Healthy, Growing Churches (4)

…for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men. Romans 14.17, 18

Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans
Origen of Alexandria (185-254)
“Just as there is no marriage in heaven, so there is no eating and drinking there either. All that will be over and done with and will have no place there. Rather there will be ‘righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’ Therefore, Paul urges us to concentrate on those things and to realize that we already have their substance here below, which we shall take with us when we go to the heavenly kingdom. Peace and righteousness and whatever else we acquire from the Holy Spirit will be our food and drink in the kingdom of heaven.”

The Lord Jesus has appointed two seemingly conflicting mandates, the build His Church (Matt. 16.18) and to seek His Kingdom (Matt. 6.33). Can these be reconciled? Certainly. Seeking the Kingdom is the first priority, in the doing of which Jesus adds all things else to us. Building the Church is a means to the end of realizing the Kingdom. For local churches are, first, signs that the Kingdom has come. In the unity we present of life, worship, and service together, we broadcast to the world that a new reality has broken into time. In addition, the local church is an outpost from which the Kingdom, through equipped and serving church members, reaches to, penetrates, and transforms every nook and cranny of life, and calls to citizenship those whom Jesus is pleased to save. No small part of a church’s unity, therefore – and of the unity it works to maintain with all other churches – must focus around the Kingdom. The more clearly we see the Kingdom, the more effective we will be in seeking it. Let us therefore “concentrate on those things” and “realize that we already have their substance here below,” so that we might be strongly bound to one another as citizens and ambassadors of the Kingdom not of this world.

How might a sharper and more consistent focus on seeking the Kingdom help to bring churches in your community together?

T. M. Moore

Organizing with the Spirit
The Lord Jesus is building His Church. His Word is the blueprint, His Spirit is the General Contractor, and we are all builders together of the Body of Christ. But are we doing our work God’s way, or ours? The Spirit has His ways of organizing our work, and we do well to understand as much as we can about His methods. This is the argument of Dr. Kent Miller of Michigan State University, and you can watch our Conversation with Dr. Miller, and download a free copy of his paper on the subject, “Organizing with the Spirit,” by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Quotations from Church Fathers are from the Ancient Christian Commentary Series, published by InterVarsity Press.