Good Company

We live in a deeply disconnected world. Ironically, we are more connected than ever before, yet we remain profoundly isolated. We have traded actual relationships for frictionless convenience. We have swapped true community for a distorted version of self-care that tells us to avoid anything uncomfortable. We have practically engineered the inconvenience of people out of our daily lives.

Consider the reality of that.

You can wake up, drive to work, and drive home without ever making eye contact. You can have groceries delivered to your door and order dinner from a QR code without uttering a single word. And when we do muster the energy to hang out with friends, we often head home feeling just as empty as when we left.

But we were designed by a communal God to be a communal people. We simply cannot exist in a vacuum, and the people we choose to surround ourselves with inevitably shape our character, our habits, and our worldviews. As the Apostle Paul warns us, bad company corrupts good morals (1 Corinthians 15:33).

Let's look at this from another angle.

If bad company corrupts good morals, then good company refines and fortifies good character. And that's what we want! That's what we're striving towards. But to get there, we need to know what makes good company. We need to answer the question: what is good community?

Good community is united as one body

To understand the gravity of Paul's words, we must understand his audience. The early church in Ephesus was radically diverse and surrounded by pagan practices. Paul is taking two heavily divided groups, the Jews and the Gentiles, and urging them to unify.

This was deeply offensive.

Imagine someone demanding you abandon the operating system you have used your entire life. It would be like forcing someone fully entrenched in an Apple ecosystem to suddenly switch every device to Android. Except WAY worse than that. The Jews and Gentiles disagreed on nearly everything. But Paul is effectively telling them that their differences should no longer define them; their similarity does. If you disagree on 99 out of 100 viewpoints, but the one thing you agree on is that Christ has reconciled you to the Father, you are more alike than you are different.

That is why Paul calls us to bear with one another in love. He knew friction was inevitable. He calls us to set aside our deeply ingrained differences and become one unified body.

Good community is reconciled by one God

Paul builds this vision on a profound theological foundation. Salvation is a free gift from God. It is not earned by human effort; it is received by grace. Jesus took our sin, our brokenness, and our shame onto His shoulders.

He made Himself far to bring you near.

Christ preached peace to the Gentiles who were far off and to the Jews who were near. He tore down the dividing wall of hostility to reconcile us both to God in one body. Because of this, we are built to live in unity with our Heavenly Father forever.

Sometimes, that future kingdom feels ethereal. It feels like getting a massive Lego set on Christmas morning. You look at the beautiful picture on the box, but then you see thousands of tiny pieces and feel entirely overwhelmed. We become content to just stare at the picture on the box rather than doing the work to build it.

Assembly is required.

God did not just hand us a completed kingdom to sit and look at. He gave us a massive pile of pieces. He gave us the believers sitting right next to us. To experience the beauty of what we are longing for, we must do the messy work of connecting with the pieces God has placed in our lives.

Good community is built for one goal

If we are doing the messy work of building, we have to know what we are trying to create. Imagine buying a blank white box of Lego bricks without a picture or instructions. If you dump the pieces out with your friends, chaos ensues. One person tries to build a spaceship; another builds a castle; another builds a flower. We would all be using the same pieces for completely different outcomes.

God did not hand us a blank box.

He gave us a clear blueprint. It requires shared participation. It requires structural ownership. And it requires one specific goal. Paul tells us that the church is equipped to build itself up in love until we reach mature manhood and the fullness of Christ. We are called to function properly as a fully connected system.

This requires friction.

In our daily lives, we treat friction as a negative force. We assume it only means conflict, brokenness, or discomfort. But Lego bricks only hold together because of friction. When handled with humility, gentleness, and patience, friction creates incredible strength and stability. It is the exact tension that holds the church together.

Every single piece has a role to play. There are no passive components in God's design. You cannot leave a bunch of bricks in the plastic bag and expect the structure to hold together. When you remain an isolated piece, you get swept away easily. You fall off the table; you slip into the couch cushions; you get lost in the noise of culture.

Are you with me?