Imago Dei Community

Dr. Nijay Gupta challenges us to live out the values of the one true God. The church lives a different culture, and we should come across as strange and inviting in the way we interact in the world. By looking at the uniqueness of Christ as described in Philippians, we can see the uniqueness of his church.

In his famous passage on “the foolishness of the cross,” Paul says that the message of Jesus frustrates both Jew and Gentile. For the community deep inside the story of Scripture and the community outside of it, Jesus’ cross was called “a stumbling block”—literally, “a scandal,” in the original Greek. What makes Jesus so scandalous to ideological and religious categories?

What does it mean to be seen by God? This Easter Sunday, we look at the way Jesus meets us in life and truly sees us. He is the living God who is present and seeking us out. 

Michelle preaches on Palm Sunday in anticipation of Easter.

God’s people are called “a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9). Jesus called his followers to a citizenship of the kingdom of heaven and the earliest church fathers gave their allegiance to Jesus before their country. What does it mean to be a nation of Jesus followers inside a nation like America? And how do we live as responsible and courageous citizens of both?

The New Testament assures us that the church is a dwelling place for God. We are likened to a “temple” and a “holy city”—places where God’s presence permeates reality. But church often feels like a dwelling place for dysfunction. What role does God’s presence have in our formation as a community? And how does it change how we commit to one another?

Shelbi Shutt, an insightful speaker, delves deep into the familial nature of relationships within the church. She discusses the powerful metaphor of the church as a family, urging a shift from individualism to interdependence. The conversation touches on navigating conflicts in community life, showcasing a poignant story about reconciliation. Shelbi also shares her journey of healing and the crucial role of community support in overcoming anxiety. Finally, she emphasizes the importance of embodying self-giving love to foster unity within faith relationships.

What does it mean to be the Body of Christ? In the New Testament, Paul employs this metaphor several times, but never in a way of striving—as if we have to “become” the Body. He, instead, simply tells us that this is what we are and we must care for the Body of Jesus the way we might care for our own body, so that we might be built up and strengthened—healthy and ready for action.

Lent is a time of repentance, of coming back to God through the acknowledgement of our humanity. Who are we before God and in his sight? For lent this year, we are repenting of the distorted images we carry of the church, the people of God, through an inspection of the biblical metaphors of us. Most of our visions of our community are distorted by our own history and lack any connection to the rich biblical images given to the people of God across Scripture. During Lent, we will lay down our distorted images of us and pick up God’s images for his church.

Is God’s community worth investing in? The church used to be a place where we received cultural and social benefits, a place where we “found our people” and grew in our relationship with our surrounding community. But as culture has rapidly secularized and been inundated with technology, we don’t need the church for a good social life or even for spiritual content. The early followers of Jesus seemed to give the church their top priority, how did they do it and why? Strangely enough, the answers for why we should come back to church and give the church a priority in our life is not just found in the New Testament, but in a minor prophetic book called Haggai.