Content taken from Tim Keller on the Christian Life by Matt Smethurst ©2025. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

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It takes a Community to Know Him

The Lord Jesus has not made his opinion on friendship ambiguous, nor has he left us all by ourselves to figure out where to find friends. Though God saves us as individuals, he doesn’t leave us to chart our own spiritual course; he saves usinto community. Your relationship with the Lord will suffer if you try to know him apart from others who also know him.

To illustrate the principle, Tim Keller relates a counterintuitive lesson about friendship that C. S. Lewis learned the hard way. Lewis, who was called “Jack” by his friends, was very close with two men, Charles (Williams) and Ronald (J. R. R. Tolkien). Eventually Charles died, leaving Jack heartbroken. His only consolation, quite naturally, was that Charles’s absence would enable him to have “more of Ronald.” But oddly, the opposite happened. He had less of Ronald. Why? Because Charles had been able to bring something out of Ronald that Jack himself, given his different personality and strengths, never could. And so, Jack essentially concludes: “When I lost Charles, I actually lost part of Ronald too.”[1]Lewis explains,

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In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I [need] other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.[2]

Here’s Keller’s takeaway: if it takes a varied community to know an ordinary person, how much more to know the living God? “You will never know the multidimensional glory and beauty of your Savior,” he warns, “unless you know him in community. You need a whole pile of other people who also know Jesus well, who are different than you, and you’ve got to know them to know him.”[3]

No biblical discussion of friendship is complete without recognizing the importance of the local church. It’s not enough, in other words, to simply hang around the margins of Christian community. Keller was straightforward:

The busy New York Christian thing is, I’m very busy with my career…and you’re lucky I’m even coming to church. But I’m sorry, that’s not good enough… You have to join, you have to be a member of a church, you’ve got to commit yourself to brothers and sisters…Without knowing Jesus, you would never know these people; [and] without knowing these people very well, you will never know Jesus—at least you won’t know the full, multidimensional beauty and glory of your Savior.[4]     

The local church is “the only human institution Jesus started” and “the only one inhabited by the Spirit and glory of God.”[5] Indeed, divine glory is available to you in the church in a way it’s not available anywhere else.[6] This is why every Christian must belong—meaningfully belong—to a healthy church. Keller wet so far as to say that “you are not an obedient Christian if you are not a member of a church. You can’t obey [Hebrews 13:17] without membership.”[7] It’s nothing less than an implication of the gospel.[8]

None of this means God’s people should be insular. The local church exists not for itself but for the good of those who don’t yet know Jesus Christ. We’re meant to shine like “a city set on a hill,” visible for miles in the dark (Matt. 5:14). But to be radiant, we must be distinct. As Keller often said, the church is designed to be an “alternate city” within every city, an “alternate society” within every society. Becoming a Christian, then, is less like “joining a club” and more like “changing your culture.”[9] You’re stepping into a whole new way of being. And so, Keller warned, if “the world around looks at Redeemer . . . and doesn’t see us living any differently than the rest of the people of New York when it comes to sex, money, or power, we’re not light. We’re not up on the lampstand. We’re not a city on a hill.”[10]

In his fifth sermon at Redeemer in 1989, Keller underscored this foundational point: “The church is not just a lecture hall [or] a social club. It’s a counterculture. It’s a pilot plant of what humanity would be in every area under the lordship of Christ.”[11] A decade later, he was still pressing the question home: “Redeemer, are we a social club or are we a colony, a pilot plant of a new humanity? Are we a weekly Christian show, or are we a counterculture?”[12] The community that is “created by the cross,” therefore, is not just a “warm family” or “aggregation of people giving one another emotional support.”[13] It is an alternate society with different habits, different customs, different loves. It is a “foretaste” of the heavenly city to come.[14]

Or to think of it another way, a church community should be like a thick tapestry showcasing God’s brilliant design (Eph. 3:10). Keller explains,

Our human lives are as fragile as threads, but if you take thousands of threads and really interweave them so they are deeply interdependent, they become a piece of fabric that is enormously strong and very often beautiful. Jesus says, “When you enter into a relationship with me, I will weave you into a human community deeper and more beautiful than you can imagine.”[15]

We will become a counterculture for the common good, simultaneously repellent and attractive to the world, only if we are distinct from the world (1 Pet. 2:11–12). There must be “something different about every single part” of our lives.[16]Otherwise we may avoid offense, but we will be faithless and frankly redundant.[17]

But through service and sacrifice, transparency and generosity, hospitality and evangelism, churches can shine as contrast communities in a dark and broken world.

