A few weeks ago our congregation talked about how the church of Jesus resembles in many ways that of a military team. In fact Paul the Apostle used military terminology when speaking to Timothy: “Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer” (2 Tim.2:3-4).
In this lesson we talked about how that if you are a Christian then you are a soldier of Jesus Christ. You experience a daily “training in righteousness” (2 Tim.3:16). You experience a very real war everyday all day. As a member of Christ’s church you are part of a soul saving mission to rescue prisoners of war from their captivity to the Evil one by the power of Christ’s Spirit within you.
We also said that different than the Navy Seals who killed Osama Bin Laden on May 1st, in the church there are no heroes besides Jesus.
It does not matter who we are.
It does not matter what we accomplish
It does not matter what awards we receive or how many people we rescue and lead to Christ; in the church of Jesus there is only one hero in the camp and that hero is Jesus.
We concluded by recognizing that as the church seeks to build herself around and on top of Jesus- her foundation (1 Cor.3:11), the life of the church will be a joyless drag in conjunction with how many people there are vying to be the hero. The quarrels in the Corinthian church in particular were largely because some were following Paul, some were following Apollos and some were following Cephas instead of Jesus alone (see 1 Corinthians chapters 1-3).
We would be kidding ourselves if we did not confess the evil desire within us, especially us men, that wants to be the church’s Navy Seal. We want to be the commando. We want to be the Green Bureau. We want to be the knight in shining armor rushing in to make history and receive the recognition.
But the reality of the church is quite different. The reality is that in the church of Jesus, the church Jesus built, there are no spiritual Navy Seals. Instead, we find a whole assembly of former Prisoners of War. Former POW’s. Today we are either former POW’s or we are POW’s. And when God through Jesus makes us former POW’s, we come hard to the fact that we did not have anything to do with Jesus’ rescue mission.
We didn’t plan for it.
We didn’t train for it.
We didn’t even know it was coming.
So what does that have to do with building life around Jesus? Well as long as we live by the illusion that the church should be filled with spiritual Navy Seals, we will never be able to love one another for the bruised, scarred and beaten POW’s we really are. This seems to be some of what Paul gets at in this passage:
”Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth" [i.e. there were no spiritual Navy Seals among you]. "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31, parenthesis mine).
What were these Corinthian Christians before they were Christians? They were spiritual POW’s. They were not wise. They were not influential. They were not of noble birth. They were not the ones chosen to rush in and make the kill. They were prisoners in need of rescuing, and so were we.
How many times have you started a new job thinking it was a perfect match only to discover 2 years down the road that it is not at all what you thought it would be?
How many times have you gone to see a movie that you were told would be spectacular only to leave feeling disappointed?
How many times have you dated someone that you thought was Mr. Right only to realize a year later that he is pretty messed up in the head?
How many times have you bought a new flavor of coffee creamer at the store, maybe a flavor of creamer others raved about, only to get home, try it in your coffee and regurgitate it in your cup because you couldn’t stand it?
How many times have you involved yourself in a congregation that for the first 8 months you truly loved, only to discover that joyous Joyce is not always joyous? In fact she even gets angry.
In each of these situations what do we do? We jump ship! We find a new job. We find a new movie. We find a new date. We find a new coffee creamer. And it’s perfectly fine to do that with some things.
What really blows it for us in all of these situations is not the bad movie: it’s the expectations we attached to the movie. You see if we had gone to the movie thinking, ‘this movie is probably not going to be as great as everyone says it is’, we might have walked out thinking, ‘hey that was a pretty good movie’. The astronomical expectations killed it for us.
In the same way our perfection expectations of the church can sometimes kill the church for us. Forgetting that there is only one spiritual Navy Seal in the camp- Jesus- we often put the church down for resembling former POW’s. Many say, “I don’t go to church because they are a bunch of hypocrites”. My reply is, “Well at least they go to church, which is more than you can say”.
The fact that the church is not perfect by no means frees us from the fight to become perfect by the power of the Spirit; but it should at least grant us the humility to show compassion and patience with other believers who are just as bruised and scarred as we are. Remember...there is only one spiritual Navy Seal in this church- Jesus.
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