Known & Knowing

Now, if you start in Genesis 1:1 and you're reading through and you get to this verse, it smacks you in the face. It's mindboggling in the context. Here we have Adam dwelling in the presence of God — no sin, no pain, no death. All he's known is love and joy and life. He's dwelling in the presence of God in the garden. He's being invited by God into God's work of order and life and the facilitation of order and life. Adam is living what our hearts long to live in such a profound way. And yet God looks at him — again, not because Adam is sinful, he's never sinned, not because Adam has failed, he hasn't failed — God looks at Adam in his condition of isolation and says, "It is not good."

Now in the context of Genesis chapter 1, that great psalm of creation, the chorus, the refrain of that poetic literature is "it is good." Day one, it's good. Day two, it's good. Day three, it's good. Day six, it's very good. And then we get to Genesis chapter 2, and God looks at Adam in isolation and says, "It is not good." This is God's assessment. The Hebrew phrase here is lōʾ ṭôb — not good. And again, God is not looking at Adam and saying you've failed, you've fallen short, you've sinned, you've broken covenant. None of that has happened. God is looking at Adam as His imager in isolation and saying, "It's not good. It's not good that he should be alone."

So God is saying that being alone is not good even in a perfect world. Why? Because we are made in the image of a God who has never been alone — not for an instant, not for a second. And you were made to image Him as He is. When He says He makes us in His image, we're to be a reflection, a picture, a living embodied statue or icon of who God is. And if God at His core is relational, if we want to image Him, how could we ever hope to do that in isolation?

This is so central. The Father is not the Father apart from the Son. The Son is not the Son apart from the Father. The Spirit proceeds from both. This deep, mysterious trinitarian reality — I don't fully understand it, and anybody that tells you they do is trying to sell you something. But that doesn't mean I don't understand that it's true. Our great God who is one is also three, and has existed throughout eternity in perfect, joyous, blissful, affirming, life-giving community.

So when God creates, God creates out of community. And when God creates something to image Him, of course He creates it to image Him in community. Do you see the logic here? It's so important and so profound. To bear the image of God is to carry within you a permanent orientation towards the other, because we're not designed to be alone — not as a weakness, not as a limitation, but as a reflection of the one who made us. What we're really talking about here is a functional reality — how we're made to function. We're made to function in a communal reality.

Think about the mandate God gives humans in Genesis chapter 1.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Is any of that possible for an individual? With the scope and the size of God's creation, is one person going to have dominion and subdue all of it by themselves? And that's ignoring the first and most obvious point — it's really hard to be fruitful and multiply by yourself. If you're an amoeba, you can pull that off, but we're not. That's not how God has wired and designed us. This is a functional reality. When God says it's not good for the man to be alone, this is a functional statement: you can't be who I made you to be, and you can't do what I've asked you to do by yourself, Adam. It's not good to be alone.

To be alone is to be incomplete. If you read this and think, "Oh, poor Adam, he was lonely," you're totally missing the point. I don't think Adam was lonely, but he was functionally incomplete. He couldn't be who he was made to be, and he couldn't do what he was designed to do by himself. That matters, because we can dismiss loneliness as an emotion, but incompleteness is something else entirely. You can try to manage your loneliness — push through it, distract yourself — but you can't manage yourself out of incompleteness. There's no way to try harder to be more than what you are.

So He says it's not good, you can't be who you're supposed to be — and so what does He do for Adam? God says, "I will make a helper fit for him." Now, in the history of scriptural verses being ripped out of context and abused, this one is going to be in the top ten. It has been used in countless cultures and countless contexts to diminish and demean, and we need to understand what it actually means.

It's easy, if you want to look at it from your own perspective, to take this verse and go, "Oh, see, well, Adam, he got a little helper. He got himself a little helper. Isn't that cute?" That's not what this text is laying out here at all. The word here is עֵזֶר — ʿēzer. It's not a subordinate assistant. It's not a supplementary figure. It's not a lesser creation. In fact, this word is used mostly in the Hebrew scriptures — by a landslide — for God Himself. So if God is an ʿēzer, if God is a helper, then consider verses like Psalm 121:2:

2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

If you want to read "helper" as subordinate, as less than, then you've got to look at all the verses that talk about God being our helper as God becoming subordinate to us. That's not a road anyone should be willing to walk down.

