One of the more troubling books I’ve read recently is a book called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam. Bowling Alone isn’t a Christian book, but it’s an analysis of the health of our sense of community in American culture. The author of Bowling Alone observes that since the 1950s membership in voluntary community groups has been steadily declining. He traces membership in groups like labor unions, the PTA, professional groups, grass roots political groups, civic groups, churches and synagogues, philanthropic groups like the Rotary, and so forth. He observes that in every single case, involvement in these groups has been steadily declining for 50 years. As a result of this our neighborhoods are filled with people who feel disconnected and isolated from each other. Although we hunger and thirst to be part of authentic community, for some reason we avoid actually making the kind of personal investment in the kinds of groups that produce that kind of community.
Even here at Life Bible Fellowship Church we see this erosion of community community, especially as we continue to grow. Last Sunday we had 975 people at our church, which makes this need for community even more urgent. Each month we tell participants in our Meet Life Bible Fellowship Church seminar that if you want to truly feel connected at this church, you need to be part of some kind of small group. Authentic relationships and a sense of belonging come from being part of a smaller group of people, where you pray together, care for each other, and seek to grow in the spiritual journey together. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a home Bible study like our Share & Care Groups, or a discussion group in Mom to Mom, or an informal accountability group, or a Bible study here at the church, or whatever. A sense of belonging is directly tied to our involvement in a smaller group of people we share with as a community. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, we had as many as 80% of our people involved in these kinds of groups. Yet as hard as we try to get people into these kinds of groups, our level of involvement hovers at about 50% of our adults being in some sort of small group.
We hunger for community, yet it seems to elude our grasp. As we look around, we find that lots of groups in our culture are based on merit. Groups thrive on created an "in" crowd that excludes the "out" crowd. We all experienced it in high school. There were the jocks who excelled in sports, the "socials" who were popular, the "brains" who did well academically, and there were people like me who they called the "stoners," who excelled at getting into trouble. And you remember what it was like; very rarely did people cross between their group because the lines were so well defined.
Then in college it was the honor societies or the fraternities, again where involvement was based on merit. With all these groups based on merit, most of us go through life feeling like we don’t quite fit in. I was at a pastors conference in San Diego all week this week with 1700 other pastors, and even in the midst of ministry colleagues I constantly fought a sneaking suspicion that if these people really knew me they’d kick me out. We constantly compare what we do know about ourselves to what we don’t know about each other. Or as they taught me in AA, we compare our "inside" to other people’s "outside."
Then we come to the Christian community, what the Bible calls the Church. And in the Church we’re supposed to find a community based on God’s grace. But sometimes in the church what we find is just a mirror image of what we find in our culture. We often find cliques and divisions, insiders and outsiders just like other places. Yet I think every Christian would agree that the Christian Church is supposed to be a community of grace.
But what does a community based on God’s grace look like? As I close my eyes I try to picture a community based on God’s grace, and I don’t see anything. What does a community based on grace look like?
Now we’ve been in a series through the New Testament book of Romans called "Good News For Our Times." In this series we’ve been looking at the "Good News About God’s Faithfulness" in Romans 9 for the last two weeks. We’ve been grappling with why the Jewish people don’t believe in Jesus as their Messiah. If the New Testament is true in claiming that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises to the Jewish people, then why do the vast majority of Jewish people reject Jesus as their Messiah? Does Israel’s rejection of Jesus mean that God failed to keep his promises to Israel? Has the nation of Israel inadvertently derailed God’s plan with their refusal to believe in Jesus? In Romans 9 Paul rejects these conclusions as he grapples with these questions. In this chapter Paul claims that for now the nation of Israel is on the back burner of God’s strategy for the world, and for the time being the Christian Church is front and center. God’s not done with Israel (we’ll hear more about that in chapter 11) but for now the Christian Church is the object of mercy God is using to further his purposes for the human race.
Now when the Christian Church first began, it was exclusively Jewish. Jesus himself was a torah keeping, Sabbath observing, temple worshipping Jew. Jesus was more like a reformer within Judaism than a revolutionary who wanted to start a new religion, and it was only after the nation rejected Jesus that the Christian faith become distinct from Judaism. Jesus’ twelve apostles were also all devout Jews. When the church began in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost every single Christian there was a Jewish Christian. Only reluctantly did the Jewish Christians begin to allow a few non-Jewish people to join them. But by the time Paul writes his letter to the Romans the Jewish Christians had become a minority, and non-Jewish people are flooding into the church. This was causing tension between the Jewish Christians and the non-Jewish Christians.
So Paul finishes Romans 9 to remind both Jewish and non-Jewish Christians that the Christian Church is a community based on God’s grace. So let’s explore what that means, as we look at two characteristics of a community based on God’s grace.
