[aron]

To rephrase post #4, it's not unimportant where you meet or with whom you meet, as a believer. But all of us have unique journeys - what family and family culture we're from, our socioeconomic status, our (dis)abilities, and what circumstances we're in. For example, a person in a sparsely-populated area will have different choices of "where to meet" vs someone in a small village, vs another in a large urban area. God knows all of this, and placed you where you are.

Irrespective of circumstances, however, each of us is responsible for developing the narrative of our journey. Not Pastor Bob at the Community Church, not Witness Lee, not our parents or peers. My own take on the gospel story is that Jesus is/was the Spotless Obedient Lamb of God. He said, "I came to do the Father's will." Everything he did and said was the Father's will, made flesh. He was the Word (God's spoken command) made physically manifest, dwelling among us. And now, just as he obeyed the Father, so we're supposed to obey him - see, e.g., John 15:9-12. My sense is that both relationships in John 15 are predicated on obedience. "Just as I do 'x', so you also do 'x'" - they're presented as an equivalent pair.

Part B of my narrative, the practical working-out part, is God's economy as practiced and taught by the NT principals, starting from and building upon Jesus. Paul took Jesus' core teaching of "do unto others" and "when I was hungry you fed me" and made it the new ecclesiastical standard, using it as a thematic bridge in uniting the gentile and Jewish wings of the church. See Ephesians 2 for Paul's view of his core mission. Then Paul spends 2 chapters in 2 Corinthians (chaps 8 & 9) on this practical outworking of the gospel, as well as considerable portions of other writings.

Jesus' teaching was, "Give to those who cannot repay you, and your reward will be great in heaven." That's God's economy according to Jesus. With that view in mind, we look at the charge of the Jerusalem leaders to Paul to "remember the poor", to which he replied that he was eager to do so, and then at the end of Acts (24:17) he's back "with alms for my nation". And then we see the remonstrances in his epistles to set aside something for the poor of Jerusalem.

The revealed NT pattern of the community of grace is that it's our vehicle to collectively do "good works" for those who can't repay us. I believe that's how Paul and the NT disciples saw themselves following Jesus. The Master went around doing good works, according to Acts 10:38, and the thematic NT charge is that we're to obey him in this, just as he was obeying the Father. If we do so, we fulfil the Royal Law to love one another (James 2:8). When you read James' and Paul's writings in this light, it looks as though both are presenting the same gospel. It is God's love manifested.