Naked Before Others

Series: How to Look Good Naked
Sermon: Naked Before Others
Ben Jolliffe
February 16, 2008

We spent a week looking at how do we get naked before others. In light on the pervasive loneliness and isolation in our society, it seemed to make sense to talk about what our Creator has to say about how we can exist in community. Enjoy.

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So, I spend my days on the campus of the University of Western Ontario, surrounded by 30 000 odd students not including the faculty, support staff and others. I am immersed in humanity. And having never lived in Saskatchewan, Montana or outer space, I have actually been around people my entire life.

So probably have you, and today’s issue is how do we get naked before others? Obviously it’s not an issue of reduced clothing, but an issue of being real. The underlying assumption behind this message is that we have difficulty connecting with others.

It’s true. It is an issue that invades our lives, that invades my life and your life. We would call the issue loneliness. You feel alone, I feel alone, we all feel alone surrounded by tons of people, living in a city of 350 000. We can still feel alone.

In the book Bowling Alone, the Harvard Business School profiles loneliness in our society. It traces the increase in loneliness and isolation over the last 25 years.


Let me give you some of the statistics from the book:

Playing cards is down 25%. Think of it, there are 2 possible causes of this;
1. We hang out less 2. Baptists are increasing.

An evening with neighbours down 33%. Most of us don’t even know our neighbours, all we know is old guy, punk guy, medical marijuana guy. Bible says love them, we don’t often know them or talk to them.

Family dinners down 33%.
Having a party with friends, down 45%. Now we are not talking about getting drunk, breaking commandments, but this is getting together for dinner, Settlers, watching The Office.

The Readiness of the average American to make a friend is down 33%. So not only do we have fewer friends, we aren’t even ready to make more. Everyone is walking around saying ‘ I would like a friend.’ Who wants to go first? Not it! Everyone wants everyone else to initiate.

The average person has only 2 friends, down from 3 in the 80’s. So it’s not looking good. It is kind of depressing to think that of the 30 million people in Canada only 2 of them like you, and that is dropping.

And don’t forget the coffee shop phenomenon, which Starbucks has unleashed on the world. This is a very unique environment where lonely, socially isolated people gather to drink bitter coffee and ignore each other in community.

Additionally, when I think of people I would like to give my life to, I naturally think of kijiji (online local classifieds). Online the other day, I noted that our local kijiji web page for London ON which under casual connections (which is code for hoping to break the law) lists 604 options for new relationships. People are lonely and looking for love.

Even in church, even in our church, there exists a problem. People come to church, hoping to make friends, to meet people, make some connections, to get rid of the loneliness. The very name of our church highlights that. Connections Community Church. A place to connect.

But in a recent issue of today’s Christian Woman, don’t ask me why I was reading it, but they did a survey, which I did not participate in. But 42% of respondents answered that they feel quite lonely. That is Christian women, who read Christian magazines. If there is a problem among women, you know it must be epidemic among men.

The bottom line is people are disconnected, they are isolated, they are lonely, they are hurting and it is epidemic. It is in the culture, it is in the church.

So before I get to our main passage this morning, let me quickly outline some of the Bible’s Teaching on this issue. That’s where we as Christians begin.

Let’s start with God. That is where we always start. We believe in a God as a trinity. He is at the same time, one and three. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. They exist together in perfect oneness, community, with respect, love and relationship to each other.

God did not make us, as some religions teach, because he was lonely or bored or incomplete. He was already perfect. He already had all he needed.

But he did create us in his image and likeness. Male and Female. He created us. And everything was good in the garden except one thing, that man was alone (Gen. 2:18). We are not created to be alone. We are created to exist in community with each other, the same way God exists in community with himself.

But as a society, we have this warped notion that as we grow up, we can do it by ourselves. That in the words of Kelly Clarkson, we can be ‘miss independent’. That we can make it on our own, that we don’t need anybody. We become self-sufficient. But being created by God to be like Him, in his image means we are supposed to exist in loving community with others.

