Creators or Participants

In his great little book, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says “Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize, it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” (page 30)

When I read those words, my first instinct is to remind myself that I should see what I do as participating in what God is actually doing rather than to see myself as creating what God would like to create. That idea alone could help us greatly with the important distinction between “God’s will for my life,” which can easily become a bit self-serving; and “God’s will for God’s life,” which will always focus on what He desires, not what I desire.

Interestingly, when Peter, speaking on behalf of the other disciples declared “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,,” (doing so in perhaps the most pagan region Jesus ever visited) Jesus responded by saying “upon this rock I will build my church” not “that’s great Peter, you can build a great church with that idea.” (Matthew 16:13ff)

While attempting to help the Corinthian believers understand the difference in creators and participants, Paul declares, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. . . For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:6-9)

The “historic reality” is, of course, that Paul is the missionary who was brave enough to attempt to plant a church in Corinth. But if those words quoted above reflect his understanding of that process, the “theological reality” was that he was a participant in what God was doing, not the creator of the church in Corinth.

Somewhere in all of this it seems to be fairly clear – though not always easily accepted – that by our participation in the work of God – being kingdom people doing kingdom things – we become His fellow workers in advancing the kingdom all over the world. Like Paul as one who planted and Apollos as one who watered, we are partners with God in the growth that He wills for His kingdom. That will, of course, is best expressed in Scripture by Peter, who declares, that God is “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

Seeing ourselves as creators is far beyond any of our pay grades! Seeing ourselves as participants immediately reminds us that it isn’t a pay grade at stake, but the marvelous grace of God who is willing to allow us to be His fellow workers.

A prime example – at least it seems to me – of how this might work differently is our current cultural confusion, debate, and obfuscation about marriage. So many are attempting to “create” what a marriage actually is. That is happening on both sides of the debate. One side quotes Scripture, as read from their vantage point; the other side quotes Scripture from a seemingly contradictory vantage point.  That is nearly inevitable when humans see themselves as creators!

But I wonder what the discussion would be like if believers saw marriage as something God created that we participate in? And that in our participation, we modeled an approach to marriage that not only honored God but made the biblical ideal of marriage appear to be the only reasonable and attractive approach to the subject?

In the gospels, a life-long commitment to marriage seems to be discussed in the context of discipleship. In other words, a faithful marriage is one of the ways we model our commitment to “the rock” upon which the church is built. But that is hard to imagine in a world where the divorce rates, abuse rates, etc., among Christians aren’t statistically different from the rest of culture. Little wonder so many in our culture aren’t all that interested in seeing us as “creators” of the definition of marriage.

But what if we did participate as disciples of Jesus when it comes to marriage? Would our culture be attracted to Christ in ways we don’t see right now? Instead of seeing us as old fashioned and a bit out-of-touch, would they see us as having something important to say, and model?

I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved to know that I’m a participant, not a creator. Or, to re-quote Bonhoeffer, I am called to “a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”