The gift and mission of the church community

[AI translation] Let me read this rather difficult expanded sentence according to the new Hungarian translation: 'Let us speak the truth in love, and let us all grow in him who is the head, in Christ, for he has fitted and knit together the whole body with every sinew supporting one another, and is working with mighty power for the growth of the body by the common labor of all the members, so that he may build himself up by love.' In short, these two verses contain the gift and task of the church community. This is what I want to talk about now.The apostle Paul often visited large cities and coastal ports, where he witnessed the bustle of world trade. Among the many goods of all kinds, he often saw living human goods. Man was sold and sold as well, slaves as horses or linen. And when someone bought a slave at a high price, he expected good service from him. He expected his slave to work as hard as he paid for him. This is how the apostle Paul regarded those who became Christians. He says to them: Look, brothers, you are not your own! You do not have the right of free disposal over your body and soul to use its powers against God. No, indeed! You no longer belong to yourselves, but you have become the property of Christ, because you have been bought at a high price. Glorify God therefore in your body and in your soul, which are God's! Yes, Brothers and Sisters, so we are all purchased at a dear price as the property of God. The blood of Christ's heart is the ransom paid for us. We are the property of Him who paid the price for us. To believe in Christ is to acknowledge, to agree that I am His, body and soul, as a purchased slave is to his master.
When a man comes to living faith, he signs, as if in full consciousness of his responsibility, the pledge which is always renewed at Communion: "I live for his glory as his redeemed." Individuals who have thus come to a living faith belong to one another, together forming a living organism. They belong together like the parts, the stones of a constitution under construction. Together they build, together they grow, together they strengthen, support and complete each other as they progress in knowing, living, serving and following Christ. By the mysterious work of Christ, they fit together, they are structured together, like different particles of a living body. The whole is like a magnificent work of art, each part of which finds its place in the community according to an eternal plan and its individual role in the community, which cannot be replaced by any other. Thus the whole lives in its parts and the parts in the whole.
This gift and at the same time task of the congregational community is not sufficiently conscious in our Hungarian Reformed Church. Someone once described the situation this way: we have faithful church members, but we have no congregations. In other words: those who believe in Jesus Christ are scattered, living separate, individual lives of faith. So much so that there may be another believing Reformed church member living on the same street as you, or even in the same house. He may read his Bible the same way, he may want to grow in Christ the same way you do, but separately: you separately, he separately, independent of each other, not even caring for each other, not even claiming the work of Christ, as the apostle expresses it, "He fitted and knit together the whole body into a mutually supporting community"! This fitting together, this edifying into a church community, is lacking even here in the church: here too, church members who do not know each other or hardly know each other sit, isolated from each other, at Sunday worship, and then go home again as lonely, isolated Christians. According to the Bible, the individual Christian who has heard God's call in Christ and has turned to Him, who has placed his life under the lordship of Christ, is never lonely and alone, but is born into a new family community precisely because of his faith in Christ, God's family, the church, - and without the church, without spiritual fellowship with other believers, he is like a soldier separated from his troops, who may have his weapons, but cannot fight alone, separated from his troops. Separated from this body, from the congregation, the Christian believer is as helpless as a lonely burning candle in a storm - he falls in temptation. It is sinful disobedience when a Christian believer thinks he can live in isolation from the church. But the reality is that no one can believe and live in faith outside the bloodstream of the body of Christ, the church, separated from fellowship, from communion, from one another's faith and prayer - separated from the mutual fellowship and strengthening of the brethren.
This is to be made aware that you are not, therefore, a lonely believing soul, walking alone on the difficult path of following Christ, fighting the beautiful battle of faith alone, partisan-like, but you are integrated into a community where you have a place, a task, a need, a need for your faith, your prayer, your love, your service, for your other brothers and sisters. You are part of a community whose members have all given their lives for the same purpose. To represent and serve the cause of Christ in this world. Do you know what strength, comfort, encouragement there is in this sense of community in the church?! The Apostle Paul, when he was in trouble or suffering, always sought and found comfort in the cause of Jesus Christ. When, for example, the Philippians asked him how he was doing, he replied from prison, smiling, "The cause of the Gospel is well! My business is more for the advancement of the gospel." This is the true consolation which comforts each man in his struggles, doubts, temptations and afflictions, by lifting him out of the subjectivity of his personal sorrow, and encouraging him to take his real stand for the Gospel, for the whole, for the cause of God.
It is very often the case that someone, cut off from the bonds of communion, is left to himself, looking only to himself, only able to complain: "I am suffering, I have difficulties, my life is meaningless, I can't go on, I have inferior feelings, etc." Such a suffering person's every need for consolation is directed towards getting help for his personal troubles. Thus, the Church's pastoral care consists in caressing individual souls, in easing their lonely spiritual struggles, in nurturing, caressing and wrapping each person in a spiritual swaddling cloth, and thus making a sensitive, indulgent generation even more indulgent. Yet it is not individual grains of wheat that need to be planted in the soil of faith, but the individual grain can only withstand the wind and the weather if it grows together with the other grains in the great field of the church! The solitary ear of corn also remains barren because only the whole field of grain is fertilized by the wind. It is only in the church that the individual is touched by the wind, the suggestion of the Holy Spirit. Without the church community, the individual man remains alone with his suffering and his troubles, in spite of all attempts at consolation. But this is his greatest problem! - Only a whole congregation can truly comfort an individual man by proclaiming to him: "Look, in your troubles, in your sorrows, in your temptations, you are not abandoned! You are in the cause of Christ! You belong to the people of God, to the body of Christ, you are a cluster in the vineyard, a sheep in the pasture of God, a building stone in the temple of God, and you are built into the place where victory has already been won, where the anxieties of the world have already been overcome! Though you become a follower of Christ by personal choice, following Christ, believing in him, is not only a subjective feeling, not only a personal piety, but at the same time an admission into the people of God. Going forth with the people of God, being incorporated into the body of Christ, into the communion of saints washed with the blood of the Lamb. Following Christ is nothing other than the individual's - you and me - commitment to the cause of God with all the members of the Body of Christ.
Our Word says, "Christ is working with mighty power for the growth of the body through the common work of all the members to build up himself by love!" So Christ works the formation of the church community by the common work of all members. In other words, you cannot be a bystander to this work, because then you are missing out. You can only be an accepting member of the church community if you are also a worker in it. Whoever does not bring his own prayer, love, service, heart to the church will never truly experience the blessings of the church community. It is by working for others that you yourself are strengthened, it is by comforting others that your heart is truly gladdened, it is by feeding others that you yourself are satisfied, it is by leading others to Christ that you yourself draw nearer to Him, it is by counselling others that you yourself find guidance.
What the ministry of this church is to the world, we will perhaps talk about next time, but for now just this: come to church, if you believe in Christ! Come, help us to accept the gift of church fellowship that comes from the presence of Christ and to fulfil the task of becoming church community. "Following the truth in love, let us from the beginning grow up in Him who is the head, in Christ; of whom the whole body, being gathered together in good order, and being fitted together with all the joints of His help, by the diligence of each member, according to the measure of his work, fulfills the building up of the body for its edification in love."
Amen
Date: 2 October 1955.