Living In Community: Self-Centeredness
When Christianity is all about me, it's not Jesus you are following.
Living in Community:
It’s About We
Here we are a New
Year. What I like about the New Year is that it feels like another gift of time
to get things right. Because of the freedom we have in Christ, a New Year can
be received like a kind of do-over. We can’t undo the past, or erase the
mistakes, but we can learn from the mistakes, make amends, and build on the
good we have experienced. I’ve laughed at New Year’s resolutions. Make a solemn
vow on January 1st and within a week, oh, well, maybe next year. Today
on this first Sunday of the New Year I want to encourage you to make a
resolution concerning your behavior. I want to encourage you to treat each
other as Christians are empowered to treat one another. This teaching is about
how Christians are to behave towards one another.
2 Corinthians 5:17
(NLT)
“…anyone who
belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has
begun!”
The old way of
life, the way you lived goes. A new life, a new way for you to live begins.
That new life is best characterized as being spiritually aware.
When we enter into
a right relationship with God through faith in the gospel you are born again.
The gospel is that God incarnated and become known as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus
revealed God to us, God’s love; God’s compassion; God’s forgiveness. Jesus
revealed to us how we are meant to live as human beings. Jesus proclaimed the
coming of the Kingdom, it is in the Kingdom that all is made right. Then Jesus
sacrificed Himself, an act of obedience, that overcame every act of our
disobedience. He shed His blood, dying on a cross, that anyone may be
reconciled to God. Jesus rose again, promising all who believe, simply believe,
eternal life, and the same power that raised Jesus from the grave will raise
you also. That’s the gospel.
When you simply
believe that Jesus has done all that needs to be done to reconcile you to God,
you are born again; Born again, talk about a do-over. Receive God’s gift, make
a public declaration of your faith and you are officially a Christian, a
follower of Jesus, a disciple. You have been adopted into God’s family. You’re
not a step-child; you’re a legal member of the family. Co-heir to the blessings
of Christ, a member of the kingdom, co-equal with every other believer, a child
now of God. This is an incredible new start.
Let’s up the
blessing, shall we? When you believe God Himself, God the Holy Spirit indwells
you, actually takes up residence within you, His purpose is to partner with you
in becoming all that God has created you to be, to guide you into living your
life to the full. Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all
truth. The Holy Spirit empowers you to live the life of this new person God
made you.
Yet even with all
these gifts, there is spiritual work that needs to be accomplished. What we
tend to do is bring the way we have done our old way of life into our new life.
We bring with us what was normal in the way we related to people before Christ
right into our new life and new family in Christ. We basically replicate what
we know, instead of learning the new way we are to live and relate to one
another. When we do so, we don’t act like Christians. This is not a new problem
in the Church, Christians acting like anything but those called to love one
another, but it seems especially prevalent in today’s culture that when we are
brought from the sewer we don’t know how to live in the palace. We are going to
look at one old way of living that we bring into the new way of life that is a deterrent
to living in Community. That old way is self-centeredness.
Romans 12:2 (NLT)
Don’t copy the
behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person
by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you,
which is good and pleasing and perfect.
The customs of this
world are what we all grew up immersed in, rarely have we taken the time to
evaluate them because they seem so normal. We haven’t looked in the mirror to
examine ourselves because we think there’s nothing wrong.
We get many
revelations in scripture as to how Jesus thought, not only in the things he
said but more so in the things he did. This is our mirror, our model, our
standard, His are the thought patterns we are to adopt. St. Paul was one of the
early followers of Jesus and he wrote to a church in the town of Philippi about
how Jesus thought. In the letter, Paul recognized Jesus' status as Co-equal
with God. We don’t want to gloss over that too quickly. It's really difficult
to speak correctly about what theologians call the Godhead, the Trinity, God in
three persons, Not three God’s but One God self-revealed as Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. You don’t climb any higher on the authority, prestige, importance,
influential, trend-setter, and power ladder. You are top Dog; not only King of
the mountain but the maker of the mountain. Jesus doesn’t show off how great He
is. He sets aside all the privileges of deity and incarnates, becomes human
(Philippians 2:5-11). He comes to us as one who serves (Luke 22:27). When we
read the conception story we learn that Jesus is just like every other human
being except he is born free from Adam’s curse. He is not a son of Adam. He is
not estranged from God. Being a man, Jesus demonstrated how humans are to
behave. In that letter that Paul wrote we read:
Phil 2:7-8 (NLT)
When he appeared in
human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God. Jesus demonstrated
humility.
