“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all that I have, and if I deliver up by body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing.”
We spoke to the issue of BodyLife in our last GN. BodyLife is an organic reality flowing out of every believer. A new life has been created inside our body and joined to God’s own Spirit becoming our new identity.
Problem! We are so rooted in our fleshly body we end up walking in flesh while living in our new spirit/Spirit. God’s resurrection power is thereby unavailable except in putting to death sin in the body … Jesus already nailed it to His cross! We need to nail it to His cross also, using His resurrection power. Jesus paved the way for us to get it done.
BodyLife is about living Life, a resurrected Life given in Love so that God’s Light shines in us for others to see. These three threads reveal how resurrected power is unleashed in our personal Life so we can be whom God intends us to be.
The three element threads, Love, Life and Light, are the three “L”s of BodyLife. You will immediately recognize God is Love and In Him was Life and the Life was the Light of men, 1John 4:16, John 14:6, John 8:12, John 1:4. These spiritual/Spiritual elements combine to become a walking sermon!
These thread elements cause others to Look and Listen, turning 3 “L”s into 5 “L”s. Master the three and get five. This characterizes God’s grace, to us, in us, and “so much more!”
God’s Love is foundational to everything else. The driving force of Love brings creation into existence just as Eve came out of Adam. We are created in Christ Jesus who is our Life so that we can create “Eve” in the Life He provides and sustains. Our Love to “Eve” replicates God’s Love to us so that we can learn to Love as God Loves. Notice how interrelated are both Love and Life are to each other. We will also SEE Spiritual Light also is produced by Love, Life and the Word. Grace continuously flows (7x7) out from God’s Love providing His love, Life and Light in us.
After Adam viewed Eve, he said, “Finally, Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” Genesis 2:28. And the two became one flesh. This picture depicts our spiritual reality because we are in Christ Jesus. The Husband’s union with his wife illumines our union in Christ and Christ’s union in His body. This is “agape” (αγαπη) love and is the hallmark of what BodyLife is about. We are individual members of His living Body born out of agape love and filled with agape love to be joined to others through us.
We are unable to fathom the depths agape portends. Being born by God into Christ thrusts us into a Spiritual reality created brand new in Christ Jesus, 2Cor. 5:17. Being “in Christ” is much more than a symbolic phrase. It is reality more literally complex than mortal minds can process. Jesus put it on the same level as His personal union with God the Father and the Father’s oneness with Jesus, Jn 17:23cf. Paul speaks of this existence as the riches of heaven’s glory being “Christ in us,” Col 1:27. It was Paul’s burden and prayer, that we know the Love (agape) of Christ surpassing knowledge so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God, Eph. 3:14-21.
Notice the great exchange in this prayer passage. By excepting the power of God’s Spirit within our inner being, we give up self to receive strength to comprehend the agape Love of Christ. In our Spiritual childhood, we are in no condition to contain the wonder of what God’s agape love is all about. This is why we must experience trials and tests. They bring about a spiritual strengthening so that we can increase our Spiritual ability to contain the fullness of God and His agape Love. This, so we can enter into an agape maturity containing more of Him who already dwells in us. BodyLife is dominated by agape Love bringing Jesus into our human flesh and us into His eternal Life, 1John 5:11-13. In Him was life and the life was the light of men, John 1:4. This is essential BodyLife because we are in Him and He is in us! We are bone of His bone.
Love is God’s relationship core. His Love provides a pattern for human focus illustrating through a man’s relationship with a woman the dynamics of agape. Love grows out of working together, sharing together and forgiving. When we are loving another, we are other directed. Our object in the love process is another person and not our self. If our “loving” effort has self as the benefactor, it is not love. God’s love in us draws our love back into Him. It fulfills making whole what is separated.
Love at the agape level has the assist of God Himself within us. He makes us qualitatively like Himself. Everything we do is exposed to His love. Our self interest becomes screened through His Love filter. Our righteousness, sanctification and redemption is all rooted in Christ’s Love toward us. Later in this study, we will look at each of these teachings and notice each one, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, all drive love back into Him as our source. Perhaps a good illustration is found in Romans 8:26cf concerning prayer:
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do no know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Above, we see God searching hearts, knowing our intimate and precise needs. While at the same time, the Spirit of God partitions the Father according to our deepest ailments within us, outside of our own conscious awareness. The Father and the Holy Spirit meet together leading us into righteous purity. We are being Spiritually counseled, as children, by our heavenly Father according to our personal necessities for holiness. This goes on 24/7 while we wear flesh, walking on earthen soil. We are in Spiritual training, in the hands of a loving Father who knows us better than we know ourselves. He is working in us while depending upon choices we make to consume His grace. This is what the death and resurrection of Jesus is about. We may employ His resurrection power to put to death sin in our body. God’s grace is continuously working “so much more” in the Life of the believer. Why? Love! This is agape love working in us bringing about our complete wholeness in Christ. Righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1Cor. 1:30) are His threads woven into our fabric so we can be, as He already is, on the right hand of the Father, 1John 4:17b.
The agape things we are discussing are replicated as a function of Life. The thread of Life, we next consider, is equally partnered to this agape discussion for those in Christ Jesus. We isolate love merely to focus on it but it is intricately a part of our larger whole. All of the elements we are examining are blended together with a composite identity even though we view them in isolation. The love we experience has shades and subtleties distinct from person to person. While there are absolute qualities in these elements, they have different casts and textures when woven together with such divine provisions as righteousness, sanctification and redemption.
As we look at these threads separately we also want to consider ourselves woven into the fabric of Christ’s Body. Each of us have an unique texture and function in the Body of Christ. BodyLife is our identity in Jesus functioning as a living dynamic within the Body of believers where Jesus is our Head. We want to understand the qualities and character of the threads holding us participates in the glory of God because we minister in His body. As we move now to consider the second thread in our trilogy, we want to keep in mind Life is also dimensioned by the Love it provides.