One-Anothering in the New Testament
What it means to embrace the gospel and be part of Jesus's family
Introduction:
Once again I am sharing an equipping tool that we are using in our church gatherings to create a conversation (and help set our life priorities around) how to be a church family, a kerygmatic community.1
Let me clarify a couple of things, which might help those reading this to better understand why I have organized it in this way.
First, we have to start thinking about the gospel differently.
For centuries, Christian traditions have buried the dramatic announcement of the gospel under a set of doctrinal statements. Those traditions approached the gospel the same way they approached the Scriptures . Namely, look at every place where a word/concept is mentioned, collect them into piles and then see which piles are the biggest. (An oversimplification, but you get the point.) This propositional version of the gospel mainly exists to allow those traditions to claim the a superficial level of Christian unity. By extracting and abstracting doctrinal “truths” which must be accepted for someone to be “saved” and boiling those down to the lowest common denominator, they have achieved a fragile, superficial unity, which neither promotes shared purpose and partnership, nor expresses the gospel in a way that carries weight or power. It’s basically a way for all the thousands of Christian traditions to agree on paper, so that they can have “fellowship” together. Although, what fellowship means remains ambiguous and diluted.
Here is a summary of the gospel presentations I grew up with:
Everyone is a sinner (original sin)
Jesus died for your sins (substitutionary atonement)
Believing these things means a.) you no longer have to feel condemned, and b.) you avoid eternal punishment (penal substition)
You should stop what you are doing and BELIEVE these things right now so you can have a good life on earth, and a good afterlife in heaven (a disembodied utopia in a spiritual dimension)
That is not the gospel the apostles preached, which is recorded over and over in the book of Acts. Their gospel goes something like this:
The plan that God began through his promises to Abraham, Moses, and David has now begun to be substantially fulfilled by what Jesus did
This promised One (Jesus) has arrived (in the middle of the story) and inaugurated a "new and living way" according to a "new covenant" with a new global family
That new family (the church) is Jesus's own "body" here on earth and is how He is accomplishing His work of embedding His redemptive kingdom in this world, in anticipation of His eventual return to make all things new and fully establish His kingdom on earth
In light of all that, Jesus’s Spirit worked through the apostles to give us the rest of Jesus’s teaching2, and we should completely reshape our lives around being this family together, according to the principles and traditioning process delivered to the apostles, which all the early churches were shaped around.
Secondly, we need to understand that the New Testament is actually organized around Christ’s plan, and how that plan was unfolded by the apostles in the first century.
Jesus intentionally held back and veiled His teaching while He was here, and then His Spirit fully revealed His plan to the apostles so that they could implement it throughout all the churches. This gives new insight and understanding of the letters of the apostles in the New Testament. That “New Testament” is the collection of the founding documents of the New Covenant, and they contain a unity and coherence through which they set forth the traditioning model (particularly through Paul’s writings) for the church for all time, until Jesus returns.
That unity can be understood by viewing the New Testament as a collection of writings organized around three key apostles and the church networks they were addressing.
Paul’s role was central to establishing the tradition for all the churches, and the other apostles thought of Paul’s work and writings as authoritative3 and shaped their own work around Paul’s traditioning process and principles, in flexible ways across various networks of churches.
Below is the equipping tool it has taken me so long to introduce.4
This tool is not a comprehensive look at the entire New Testament, but I have taken the 59 One Another passages from Carl George’s book and set them within their New Testament context, so that, rather than existing as a random list of how we should treat one another, you can actually see how they are part of the larger plan of Christ to shape His global family as networks of church families.
[This tool is adapted from Carl F. George, Prepare Your Church for the Future, The 59 One Anothers of the New Testament.]
Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a coalition of leaders who are establishing churches that are families, patterning themselves after Acts.
Kerygmatic Communities are churches who live as extended families, so that every aspect of their lives together are a visible proclamation of the gospel – which is the announcement that Jesus has initiated the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises to Abraham, Moses & David, and set in motion.
John 14:25-28; 16:12-15
2 Peter 3:15-16