One of the customs
of the world that we drag into our new lives with Christ is wrapped up in the
slogan: “It’s all about me.” We’re talking about self-centeredness. Here’s a local worship team that brings this
message home for us:
For you who may
have missed the subtle message, let’s see if this special TV offer enlightens
you to the problem of dragging pride into your new life as a member of the
family of God:
OK for you folks
who never listen to the lyrics, one more clip:
When you become a
Christian, it’s no longer about me, it’s about “we.” The scripture reveals that
those who are united to Christ are united to one another. 1Cor 12:27 gives us a word picture describing
a spiritual reality. Jesus is the head of the body, those who believe are the
body. In your new life, you are part of one body. Each believer is a living
part. Pathologists call a part in the body that is “all about me” cancer. I’ve
seen such cancers kill congregations and have been the cause of many falling
away from the faith and especially “the church.”
Romans 12:4-5 (NCV)
Each one of us has
a body with many parts, and these parts all have different uses. In the same
way, we are many, but in Christ, we are all one body. Each one is a part of
that body, and each part belongs to all the other parts.
President John F.
Kennedy in his famous inaugural address in 1961 said: “ask not what your
country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” The clarion
call of the culture has changed—it's more what can I get than what I can give
to make things better. This self-centeredness is cancer that we drag into our
new life with Christ. We see ourselves as all that and a bag of chips and we
want special attention. We want others to pay us deference. We want others to
recognize how wonderful we are. When we feel slighted, or we don’t get what we want
we complain. “It’s all about me.” You’re not paying attention to me, you’re not
catering to me, you’re not doing what I want, you’re not spending time and
money and effort on taking care of me. You don’t sing the music I like, you
don’t serve the coffee I like, you don’t regulate the temperature the way I
want. There an old movie called “The Little Shop of Horrors” it features a
talking carnivorous plant that has a special taste for humans. Its dialogue is
rather repetitious, it one line is “Feed Me,” sometimes with the variation
“feed me more.” Watch the clip--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt9wVzkPwrY.
I see this same
type of “Feed Me” behavior in Christians who have dragged the old way of doing
life into the new. They quickly become a disruption in the body as they put
demands on every other disciple to take care of them. People can become black
holes of need and exhaust the body, “Feed Me More.” I have referred to such folk as EGRs, that is
Extra Grace Required for the body to deal with.
“I want what I want
when I want it,” and if you don’t give it to me, “how dare you!” You’re a bad
person. You didn’t respect me. You don’t love me. What a bunch of hypocrites! A
hissy fit, a tantrum is thrown and you want everyone to know it. Unfortunately,
such behavior is parasitic. It drains
the body of vitality or vibrancy, and worse distracts from the calling of the
church. This is cancer in the body.
In a healthy body, every
part works together for the common good. So we are urged over and over again in
scripture: do what benefits the whole.
Romans 12:1 (NCV)
So brothers and
sisters, since God has shown us great mercy, I beg you to offer your lives as a
living sacrifice to him.
To be a living
sacrifice you seek the will of God and choose to live according to it. Often
that entails denying self for the welfare of the body. Sacrificing self is
being inconvenienced by choosing to do what benefits the body. If you do what strengthens the body, you
contribute to your own well-being, since you are part of the body,
1 Corinthians
12:25-26 (TLB)
“…the parts have
the same care for each other that they do for themselves. 26 If one part
suffers, all parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts
are glad.”
