The Compelling Community: Where God's Power Makes a Church Attractive (9Marks)

by Mark Dever

I’ll define local church community as a togetherness and commitment we experience that transcends all natural bonds—because of our commonality in Jesus Christ.

We may cultivate it, feed it, protect it, and use it. But we dare not pretend to create it. When in our hubris we set out to “build community,” we risk subverting God’s plans for our churches—

To adjust our aspiration. Many relationships that naturally form in our churches would exist even if the gospel weren’t true.

In gospel- revealing community, many relationships would never exist but for the truth and power of the gospel—either because of the depth of care for each other or because two people in relationship have little in common but Christ.

When Christians unite around something other than the gospel, they create community that would likely exist even if God didn’t.

God has great purposes for the community of your church: to safeguard the gospel, to transform lives and communities, to shine as a beacon of hope to the unconverted. Community that does this is demonstrably supernatural. It is not community designed around the gospel plus some other bond of similarity. It is community that reveals the gospel.

to love God is to love other Christians.

Supernatural forgiveness drives supernatural love.

The miracle of the atonement is that there is a way for God to be both just and the one who justifies sinners (to paraphrase Rom. 3:26). Mercy and justice met when the sinless Son of God was, impossibly, sacrificed on our behalf. Our forgiveness as Christians is profoundly supernatural.

This love is empowered not by the lovability of others or our own goodness, but by supernatural forgiveness in Christ at the cross.