1. All Kinds of People (Romans 9:24-29).
These final verses in Romans 9 are dominated by quotations from the Jewish Bible, what we Christians call the Old Testament. This is because Paul has to pull out the big guns of the Jewish Bible here to prove that God’s community has always been intended to be a community based on grace. Even in the Old Testament, this was Israel’s calling: to embody God’s incredible grace.
Now perhaps I need to define grace at this point, because that’s a word I’ve used a couple of times so far without definition. Grace essentially means gift, something that’s offered free of charge. Grace is something you can’t earn, you can’t merit, you can’t perform for or buy; something that can only be received as a free gift. Philip Yancey’s wonderful book What’s So Amazing About Grace says grace means no amount of sinning can make God love me less and no amount of goodness can make God love me more.
Paul wants to prove to us that God’s community in the Christian Church is characterized by God’s grace, not by merit, nationality, performance or importance. What Paul seeks to prove from the Old Testament here is two fold: First that God had predicted that Gentiles would flood into God’s community, and second that the Jewish people would become a remnant in God’s community.
To prove his first claim he quotes the book of Hosea in vv. 24-26. Now v. 24 is obviously connected to v. 23, which mentions objects of God’s mercy. Paul’s saying that the objects of God’s mercy today are both Jewish people and non-Jewish people. Then he quotes two verses from the book of Hosea. Hosea is one of the minor prophets from the Jewish Bible. Hosea was a prophet you wouldn’t want involved in your church because Hosea’s wife was a prostitute. Hosea’s story is a painful one, a story filled with heartache and betrayal, as his painful marriage mirrors God’s relationship with ten unfaithful tribes from the nation of Israel. Just like Hosea’s wife was breaking her marriage vows, the ten northern tribes of Israel were breaking their vows to God. By breaking their covenant vows, these ten tribes had become no different than the non-Jewish nations around them. Their unfaithfulness disqualified them from participation in the promises God had made to Israel. No longer were they God’s people, the object of God’s special affection, no longer were they children of the living God.
Yet even in the midst of their unfaithfulness, God looks forward to a time when he looks at these ten unfaithful tribes and once again calls them his people, his loved ones, his children. Although through their unfaithfulness they divorced themselves from God’s people, God predicts that one day they will once again be included among his people.
Paul views these two passages from Hosea as a paradigm for what God wants to do with all the nations. Paul says this isn’t just true of these ten unfaithful tribes who divorced themselves from God’s people, but it’s true for all the nations of the world. The day will come when God looks at people from all the other nations of the world--Egyptians and Americans, Canadians and Rwandans, Iranians and Iraqis and calls them his children. The day Hosea looked forward to began when the Christian church was born, and it continues even today as God calls people from all nations of the world to be part of his community of grace. Through the Christian community, God calls Americans and Armenians, Russians and Aborigines his children, his loved ones, sons of the living God.
So in Paul’s day as Gentiles from the Roman Empire flood the Christian community, Paul rejoices because he sees this as the beginning of the fulfillment of these promises God had given through Hosea.
But to prove that this community of grace will only have a small number of Jewish people, in vv. 27-29 Paul turns to the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah was one of the major prophets from the Jewish Bible because his book is so long. Isaiah spoke God’s message to the two faithful tribes within the nation of Israel before and during the destruction of Jerusalem about 500 years before the birth of Jesus. Although the nation of Israel was huge in Isaiah’s generation, he observes that only a remnant--only a small number--would truly be saved. Even though the nation was filled with circumcised, temple worshipping, bacon abstaining Jewish people, the vast majority of these people didn’t truly know God. They were nominal, much like many people today who call themselves by the title "Christian," but who no more have a relationship with Jesus than my son’s pet corn snake.
The second quote from Isaiah reminds us that even the remnant in Israel that is saved isn’t saved because they deserve it. If salvation was based on merit or worthiness, then Israel would’ve been destroyed just like Sodom and Gomorrah had been back in the Old Testament book of Genesis. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of the moral cancer that had taken root in theses cities. Yet Israel had done everything Sodom and Gomorrah had done, and even worse. Only because of God’s grace would there be a remnant in Israel.
From these four quotes of from the Jewish Bible we find the first characteristic of a community based on God’s grace. A community based on God’s grace is composed of ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE.
This is where Israel struggled. And it’s often where the Christian community today struggles as well. The Jewish Christians back then assumed that God’s community would only have religious people in it. You know what I mean; people like them, people who were Bible believing, family values affirming, church going, law abiding, conservative, religious people. The kind of people you’d feel okay about sending your daughter on a date with. Of course the Jewish people knew there’d be occasional irreligious outsiders among them. In Israel’s history there had always been a few oddball outsiders, people like Rahab the prostitute, like Ruth the Moabite, and so forth. But they were always a small group--a remnant from the nations--and so long as they were a small group you could tolerate them. If you didn’t want your kids to around Rahab, you could easily avoid her. If you didn’t want to see Ruth the Moabite, you could just go to first service at the temple and avoid her.
