Life Together: A Community “in Christ”

“Entering into friendships in Christ… is not simply an added benefit of the Christian life; it is constitutive of the Christian life.” – Stephen Fowl

Throughout this week I’ve continued to reflect on the nature of Christian community and friendship. Community is at the heart of Christian life. In fact, Fowl is right when he suggests that “entering into friendships in Christ… is constitutive of Christian life.” There is no such thing as private, individual faith, for we are all bound together in Christ Jesus by connections and bonds that are forged in our baptism. And these are not voluntary bonds; we do not get to choose our brothers and sisters in Christ. Through our baptism we are drawn by God into a deep communion with God and with all of those who are in Christ. As Rowan Williams puts it, “the event of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection… has created a different sort of human community; professing commitment to Jesus as Lord connects us not only to Jesus but to one another in a new way.” We don’t choose one another; Christ chooses us!

The Christian life cannot be lived alone. We have all been caught up together into the larger drama of God’s ongoing work and dealings in the world. We can see this in Paul’s letter to the Philippian Christians, where Paul’s encouragement assumes and presupposes a community of people (Phil 2:1-5). The question, then, is “What does it mean to live together as an authentically Christian community?”

Paul’s answer begins with having “the same mind” (2:2, 5). This does not mean that we must think the same things or have identical doctrine before we can live together in community. This idea actually flies in the face of what Paul is trying to say. We have already been brought together in Christ, so by suggesting that we have the “same mind,” the “mind of Christ,” Paul is saying that we must share in Christ’s approach to life, his way of thinking about living. The power of what Paul is suggesting is precisely a function of its daring improbability. As Richard Hays would say, Paul is “inviting the readers to see their own lives as corresponding to the gracious action of the Lord whom they acclaim in their worship.”

At the root of our unity and common life, then, is God’s story, which takes its most concrete shape in the story of Jesus’ self-emptying, self-giving, status-renouncing love (Phil 2:6-11). This is the “mind of Christ.” These are the dispositions that must form and direct our friendships with each other. Paul exhorts the Christian community in Philippi to have this mind, to live cruciform lives, shaped by the story of Christ who chose the way of the cross. Paul encourages them to think, feel, and act according to the cross-shaped way of Jesus.

Over the next two weeks, I want to look at a two of the many facets of Paul’s understanding of Christian community as a life together in Christ from Philippians: accountability and story-telling.