Who loves me? Our Communion with Christ

Our current series – In Christ, With Christ, and for Christ – is structured around some very basic questions about our relationship with God. It’s good to consider these often, because they go to the heart of what we believe as Christians. And who we are and what we do – what we focus on and prioritize – are always a reflection of what we truly believe. So I am finding this series very thought provoking and worthwhile. May God continue to bless it and use it in each of our lives.
 
Our three main topics are identity, belonging, and purpose – all in relationship with Jesus Christ. We have considered our identity in Christ for a few Sundays now. Carl started with that, and John and Fred expanded on it. Today we start to think more about belonging, but of course these three – identity, belonging, and purpose – and all interrelated and intertwined. Our communion with Christ is part and parcel of our identity and purpose, as well as the basis for our belonging.
 
Today we are going to talk about our love relationship with God. We are saved for relationship, aren’t we? God wants us to relate to him in love and extend that love to others. In a couple of weeks Carl will be talking about our love relationship with other people, and I will try to avoid stealing his thunder in today’s message. Fortunately the topic of love is so huge that it could easily be its own sermon series. So today we will consider our relationship with God, not ignoring how that should impact our relationship with others, but deferring that part for later.
 
Let’s begin with prayer and then look at this word communion. Communion is a useful description of this love relationship with God. What does communion mean? If you look at dictionary definitions they mention things like sharing, intimate fellowship, communication (it’s easy to see how that is related), exchange on a mental or spiritual level, rapport (which means harmony based on understanding another’s feeling and ideas), and of course what we call communion in church: the ritual with the bread and cup that we do to remember Christ’s death for us.
 
Incidentally, the reason that ceremony is called communion is because for many believers it involves more than just remembering something that happened in the past – it is actually part of our real fellowship with Christ right now and in some mysterious way enhances our spiritual union with him. In my church tradition, the communion ritual is considered a “means of grace,” a way that we can receive God’s grace and forgiveness anew. But I certainly admit that eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood is something that is difficult to understand. When Jesus first stated this in John 6, the response from his disciples was, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” And it says that “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”
 
So I’m not going to talk more about the ritual of communion, although it is very important to me and receiving the body and blood of Christ on a regular basis is an incredibly intimate and gracious experience. The larger concept of our communion with Christ transcends that and should be a moment by moment reality all through our lives, not just in church or as part of a ceremony.
 
With such a big concept, I would like to establish a simple structure to keep us from just wandering around in the scriptures and then looking back wondering where we’ve been. In considering our communion with Christ, I would like to focus on its foundation, its fruit, and its fulfillment. And I didn’t even have to work that hard to get them all to start with “f.”
 
The foundation of our communion with Christ is a something that I have already mentioned, in a word: love. This is a love relationship that God initiated:
 
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16
 
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8
 
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. – Ephesians 2:4-5
 
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. – 1 John 4:9-10
 
This is the core of the gospel message, isn’t it. We have done nothing to deserve God’s love, it is inherent to his nature. God is love, so he loves us whether we respond or not. While we were still sinners he sent his son to die for us, to pay the price for those sins. We were dead in our transgressions, it says – and a dead person cannot save themselves. It is by grace we have been saved: not that we loved God, but that he first loved us.
 
We will never be able to fully comprehend the love of God – and yet Paul prays this for the Ephesians in chapter 3 of his letter:
 
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:16-19
 
What an incredible description of our communion with Christ! Once again, it starts with God the Father and his glorious riches, the power of the Holy Spirit that enables Christ the Son to dwell in our hearts by faith. The whole Trinity is involved here. The indwelling presence of Christ is what enables us to experience the love of God, to be rooted and grounded in it. The Holy Spirit within us confirms again and again that God loves us, that he has forgiven us, that he is taking care of us in every way. Then, as we come together as a community of believers, combining the experience and insight of all of the Lord’s holy people, we begin to get a glimpse of how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. We can’t perceive this on our own, only as part of the universal body of Christ. Even then, this is love that surpasses knowledge, just as it says here. And what does it mean to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God? This too is a mystery, but we can know for sure that God is willing to fill us with as much of himself as we could ever imagine, as part of our communion with him.
 
