Dear Parents and Friends of CCS,
I hope this post finds you well and walking in the forgiveness, grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ!
This week I want to conclude our series on the “Shalom Community” that we talk so much about here at CCS, a Community of Peace, Safety, Wholeness, Hope and Joy.
Over the last few weeks we have looked at many facets of this deep concept that is evident throughout the Bible, and is rooted in many particular Scriptures.
I would like to focus this week on 1 Peter 5: 6-11, a beautiful text that illuminates both the challenge of striving to live like Christ in a fallen world, and the immense reward of those who set their hearts toward a joy-filled obedience of Christs’ teaching.
It bears repeating that virtually every text in the Bible has as its backdrop the gospel of Jesus Christ. In person after person, event after event, teaching after teaching, prophecy after prophecy, we can see Jesus, and how He completes the picture.
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” 1 Peter 5:6-11 (ESV)
This passage provides a beautiful description of how people acting as members of a Shalom Community should live.
In fact, in a very real way, this passage can be seen as a prequel, a preliminary position that must be held in order for a Shalom Community to operate with a minimum of friction.
Point by point, Paul pushes back against the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age that holds hyper-individualistic autonomy so dear.
-Some thoughts to consider:
V. 6-7 We are called to humble ourselves, the difficult but vital step toward living fruitfully in community with others. Humility is not so much comparing yourself unfavorably with your neighbor, as it is practicing a Spirit-empowered self-forgetfulness.
This Is hard, because in order to do this we must have a solid trust that God has our back, that He is upholding us every step of the way, and that He in the end will not only fight our battle for us, but will give us the victory that He has appointed for us in His perfect timing. Paul goes on to make clear that humility becomes possible as we transfer our cares and burdens onto the “shoulders” of the only one strong enough to carry them: Jesus.
V. 8-9 We are alerted that we have a powerful enemy who seeks our destruction, and short of that, creating situations where we are “combat-ineffective” in the Kingdom i.e. our brokenness is so raw and overwhelming that we are hindered in our service to our great King.
Praise God! Paul balances this point with a command to resist, to stand firm against, to actively oppose this enemy who seeks our ruin. This is one benefit of our inheritance in Christ that we often overlook, to our own peril.
V. 9-11 It is impossible to do justice to these verses in a sentence or two - I strongly encourage you to get alone with God and meditate on these verses, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal God and the gospel through them.
I'll simply say for now that those who grieve, including people who are strong followers of Christ like the Gaskins family, who recently lost their beloved son Wesley, can resist the despair that can so naturally result from enduring the emptiness and experiencing the world as somehow different, humanly speaking.
It’s hard to imagine a more counter-cultural message than the one depicted in these verses.
Yet Paul has the boldness and audacity to conclude that for those who have been humbled, for those who resist the enemy of their souls and his fiendish agenda, who embrace the God of grace with open arms, open minds and open hearts, for these people, God has promised to “restore, confirm and establish them”, to His praise and glory and dominion, forever and ever.
God is revealing here a truth that cannot be applied in real life without embracing the scandalous gospel of Jesus Christ, and progressively becoming a people who are sold out to Jesus. In other words, human nature, in its unredeemed state, is incapable of sustaining such a way of living.
We need Jesus in order to live like Jesus.
In closing, remember that all of this makes much more sense if we realize that Jesus is worth it, that He is better, and that experiencing and knowing Him firsthand is the ultimate pleasure.
As the late Timothy Keller said,
“You are worse than you think you are, but also far more loved than you feel you are.”
Community Christian School has clearly been called by God to be the sort of community where we “stir one another up to love and good works”. (Heb. 10:24 ESV)
This means the growth of a Shalom Community is of first priority. And by the grace of God and in the power of the Spirit, we will continue to pursue this.
Next week I’ll be beginning a short series that examines the good news of the Kingdom as it’s revealed in the season of Advent, and how this relates to the vision God is continuing to reveal at CCS.
‘Till then, may God bless you with His awesome truth and love.
For CCS and the Kingdom,
Tom