Coming and Going (and Joining)

At FPC, we are all about community groups. The essential work of the Church in the New Testament age in which we live is building up the house of God, the place where he makes his dwelling amongst his people. But whereas in the Old Testament the house of God was the tabernacle or the temple, in our time, it is us. Each believer is a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Each believer is a “living stone” to be used in building up God’s “spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). “Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). This happens partly at our Sunday worship service, but even moreso in community groups, where we can know and love each other more personally.

But there is a particular challenge to community-group participation at FPC, and that is the transient nature of our congregation. Transience is a fairly typical feature of life in big cities the world over. People come to the city for education and internships, or to prove themselves in their field, or simply for a few years of excitement before “settling down” in the suburbs. Few of these pursuits lead to a long-term commitment to living in the city, to “putting down roots.”

This is by no means to look down on such choices. It is simply to point out that they can inhibit the impulse to commit to things like community groups, given the background knowledge that the faces in the group may be completely different in six months’ time.

The question that needs to be asked, though, is what is my criteria for commitment? How long does someone need to be around for me to commit to being at least partly involved in their life, and they in mine? Six months? Two years? Indefinitely? If I justify the withholding of myself due to transience, well, transience is based on time. So what is my time? At what point do I feel a person will be “there” long enough for me to commit to them?

Committing to a person or a group of people is never something to take lightly. As Christians, we seek to build our houses on rock, not sand. For the storms will come, taking people out of our lives whom we have cared for, and who may also care for us. It can just as easily happen without a storm, too, perhaps moreso. But if we are waiting for someone who can give us a lifetime guarantee of being forever “there” before we can invest in them even a little bit, we will find ourselves doing more waiting than investing.

And it is not just the Church that suffers:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

--C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

5 Questions With...Erika Ho

This month, we begin a new feature in the newsletter: “5 Questions With…”. This feature will offer brief profiles of FPC Elders, Deacons, staff, and, most importantly, members like you! So if you receive an e-mail from Director of Community Life Peter Brown with five questions for you, jump right in. We’re not looking for your deep, dark secrets—as sinners saved by grace, we already know the worst about each other! Just a few basic things that can serve as conversational appetizers.

Erika Ho

1. How did you first get involved with Friendship Presbyterian? I have a very good friend who has been living just around the corner near church. I had shared with her that I had been looking for an English-speaking church for a while but hadn’t been able to find one I felt could be my home church. She suggested Friendship since she would see many “white people” gathering at the entrance every Sunday! After attending the first few Sundays, an opportunity came up to participate in the 2015, “Waking up to Wonder” retreat. It was a great chance to know the church better and engage in community groups. I’ve been attending FPC regularly ever since.

2. What do you do when you're not working for the church? For the most part, I work in foreign market development for a company that manufactures industrial SSDs (Solid State Disks). If you’re interested in knowing what SSDs are, you can come find me for more details. I also spend a lot of time with my dog.

3. What is something people might be surprised to know about you? I get a lot of perplexed and confused looks when I tell people I grew up in Bolivia, mostly because they don’t know where Bolivia is, and it is not every day they meet someone from this country. If you’re interested in knowing more about Bolivia, you can also come find me. 

4. What do you find most challenging about being a Christian today? With the continuous growth and widespread use of gadgets, it is becoming increasingly difficult to disconnect and to get away from distractions. This poses a challenge for my growth as a Christian, as I can easily overlook what God is trying to communicate to me.

5. What is your favorite book of the Bible? It depends on the circumstances I’m in, but I often find encouragement in Philippians. Because it so simply and clearly reminds me of who I am and the reason why I push onward in the moments when I feel discouraged, overwhelmed, and lost in life. I am united with Christ and should take on his attitude (Phil. 2:5-7). And when it gets tough, I know that God will not give me more than I can handle (Phil. 4:13) because in everything He works for His good purpose (Phil. 2:13).

Sinclair Ferguson Visit

During the last week of November, we were blessed to have renowned Reformed theologian and teacher Dr. Sinclair Ferguson with us. Under the sponsorship of China Reformed Theological Seminary, Dr. Ferguson led a week-long lecture series on the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and delivered the message at our Sunday service.

