Back in 2016, LSU’s athletic director hired a native son, Ed Orgeron, to be the head football coach. Known for his gravelly voice coupled with a Cajun accent, he stepped up to his first press conference, pledging that he would quickly build a championship team. The means to the team’s success would be captured in the mantra “One team. One heartbeat.” Team members must be committed to one another with no prima donnas. They must move as one man out on the field, sharing the same commitments, love, loyalty, and goals. They must have one heart. If they did this with the talent they had, they would grow into a team that would win a championship. In 2019, they did win the championship with arguably the best college football team ever. (I’m a tad bit biased, and I don’t want to talk about what happened after that.)
The apostle Paul’s concern for the church at Colossae (and Laodicea) is that they grow to maturity as individuals and as a church. The path to maturity and, in some sense, its goal is “One church. One heartbeat.” Paul fights (Col 2:1) through all that he suffers as well as through teaching the churches through his letters (cf. Col 4:16) so that “their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, so as to come to all the riches of the full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery: Christ” (Col 2:2). Within that statement, Paul gives a perichoretic trinity of characteristics that move the church and its individual members to maturity. We are encouraged as we are knit together in love, and being encouraged through our oneness in love moves us to the full assurance of our faith in the gospel.
If you have ever played a team sport, you know what it is like to become more than you could ever be alone. The team dynamic “fires you up” as you come together for the purpose of winning the game. If isolated, you may never be as motivated or disciplined to be pushed to your limits and realize your individual potential. Knowing that you are one with others and that they depend on you calls you up, filling you with the courage to push yourself. You are encouraged to excel in your individual abilities for the team’s sake. Without the team, you wouldn’t have the same encouragement.
As we grow in our unity with the church–and I’m talking about a particular, local church filled with people with whom your life is entangled with all the good and the bad–we are encouraged. Unlike sports teams, civic organizations, or businesses where we can be encouraged, our connections within the church run deep to the fundamentals of how we think about God, ourselves, and the world around us. Our hearts are “knit together in love.” We have something more profound than merely a common purpose. Our hearts are knit together in love with the fundamental truth of the gospel that determines everything about everything.
Our hearts being “knit together” speaks of us having one heart. The heart is the central command of our person, determining the way we think, our affections, our loyalties, and what we do. For our hearts to be knit together in love means that we share the same way of thinking, the same affections, the same loyalties, and the same will. We live as one unified body.
Within this context of unified hearts, our assurance of the truth of the gospel grows to deep and abiding convictions that cannot be shaken. The way others see the world apart from the gospel makes no sense to us and has no appeal. We really believe this stuff.
Your personal maturity in Christ is tied to your relationship with the church. We are nourished and grow in our union with the body of Christ (Col 2:19; Eph 4:11-16). We live in such an individualistic Christian culture that people believe the church to be only a devotional aid to our personal relationship with Jesus. The church may be used to help me mature, but my maturity is not dependent on participation in the church. Reading the Bible on your own, listening to podcasts, following the latest social media issue du jour, or engaging in some other “spiritual activity” is sufficient, even if I never participate in the life of the church.
Some confess the church is vital in our relationship with Christ, but they do the bare minimum. They come to Sunday morning worship and leave. Because other church activities aren’t “required,” they don’t participate. They will complain that they don’t “feel connected” or “don’t feel a part of the church,” but it is because they are like a sports team member who only shows up for the game but none of the practices or team-building activities. They expect everyone to minister to them one-on-one and bend to their schedules because they refuse to submit to the church’s common calendar. They don’t like what the church does together, so they do things independently. But if you’re not a “team player,” it will be quite difficult to feel like or, in reality, be genuinely connected to the team.
Receiving the maturing benefits of being knit together in love means you take the time and effort to build relationships within the church around the church’s ministry of teaching the Word, celebrating the Sacrament, and the fellowship of the saints. No amount of personal study or ministry disconnected from the life of a local church will cause you to mature as God intends. If the church is filled with everyone doing his own thing, the church as a whole will not mature. We mature only as we are one church with one heartbeat.
