Because this grace is open to all—all—the gospel of grace provides the only resource for authentic community. Here we remember that the craving for community is not only for extroverts. It is for humans. Introverts, too, need community. The hunger for fellowship is rooted in the image of God, not in our personal wiring.

The very essence of Christianity is help, acknowledgement of inability, salvation through the work of another, admission of guilt. Yet we Christians are a strange bunch. Somehow we allow ourselves to slide into a ‘good enough’, ‘minimum standard’ social culture that frenetically strives to keep up appearances. In his book Forgotten God, Francis Chan writes:

A while back a former gang member came to our church. He was heavily tattooed and rough around the edges, but he was curious to see what church was like. He had a relationship with Jesus and seemed to get fairly involved with the church. After a few months, I found out the guy was no longer coming to the church. When asked why he didn’t come any more, he gave the following explanation: ‘I had the wrong idea of what church was going to be like. When I joined the church, I thought it was going to be like joining a gang. You see, in the gangs we weren’t just nice to each other once a week — we were family.’¹

It is sobering to consider that many of our churches — and let’s be honest, we ourselves are far more often the problem than the solution — foster a more domesticated brand of community than a gang. Real fellowship is elusive. Even among our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, we wear masks, and hide sins, and parade virtues, and judge others. Many find the church to be the place where it is hardest, not easiest, to speak openly about personal struggles.

Honest Sinners

This is deeply ironic and tragic because in the Christian gospel we have the one resource that can unlock the heart and free us to take off the masks. As long as we view the Christian church as a club for those who make the grade socially, we will be unwilling to speak freely of our shortcomings as believers. Only when the single prerequisite to inclusion in the church is joint agreement that there is no prerequisite will we let down our guard. The Gospel of Luke takes us there.

The fundamental distinction between churches is not that some of them have sinners and others do not. The fundamental distinction is that some churches have honest sinners and other churches have self-protecting sinners. The question is not whether we are sinful or not, but whether or not we are honest about it. James 5:16 was not written to a segment of the church but to all members: ‘Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.’

~Taken from Dane Ortlund’s ‘Surprised by Jesus: Subversive Grace in the Four Gospels’, Evangelical Press, (EP Books), an imprint of 10Publishing Unit C, Tomlinson Road, Leyland, PR25 2DY, England, pp. 129-131.

Notes:

1. Francis Chan, ‘Forgotten God: Reversing our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit‘ (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2009), p.152. See also Manning, Ragamuffin Gospel, pp.16, 56–57.