This morning, I was going to focus my time in the word on these two phrases that stood out in my journey through Nehemiah. They were, “We obligate ourselves to…” and “We will not neglect the house of our God.”[1] The scene is that, when the people began returning to the land after their exile, Ezra had led the people in rebuilding the temple, Nehemiah had led them in rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem, and it was now time to return to their covenant-relationship with God.
The first expression included a whole list of positive statements from the Law that the people were going to carry out as required. The second was the negative conclusion that they would not neglect God’s house, the temple that had now been restored to full use. The point was that, in returning to their homeland, the people were 100% ready to return to 100% of their covenant responsibilities.
However, as I was meditating on this section, I couldn’t help noticing that one word applied to everything they were promising to do. It was the word “bring”. There were so many things under the old covenant the people were to bring to the temple as their worship (tithes, offerings, sacrifices, etc.), and the people were recommitting themselves to bringing everything their side of the covenant required. The leaders had been exemplary in shepherding the people with knowledge and understanding,[2] and the people were exemplary in fully joining God in his work.
When I looked at what the counterpart is for us under the new covenant, it basically came down to what Paul summarized in I Corinthians, “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts”.[3] I even looked up the word “bring” and there wasn’t one reference in the New Testament to us bringing something as our part of the new covenant the way the Israelites had to do under the old covenant.
This was not a surprise since, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”[4] The new covenant in Jesus’ blood has nothing we can bring as our contribution, and the good works we now do to express our new life in Christ amount to continually joining God in the work we see him doing rather than listing behaviors that are commanded.
So, understanding that we don’t “bring” good works to the table as if that is our requirement for keeping the covenant, I was drawn to consider how Paul summarized the “love chapter” of I Corinthians 13 with the expression, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”[5] And I could see how these were the things we must “bring” to our participation in the new covenant.
We bring “faith” to church with us because “the righteous shall live by faith”,[6] and, “without faith it is impossible to please” God.[7] We bring “hope” to all our activities and relationships in the kingdom because, “in this hope we were saved.”[8] And we bring “love” to all our interactions in the household of God because, if I “have not love (agapè), I am nothing.”[9]
As I considered this, I couldn’t help replaying some negative experiences where church-folk rejected these qualities and then abandoned us because they did not have them (I saw this happen in both institutional and home church settings). I also remembered the positive experiences of those seasons where we did witness people bringing these qualities with them to church and how joyful we were to see the genuine experience of “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”.[10] Both the negative and the positive encounters encourage me to tune my heart to this life of “faith, hope, and love” as an absolutely inherent reality of the new covenant, not a suggestion for extra credits.
What happens to us when we combine the earnestness we see in Nehemiah as the people return to their covenant-relationship with God, with all we know of the realities of living in the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ under the new covenant where “the righteous shall live by faith”?
For me, I want to see any church assembly I am part of the way Paul described. Before we gather for anything as a church, I want to see God’s people fill our hearts with “faith, hope, and love”, and bring those characteristics with us so we are ready to build up one another in every way that is needed. I know that not everyone will have the capacity to do this at the start. I know we can’t necessarily maintain this every week if we are the ones who just got hit with something traumatic and need of ministry.
However, if this were to become a way of life where people came to church bringing their faith, hope, and love to contribute rather than coming only to see what the church was going to give us, there would be an over-all quality of kingdom-and-covenant focus so that those who were running on empty that week would be built up by all the others who were maintaining the covenant-life of the church. It would be as Peter described, “Above all, keep loving (agapèing) one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”[11] The more people who live like “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love”, the more those who struggle with these will be built up in the Lord Jesus Christ with us and the world will know we are Jesus’ disciples by our love.[12]
In conclusion, I return to Paul’s summary challenge of, “pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts”. When we treat that like it is our side of covenant-relationship with God and his people, we will always bring our “faith, hope, and love” to church gatherings, and then express those very thing as we use our spiritual gifts to glorify God and love his people.
And I am now very eager to see what happens to me and our
home church gathering when I devote myself to this the next time we meet.
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
[1]
Nehemiah 10:35,39
[2]
What God had prophesied in
Jeremiah 3:15
[3]
I Corinthians 14:1
[4]
Ephesians 2:8-10
[5]
I Corinthians 13:13
[6]
Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11
[7]
Hebrews 11:6
[8]
Romans 8:24
[9]
I Corinthians 13:2 (we must
keep in mind that this is the Greek word “agapè” which means the love of God in
us, not family, marriage, or friendship kinds of love)
[10]
Ephesians 4:3
[11]
I Peter 4:8
[12]
John 13:35
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