So God looks and says he can't do what he's supposed to do, he can't be what he's supposed to be by himself. So God has to complete the picture. He has to give him what he needs so that together they can be what they're supposed to be — be fruitful, multiply, subdue, have dominion. He can't do it by himself. So the one the man needs is not a lesser figure designed to meet his wants. The one he needs is a necessary complement, another image bearer without whom his own image bearing is structurally incomplete.

Before the fall, before law, before covenant, before any human failure of any kind, the Creator looks at the human being — His own image in creaturely form — and declares that a solitary image bearer is not fully what it is designed to be. Community is not a remedy for a problem that sin introduced. It is a feature of a design that sin will later damage. So the need we have for each other is not a weakness. It's the shape of who we are. It's what it means to be truly and fully human.

So before we go any further this morning, I want to pause on the image that I've been developing through both the idol series and into this series — the idea of a mirror. What it means to be made in the image of God is to be a mirror. We're made to receive God's glory and then reflect God's glory. The mirror turned towards Christ receives and reflects His glory. The mirror turned towards lesser things, idols, receives and becomes transformed by those things. That's the primary principle: we become what we behold. But the mirror metaphor applied individually contains a limitation. A single mirror, however perfectly oriented, cannot receive or reflect the fullness of the light. The infinite glory of the living God exceeds what any individual image bearer could ever hope to contain.

That's a challenge because our culture, and even within church culture, has trained us to approach everything through the lens of a radical individualism. We've turned relationship with Jesus into a private project — you and God, you in your mirror, turned towards God in your quiet time, in your way. This is not simply bad cultural conditioning. It's bad theology. No single image bearer bears the full image. The community of individuals, the community of image bearers joined together and oriented towards the same source, has this ability to receive and reflect what no individual mirror could do alone. Mirrors need to be together to truly function the way they're supposed to.

And that's not a metaphor for just proximity, for being in the same building. Most community sermons you're going to listen to are going to be, "Hey, come to church. Hey, I've got a small group, sign up. Hey, get involved in something at the church." But that does not equal community, because you can do all of those things and still be stuck in a radical isolation. And that is not what God has for us. In the words of God in Genesis, it is not good for you to be alone.

So I want us to look this morning together at Hebrews chapter 10. The author of Hebrews builds one of the most sustained and detailed theological arguments in the entire New Testament. The writer of Hebrews is steeped in the Hebrew scriptures, and the whole point of the book of Hebrews is to take what has happened in the Hebrew scriptures — God's covenants with Israel through time — and see how Jesus has become the ultimate and better fulfillment of all of it. In Hebrews chapters 7 through 10, he begins building this specific argument, movement by movement. It is a case for the absolute superiority of Christ and His high priestly ministry over what came before in the Levitical system — that Jesus offers a better covenant because He offers a better sacrifice. His once-and-for-all entrance into the Holy of Holies radically changes everything.

The argument is dense and demanding, but the purpose is simple: to establish a single revolutionary claim that because of what Jesus has done, the people who belong to Jesus now have direct access to the presence of God. The veil has been torn. The way is open. The distance that the entire sacrificial system was designed to manage has been abolished because it has been fulfilled in Jesus. It is from this theological argument and foundation that we get the following in chapter 10 starting in verse 19.

19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

So what the author does is he builds this huge argument saying, "Look at what God did through the Mosaic covenant and the Levitical system and the sacrificial system there, and look how Jesus has come in perfect and better fulfillment of that reality." Look at what Jesus has done, and look at what it does to you. It gives you access to God. It gives you confidence to come fully into His presence without shame, with a clear conscience.

And then listen to where he goes immediately.

24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

It is not accidental that as the author of Hebrews builds this really intricate and complex argument about what Christ has done for us, and then as he begins to turn to the implications, the first implication he goes to is community. Because of what Jesus has done, because of the new reality available in Jesus, this is what we should do. And the first thing he says in verse 24 is, "Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works."