But suddenly good, religious, reverent people had become the minority in the church in Rome. They’d been invaded by Roman barbarians: Greek speaking, Sabbath breaking, pork eating, irreverent, pagan, irreligious people who were suddenly all excited about Jesus. They couldn’t protect their kids from seeing these people, because now these were the very people coming to their church, celebrating the Lord’s supper with them, and serving Jesus side by side with them. Perhaps some even wanted to teach their kids in Sunday school!
How often we forget that the church is supposed to be composed of all kinds of people. Good people and bad people, fun people and negative people, friendly people and hostile people, well people and sick people. A community of people composed of people just like me isn’t really a community; it’s a mutual admiration society. Whenever the church forgets first characteristic, in a sense it ceases being the true Christian Church.
Think back to the late 1960s when suddenly hippies here in southern California started discovering Jesus Christ. They walked into southern Californian churches shoeless, smelly, hairy, yet excited about Jesus. The majority of churches here in Southern California said, "You’re welcome to be here if you become just like us. Just burn your rock music, get a haircut, buy some shoes, take a shower, get a job, and you’re welcome to join us. We’re all about grace here after all!" Yet there was one remarkable pastor who didn’t do that, a guy named Chuck Smith. Pastor Chuck didn’t demand that the hippies become like him, and the Calvary Chapel movement was born. Life Bible Fellowship Church was also born during that same period of time, as a Bible study back in 1971. That’s why we met in a converted chicken coop and said, "Come as you are" back in the 1970s. Back then we truly believed God’s community were supposed to be composed of all kinds of people.
Do we still believe that? Now that we’ve gotten jobs, had kids, bought shoes, and become middle class, do we still believe that we’re supposed to have all kinds of people? Who are the equivalent of the hippies today? Maybe the tattooed, body pierced, broken people struggling to find hope and meaning in a society that views them as slackers and consumers? Are we telling them, "You’re welcome here as long as you become just like us. Just cover your tattoos, take out your piercings, dress a little more modestly, and you’re welcome to join us. We’re all about grace here after all!"
A community based on God’s grace is composed of all different kinds of people.
2. The Entry Requirement (Romans 9:30-33)
Now some of you are thinking, "But Pastor Tim. We have to have standards. We can’t just let anyone be part of our church!" We’ve got to have some kind of standard for membership. After all, some churches have thought this first characteristic means dropping all membership requirements. I know of one church in the Inland Valley you can become a member of even if you’re an atheist. Some churches in our community advertise themselves as "welcoming and affirming." That’s a code phrase that means, "If you’re gay, you can join our church. We won’t tell you that being gay is wrong or call you to a life of sexual purity."
That’s not what I’m talking about. After all, we do have a membership commitment people who join our church make a commitment to. So we’re not talking about having no standards. A community based on God’s grace doesn’t mean having no membership requirements, but it does mean letting God define the basis for membership.
What’s the requirement for membership in a community based on God’s grace? Paul answers that in vv. 30-33. Still Paul is comparing the nation of Israel who’ve mostly rejected Jesus with this massive number of non-Jewish people who’ve come to faith in Jesus and joined the Church.
It’s not as clear in the English, but the Greek Paul uses here it’s clear that Paul’s using a word picture of a race in these verses. The words "pursue" and "obtain" in v. 30 and the word "attain" in v. 31 were all athletic terms used to describe a foot race. The apostle Paul loves athletics, and he uses athletic imagery frequently in his letters. To "pursue" means to run in such a way as to "pursue" the finish line. To "obtain" or "attain" means to cross the finish line of the race. In this word picture, Israel has entered the race. Israel’s gone through the preparation and training to be a contender in this race. The Gentiles however never even sent in their registration, they never trained, they never entered the race.
The finish line in this race is "righteousness," which is just a fancy religious term that simply means right standing with God. Righteousness is a reconciled relationship with God, a relationship of intimacy and love where the things that once separated us from God have been done away with. Righteousness is knowing God personally.
Yet, although Israel entered the race and the Gentiles didn’t, when the end of the race comes, the Gentiles are crossing the finish line, and the nation of Israel stumbled and fallen down on the track half way through the race. It’s the upset of the century, as the favorite to win the race doesn’t even finish, and a late entry who never even trained crosses the finish line in victory.
