“In response to Christ’s exaltation, the church is a glad community,” writes Oliver O’Donovan in “The Desire of the Nations.” How could it be otherwise? Christ’s exaltation consists in his resurrection from the dead, defeat of the last enemy Death, ascension to his rightful throne where he now reigns as King over all, and promised return to consummate what the resurrection inaugurated.
In Christ, we are made right with God. We’re given a sure and happy hope. Our King reigns and is abundant in his love for his people. We the church, of all peoples, should be marked by gladness.
That is to say, we the church should be marked by gratitude. As G.K. Chesterton once pithily observed, “The test of all happiness is gratitude.” The church’s identity as a glad community is inseparable from its gratefulness. And the church especially comes into its own when it sounds forth glad thanksgiving together.
Consider a subtle but striking detail in Colossians 3:12–17. At first blush, the passage is all about healthy inner-church relations. Nearly every exhortation concerns the duties and dynamics of relating well to one another in the body of Christ.
It directs our attention to the compassion we should feel for others and the patience needed because others will try it (v. 12). Forbearance and forgiveness are certainly interpersonal (v. 13). And then Paul reaches his central concern, “Above all put on love,” which binds believers together in harmony (v. 14).
To be sure, Paul’s charge to “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (v. 15) can strike many ears as referencing our inner life. But Paul immediately clarifies that his concern is for peace “in one body.” Body peace is in view, peace with one another. Similarly, God’s word dwelling in us richly is in the context of “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom,” as well as corporate worship (v. 16). This passage is unmistakably focused on life with one another. Nearly every exhortation is about our horizontal body relations.
But one command is directed at our “vertical” relationship to God: “Be thankful” (v. 15). The idea is repeated, specifying that our thankfulness is to be “to God” (v. 16). Still a third time, we’re told to be giving thanks to God the Father through Christ our Lord (v. 17).
What’s going on here? Why is thanksgiving to God so insistently repeated in a passage devoted to relational dynamics within the church? There are likely several things that go into a proper answer.
Thanksgiving to God is singled out because our life with one another is itself the gift of God. We do not produce a healthy life together by our strength and effort, not even by the good and necessary effort of “putting on” all the virtues listed in Colossians 3. We do not make ourselves into a kingdom of light, peace, joy, unity, and love. It’s God’s work of grace and glory accomplished in Christ, for which we give him thanks together (see Colossians 1:12–13).
Also, thanksgiving to God repeatedly appears in the passage because it’s the crucial ingredient. The regular giving of thanks is one important practice or means through which God, who created our life together in Christ, further binds us together in love.
God in his grace redeemed us in Christ that we might “proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9), a practice surely involving public expressions of thanks to God for his mighty and merciful deeds. The grace of God continues to abound to the church, enabling us to meet each other’s needs with the goal of abundant thanksgiving to God (see 2 Corinthians 4:15; 9:12).
The giving of thanks is our raison d’être and the goal of our life together. Its repeated appearance in Colossians 3 is no loosely related footnote to the drama of healthy community life. It’s the proper end of that drama.
The root of what’s gone wrong in the world is the refusal to give thanks to God (Romans 1:21). The church’s insistence on giving thanks publicly, persistently, in assembly may be one of its most important impacts for good on the nations and societies among which it sojourns as exiles.
The practice of glad thanksgiving to God in Christ’s name will be one of the clearest ways in which we’re seen to be the peculiar people that we are since the nations of earth tend to be bound together by things like fear of common enemies, shared identities of victimhood, and mutual anxiety about what’s on the horizon. No wonder, then, that in a passage devoted to guiding the church in its life together in Christ, Paul keeps coming back to the need to give thanks.
For those in the United States, a national holiday devoted to giving thanks, Thanksgiving Day, proves to be a sweet providence. It’s a yearly reminder of a crucial ingredient in healthy life. Yet for us, the set apart nation that is the church of Jesus Christ, every Lord’s Day on which we celebrate the Eucharist (from the Greek word for “thanksgiving”) is thanksgiving day.
For those delivered from the darkness of sin and death through Christ, every Lord’s Day gathering is for proclaiming God’s excellencies and giving him thanks. Let us the church take up our great privilege and responsibility to be full of genuine gratitude to God. Or to put it more simply, let us be a glad community.
Dan Brendsel serves as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hinckley, Minnesota.