However, there is an issue. Sin.

Now I am married, I have been married for 7 months and 3 days. It has been great. And in my immeasurable experience of being married, I have realized this: we have 2 problems with our marriage. Me and Jen. Without those two problems, our marriage has huge potential for awesomeness. But we exist. And we have issues with sin. I have a propensity to be selfish and to sometimes place my wife’s needs lower than mine. I sin against her all the time.

Last week George went to town on this issue of sin and how it separates us from God, and how Christ’s sacrifice has bridged the gap and we need to confess our sins to him so he can forgive us.

But the sin in our lives does not just disconnect us from God, it also disconnects us from each other. It brings death to our relationships. If I am your friend and I punch you in the solar plexus because you beat me at Risk and gloated in my face that will bring death into our relationship.

And this is the root of why all people struggle with loneliness. Because we all sin. We all fall short of God’s glory. One of the effects of sin is broken relationships. Disconnected lives. Broken hearts.

So here we find ourselves, created to be like God in community, longing for it, looking for it, but yet unable to find it because of our brokenness.

And so we come back to Scripture, as the authority for our lives, asking it, what is the deal with broken relationships? What is the answer to loneliness? How do I connect with others? How do I get real with people? How the heck do I get naked before others?

And so let me read for you from Philippians. We are going to jump around a bit, but let’s start in Philippians. This letter is written by a guy named Paul, who planted a bunch of churches and wrote most of the new Testament. At this point in his life, he is a jail cell, all alone, probably facing death, under house arrest – and he writes a letter to his friends from a city called Philippi.

In Philippians 1:3 – Paul says, “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Paul, facing death, all alone, abandoned by friends is praying and thanking God because of the partnership in the gospel that he has with the people of Philippi.

See the common answer given to the problem of loneliness is that you need a friend. But that is not true.

Because, most, if not all of your friendships are based on proximity and affinity. This can be easily demonstrated by your high school yearbook.

If you have ever gone back and looked at your yearbook, you may notice many profound comments and piercing insights into the human experience. Comments like ‘Never Change” or “Rock on” or “BFF - Best Friends forever.”

And you think, who is that person? And why did I let them write in my yearbook?

See what you had is proximity. You went to the same class, you had lockers beside each other, you made fun of the jocks at lunch time. You had proximity. You spent significant time together in the same geographic location. You just had the illusion of friendship.

Or maybe with some others you have affinity. You both like the same sports team, you have the same hobby, you like hamsters, you both have no jobs, whatever.

But in both cases, when you move away, or you get in a fight, or things change, the relationship ends. And even when the relationship is ‘on’, you feel like you are gliding along the surface, or always talking about the Leafs or getting your books our of your locker, because nothing of value holds your relationship together.

And this extends to church. We have a lot of proximity, we have some affinity…But do we have something that goes beyond some surface connection. With most people we have some wispy semblance of a real relationship.

The deep, on-going, abiding connection that you really long for, that God created you to experience is still missing. It never was there. We all have this longing, we all have this need for real relationships. We can’t get by without them.

But we are like cars running on diesel fuel. In their song, Love is the Reversal, Switchfoot calls it “the worldwide train wreck. The come undone.” The whole world is broken somehow.

We try to fill our need for transparency and real relationship with this hodge podge of proximity and affinity. We have been convinced that if we simply hang around with people long enough, or do enough stuff with others that we will end up in a satisfying, abiding, deep relationship.

You won’t. It will never work. Think of all the people you might call at 2 am when life is crashing down around you. You pick up the phone and whose number do you dial? Do you call the guy who works in the cubicle next to you, or the guy you play hockey with, or the girl that you sit beside in biology class?

Relationships of proximity and affinity seem okay, but when life comes crashing in, they fade away.

Paul knew that, because he was there. That is why God inspires him to write of his partnership in the gospel with the Phillipians. His friends of proximity and affinity were gone.

