The Church: a Servant to All People

The totality of Jesus followers is the church; those who’ve already left this life and gone on to the next life are called ‘the church triumphant.’ Those who are still living in this world have work to do: as Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “as much as it is possible, live in peace with everyone.”

Servanthood is not the church’s only task, but it is a central one. In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul writes, “although I’m free from all people, I have made myself a slave for all people to win more of them.”

In those same letters, Paul commends the Jesus followers in Corinth for their material generosity: “You will honor God through this genuine act of service because of your commitment to spread the Good News of Christ and because of your generosity in sharing with them and everyone else.”

In freely giving time and possessions, the people who follow Jesus give themselves away. This act of self-sacrifice is paradoxically energizing. Shortly before his death in 2013, Byron Porisch noted several passages in a book coauthored by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay. These authors write that it is

in the essence of being given away that we will find the meaning and reason to keep going.

The people who follow Jesus work to build relationships and friendships in all directions, to all sorts of people. As Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, “whenever we have the opportunity, we have to do what is good for everyone.”

Realistically acknowledging that this world will never be perfect, people who follow Jesus know that God still reaches into the lives of individuals with His abundant blessing.

This world will never be perfect, but God makes the life of each person better. He gives us the privilege of being the instrument of His blessings, and as Halter and Smay phrase it,

There's just something about this thing called church that captures our hearts and keeps us fighting for a better day.

Paul’s prayer for the Jesus followers in Thessaloniki shows this spirit: “We also pray that the Lord will greatly increase your love for each other and for everyone else.” The ‘love’ which Jesus followers show is practical help, friendly relationship, and spiritual truth.

Those three elements - help, relationship, and truth - are all necessary. The church must avoid the temptation merely to present the truth.

A second temptation is to ignore or cast aside those who don’t embrace the truth; this temptation must likewise be avoided. Paul’s imperative to show love and generosity to ‘all’ people is unconditional.

The metaphor of the church as ‘bride’ gains richness in this light: in many cultures, the bride is ceremonially ‘given’ by her parents to the new husband. But as she is given, she simultaneously decides to give herself.

The content is not about marriage and wedding traditions in various cultures. The content, as authors Halter and Smay report, is about generosity in giving of one’s time, one’s possessions, and one’s self:

The mysterious awe associated with the Bride of Christ is in the character of her sacrificial and missional calling. The church is beautiful because it is endowed with the purpose of giving herself away wholeheartedly to the world God desires to redeem.

So it is, then, that Paul writes to Timothy: “First of all, I encourage you to make petitions, prayers, intercessions, and prayers of thanks for all people,” and “a servant of the Lord must not quarrel. Instead, he must be kind to everyone.” The operative phrases here are ‘all people’ and ‘everyone.’

People who follow Jesus live in communities of believers and nonbelievers, of righteous and unrighteous. Paul tells Titus that “believers shouldn’t curse anyone or be quarrelsome, but they should be gentle and show courtesy to everyone.”

The letter to the Hebrews advises the Jesus followers to “try to live peacefully with everyone.” The ‘peace’ with which they are to live is not mere absence of conflict, but the full wellness and wholeness of the Hebrew shalom. They are to be generous friends to everyone.

To be sure, there is a need that the people of Jesus not be weaklings, and not endure unnecessary abuse. Self-sacrifice is a sacrifice that serves a purpose, not merely to gratify a bully.

So when Peter writes that Jesus followers should “honor everyone,” he is not commanding passivity, and not relegating them to codependence or victimhood. Generosity and friendship, which sometimes entail self-sacrifice, demand courage when carried out authentically.

Creating, and Maintaining, a Clean Heart

Over the centuries and millennia, people have used the famous words, ‘create in me a clean heart’ to seek forgiveness, regeneration, and a fresh start. What are they asking God to do?

God is the one who can reach into our lives and do this amazing work. We can’t do it. It’s no mere adjustment: it’s a ‘creation’ or a ‘re-creation.’ It’s a total reboot.

When a computer is frozen, or when a smartphone is a ‘brick,’ it cannot reboot itself. Only from the outside can the restart be initiated.

God reboots us when we’re totally glitched, or when we’ve run into a ‘hang.’ When we crash, He restarts us.

But even more: after rebooting us, He continues to maintain our ‘operating system’ (OS), which will become corrupt and eventually crash again without His updates. As Martin Luther writes,

It is not in our power to acquire such a heart, but it comes by divine creation. This is why the Spirit wanted to use the term “create” here, for those are vain dreams that the scholastics foolishly thought up about the cleansing of the heart. Just as such a clean heart is not by our powers but by divine creation, so we cannot preserve this creation against the devil either. We see how often we are polluted by sudden troubles and sadness. Hence this prayer for the creation and preservation of a clean heart ought never to stop.

What’s the result of God rebooting us, and then continuing to maintain us? The result is that He uses us to do amazing things. When we’re running properly, which happens only through His intervention, we can be the way He helps other people.

Shortly before he died in 2013, Byron Porisch took note of this passage in a book coauthored by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay:

Whenever I see someone invest time and energy and love into something and then willingly sacrifice it, giving away what they have, it’s powerful!

Halter and Smay point out what it looks like when God has created, and maintained, that ‘clean heart’ in a person. That person is transformed into a blessing toward other people.

For around 3,000 years, people have meditated on the words of the Psalm, which show us God’s action:

Create a clean heart in me, O God,
and renew a faithful spirit within me.
Do not force me away from your presence,
and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore the joy of your salvation to me,
and provide me with a spirit of willing obedience.

The grammar of these passages reveals God at work. God does, or doesn’t, do the action. The person speaking to God simply asks. God creates, renews, forces, takes, restores, and provides.