A Church Re-Formed For The World

In Week 8 of A Re-Formed Imagination, we turned to Philippians 2:12–18 and asked a direct question: If Jesus is Lord, why would our lives look exactly like everyone else’s?

Paul tells us we live in a “crooked and twisted generation.” That isn’t controversial. What is controversial is what the church’s difference should actually look like. According to Paul, it’s not louder dominance or cultural outrage. It’s luminous obedience. It’s a people who “work out” what God has already worked in. A people who refuse grumbling in a cynical age. A people who shine.

We were reminded that grace is not opposed to effort — it is opposed to earning. Because God is at work in us, we work. Because Christ was poured out, we pour ourselves out. This is not anxious striving. It is cooperative grace. Even our desire to obey is evidence of God’s presence among us.

Philippians shows us how formation leads to witness. The credibility of our confession rises and falls with our character. If our lives look ordinary, our Lord will seem optional. But when a church chooses gratitude over grumbling, endurance over comfort, and joy over cynicism, it becomes visible.

The world reads the gospel by watching the church.

So we asked: Are we different in how we handle conflict? Different in how we endure suffering? Different in how we respond to disappointment? Or have we absorbed the tone of the age?

A church re-formed under the Lord becomes a church re-formed for the world — not by force, but by beauty. Not by platform, but by presence. Not by winning, but by witness.