Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10.5)

Outcomes
What We Love
Somewhere around 90 AD, Clement, pastor of the churches in Rome, and a former companion of the apostle Paul, wrote the first of two lengthy epistles of instruction to one of the churches formed under Paul’s ministry.

In the opening of his letter, Clement extolled the exemplary life and witness of this church: “For who ever dwelt even for a short time among you, and did not find your faith to be as fruitful of virtue as it was firmly established? Who did not admire the sobriety and moderation of your godliness in Christ? Who did not proclaim the magnificence of your hospitality? And who did not rejoice over your perfect and well-grounded knowledge? For you did all things without respect of persons, and walked in the commandments of God, being obedient to those who had rule over you, and giving all fitting honour to the elders among you.”

Virtuous, godly, hospitable, knowledgeable, loving, law-abiding, God-fearing, orderly: Here is a model from which churches today could learn.

The church to which Clement was writing was the church in Corinth, the church which was so wracked with troubles, schisms, immorality, and immaturity in Paul’s day, 30 years before Clement wrote, that it took two letters from the apostle to address all their needs and concerns.

The basic problem in Corinth in Paul’s day was that the believers were letting misplaced affections lead them from the path of growth in unity and maturity. Paul was blunt: “You are not restrained by us, but you are restrained in your own affections” (2 Corinthians 6.12).

Paul saw the Corinthians as hemmed in, cramped, restrained. They were not abounding in the Lord but were living as babes in Christ. Their churches were riddled with schism, sin, and strife, and they were not bearing the fruit of love for God and neighbors which Paul expected. Their witness in the community was compromised and their worship was chaotic and disgraceful – even though everyone there seemed to enjoy it.

We would say the churches in Corinth had “plateaued”, become stagnant, and were beginning to decline. But this is not what any church should ever be, and Paul knew it. If we have Christ’s vision for His Church, and if we savor this vision and long for it with all our hearts, then we can never be completely satisfied with our progress at any time. Though we will rejoice and give thanks daily for what the Lord is doing in and through us, we will always strive to realize more, and long to break out in new directions and thrusts and adventures of faith, both as individuals and as congregations.

What we long for is what we will love, and what we love will command our time and strength. The Corinthians’ problem was that they lived a wrong vision of the life of faith and the Church. They were content with smallness, the status quo, and a turf to call their own. Their affections were strong, but misplaced. But this was not because Paul had not properly taught and challenged them during those 18 months in their midst. It was because they had set their hearts on a false view of the faith and the Church. They were hemmed in by their own misplaced affections, and Paul knew they would not break out of their restraints unless he confronted them unsparingly, even to the point of challenging the genuineness of their faith (2 Cor. 13.5).

The evidence, from the early chapters of 1 Clement, is that the Corinthians accepted Paul’s hard words and came to know revival and renewal in ways that significantly impacted the city of Corinth and beyond. The challenge to church leaders today is thus both to cast a large, expansive vision of the life of faith and the Church, and to challenge not just the thinking of the people they serve, but the desires of their hearts as well.

Churches will never realize the potential for which Christ has brought them into being until love for God and His Kingdom is the commanding affection in everything they do. If we love anything other than these, our churches will never become the Kingdom signs and outposts the Lord intends.

Churches today need to heed Paul’s challenge to the struggling churches in Corinth: “Examine yourselves!” Do you love Christ and His Word? His Kingdom and righteousness? Or is your church so infatuated with numbers, relevance, tolerance, and other manifestations of the narcissism of the age that all you can see, as you think of your church, is what’s good or pleasing for you?

We are what we love. What do you and your church love most of all?

For reflection
1.  How would you even begin to gauge the affections of a local church? Where would you look to determine what your church loves most of all?

2.  How could you tell if a church loved Christ and His Kingdom above all else?

3.  What obstacles are keeping your church from becoming more the Kingdom sign and outpost the Lord intends?

Next steps: Share the three questions above with some of the leaders of your church.

If you’d like a resource to help you examine the overall health of your church, download the free PDF Twelve Questions that Could Change Your Church (click here). Work through the questions, then share your observations with some friends, and invite them to answer the questions as well.

For a more complete study of Paul’s advice to the struggling churches in Corinth, download the free ReVision study, Hope for the Church(click here).

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