What we need, is gospel partnerships with people. The difference being that in a friendship, your hobbies, or your geography make up the foundation. But in a gospel centered partnership, Jesus is the foundation and the center.

Because as I mentioned before, we are all sinful. And there will come a point in every relationship when one of you will sin. And what you do with that sin is of huge significance. If golf is the center of your relationship, you don’t know what to do with sin, you can ignore it, but it will destroy your friendship.

But! In a gospel partnership, it is a different story. In a gospel partnership, you both know that Jesus died to take away sin and forgive us for all of our stuff. Sin is going to happen, but Jesus died to pay for it.

In a gospel-partnership we agree to do life together, to treat each other the way that God treated us. John says, God loves us, so we love others. Ephesians says God forgave us, we can forgive others. Corinthians says, God reconciled us, we can reconcile with others. We give with no expectation to be paid back. We give because God gave.

Sooner or later, what you will realize is that everyone has as issue.

I remember going to IKEA in high school with my friends to walk through the displays and buy a couple of small funky items. But my favourite part of the store (except for the cheap hotdogs) was right at the end before the checkouts. Off to the left there is a section called ‘AS IS” which is full of couches and furniture and all kinds of stuff that had been damaged in some way, or had been returned.

We would always dig through it all to try and find some sweet treasures for a bargain. I was always so proud to get stuff cheaper than everyone else.

And what I ended up realizing as I journeyed through life is that I kept getting frustrated with all my friends. All of them would so stuff that annoyed me. They would say things that hurt me, they would ignore me. Or I would do it to them. And I longed for a deep friendship.

Even when I got into dating relationships, there was always lots of misunderstandings, hurt feelings, sin. And I came to understand that everyone, everywhere, including me comes with the as is tag. We all have sin. We all have emotional issues. We have junk in our trunk. It may be immediately apparent, but everyone has it. Even my wife, who is nearly perfect. Sin is always part of the picture as long as live.

But this is the absolute brilliance of a friendship or relationship centered on Jesus. There is a way to deal with it. When we hurt someone else, we go to them and ask their forgiveness and we repent. They forgive us and we repair the relationship. When they sin against you, they repent and you forgive.

A gospel partnership places Jesus at the center, because he is the only one who can deal with sin.

Paul goes on to say in Philippians, that when he prays for the Philippians, he prays with joy, remembering all that had happened in their relationship.

That is another thing about gospel partnerships, people pray for each other. We pray for each other’s best, for each others needs, hopes, dreams, feelings, hurts. We lift each other up to our God asking for him to bless, help and comfort. There is a spiritual side to the relationship, where together we are on a mission to serve and glorify God. And we pray together.

And we have end up with good memories. Paul says that when he thinks of them, he has joy. When we think of our gospel partnerships, we don’t have to deal with guilt or bad feelings or grudges. When we deal with our sin, and are forgiven by Christ and our friends, we can let go of our hurt and guilt. We can think of others with joy. Gospel partnerships lead to good memories.

Gospel partnerships are about dealing with sin, praying for each other, making good memories and choosing to do life together.

And right now some of you may be saying to yourself, that is what I would like. I would like a friend like the one you are talking about. I want someone who will pray for me, love me, talk to me, call me, ask me to do stuff, go to church with, even rebuke me if necessary. That sounds like a good deal.

And I agree. That does sound pretty sweet. Who wouldn’t want that?

But the problem, and this is where we first need to get naked, is that we are all inherently selfish.

We all come with our agendas to friendships or relationships, looking someone who can fill our need, who can meet our desires, instead of thinking how we can be that for someone else. We wait for the relationship to come to us. We expect to fall backwards into it.

And I am preaching this to myself. It is God’s irony and sense of humour that I got to preach this sermon today. Because if this text is talking to you, it is yelling at me. For my whole life I have wanted something like this. A friend who sticks closer than a brother. And I have come to almost every single relationship in my life looking for what I can get out of it. I have struggled to want to be that friend to others. I am prone to love things that kill relationships. I live in the shipwreck of the fall, in the dirt of sin, and my old nature is stained dark by sin. I tend to roll along the surface, friends with everyone and no one. To be honest, if my life came crashing down tonight, I don’t know who I would call besides my wife.

