Partnership in the Gospel

Paul understands the importance of a community’s relationships with one another and with God. He uses language people were familiar with: saints, bishops, deacons. It is by working together in partnership that we share the gospel.

The Good News is not an individual possession. It is a communal reality in which we are invited to participate.

A word that we, as the Church today, need to reclaim is koinonia. It literally means partnership. The work of the Church is meant to be done together. Together as koinoina, as community, we build the good news with God.

For Paul, the mission and ministry of the Church is not hierarchical. He writes to all the saints, and he speaks of a communal character of the gospel.

The community of saints means sharing in BOTH the joys AND the sufferings of our common life on behalf of God’s love for the world.

How do we help our congregations live into being the “community of saints?” What do “all the saints” look like?

The use of the words “slave of Christ” is not meant to justify slavery. Paul uses the phrase to talk about the mutual relationship between himself and God. This isn’t about coercive power; it’s about relational power.

The aim of power is not to control but to provide conditions of giving and receiving. This relational power that Paul speaks of is not for self but to be in continual relationship.

Paul flips the slave-master, hierarchical construct and turns it into a horizontal understanding of Christian love.