Life Together
by Pastor Tommy Bailey
There’s a story I love about a famous organist in the 18th century who gave a series of sold out concerts. Before electricity, these massive pipe organs required an additional person behind the instrument manually pumping air into the bellows so the music could sound. It was grueling, hidden work.
After a remarkable performance, as the crowd rose to their feet, the young man who had been pumping the bellows approached the organist backstage. “We had a great performance tonight, didn’t we?” he said.
“We didn’t have anything,” the organist replied. “I had a great performance.”
The next evening, the concert began, and the organist sat down. He placed his fingers on the keys, and played. No sound came from the pipes. He kept playing, waiting for the music to be heard, and it never came. Finally, he went around back and found the young man sitting quietly. “What is going on back here?”
The young man looked at him and said, “It looks like you are not having a great performance tonight.”
This story exposes something that runs through every human heart. We often live as though we can flourish on our own, unmoored from others and, ultimately, from God himself. It’s the age-old deception of autonomy. Self-reliance. Self-satisfaction. Self-righteousness. This posture cuts against the grain of everything scripture teaches about what it means to be God’s people.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he offers a vivid summary of what a community shaped by the gospel should look like, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Col 3:12-14)
Notice the substance of his summary. Every single attribute he names is relational. Compassion requires someone to receive it. Bearing with one another assumes friction. Forgiveness presupposes real hurt. This is not a life we can live in isolation. It’s a way of living that only makes sense together.
Compassion requires someone to receive it. Bearing with one another assumes friction. Forgiveness presupposes real hurt. This is not a life we can live in isolation. It’s a way of living that only makes sense together.
We see this same reality in Acts 2, where Luke gives us a sketch of the earliest church. Those first believers continually devoted themselves to what Luke calls “the fellowship.” (2:42) That word in the original Greek is koinonia, a deep relational bond, centered around a common aim. Apart from Jesus, many of those early believers would have had very little in common. But the gospel of Jesus dissolved those barriers. Their identities had been reoriented around the person of Christ, and their lives radiated with practical, sacrificial love for one another.
Those of you following our Treasuring God’s Word Bible reading and memorization plan will remember Paul’s words in Romans 12, “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” (Rom 12:4-5) Here we see it again. Members of one another. Not spectators. Not soloists. We belong to each other because we belong to Christ.
Yet we all feel the pull to “self.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer considers the dangers, “Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community.”¹
Autonomy is one of the chief values of our time. Supposed self-sufficiency is often celebrated. But the scriptures know nothing of a follower of Jesus who goes it alone. We were fearfully and wonderfully made for each other.
Autonomy is one of the chief values of our time.² Supposed self-sufficiency is often celebrated. But the scriptures know nothing of a follower of Jesus who goes it alone. We were fearfully and wonderfully made for each other. The organist needs the one who fills the bellows, and the one at the bellows needs the organist. When both lean in, the music is heard.
“Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Col 3:17) That’s the second half of Paul’s summary of a Christ-centered community, a call to double submission: to one another and to Christ. May we continue to answer that call at The Village Chapel, doing the costly and life giving work of “putting on love” as we lean in to life together as brothers and sisters in our little outpost of the Kingdom of God.
For His glory and for our good.
¹ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
² A humorous but revealing way to see this value playing out in our Western culture is to follow the slogans of our most iconic brands. Consider Burger King’s progression, “Have It Your Way” (1970s) was about hamburger customization. “Be Your Way” (2014) became a statement about self-expression. “You Rule” (2022) arrived as a declaration of individual sovereignty.