The church is described in Revelation as the bride of Christ, and marriage is an important metaphor for our communion with our Lord. Of course every human marriage is flawed, but there are moments in good marriages that do reflect the love and intimacy at the center of our relationship with Christ. As a husband and wife spend time together and get to know each other and begin to communicate openly and deeply, they have the opportunity to offer grace and support. Unconditional love and trust begin to build on each other, strengthening their bond and commitment. Marriage is designed to be exclusive, and in the same way nothing else in our lives should be allowed to detract from our relationship with God. The Bible refers to two people becoming one flesh in marriage, another expression that should characterize our intimacy with Christ.
 
How do you experience communion with Christ? Do you share everything with him? Do you turn to him in any and every kind of need? Are you able to rest in his presence? Do you hear his voice and understand his direction for your life? Are you confident of his unfailing love for you? And is your communion with Christ evident in the way you live and treat other people? Some of this comes and goes, I know, because we are weak and fallible humans. But these questions about the effect of our relationship with Christ lead to the next point I would like to talk about: the main result or fruit of this communion.
 
You may immediately think of the fruit of the Spirit that we find in Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These and many other qualities should flow out of our relationship with Jesus. God has loved us so we are able to love him back and love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus pointed out that this is the greatest commandment. Love for God leads to all kinds of other good things: obedience, humility, courage, and self-sacrifice. This list goes on and on. The fruit of communion with Christ should radically change who we are.
 
I am reminded of the story from Acts 4 where Peter and John are arrested and brought before the Council to justify their healing of the lame man in the temple in the name of Jesus and proclaiming the resurrection. Before all these leaders Peter clearly witnesses to the power of the name of Jesus, that name by which everyone would need to be saved. In Acts 4:13 (ESV) it says that the Council was quite taken aback:
 
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. – Acts 4:13
 
They had been with Jesus, and that had transformed who they were. Communion with Christ should give us boldness also in witnessing for him. We need to “press on to acknowledge the Lord,” as my favorite verse from Hosea states. There is so much that could be said about the outcomes that we can expect from our communion with Christ. But since we are supposed to be answering the question, “Who loves me?” I would like to home in on one aspect in particular. The fruit of our communion should be security. I don’t mean the security of our salvation. Indeed, no one is able to snatch us out of God’s hand. Rather I am referring to a sense of security and confidence that allows us to let go of fear and truly receive and rest in his love for us. This may or may not be accompanied by physical security. It should not be dependent on that. Another word for this sense of security might be faith.
 
The reason I want to highlight this as the fruit of our communion is because of the current sense of upset in the world. I know that the world has always been an uncertain place, and other generations of people have lived through tremendous upheavals as well. But the COVID pandemic has had an unprecedented global impact, affecting the routines of virtually every person everywhere. The effects are much broader than the disease itself. Family relationships, mental health, employment, supply chains, church attendance, health systems, politics – the list goes on and on as to the aspects of life affected around the world. On top of that, there are ongoing military threats always lingering in the background. Might America go to war against China or Russia? Will a rogue state like North Korea fire a nuclear missile at an American city? There is a lot to be worried about these days!
 
Where can we turn to for security? Our government seems broken in so many ways. It can barely even deliver the mail anymore. Political polarization hampers pretty much anything from getting done at the federal or state level. The economy and markets are up and down, affecting income and wealth in unpredictable ways. Social ills seem as intractable as ever. Of course there is progress in some areas, and science and technology have helped to conquer many problems, but they have added many more, and overall the world is not becoming a better place. Where can we turn, except to the Lord?
 
One thing I ask from the Lord,
    this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
    and to seek him in his temple.
For in the day of trouble
    he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent
    and set me high upon a rock. – Psalm 27:4-5
 
Here in Psalm 27, it’s clear that David knew what it meant to have communion with God. It was the deepest desire of his heart. We have studied the many “days of trouble” that he had over his years, especially as he fled for his life from King Saul. What did it mean for the Lord to hide him in the shelter of his sacred tent? It’s unlikely that he meant the literal tabernacle. That would not have provided much physical security. David was referring to the deeper security that comes from dwelling in the presence of God, in gazing on his beauty and connecting with him in worship.
 
