We finished our three part discussion on being In Christ with “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”, John 17:17. We suggested “Drilling Down” with a friend 2Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 2:20. This is what Body Life is all about. This is what we are called to do, 1 John 1:3.
Being created new in Jesus Christ provides access to divine realities and a whole new life style. Values and priorities erode and get upended. Our big picture becomes cracked and pieces start falling out. Our relationships, our friends and the way we choose to spend time undergoes major overhaul. We begin to see ourselves from God’s point of view.
How this change is handled varies greatly from individual to individual. Some believers transition smoothly, others go through crises experiences. Others, like me, don’t get it ‘til we turn grey … even though we have been “in Christ” since childhood. A key factor in our transition within God’s spiritual kingdom is fellowship within the “Body of Christ.”
Our last three discussions were about personal relationship with God through Jesus. These discussions are also relevant to us as a body of believers. The content of our vertical discussions are vital and foundational to our relationships with each other and His Body.
All believers are dealing with self, the world, and Satan’s minions. We share the same savior and the same problems of sin and self. God’s purpose is relational to believers as well Himself. He intends we share our grace with others. We jointly form His body and have been gifted with functions valuable in ministry to each other who share His love.
Jesus prayed to our Father, as we noticed last week, “…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you”. God made us one in Him and provides the means through faith, hope and love for us to posses what He has provided. We are all part of His living organic Body in our own flesh.
The first 16 verses of Ephesians 4 describes the Body concluding with:
“… speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” Eph. 4:15-16.
There are counterfeit churches all around us just as there are counterfeit Christians within the same churches. We are described as wheat growing in the fields with weeds. It is not our task to separate or to pull the weeds out of the wheat field. If we pull the weeds we will accidentally pull out wheat as well, Matt. 13:24-30. But notice, it is not the church members who separate the weeds from the wheat but the reapers (angels) at the time of judgment. We are to focus on our relationship with the living Lord Himself.
Peter describes the Body like “living stones”, Jesus was THE living stone “rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stone are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” – 1 Peter 2:5.
Perhaps this reminds you, as it does me, of Moses in the wilderness when in anger he struck the Rock (Jesus) and water flowed to satisfy the thirst of the people. Moses and Aaron had gone to the tent and fell on their faces to God because of lack of food and water. God appeared in his “glory” and instructed Moses to take his staff, speak to the rock and it would produce water. Moses disobeyed and in his anger struck the rock with his staff. God never the less produced water for the people but Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land with them.
You will recall in Matt. 16:18 Jesus declares Himself to be the rock upon which He will build His Church, the Catholics’ interpret the rock to refer to Peter. It is Peter who uses living stones to represent us to be in Christ the living Head as Paul uses in Ephesians.
The idea of “Body Life” seems out of sync with the image of living stones. Yet, it is compatible with what Paul writes in Ephesians and Colossians. He puts it this way in Colossians 3:6-7.
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
Paul speaks about being rooted. This is the organic process of life giving in John 15 where we are grafted into the root which is Christ. It is similar to the Body language Paul uses in the Ephesians passage above. But then Paul speaks of being built up and established in the faith. These structural images are about foundations and organizational things in our natural world not organic life.
We have this same clash or dialectic summed up in living stones used by Peter. Jesus is the rock, the foundation upon which both we and the body are built but water flows out of the rock. It is in this mystery of life, in the rock, which Body Life takes place. The water still flows out of the rock in the wilderness but now that rock is within us and it flows to nurture the Body of Christ.
Our heavenly Father is the same God who produces seed to grow redwoods, (have you ever seen a grove of redwoods!!!), potatoes, orchids, rosemary, everything with life comes from our Father in heaven. He also produces in us the kind of fruit and vegetables necessary to sustain life in His spiritual body. He uses us in His process. He desires us to minister to each other and for that reason He gives to each of us power, authority and discernment, to share His life within us with those who are around us.
Sharing the Life of Christ makes the difference between an organization and Body Life. There are many good church organizations teaching the gospel message. The power comes out of the Life of Christ actively working in the living stones. If the well of Christ’s water is not being shared than we are nothing but rocks. We need to let His water flow out of us into others.
Remember the story of Jesus meeting with the lady from Samaria at the well in John 4. Jesus told her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” If you are in Christ you have a “spring of water welling up” within you leading into eternal life.
The water you and I have within us differs according to who we are and what the Lord has for us to do. The question of gifts often becomes a stumbling block. People rely upon their own self awareness to structure what they can do for the Lord. This has a measure of value but remember who it is within us, the One who created life itself!!
If your spring is welling up within you, you will find opportunities dropping in your lap completely unaware. God will even gift you in the moment and then gift you differently for another task unrelated to the first. The priority is not analyzing your gift, but walking in faith. If you have a burden on your heart take it to God. God will gift you according to your level of participation, according to God’s grace to you.
Body Life is about sharing Christ’s life in our community. God became manifested in flesh through the life of Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of man. When the man Jesus died He did more than rise again from the dead. Jesus went back to the Father and put His life back into flesh. The person of Jesus is gone but He is alive in you and me. The Life He lived in the flesh still lives in the flesh, yours and mine.
For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. -2Corinthians 4:11
The incarnation of God into flesh through Jesus was just the beginning. Jesus is the Head of an organic spiritual body in which each person “in Christ” is a member, a living stone. These living stones are joined together into a living structure with Jesus at the head. Inside this unseen living structure is a spiritual culture, a Grace Culture.
It is within the culture of grace Jesus continues to live and for His love in us be shared with those whom also have received His love.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God: if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. - 1John 4:11-12
Grow in grace!
Vic Moran