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[1] Keller, Prodigal God, xvii.

[2] Keller, Prodigal God, xix.

[3] Keller, Prodigal God, 12.

[4] Keller, Prodigal God, 13.

[5] Keller, Prodigal God, 9.

[6] Keller, Prodigal God, 34. See also Tim Keller, “The Prodigal Sons,” preached on September 11, 2005, and “The Lord of the Sabbath,” preached on February 19, 2006. He writes, “Each acts as a lens coloring how you see all of life, or as a paradigm shaping your understanding of everything. Each is a way of finding personal significance and worth, of addressing the ills of the world, and of determining right from wrong,” Keller, Prodigal God, 34.

[7] Keller, Prodigal God, 37.

[8] Keller, Prodigal God, 37. As Keller explains in a sermon, “Jesus says, ‘You’re both wrong. You’re both lost. You’re both making the world a terrible place in different ways.’ The elder brothers of the world divide the world in two. They say, ‘The good people are in, and the bad people (you) are out.’ The younger brothers do as well—the self-discovery people also divide the world in two. They say, ‘The open-minded, progressive-minded people are in, and the bigoted and judgmental people (you) are out.’ Jesus says neither. He says, ‘It’s the humble who are in and the proud who are out.’ ” Keller, “The Prodigal Sons.”

[9] Keller, Prodigal God, 40.

[10] Keller, Prodigal God, 48. In a 1992 sermon, Keller remarked, “I’ve seen plenty of people—who have been non-Christians and skeptical and under the influence of the flesh—come on into the Christian faith, and their flesh continues to dominate them, because now they find religious ways of avoiding God, whereas before they were finding irreligious ways.” Tim Keller, “Alive with Christ: Part 2,” preached on November 8, 1992.

[11] Keller, Prodigal God, 44.

[12] Keller, Prodigal God, 45.

[13] Keller, Prodigal God, 51.

[14] Keller, Prodigal God, 53.                                                                                                        

[15] Keller, Prodigal God, 54. Keller explains further, “The younger brother knew he was alienated from the father, but the elder brother did not. That’s why elder-brother lostness is so dangerous. Elder brothers don’t go to God and beg for healing from their condition. They see nothing wrong with their condition, and that can be fatal. If you know you are sick you may go to a doctor; if you don’t know you’re sick you won’t—you’ll just die.” Keller, 75.

[16] Keller, Prodigal God, 43.

[17] See,forexample,“PreachingtheGospel,”2009NewfrontiersConferenceatWest-minster Chapel in London, available at https://vimeo.com/3484464. Elsewhere Keller illustrates the deceptive nature of our motives: “Once upon a time there was a gardener who grew an enormous carrot. He took it to his king and said, ‘My lord, this is the greatest carrot I’ve ever grown or ever will grow; therefore, I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.’ The king was touched and discerned the man’s heart, so as he turned to go, the king said, ‘Wait! You are clearly a good steward of the earth. I own a plot of land right next to yours. I want to give it to you freely as a gift, so you can garden it all.’ The gardener was amazed and delighted and went home rejoicing. But there was a nobleman at the king’s court who overheard all this, and he said, ‘My! If that is what you get for a carrot, what if you gave the king something better?’ The next day the nobleman came before the king, and he was leading a handsome black stallion. He bowed low and said, ‘My lord, I breed horses, and this is the greatest horse I’ve ever bred or ever will; therefore, I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.’ But the king discerned his heart and said, ‘Thank you,’ and took the horse and simply dismissed him. The nobleman was perplexed, so the king said, ‘Let me explain. That gardener was giving me the carrot, but you were giving yourself the horse.’ ” Timothy Keller, The Gospel in Life Study Guide: How Grace Changes Everything (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 17. Keller first shared this illustration at Redeemer on May 5, 1996. Though he attributes it to Charles Spurgeon, I cannot find the original source.

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