The word here for "consider" is κατανοέω — katanoeō in the Greek, and it means to perceive or take note of. It means to pay careful attention to. It is not an occasional or casual thought. He is calling them — because of what Jesus has done, because of the access He has given, because of the freedom of the new covenant and the new reality and the great high priest that we have — to organize your mind, to contemplate and ponder and consider very carefully and intentionally this one thing: how to stir up one another to love and good works.

This is where it gets interesting, because that word for "stir up" is παροξυσμός — paroxysmos, and it means a provocation. It means an inciting. It comes from a root that means to sharpen. This is interesting because this word is intentionally chosen here. The author could have said a lot of different things. He could have said, "Encourage one another to love and good works" — there is a Greek word for that, paraklēsis. He could have used the word for comfort, to comfort each other and build one another up and make each other feel good — there is a Greek word for that too, paramythia. He doesn't use either of those. He uses this really interesting, strange Greek word that means to sharpen, to provoke, to incite.

When looking at this word in the Greek and looking at the root and where it came from, seeing that first initial concept of "to sharpen" immediately brings to mind a well-known verse in Proverbs about community. It says this in Proverbs 27:17:

17 Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

This is like THE poster verse of community. You see it on t-shirts and bumper stickers everywhere. But because we tend to think about community through our own lens rather than through the lens of scripture, it is easy to look at this verse and think, "Oh, that sounds nice." The thing is, if you have ever actually sharpened iron with iron, it is not nice. It only happens with tension. It only happens with friction. And what happens when you get iron and iron in friction is you get sparks. It is a messy process.

And this is so central to what needs to be heard this morning. We want community to be easy. We want community to be comfortable. We want community to make us feel good. But that is not what God has given us the gift of community for. He has given it to us to make us better. And to make us better means there is going to be some refining. To make us better means that, by definition, we are blind to our blind spots, and so we need other people to say, "I know you can't see this, but I've got to address that. You need this, and it is not going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you. No, it's going to hurt you." This is the reality of community. As iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another. In the Hebrew, it literally reads "sharpens the face of a friend." That is what it literally says in the Hebrew. The idea of "the face" in Hebrew semantics carries the sense of the totality of the human being, but it is also this face-to-face dynamic — I see you, I know you, and because I love you, I want to sharpen you.

I'm not sure this is what we think of when we think of community. In a culture of radical individualism, we tend to think about community individualistically. What do I get out of this? What can this church do for me? What can this small group offer me? Do I like the music? Are the chairs comfortable enough? Does the preacher preach too long? These are thoughts other people have. But what do I get out of this? And in a church culture — I don't have time this morning to fully flesh this out, but I think most of you will catch it quickly — in a church culture where the highest moral virtue is niceness, where we're just supposed to be nice, how do you sharpen one another? There's friction. The biblical call to community is not a call to comfort. It's a call to growth and a call to service.

John F. Kennedy in his famous 1961 inaugural address was trying to reframe how Americans saw citizenship and the relationship between themselves and their country. He said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." It's almost nonsensical in 2026. The provocation was deliberate. Kennedy was calling his generation away from a consumer relationship with the nation towards a contributive one. The story is not done, but at least from our vantage point today, it doesn't look like those words took hold.

I think it's really easy, though, to transfer that concept to the church. And I think it's a true statement to say: we have got to stop asking what the church can do for me and start asking what I am called to do for the community. Instead of consumers, contributors. Because the ekklesia — the called-out community of those who belong to Christ — are supposed to help one another shine. We're called to help each other grow.

So back to Hebrews 10, he says, "Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together." You've got to show up at church. You've got to show up in a small group. You've got to do that. Of course — that's the low-hanging fruit. But the author is actually saying something much more profound and deeper. The word here for "meet together" is ἐπισυναγωγή — episynagōgē. You probably recognize the last half of that word — it's the word used for synagogue. Episynagōgē: a gathering together, a full assembly. The epi part of that word is used to intensify. So it's an intense gathering together, an empowered and profound and radical gathering together. And he says don't stop doing this. Some have done that. Some have stopped connecting to that intensity. They've walked away from it. But he calls for encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

He connects it not just to felt needs — as if to say, "Oh, you're feeling lonely? You should join a small group." That is not what he is talking about. He is saying we are a part of a larger story and we have a place and a role to play within it. We're made to function, and we are to reflect God's glory. Now we've been set free by Jesus to do that. We've been given access to the Holy of Holies. We are able to perceive the glory of the Lord. So because of that, we've got to do it — because He is coming back. And when He comes back, we want to be found faithful doing what we were designed to do.