What happened? Well Paul tells us that Israel tried to run the race by pursuing the Jewish law--the ten commandments--"as if it were by works" (9:32). Now it’s very important to understand what Paul is and is not saying here. Paul is not faulting Israel for pursuing the law, but he’s faulting them instead for pursuing the law on the basis of works instead of on the basis of faith. God’s law isn’t the problem; it was Israel’s distortion of God’s law that became the problem. Instead of seeing the ten commandments as an instrument God would use to kindle faith, the vast majority of Jewish people saw the law as a means of earning acceptance before God by keeping the law. The law was given to kindle faith, but in Paul’s day it had become a self-improvement program to earn your way to God, a kind of performance stairway to heaven. We’ll see in the next chapter, that the Jewish people who pursued the law by faith were brought to Jesus because Jesus himself is the goal of the law (10:4).
The Gentiles didn’t have this problem, because they didn’t have the ten commandments to trip them up. So it was easy for the Gentiles to understand that a right relationship with God came as a result of faith, a result of heartfelt trust in God to create a right relationship. So they crossed the finish line.
As Israel ran the race, they stumbled over a "stumbling stone." That "stumbling stone" is Jesus himself, the one who fulfills the law, supercedes the law, the one who shows us the right way to understand God’s law. This too was predicted by the Jewish prophet Isaiah, that God would lay a stone in the city of Jerusalem that would cause his people to stumble. Yet those who trust in this one God sends would never be put to shame.
So here we find the entrance requirement to a community based on God’s grace. A community based on God’s grace receives people on the basis of FAITH ALONE.
You see, no one can earn the right to be part of a community based on grace. If it’s based on grace, it’s not based on merit, or goodness, or worthiness, or race. If it’s based on grace, no one deserves to be a part of it, because it’s not about deserving. When the nation of Israel saw the ten commandments as a way to earn merit before God, that short-circuited the purpose of the law, which was to lead them to Jesus.
They began to think they had a divine right to be part of God’s community. They forgot it was by grace, and began to think it was by race. They set up artificial barriers to define who was in and who was out, to provide a clear line of separation between God’s people and those outside God’s people. This is how they stumbled over Jesus, the stone that makes men stumble because he embodies God’s grace.
Jesus offered people a place at his table based on faith in him. You see, faith isn’t just another work, just another attempt to earn our way to God. Faith by its very nature admits that there’s nothing I can give, no way I can merit a relationship with God. Faith is the empty hand that admits it has nothing to offer. The empty hand of faith is no longer clinging to merits and works, it’s released its hold on religious attempts to earn our way to God. The empty hand of faith simply receives the free gift. This is why, at the finish line of the race--the finish line of a right relationship with God--the most religious people stumbled and fell, yet the most irreligious, unlikely people crossed the finish line.
Who can be a part of God’s community of grace? Do we demand that people clean up their act first, become like us, and scrub their lives clean of all failure and struggle? Do we put people through a morality test to see how ethical they are? Do we ask them how they voted in the last election? Or do we receive them on the basis of their faith in Jesus Christ alone? Do we receive them by their confession that Jesus loves them, has died for them, and saves them? Do we trust that faith in Jesus is enough to change their lives, to clean up their lives, to empower them to become like Jesus?
You see, only the good news of Jesus Christ can truly and genuinely change human lives. What therapy, social action, new laws, recovery groups, and every other human solution is powerless to do, the message of Jesus Christ can do. That’s why Paul told us back in chapter one that this message is the power of God in action for the salvation of everyone who has faith in it (Rom 1:17).
I think about this when we come to the communion table together, as we did this morning. All kinds of people, none of us deserving a place at the table with Jesus. None of us worthy, none of us with a claim on God or a leg to stand on. Yet we come by grace, not because of what we’ve done, but because of what Jesus has done for us.
Conclusion
What does a community based on God’s grace look like? In some respects, I can’t imagine because I’ve never seen a community of Christians that truly and fully understands this. We see glimmers of it in the book of Revelation, with that immense crowd of people from every language, every tribe, every nationality, all worshipping God. Yet here I see a community what wants to live like this, a group of Christians that wants to embody this grace. We fail, we exclude, we hurt each other, we form "in groups" and "out groups." Yet God is patient with us, reminding us of his grace, that no amount of sinning can make God love us less and no amount of goodness can make God love us more.
In fact, whenever we have a baptism I’m reminded of this calling to embody this grace. Whenever a person stands in front of us and gives a confession of faith, we don’t ask, "What political party are you?" we don’t ask, "Have you cleaned up your life?" we don’t ask, "Are you married or single?" We don’t say, "You have some tattoos, so we can’t receive you here." We don’t say, "You had an abortion, so you’re not welcome here." We don’t say, "You were once gay, so you have to prove yourself first." What do we ask? "Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the grave?"Nothing more, because that one confession is enough.
May God help us be a church that embodies the very grace that has called us into existence.