David’s word are a comfort and encouragement for us today, as they have been for countless others down through the centuries. David knew what it meant to be afraid, but he also knew where to turn when his world seemed out of control. He did not let fear get the better of him. Fear is an enemy of love, because it is an enemy of faith. John addresses this in 1 John 4:
 
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. – 1 John 4:15-18
 
God living in us means that we can live in God, in the type of intimate communion that we have been talking about. Living in God means to acknowledge him moment by moment, with a sense of his consistent involvement in our lives: guiding, providing, caring, and motivating. We know and rely on the love God has for us. You have probably heard how Brother Lawrence, back in the 1600s, “practiced the presence of God,” as described in his little book by that name. Here are a couple of quotes that will give you a sense of how he tried to live in God:
 
“He does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, at other times to thank Him for the graces, past and present, He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him during your meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be the most pleasing to Him. One need not cry out very loudly; He is nearer to us than we think.”
 
“The difficulties of life do not have to be unbearable. It is the way we look at them - through faith or unbelief - that makes them seem so. We must be convinced that our Father is full of love for us and that He only permits trials to come our way for our own good.
 
Let us occupy ourselves entirely in knowing God. The more we know Him, the more we will desire to know Him. As love increases with knowledge, the more we know God, the more we will truly love Him. We will learn to love Him equally in times of distress or in times of great joy.”
 
This is a wonderful, simple, little book, and I highly recommend it if you have never read it. “Our Father is full of love for us,” says Brother Lawrence, reflecting the second part of our passage in 1 John 4. I’ll just read that again.
 
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. – 1 John 4:16-18
 
Love is made complete among us when we are like Jesus in the world, representing him to the people around us. And his perfect love drives out fear. The world can seem like a pretty scary, unpredictable place at times. I don’t know what your fears are right now, but I pray that the perfect love of Jesus will drive them out. We can be assured that whatever happens to us we are secure in him. Suffering will come, but he will be with us in it. Even if our faith seems weak, we can hang on to the fact that he has forgiven our sins and will receive us to himself.
 
And that leads into my third point about our communion with Christ, its fulfillment, which will be in heaven. Paul says in Philippians, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Paul clearly lived in communion with Christ. “It’s all about you, Jesus,” he would have sung with Matt Redman if he could. And he did say to the Galatians in chapter 2,
 
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. – Galatians 2:20
 
Therefore, if Paul, living by faith, could say, “For me to live is Christ,” then dying would indeed be gain. If living is Christ, then dying means even more of Christ, dwelling in his presence forever. That is what David was longing for as well, as we read in Psalm 27. None of us can know what heaven will actually be like, but we know that its focus will be on worship of the Lamb. As John says in Revelation 7, in his vision of heaven,
 
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.” – Revelation 7:9-10
 
And skipping down to verse 15,
 
 Therefore,
“they are before the throne of God
    and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne
    will shelter them with his presence.
‘Never again will they hunger;
    never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’
    nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb at the center of the throne
    will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’
    ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’” – Revelation 7:15-17
 
This then is our destiny as believers, our eternal communion with Christ, the Lamb. We are not told much about what we will do in heaven besides worship, so some people have worried that heaven will be boring. I like how Randy Alcorn responds to this:
 
Our belief that Heaven will be boring (and I hear this from people all the time) betrays a heresy — that God is boring. I think that we will see that for the lie it is if we realize that Heaven is God’s place and it’s the person whose place it is that determines the nature of the place….if  we’re experiencing the invigorating stirrings of God’s Spirit and trusting Him to daily fill our lives with divine appointments, experiencing the childlike delights of His gracious daily kindnesses to us, then we will know that God is exciting and Heaven is exhilarating. People who love God crave His companionship. To be in His presence will be the very opposite of boredom.
 
Randy makes it clear that if we are experiencing communion with Christ now, then our anticipation of eternal communion with him will be even greater. I heard a quote this week, probably third or fourth hand, that got me thinking more about this: our dreams should always exceed our memories. I’m sure you have met people who seem to be living in the past. Each of us probably feels nostalgic at times, wishing for bygone days that were better than now in some way. But our dreams of the future really ought to exceed our memories, if we have heaven to look forward to. Our earthly lives may indeed diminish as we grow older and are unable to do or influence as much as we used to. Communion with Christ may be all that we are left with in the end. This is what I saw as my mom faded away last September. As death approaches, nothing else really matters. And he promises to be with us as we transition from this life to the next.
 
So who loves me? Jesus loves me; this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Karl Barth, the great 20^th century theologian, said that this was the most profound theological statement that he could make. This love, flowing from Christ, is the foundation of our communion with him. The fruit of this communion is security, and its fulfillment is in heaven. I noticed that Psalm 23 is actually a beautiful expression of these three points, so I would like to close with reading that:
 
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever. – Psalm 23:1-6