This is the exact same word that Paul uses in 2 Thessalonians 2:1:

2 Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers,

Episynagōgē, gathered together. The assembly of the community is not merely a weekly social gathering. It's not simply proximity. It's the anticipatory gathering of the people who are oriented towards the One who is coming back to finish what He has begun in us.

I hope you see how much bigger and better that is than just scratching your felt need of wanting somebody to like you and affirm you. It's so much bigger and so much better than that. Their togetherness is not organized around present comfort, but around the One who has bound them together and His eventual promised return. They gather because the day is approaching, and their mutual sharpening is preparation for that day.

I don't know if you've spent much time reading through the Gospels, but Jesus tells parable after parable after parable about the day - about His return; the common theme between all of those parables is preparedness. Are you ready or not ready? That's what the author of Hebrews is picking up on here. We gather together because we need to, because of the calling that's been placed on us, because of the way we've been designed, and because of the reality that Jesus has started something in us that He's going to carry to completion. That's why we gather together. We're called to community. We're called to one body.

The biggest challenge for me personally to Christian community throughout my life has been what I call cookie cutter Christianity. Some of you instantly know what I mean — churches and church cultures that have created cultural environments where everybody is supposed to be exactly the same, to be the picture of a good little Christian. This is what a good little Christian man looks like. This is what a good little Christian woman looks like. And of course it's born out of good intent. It always starts with the best intentions, but it misses the heart. It misses the size of God and the scope of creation that God has created not in uniformity but in diversity.

Go look at some trees. God could have created one tree. He could have created one flower, one bird, one animal, but He doesn't. It's unbelievable the amount of complexity and diversity that God creates, and it's an expression of the beauty and diversity within God Himself. So the idea that God wants us to all be the same is anything but biblical. It doesn't come from our creation. It doesn't come from the scriptures. We're called to oneness — we're called to one family, one faith, one Lord, one hope, one baptism, one Lord and Savior overall — but that doesn't mean we're all supposed to be identical.

Paul spends a lot of time on this, especially in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. He really unpacks what it means to be a part of the body. In verses 12 to 14 he says:

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

So you've got a body — it's got a hand, it's got a foot, it's got an ear, it's got a nose, it's got all these different parts — and yet it's all one body. That is the way it is with Christ. Some of you are ears, some of you are heels, but we're all connected into the oneness of one body through Christ.

He goes on in the next few verses to talk about the need for different parts of the body. You've got to have hands, you've got to have feet, you've got to have eyes. And he makes the point that if a body was all eyes, it would be a monster. A body that doesn't work in harmony, a body that works against itself, doesn't function — it's nonfunctional. But when all the different parts of the body work the way that they're designed to, not for their own good — the hand doesn't do what the hand does for the hand, the hand does what the hand does for the whole body — that's where things get interesting. A body that works against itself will fail, but a body where each part does what it is designed to do, oh, that's where things get interesting.

He continues picking up in verse 25:

25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

So it doesn't matter what part of the body you are, what role you have — you're a part of the body. And because you're a part of the body, we're all on the same ground. We all stand on the same ground at the foot of the cross. There's no elevation based on gifting or talents or skill sets or roles or offices. We all come to Jesus by grace through faith. So there's not supposed to be any division in the body, any superiority. The eye doesn't get to look at the foot and say, "I'm better than you." It's not the way it works.