And if I ever want to break free, and if I ever have a hope of having a deep relationship, I need to take the first step. And so do you. If you only ever come expecting to get, you will leave disappointed. Getting naked before others begins with taking first steps.

But just for a moment, imagine if we became a church of people who cared enough to take the first step? If every time a person walked through the doors of the theatre, someone loved and cared about them and chose to be their friend? If we intentionally chose to go deeper with a few people so that we could know the joy and awesomeness of real connection. That would be a church that I would want to be a part of.

Today, is about first steps, let me give you a few ideas:

1. You might need to become a Christian. Maybe you’re here because you are burned out on life and relationships and doing things your way. You have heard about what relationships should be like and you think, “I can’t do that.” And you are right, you can’t. We all need Christ to forgive us and help us. The only way you can have real relationships is when Christ anchors them. Your first step may be to trust Christ with your life before you start to trust others.

2. It could be a first step to join a connection group here. Get over your selfishness and pride and start to get naked with others. You get into a little community with other people where you can take first steps to expose your true self.

3. It could be a conversation, where you approach a friend of proximity or affinity and take it to a deeper level. Ask them to go out for coffee, confide something important to them, invite them over for dinner. Be a little more naked with your desire for connection.

We have to get naked and be real and take the first step. And it will require some vulnerability. Being exposed. But as the people of God, the physical representatives of God on earth, we have to be this way. Not just with each other, though that is important.

But there will be people who walk through the doors of this theatre, who have been burned real bad. Some of you today may be listening to this message thinking, he has no idea what I have been through. And I don’t.

But I can tell you this, is that as a Christian community, we will do our best to love you. It doesn’t mean nothing ever goes wrong, or no one ever sins, but it does mean that we will repent and reconcile every time we do.

A gospel partnership is not about relationships that never have bad parts. It is about Jesus using other human beings to help us through the bad parts so we can continue deeper with him.

Because in the end, it is not simply the relationship, it is the people. Everyone is created in God’s image, everyone has value, everyone has worth, everyone is loved by God, everyone is stamped with God’s image.

In the end, it is about God. God knows we need other people. He knows it is not good for man to be alone. He knows that we need help to get through life. And he knows that we are going to sin against each other. That is why he came and died. Jesus paid the price for our sin. Jesus gives us the gift of relationships so that we can grow and know him and know ourselves more.



I was in Edmonton for the summer in 2004 with a Campus for Christ mission project. During the course of the summer we took a trip to Jasper and camped in the mountains for a weekend. It was freezing at night. But the Saturday was just beautiful. It was about 22-23 degrees and sunny. So, being young and immature, we decided to go swimming and cliff jumping, in a mountain lake. Which is a little chilly. Eventually we found the place and it turns out there is a nice big cliff there.

I have done some cliff jumping before, but 70 feet is a little outside my range. So I was about to give a manly excuse for not jumping off the big one when 3 of the guys started talking about how they had already jumped. So I thought to myself, Dang.

So I walked around to the top and peered over the edge and again, Dang it’s a long way down. And I am a bit scared, because you can’t just hop off, but you had to run and jump to get out over some rock ledges.

But, I backed off, then looked again, and backed off, took a deep breath and hurled myself off. And it was awesome. Such a huge rush flying that far. I never regretted it.

And today some of you may be looking over the edge at relationships with others, with gospel-centered partnerships and saying, “there is no way.” It’s dangerous, its foolhardy, it is going to hurt, I am going to get injured. I am waiting till someone comes to me.

But I think God may be telling me and telling you and telling our church that this is a jump we need to take. This is a risk that is worth taking. Because he is guiding us, he is helping, and he knows that it is worth it. So, let’s do it, let’s get naked.