Growing in Christ

Two months ago I wrote about the most important word in our new slogan, “Grow in Love, Love by Serving.” That word is the only one to appear twice: the word love. Everything we do as a church and as people of God is rooted in God’s love for us, and God’s command and desire for us to love one another. That is, and always will be, most important.

But that is not all.

The first word in our new slogan is “Grow.” One thing is for certain: we are all growing. No one stays the same over the course of their life. They might grow in good ways or in bad ways, but growth is unavoidable. It will happen. The question, therefore, is not if we will grow. The question is how we grow. What will we grow into? That is the question.

Most of the time, when we discuss growth in church, we talk about getting more people to come to worship and programs. The Greek word for a church building, kuriakos, appears twice in the Greek New Testament. That’s it. And Jesus never used it. Jesus had no interest in building churches, nor did he seem to have interest in attracting people to them. While we typically think of growth in terms of adding people to church, this was clearly not Jesus’s focus.

A word Jesus used a lot, though, is disciple. That word is all over the Gospels, and it is how Jesus treated the twelve: as disciples. Many of the ways he related to them that seem odd to us are perfectly normal when placed in the context of the rabbi/disciple relationship of the time (for a great video on this, go to YouTube and watch a video titled “Rob Bell 08 Dust Legendado.” Trust me.) Jesus did not come to build church buildings or to attract people to them, but he did come to make disciples. This is how he calls the twelve to grow, and how he calls us to grow: as his disciples.

Discipleship is, essentially, learning to be like Jesus. The goal of the disciple is to know what Jesus knew, so we can do what Jesus did, so we can be like Jesus. The task of being a Christian, therefore, is the task of dying to self and rising to new life in Christ. Dying to who we want to be, who the world wants to make us, and making Christ our identity. New life in which are thoughts, behaviors, indeed our very self becomes more and more like Christ.

This is the call Jesus issues to each of us. This is what we mean by growing in love. Because of God’s love, we are free to become more like Christ. We do so not out of shame or guilt, but as a response to God’s love for us. Growing in love is a vital part of our walk with Christ.

How do we do that? That will be the topic for next month.

God loves you, and so do I.

-Pastor Scott