When
self-centeredness motivates you to demand deference, to gossip, to spread
rumors, to try to garner support for “your side,” to be a consumer and not a
contributor, you think you are promoting self, but in actuality, you're causing
your own body harm.
Since we tend to be
blind to what we are doing I am going to use a leadership principle to
illuminate the problem. This is not intended to be a guilt trip or to motivate
you to do something, it is a lighted mirror for you to look into and evaluate
what you see, that’s all. Ok? No heavy guilt trips here. If the principle hits
home let the Holy Spirit gently lead you in the way of the disciple.
The leadership
principle is known as The Pareto Principle which states that in any
organization, especially in a volunteer organization like the church, 20 % of
the congregation does the work, while 80% of the congregation benefit from.
It’s most often the same 20% doing serving, and the same 80% doing the
consuming. Again don’t hear a guilt trip in this. You see it all the time, but most clearly in a
church workday, or an outreach, or in a fellowship meal, or in janitorial work,
or gardening work, or teaching, or ushering or greeting guests, “or, or, or” in
just about every other area of service. The same folks show up to do the work. If only
20% of your body parts are functioning, do you think the body is sick or
healthy, declining or thriving? When you
are consumed with self-centeredness it doesn’t even enter your mind that you
appear to be playing the role of the boss, the master, when we have all been
called to serve one another in love (Galatians 5:13).
1 Corinthians 12:27
& Romans 12:6-8 (NLT)
“All of you
together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.” “In his grace, God has given us different
gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to
prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. If your gift is
serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. If your gift
is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If
God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if
you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.”
There is a very
effective way to tell what opportunity God has given you to serve. If you see
something that needs to be done, “do it.” You seeing the need is your Divine call
to go to work. A while back someone informed me, “Pastor the trash in the
kitchen needs to be taken out.” I said, let me show you how to take care of
that problem, but they had to leave and didn’t have time. That individual eventually
left for a more consumer-oriented congregation and will remain nameless.
This is how we live
as Christians in community. We do what builds the body up. We build up with our
words, our attitude, our service, this is love in action (John 13:35). The
well-being of all is your concern.
Addressing concerns, asking questions, seeking clarification is healthy;
critical complaining while not offering solutions or willing to be part of the
solution, infighting: not healthy; that’s biting and devouring one another
(Galatians 5:15).
Philippians 2:3-4
(NLT)
Be humble, thinking
of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own
interests, but take an interest in others, too.
A change of thought
must occur for the body to be healthy and thrive. I have to understand that I
am to be a living sacrifice to God. Being a living sacrifice means I am here to
serve and not be served. I am to encourage not discourage with my words so I
have to put a guard on my mouth (Psalm 141:3 & Ephesians 4:29). I have to
adopt the attitude that life is about us, not me, therefore I serve the body in
love (Matthew 23:11). I have to be willing to be insulted, slighted, and then
forgive (Matthew 18:21-22) and once
having put it under the account of Christ, go in humility confronting this
apparently rude brother or sister, lovingly not accusingly, not demanding,
relating to them how the situation made me feel (Matthew 18:15). I have to be willing to be inconvenienced for
the sake of the body. Jesus said it this way:
Matthew 16:24 (NLT)
“If any of you wants to be my follower, you
must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.
There is a balance
to be struck between caring for self and caring for others. Self-centeredness
is sly. It is not easily vanquished. We have grown up in a culture that is “Me
first,” with the motto: “Do unto others before they do unto you.” We seem to constantly
ask “What’s in it for me?” As a new creation in Christ, you already have been
given the power to deal with self-centeredness. I have found that vanquishing
self-centeredness is not a onetime battle, but rather an ongoing war, a
deterrent to the welfare of my family that I must guard against. So it comes
down to recognizing when I am acting purely out of my pride to promote self and
using the power given to change my behavior before I damage the body.
I encourage you to
make a New Year’s resolution. Determine that you will be a healthy part of the
body of Christ.
Romans 12:9-11
(NLT)
Don’t just pretend
to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is
good. Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each
other. Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.
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