26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Haven't you found this to be true in your own body? Isn't it amazing how a paper cut can ruin your whole life? Those of us that are getting older — the younger people in the room won't know this yet, but if you get to our age you'll learn — just getting out of bed can be dangerous. Just that one tweaked muscle, that one little thing, and your whole world suffers. That's his point. If one member suffers, everybody suffers. And if one member is honored, all rejoice together. It's a beautiful description of community. And in this there is a logic: if one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Paul describes mutual sympathy and rejoicing as the mark of a healthy body, and in our physical bodies this happens automatically — you feel the pain. But in the body of Christ, it's dependent on an intentional kind of mutual knowing that allows the body to feel what its members are experiencing. He will say:

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

And that's where we come back to the difference between proximity and actual connection and community.

Let me say this morning — there are some of you here in this room or watching online, and the body of Estrella Mountain Church can't feel your pain and can't feel your celebration. Not because we don't have the capacity or the desire to. It's simply because you're keeping it to yourself. We can't carry a weight that we don't know about. The burden that's never been named can't be shared.

And I want to say to everyone here this morning: we're not called to suffer in silence. We're not called to grieve and hurt in isolation and independence. And on the flip side, you're not supposed to enjoy the really, really good stuff and hoard that all to yourself. But the church can't weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice unless the church is invited into it. It's not a judgment — it's a diagnosis.

The prescription is not a program or a small group signup sheet, because again, you can show up on Sunday morning and keep it all to yourself. You can be in a small group for years and keep it all to yourself. It's a decision — costly, frightening, but absolutely worth it — to let someone in the community know what's actually happening in your heart and your mind with Jesus. This is what we're made to do.

Paul continues in verse 28:

28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.

Paul loves to make lists. They're not exhaustive lists — they're illustrative lists. So here he's just giving a list of what's in the body. We are all different members, and now he goes to the idea that we have different giftings. The Spirit gives us different giftings, different talents, different inclinations. If you've spent any time around other people, you come quickly to realize that we're not all the same. Paul's point is that that's a good thing. We're not all wired the same and we're not all empowered the same by the Holy Spirit. We're empowered by the same Spirit, but we're empowered in different ways.

So he continues:

29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?

Imagine for a moment a small group environment where a young woman who's maybe been on the margins of that small group comes in, and she is obviously hurting and begins to weep. Somebody in the group comes and sits down and says, "What's wrong?" And she begins to tell the group, "I've become pregnant out of wedlock." She shares this reality in her life. Is everybody in that group going to respond the exact same way to that young woman? Paul's point is that we're all wired differently.

The person gifted with mercy is going to be on that couch with their arm around her, weeping — just weeping. It's all they're going to do. Just weep. It's a beautiful thing. While the mercy-gifted person is doing that, the administrator is already developing a PowerPoint and an Excel spreadsheet about all the things that need to happen to help this woman along the way. The person with the gift of giving already has their checkbook out writing a check to help. The shepherd wants to stop and have a moment of prayer with everybody. The evangelist is going, "Does she know Jesus? Does the person that got her pregnant know Jesus? What about the extended family? How can I tell more people about Jesus?" And the prophet in the room is going, "Has she repented? Does she really know about the nature of her sin?"

So my question to you is: which one of those is the right response? Yes. Right — that's good. Yes. Now, there is a right order of response, and that gets worked out in real time. But they're all needed. That young woman in that situation needs all the gifts to function. If she's in a group and everybody in there is a prophet — whoo — all right. Or if everybody in there is mercy-gifted, they'll just sit around and cry and nobody will do anything.

And here's the thing that we don't say out loud — let me just say it. We actually want everybody to be like us. The mercy-gifted person looks at everybody else and goes, "You heartless sociopaths." And the evangelist looks at everybody else and goes, "Why won't you tell people about Jesus?" And the prophet's like, "None of you care about truth." Do you see what I'm saying? Instead of appreciating each other, we become competitive with each other, and then we try to mold each other into uniformity and conformity when God has made us in an unbelievable diversity that's supposed to work in harmony for each other. Paul says it really straight earlier in the text. In 1 Corinthians 12:7, he says:

7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

God has made you the way He's made you, not for yourself. It's not about you. And if that's not good news to you yet, you don't understand the gospel fully yet, because this is good news. We're called into something so much bigger and better than just our own story with us and the throne. We're called into the reality of a creator God who made us for Himself. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. We really are better together than we are by ourselves.

