If you are a Christian you have heard some teaching on the
Body of Christ and unity. If you are a reader of scripture than you have read
Jesus’ commandment about unity and the teachings of the Apostles about unity
and the Body. So why is it so hard for us to walk in obedience to GOD in being unified as the Body
of Christ (the Church) in the world? I’m not actually going to try to answer
that, I’m going to try to explain what it means to be a body.
Think about your body, what a marvelously mysterious thing
it is! Medical science has only begun to understand how and why our body is and
functions. The truth is, as much as they know there is so much more they do
not, but this is not a medical or scientific exploration. For this discussion
we must set aside all of that type of thinking and just look at our body as a
singular being made up of innumerable parts all with their own unique purpose and
function.
Our body is fearfully and wonderfully made! We are the
purposeful result of GOD’s
creative desire to have a lover. Here is one of the biggest problems we have
with thinking about the Body of Christ and being the Bride of the Lamb; we
think after our human desires and understandings rather than GOD’s. GOD does not want nor need a lover like we as
humans do. 1 Corinthians 13 is the chapter on love and if a married couple live
according to that lifestyle they will have a great marriage and love life, but
sex is a purely mortal function. There is no sex or need for sex in the eternal
spiritual kingdom, and being in the continual glorious presence of the True and
Living GOD we will not
miss it, Luke 20:27-38.
Stop thinking about the Body of Christ and the Bride of the
Lamb (which are one and the same) in fleshly terms.
Our body is fearfully and wonderfully made! We are the
purposeful result of GOD’s
creative desire to have a lover. Not just individually which is the first
relationship that we have with GOD,
like being in our mother’s womb. We are not aware of our body just our
existence and the feeling of love and protection that we should experience.
Then we are born and as we grow and gain understanding we begin to discover our
body and its many functions and how to function as a whole being in the larger
world in which we exist. This is an ongoing process in life. So our relationship
with GOD must grow beyond
just our self to include His whole Body.
Think about your body, what a marvelously mysterious thing
it is! It functions under many adverse conditions and it functions after traumatic
events. It recovers and renews itself and sustains life longer than we expect
most of the time. This is of course not always true, many die early deaths for
a variety of reasons, accidents, sickness or disease, war, or acts of evil. This
is the result of sin in our world, therefore in our lives. Not all people die
because of their sin but sin is the underlying cause of death in all creation.
All of us know people who have lost organs or limbs and survived and still
function normally or mostly normally. Some are born with major defects or
conditions and still live and have a reasonable life. Some experience horrific
physical events that result in major lose of limbs and or organs and most
recover and regain life.
So what am I trying to say? GOD made our body, formed from the dust of the earth
and He breathed His breath of life into it in Adam. Then He took Eve out of
Adam, remember what the scriptures say, GOD man male and female; then He separated them because
He knew man was not a singular being and needed a companion. After that GOD forms all of us in our
mother’s womb, writing out the days of our lives before any of them exist. We
are marvelously and wondrously made in the image of GOD.
Now that the preamble is done here is what the LORD was showing me this morning
in my prayer and reading time.
The Body of Christ is like our body, it was made perfect by
GOD who expects us to
maintain it’s perfection. But He knows that we cannot without His Spirit so He
has given us His Spirit.
Now we, the Church, have done many things to hurt the Body
plus our enemy the devil attacks us to keep us sickly, weak, and divided. Being
divided is like having an autoimmune disease, we are fighting and hurting our self,
therefore we are fighting GOD!
Like many individuals who have lost organs and limbs we are
wounded and have festering sores. Festering sores are the deceptions and hatred
we have for other members of the Body. They do not let the wound heal and therefore
the body cannot recover.
We have lost limbs and organs and wonder why our Heavenly
Father does not pour out His anointing for revival and miracles. Our thinking
is wrong He has; but because we are not healthy and whole the way He made us we
cannot function normally as He designed us.
Like our human body we can live and function after lose and
damage but not the same. We can overcome and develop reasonable behaviors and
adaptations, but we are not what we should be.
Around the world right now there are calls for unity though out
the Church, but if we stay as we are it will not happen and we will continue to
be incomplete and inefficient in the gifts and callings for GOD’s Kingdom in the earth. If
we really believe the scriptures and want to obey Christ’s commandment to love
one another as He loves the Church then we must be willing to lay down our life
for the Church (Ephesians 4:32; 1 John 3:16). It has to stop being about us,
our ministry, our church, and our denomination. It’s all His and we are only a
part of it, He determines what and where He wants us and the function that is
our required part to keep His Body healthy and accomplishing His will in the
earth.
In the natural our body only has a few organs that it cannot
live without; brain, heart, and liver. In the Body of Christ there is only one
that we cannot exist without our head, Christ. In our natural body every part
and function is controlled by our brain. In the Body of Christ it should be the
same, but many parts of the Body have cut themselves off from our Head or
believed a lie of the devil that cuts us off from our Head.
Like our human body that we can repair and bypass some
functions or replace with artificial or borrowed parts; many members of the
Body of Christ have fixed or adapted themselves to make them seem whole; but we
are not! My hands have 4 fingers and a thumb each, my fingers have multiple
digits and if I lose a couple of them I can still function but not as well. If
I lose all of them my hands can still function but not fully. If I lose one or
both hands my arms can still function but even les effectively; etc.
We can only be whole and complete and fulfilling the purpose
of GOD in the earth when
we are truly united and The One Body of Christ. I am not saying that we need to
or must do away with denominations, or individual church ministries, or anything
like that. What I am saying is that if we maintain our divisions and separations
at the expense of unity we will not accomplish the purpose of GOD that He expects us to and we
then pass off to the next generation the responsibility to do what GOD gave us to do on top of what
He has called them to do. GOD
does overcome our deficiencies but He wants to use us as His one united Body in
the earth to accomplish His purposes not overcome our deficiencies.
Study Genesis 1 and 2; Psalm 139; John 14 thru 17; Acts 1
and 2; 1 Corinthians 12 and 15; Hebrews; 1 John 4
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