The Community of other people who Hear & Follow Jesus is the third tool God uses to make us into his image.

There is a thought that goes something like this…”Church doesn’t matter if I have a relationship with Jesus. Church doesn’t save me.”

God’s purpose for the Church is not to save us. God’s purpose is to utilize other believers to bring us more into his image.

How?

Through perfect love.

18There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love. 19We love because he first loved us.

1 John 4:18-19

We hide because we fear. We fear being exposed. We fear punishment when others find out our failures.

Adam and Eve feared God. They sinned. They hid. They covered their nakedness from God. God called out to Adam, “Where are you?” not because God didn’t know. God called out because he wanted Adam to recognize the folly in being fearful and hiding.

We do the same to others. In order to not be exposed to hurt, we cover. We’re fearful about what other people will do with our vulnerabilities. We’re afraid we’ll experience more hurt if we expose our naked self to other people. (BTW…Expose, naked = the inner most parts of our being and our soul and our failures we do not want just anybody to have access to.)

Have you ever experienced a friendship where you can be completely exposed?

You can encourage them without fear.
You can challenge them without fear.
You can expose yourself without fear.
They can expose themselves without fear.

Because of this, you make each other better. You make them into the image God has for them. They make you into the image God has for you.

This is the picture God has for his Church.

Not because you get up on stage before the entire congregation to expose your inner most secrets. But because inside the congregation, you have relationships that love perfectly. You know you don’t have to hide behind a facade for them to love you. So your guard can come down. You experience perfect love. You get to love perfectly.

I have a HARD time being this vulnerable. I have a hard time getting this deep with others. I have a hard time with wanting others to see a put together leadership facade that does not include failures or weaknesses. Therefore, I keep everyone arm’s length away. If I get this close, I don’t know what you’ll do with what you’ll see.

I must have people who love perfectly so my fear can be driven away.

Everyone longs for a relationship where they can be this vulnerable. The Church is supposed to provide this relationship for anyone and everyone. Unfortunately, instead of driving away fear…we drive people away because they fear us. We take their vulnerabilities and expose them to others. We demand they clean up before coming to Church so they can have a nice shiny facade like we do.

This is not Jesus’ vision for his Church. He imagines a people streaming to his house because perfect love drives out all fear. We are to give those who are fearful a safe house to be loved and find God.

Join a Community so you can have fear driven away by perfect love. Join a Community so you can help drive other people’s fear away by your perfect love.
Join a Community, not because it already has perfect love, but because they long to have perfect love that drives away all fear.

When have you experienced perfect love that drives away your fear?