So let me give one more strong word of exhortation here. There are some in the room that are keeping their pain and their struggles and their celebrations from each other. There are also those in the room who are holding back their gifts from the body. You're just consuming. You're just feeding. Remember that Amy Grant song way back in the 80s? “You’re just a fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat little baby!” — just always consuming, never growing, never developing, and never maturing. And there's a choice involved there. Let me say it this way: this church, this community, this family of God could be so much better than it is right now if you would contribute what God has given you to contribute to the body. You're needed. It's needed. We are less than what we could be because you're being selfish and holding it to yourself.

The mission that God has given to us and entrusted to us is going slower and has more obstacles because you're a consumer instead of a contributor. I think about that great scene in the Lord of the Rings — the council with Elrond at Rivendell, and that moment: "You have my sword," and "You have my axe," and "You have my hairy hobbit feet!," It doesn't matter what it is, but it's needed. Those little hairy hobbit feet walked all the way to the mountain and threw the ring in. Just get off the bench. Stop being so selfish. God has made you who you are, and He's given you what you have, and the gifts the Spirit has empowered you for are not for yourself. They're for the common good and they're for the mission of the church. It's time to get off the bench and stop hoarding the grace of God.

Before I close, Paul ends 1 Corinthians 12 this way. He says:

31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

So the gifts are really good. Serving is really, really good. But there's something even more fundamental than that. And then he goes to 1 Corinthians 13. We all know this passage. We use it primarily in marriage ceremonies, and it does have this profound meaning for marriages — the two become one. But the context is not marriage. It's the church. It's the body. The marriage of Jesus and His bride, the many functioning as one. So listen to 1 Corinthians 13 in that light.

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

What he's saying here is that humans can turn anything into idols. We can even turn our gifts and our service into idolatry. So if we make our gifts and our service to God and to the body the main thing and turn it into an idol, the right thing done in the wrong way becomes the wrong thing. He says you can serve with the best of them. You can serve at the heights of your capacity. You can do things that nobody else could imagine doing, but if you do it without love, it's nothing. I have nothing. I am nothing. I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Paul is using a mirror metaphor in a little bit of a different way but in the same light. Right now he is not getting the full picture, but it is coming. He says:

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The greatest of these is love. Whatever community we have in Jesus's church must be rooted and sustained and lived out in love.

We ended last year with an advent series called Beloved, out of 1 John 4:

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

So here is the logic in the series and in this text: we become what we behold. If we behold God, and God is love, then we should become what? Loving. It is pretty simple when you break it down that way. I do not know about you, but that is the kind of Christianity I long for. I am tired of angry Christianity. I am tired of whiny Christianity. I am tired of judgmental Christianity, harsh Christianity — the baptized-in-lemon-juice kind of Christianity. God is love. Anyone who loves knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God.

Now do not mistake this. Do not mistake loving Christianity for weak Christianity. Do not confuse it for warm, fuzzy Christianity. Love is what actually does the hard things. If I love you, I will do the hard work of sharpening you. And if you love me, you will do the hard work of sharpening me. If I do not love you, I do not care. You see how this works? So do not mistake loving Christianity for weakness or for comfort. Love tells the truth. Love goes the extra mile. Love is not weakness — it is strength. And we are truly better together, stronger together, than we are by ourselves.

The way that we love one another, the way that we serve one another, the way that we sharpen one another — it matters deeply, ultimately, missionally. Jesus said it this way:

35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Not a selfish, consumer love. Not a warm, fuzzy, “this makes me feel good” love. Love for Jesus is not optional. Community for Jesus is not optional. It is mandatory. It is at the core of what it means to be a part of His family and His body.

Our one life in isolation, receiving and reflecting the light and love of God — it is good. It really is good. But it is so limited. When we together, with unveiled faces, behold the glory of the Lord — look out. What one mirror can do, ten mirrors does better. A hundred mirrors does better. A thousand mirrors does better. A bigger, fuller, clearer representation of the goodness and glory of the One who made us — from community, for community. Christian community is the means through which we live out our true calling: to be images of God. The God who has never been alone, the God who is love, is best imaged in a community of love. May God grace us to be that community. Amen.