His Sunday message, based on the Old Testament story of Joseph, was a powerful reminder of the glory of God’s sovereignty and its immense value to us in coping with human adversity in our lives. To paraphrase Genesis 50:20, what someone may intend as evil against us, God may be using for good--though not necessarily our own personal good, as Dr.  Ferguson reminded us. Joseph’s survival of domestic abuse, involuntary slavery, and unjust incarceration was not all orchestrated by God simply for Joseph’s own spiritual growth (though it certainly contributed to that). It was also, perhaps even primarily, to enable Joseph to become a savior of thousands of people during a great famine in the ancient world.

Dr. Ferguson’s lecture series on the Holy Spirit was on a scale too large to effectively summarize here. But one of his many insights concerned the work of the Spirit in uniting believers with Christ. The most succinct exposition of this work, known as the doctrine of the Union with Christ, is found in 1 Corinthians 15:22: “For, as in Adam all die, so all will be made alive in Christ.” All humanity is “in,” that is, spiritually united with, either Adam or Christ. Because Adam sinned, death entered the world (1 Cor. 5:21), and so all who remain “in” Adam will eventually die. But all who put their faith in Christ and turn away from sin are “in” Christ, and will live eternally and abundantly. They have been spiritually united with Christ by the Spirit.

Dr.  Ferguson identified four dimensions to the Union with Christ. First, there is an eternal dimension. We see this in Ephesians 1:3-4, where the Apostle Paul writes that God has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world…”. This assures us of the profound strength and trustworthiness of our union with Christ.

Second, there is an incarnational dimension. This involves Christ’s fully human nature that existed alongside his fully divine nature. As Hebrews 2:17-18 teaches us, Christ “had to be made like [human beings], fully human in every way, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” On a personal level, our union with Christ is not a union with some distant, incomprehensible deity, but with a human being who shared our needs, fears, and temptations.

Third, there is a federal dimension. This is the basic idea of 1 Cor. 15:21-22 (as well as Romans 5:18-19), in which the one stands in for the many. This is perhaps the most essential (and sometimes vexing) aspect of our union with Christ. The action of one being is imputed to many others. Adam was our representative. So, because he sinned, we, his descendants, have sin imputed to us. From a certain angle, this can seem unfair. Yet consider the freedoms we enjoy because others fought in a war for us. We didn’t risk our own lives in combat, yet we enjoy the fruits of the victory won by those who did. Our soldiers are our representatives on the battlefield. The good news is that it works both ways. As much as we are condemned in Adam, we are equally saved in Christ. Because Christ lived the perfect, sinless life that God requires us to live, if we, then, are “in” Christ, God considers us also to have lived that perfect sinless life.

Finally, there is a spiritual dimension to our union with Christ. Everything that happens to our “representative,” whether Adam or Christ, also happens to us, on a spiritual level. What has happened to us? The Bible teaches that we, as sinful humans in Adam, have been condemned (for sin) and are due the punishment of death (Romans 6:23). But it also teaches that in Christ we have been raised from the dead (Rom. 6:4) and adopted as sons (and daughters) by our heavenly Father (Rom. 8:14-17). Accordingly, the same things have happened to Christ himself. On the cross, Christ’s human nature, although without sin, was made by God to be sin (2 Cor. 5:21), and was rightly condemned and punished for it, just as we would have been. Yet Christ was subsequently raised from the dead and “declared to be the Son of God” (Rom. 1:4)—that is, adopted by the Father, just as we are.

(Note--we may look at the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, where a voice from heaven proclaimed that Jesus was “my beloved Son” (Mark 1:9-11) and reasonably wonder if Christ’s adoption therefore took place before his resurrection. But Romans 1:4 makes clear that Christ’s human nature was “declared to be the Son of God…by his resurrection from the dead” (italics added). Thus, the heavenly declaration of Sonship at Jesus’ baptism is more of a picture than an actual event—just as baptism itself is a picture of the Christian’s conversion event, rather than the thing itself. Appropriately, in Jesus’ baptism, the heavenly declaration of Sonship comes after the baptismal act. Baptism is a symbol for the believer’s death and resurrection in Christ (Romans 6:4-5), from which heavenly adoption follows.)

Dr. Ferguson’s exposition of these four dimensions of our union with Christ enable us to grow in our understanding of, and our joy in, the glorious work of the Holy Spirit.