Nurturing Your Faith

PART FOUR

A Belonging Place and a Launching Base into the Community

Welcome to this Nurturing Your Faith study on the Christian life together . With your Bible and journal at the ready, begin reading below . After reading the commentary and studying the Word, you’ll be prompted to watch a video online . May God bless your study!

INTRODUCTION

If you have a gray hair or two, you know that church life has changed a lot in recent decades . The good news is, it doesn’t take a neuroscientist to understand what’s been happening. On the other hand, simply going along with people’s opinions, our own included, doesn’t help us contribute in an informed and helpful way to conversations about spiritual life .

Many factors have contributed to the decline of Christian organizational life . Church-going and Bible-reading are no longer common or respected . Digital technology has transformed how we learn and interact with others, even within families . Growing individualism and reliance on centralized government also contribute to the decline of churches .

Individualism tends to weaken mediating power centers that stand between the individual and the nation as a whole— from families to local communities (including local governments), [and] religious institutions… . In their place, it strengthens individuals, on the one hand, and a central government, on the other, since such a government is most able to treat individuals equally by treating them all impersonally . For this reason, a hyperindividualist culture is likely to be governed by a hyper-centralized government, and each is likely to exacerbate the worst inclinations of the other . (Yuval Levin,

The Fractured Republic, 99-100).

Individualism isn’t wrong in moderation, but today’s hyper-individualism often means believing I really don’t need others, such as the church . Government in itself is a gift from God, but it becomes a problem when people are looking to it rather than to God to make life right .

The result of all these factors has been the weakening of what Levin calls “mediating power centers .” These are groups like local congregations that stand between an individual and life out in public—places that make a person feel welcome and show us how to go out, live, and work in impersonal society . And this brings us to our study of 1 Peter today . (Thank you to Bethany Lutheran Church of Austin, Texas, and Pastor William Knippa for the title of this Bible study, “A Belonging Place and a Launching Base into the Community .”)

WATCH

Visit lhm.org/studies and watch the video from Rev. Dr. Dale Meyer, Speaker Emeritus of The Lutheran Hour, and then come back here to finish the study.

LEARNING FROM THE WORD

Read 1 Peter 2:11-3:12 and 4:7-14.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “church”? Of course, one of the best images is the “body of Christ,” but chances are the word “church” also brought to your mind a place, a building set aside for religious functions. News flash: There were no church buildings in the earliest history of the Christian church .

The first believers met together in the private homes of individuals… . The gathering of

Christian believers in private homes (or homes renovated for the purpose of Christian gatherings) continued to be the norm until the early decades of the fourth century when

Constantine began erecting the first Christian basilicas . For almost three hundred years the believers met in homes, not in synagogues or edifices constructed for the sole purpose of religious assembly . (Bradley Blue, “Acts and the

House Church,” in The Book of Acts in Its First

Century Setting, II, 120-121)

The New Testament frequently mentions households coming to faith . When the Lord told Peter to go to Cornelius, a Gentile, Peter balked because they were “not our kind of people .” Still, after some prompting from the Lord, he went and entered the home of Cornelius, who “had called together his relatives and close friends .” While Peter was witnessing to Jesus, “the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word” and all were baptized (Acts 10:24, 44) . Paul also shared the Gospel with households . He reminded the Ephesian elders he had gone “from house to house” (Acts 20:20b). continued …

Read Romans 16:10-11; 1 Corinthians 1:16, 16:19; Colossians 4:15; and Philemon 2. What do these verses say about households?

This draws our attention to the word “house” in 1 Peter, which is the Greek word oikos. “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house [oikos] . . .” (1 Peter 2:5a) . When those words were read to the Christians in Asia Minor, those hearers didn’t think of themselves as a figurative church building but more in terms of a family home . “House” meant their immediate family, extended family, their slaves, and the other Christians who joined with them because their own families were not Christian . “Being built up as a spiritual house” meant that a household, along with other believers who came for the Christian meetings, were growing in the Spirit of their Lord Jesus . Spiritual growth was a key reason for their weekly gatherings (see 1 Peter 2:2) .

When you think about your childhood, you may remember regular times, like meals, when you talked about the experiences of the day and thought through the challenges of tomorrow . Like such families, the household of the church is meant to be “a belonging place and a launching base into the community .” Twenty centuries after 1 Peter, Christians most commonly gather in buildings specifically designed and erected for the functions of the church, but what happens in today’s “houses of God” should still be what happened when the first Christians came together in their homes . In the learned words of social scientists, the household of the church is a “mediating institution,” a place between solitary individuals and impersonal life “out there .” It is a place where you’re accepted and where you learn how to live in the world .

That’s the way to understand 1 Peter 2:113:12 . As Peter instructs individual Christians in their household and community relationships, he keeps bringing us back to why church is our “belonging place”—that is, because of Jesus Christ . He suffered unjustly, as we sometimes do also, but trusted Himself to God. Now His sacrifice has been vindicated, and He “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to Him” (1 Peter 3:22) .

By the way, that’s how to understand the commands to submit to others (see 1 Peter 2:13, 18; 3:1, 5, 22; 5:5) . When we live conscious of the coming return of Jesus Christ in glory, we think less about our own individual rights and much more about our Savior and example, Jesus . We can go into our communities confident in our Lord, knowing He will soon appear in glory .

How do you see the church’s role as a “mediating institution”? How has church been a “belonging place” for you? If not, how could it become that way?

Why is it important to see the church as a “launching base” into the community? What do we, as the people of God, have to offer the community?

Launched for witness, we return each Lord’s Day to the household of faith, our “belonging place .” Doesn’t 1 Peter 4:7-11 describe a place you want to be? Shouldn’t your church be a winsome and attractive place to invite people who don’t yet know Jesus? The hope we share in our communities (see 1 Peter 3:15) is nurtured by weekly gatherings that are qualitatively different than any other gathering or association people have during the week . “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards (literally, stewards of the oikos) of God’s varied grace… in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To Him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 4:10, 11b).

CONCLUSION

We’re a household of faith belonging to the exalted, soon-to-be-seen Lord Jesus . What good news, and what opportunities we have as a result!

The ultimate soul-forming institutions in a free society are frequently religious institutions .

Traditional religion offers a direct challenge to the ethic of the age of fracture . Religious commitments command us to a mixture of responsibility, sympathy, lawfulness, and righteousness that align our wants with our duties .

They help form us to be free . (Levin, 204)

There is a yearning for a different way, especially among the young; a way that has integrity with the historic truths of the faith and the witness of the Spirit and that is adequate to the challenges of the present moment . (James Davison

Hunter, To Change the World, 276)

Let us be about “Bringing Christ to the Nations—and the Nations to the Church”!

“Blessed are those who dwell in Your house” (Psalm 84:4a). Amen.