Quotes on Church Life
The sermon emphasizes the importance of the individual's relationship with God and the role of the community in representing Christ's body and becoming God's temple.
Adolf Schlatter emphasizes the profound impact of God's grace on the individual's life, highlighting how Christ's act of love and sacrifice leads to freedom and a deep sense of God's love. The community of believers plays a crucial role in nurturing and enhancing the individual's spiritual growth, allowing each member to experience God's love and grace in a powerful way. Through public confession of Jesus' lordship and communal practices like baptism and partaking in the Lord's table, believers are united in purpose and connected to the universal body of Christ. Love is central to ethical living, emphasizing the importance of community in expressing and receiving love, which ultimately leads to sanctity and a harmonious union of giving and receiving.
Text
"The terms by which Paul describes God's grace provide the personal life of the individual with its greatest escalation. The concept of guilt places the decisive event by which our relationship with God comes into being or is broken within the depth of the individual life. As the agent of justification, Christ turns to the individual as the one who gives; "he loved me an gave himself up for me" (Gal. 2:20). The individual is granted God's love in such greatness and glory that his Spirit moves him. He has become free. That the Pauline community doe not merely not hinder, or grudgingly overlook, or just tolerate this rich and strong emphasis on the individual life but that it rather produces it, provides it with its peculiar greatness. Only the community that truly is the community of Christ, that represents his body, that becomes god's temple, can consist of such vigorous and free members."
"Moreover, the public confession of Jesus' lordship produced in them a union that oriented everyone's conduct toward the same goal, and the Spirit's presence invested the community with a thoroughly spiritual dimension. Baptism did not result in a multitude of autonomous congregations but the one church, because baptism called its recipients to the Christ. Likewise, the table around which the community gathered was not the table of a teacher or baptizer or bishop but Christ's table. By receiving their share in Christ, they simultaneously entered into communion with all other believers. The concept of the church thus took on a universal dimension from the start that remained undiminished, just as the individual local Jewish congregation had always been considered to be part of the one Israel."
"As soon as the concept of love becomes the central term of ethical instruction, the community's indispensability is secure. In the isolation of the individual, love would lose its sphere of operation and wither to an empty attitude. If it truly comes to permeate the human will, a union of giving and receiving arises for which the recipient is as indispensable as the giver. By recognizing God's will to be love, the community receives irreproachable sanctity. "
Sermon Outline
- The Concept of Guilt and Individual Life
- The Community of Christ
- The Public Confession of Jesus' Lordship
- The Indispensability of the Community
- The union produced by confession orients conduct toward the same goal
- The Spirit's presence invests the community with a spiritual dimension
- Love requires a union of giving and receiving
- The community receives irreproachable sanctity by recognizing God's will to be love
Key Quotes
“He has become free.” — Adolf Schlatter
“The community that truly is the community of Christ, that represents his body, that becomes god's temple, can consist of such vigorous and free members.” — Adolf Schlatter
“As soon as the concept of love becomes the central term of ethical instruction, the community's indispensability is secure.” — Adolf Schlatter
Application Points
- Recognize the significance of your individual relationship with God and the role of guilt in shaping that relationship.
- Understand the importance of the community in representing Christ's body and becoming God's temple.
- Emphasize the concept of love as the central term of ethical instruction, recognizing the community's indispensability in living out that love.