“In response to Christ’s exaltation, the church is a glad neighborhood,” writes Oliver O’Donovan in “The Want of the Nations.” How might or not it’s in any other case? Christ’s exaltation consists in his resurrection from the useless, defeat of the final enemy Demise, ascension to his rightful throne the place he now reigns as King over all, and promised return to consummate what the resurrection inaugurated.
In Christ, we’re made proper with God. We’re given a positive and glad hope. Our King reigns and is ample in his love for his folks. We the church, of all peoples, ought to be marked by gladness.
That’s to say, we the church ought to be marked by gratitude. As G.Ok. Chesterton as soon as pithily noticed, “The check of all happiness is gratitude.” The church’s identification as a glad neighborhood is inseparable from its gratefulness. And the church particularly comes into its personal when it sounds forth glad thanksgiving collectively.
Think about a delicate however placing element in Colossians 3:12–17. At first blush, the passage is all about wholesome inner-church relations. Almost each exhortation issues the duties and dynamics of relating nicely to 1 one other within the physique of Christ.
It directs our consideration to the compassion we should always really feel for others and the persistence wanted as a result of others will attempt it (v. 12). Forbearance and forgiveness are actually interpersonal (v. 13). After which Paul reaches his central concern, “Above all placed on love,” which binds believers collectively in concord (v. 14).
To make certain, Paul’s cost to “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (v. 15) can strike many ears as referencing our inside life. However Paul instantly clarifies that his concern is for peace “in a single physique.” Physique peace is in view, peace with each other. Equally, God’s phrase dwelling in us richly is within the context of “educating and admonishing each other in all knowledge,” in addition to company worship (v. 16). This passage is unmistakably targeted on life with each other. Almost each exhortation is about our horizontal physique relations.
However one command is directed at our “vertical” relationship to God: “Be grateful” (v. 15). The concept is repeated, specifying that our thankfulness is to be “to God” (v. 16). Nonetheless a 3rd time, we’re informed to be giving due to God the Father by way of Christ our Lord (v. 17).
What’s happening right here? Why is thanksgiving to God so insistently repeated in a passage dedicated to relational dynamics inside the church? There are seemingly a number of issues that go into a correct reply.
Thanksgiving to God is singled out as a result of our life with each other is itself the present of God. We don’t produce a wholesome life collectively by our energy and energy, not even by the nice and mandatory effort of “placing on” all of the virtues listed in Colossians 3. We don’t make ourselves right into a kingdom of sunshine, peace, pleasure, unity, and love. It’s God’s work of grace and glory completed in Christ, for which we give him thanks collectively (see Colossians 1:12–13).
Additionally, thanksgiving to God repeatedly seems within the passage as a result of it’s the essential ingredient. The common giving of thanks is one essential follow or means by way of which God, who created our life collectively in Christ, additional binds us collectively in love.
God in his grace redeemed us in Christ that we’d “proclaim the excellencies of him who known as [us] out of darkness into his marvelous gentle” (1 Peter 2:9), a follow absolutely involving public expressions of due to God for his mighty and merciful deeds. The grace of God continues to abound to the church, enabling us to satisfy one another’s wants with the aim of ample thanksgiving to God (see 2 Corinthians 4:15; 9:12).
The giving of thanks is our raison d’être and the aim of our life collectively. Its repeated look in Colossians 3 isn’t any loosely associated footnote to the drama of wholesome neighborhood life. It’s the right finish of that drama.
The basis of what’s gone unsuitable on the planet is the refusal to provide due to God (Romans 1:21). The church’s insistence on giving thanks publicly, persistently, in meeting could also be one among its most essential impacts for good on the nations and societies amongst which it sojourns as exiles.
The follow of glad thanksgiving to God in Christ’s title might be one of many clearest methods through which we’re seen to be the peculiar folks that we’re because the nations of earth are usually sure collectively by issues like concern of frequent enemies, shared identities of victimhood, and mutual nervousness about what’s on the horizon. No marvel, then, that in a passage dedicated to guiding the church in its life collectively in Christ, Paul retains coming again to the necessity to give thanks.
For these in america, a nationwide vacation dedicated to giving thanks, Thanksgiving Day, proves to be a candy windfall. It’s a yearly reminder of an important ingredient in wholesome life. But for us, the set aside nation that’s the church of Jesus Christ, each Lord’s Day on which we have fun the Eucharist (from the Greek phrase for “thanksgiving”) is thanksgiving day.
For these delivered from the darkness of sin and demise by way of Christ, each Lord’s Day gathering is for proclaiming God’s excellencies and giving him thanks. Allow us to the church take up our nice privilege and duty to be filled with real gratitude to God. Or to place it extra merely, allow us to be a glad neighborhood.
Dan Brendsel serves as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hinckley, Minnesota.
