MY BODY

One of the most beautiful things about an open mutual participatory church gathering is that you learn from everyone in the room, not just one person.

In our last house church gathering a brother shared an insight with us that totally floored me. I had never seen this before, even though it was from a passage of scripture I have read, and taught from, and blogged about dozens of times.

We were looking at Romans 12 which starts out with the statement:

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” [v.1]

It’s a powerful statement of our calling to lay down our lives for Christ and to allow Him to live in us by His Spirit. But I already knew that part.

Then we continued to talk about the rest of Romans 12 together and everything was going as expected, until we got to verse 5 which says:

“…so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

And then my brother in Christ said this:

“So, we lay down our bodies as living sacrifices so that we can become part of His Body…”

Boom.

Such a simple observation but, honestly, I had never made that direct connection between verse 1 and verse 5 as he had done. But now that he had pointed it out I couldn’t stop seeing it, and marveling at the beauty and synchronicity of it all.

We have to let our body die so that we can become members of His Body.

And consequently, if we refuse to lay down our bodies and to die to ourselves then we cannot really expect to become members of His Body.

We must become submitted to the Head of the Body and that can only happen if we do what He commands.

“If anyone would come after me, he must first deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” – Jesus [Luke 9:23-24]

This submission is not only essential to our own personal Christian life, it’s also essential to our corporate life in the Body of Christ.

This is how we experience “oneness” in the Body. It’s how we experience “oneness” with Christ.

So grateful for the simple power and truth of this insight.

Blessings!

-kg

TO PREPARE A PLACE

And Jesus said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." (John 14:1-3)

Jesus promised that he would go and prepare a place for us to be with himself.

He promised to send us the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.

The Holy Spirit at Pentecost came and inaugurated the birth of the Church, which is the Body of Christ.

God poured out His Spirit on all flesh - men and women and children - on that day.

Jesus fulfilled the daily sacrifice in Himself as the Lamb of God.

Jesus fulfilled the Holy Priesthood when He became our High Priest.

At the moment of His death on the cross God the Father ripped the veil in the Temple from top to bottom.

Why?

To signify that an end to this old form of worship was fulfilled and had come to an end.

The Temple of God is now composed of living stones.

The Priesthood of God is now expanded to include every single believer in Jesus as the Messiah.

The blood sacrifice is no longer necessary. Bulls and sheep and doves are no longer laid on the altar. Instead, every single follower of Jesus is a living sacrifice to God.

Where is the place that God will prepare for us?

In Revelation 21:9-10 we see the Bride of Christ coming down out of Heaven like a city. This city is the Bride. In verse 21 it says, "I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple."

Within this city there is no Temple. Why? Because Jesus is our Temple. Yet, we are called the Temple of God where Jesus dwells.

"Behold, this is a profound mystery," Paul says in Ephesians. "I am speaking of Christ and the Church," he says when referring to how a man and woman will become one flesh.

In 2 Samuel God promises to send a Messiah from David's seed who will build a house for David, and establish a Kingdom which will have no end.

Instead of allowing David to build a Temple for God, God promises to build a Temple for David.

Yet, when Jesus came to this earth in fulfillment of this prophecy there already was a Temple in Jerusalem.

Standing in that Temple, after clearing it of the money changers, Jesus said, "Destroy this Temple and I will raise it again in three days". We know that he was speaking of the Temple of His Body.

We are His Body.

His Body. His Temple. A House for Himself. A House for us where we will be with Him.

What Jesus is building is His Church. A Bride for Himself. A Temple for God. A House for us to dwell with Him forever.

The Church, the Body, the Bride, is the promise of God fulfilled, and in process.

We are the place He is preparing for us to dwell with Him forever. He will purify His Bride until we, the living Temple, are presented holy and unblemished. Then, He will dwell within us, and we will dwell within Him.

What if the "many rooms" Jesus speaks of are the individual members of the Body? What if we are the rooms where Jesus dwells, and where we dwell within Him?

If we are the Body of Christ, and the Temple of God, and the Bride of Christ, then imagine how important it must be that we love one another.

Love is what holds us to Him, and it is what holds us to one another.

There is only one Bride. There is only one Temple of God. There is only one Body.

Let the Temple of God be built as we love one another and hold fast to Jesus, our Lord.

"As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." - 1 Peter 2:4-5

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." - John 15:9-12

Are We (Really) Practicing Christianity?

According to the New Testament, the Christian faith was inaugurated at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit, in fulfillment of Joel 2:28-32, was poured out on all flesh. From that day forward, the followers of Jesus became empowered to preach the Gospel, baptize new believers, plant churches, and share communion with other believers. Everyone was in the ministry of Jesus Christ. There was no distinction between clergy and laity because in their minds, every follower of Jesus was “…being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." – 1 Peter 2:5

When the Spirit of Almighty God was poured out on all flesh at Pentecost, those first Christians got it. They understood that the same Holy Spirit of God that once rested over the ark of the covenant behind a 300 pound veil in the Temple of Jerusalem was now living within their own hearts. They were excited beyond belief and consumed with a fire and a passion to share this living presence of God with everyone they knew.

The original Christian church was one “not made with human hands”. Rather than following “the pattern of this world” the Biblical Christian church was birthed by the Spirit of God, empowered by words of Christ, and under submission to the Father. Simply put, the Christian church we read about in the New Testament was something that God was doing, not men. In contrast to our Church today, the first Christians were ordained by the Holy Spirit of God Himself and sent out to proclaim the Gospel, the Good News, that the Kingdom of God had come to every man, woman and child.

The artificial, man-made hierarchy we see in the Christian church today is not what the Church practiced under the Apostles in the New Testament. Instead of a Body made up entirely of Spirit-filled ministers of the Gospel, the Christian church eventually surrendered this heavenly model for a more top-down approach.

As one New Testament scholar, Howard Snyder, put it:

"The clergy-laity dichotomy is…a throwback to the Old Testament priesthood. It is one of the principal obstacles to the church effectively being God’s agent of the kingdom today because it creates a false idea that only ‘holy men,’ namely, ordained ministers, are really qualified and responsible for leadership and significant ministry. In the New Testament there are functional distinctions between various kinds of ministries but no hierarchical division between clergy and laity. The New Testament teaches us that the church is a community in which all are gifted and all have ministry.”

I believe this is partly why Jesus strategically chose his disciples from among the most common and ordinary strata of society. He wanted to make sure that when a run-of-the-mill fisherman stood up and proclaimed the Gospel no one would bow down and worship him. Instead, the people saw ordinary men and women just like themselves, uneducated, dirty, and painfully normal, who had been caught up into the eternal purpose of God.

When Peter spoke under the power of the Holy Spirit, or when Paul prayed for people to be healed, or when any of those unnamed disciples ministered to one another in the Body, everyone knew it was God doing the work, not the people themselves.

“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” – Acts 4:13

When they gathered together it wasn’t to hear words of “eloquence or superior wisdom” but to experience Jesus in their midst as the Head of the Body and to share Him through a communion that went beyond bread and wine. The original, New Testament Christians were empowered, “not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power” (1 Cor 2:1-5).

The Church is what God is doing, not what we are doing. We are living stones, but only because we are filled with the Life of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Gathering apart from that is just a gathering. When we come together, to the Living Stone, we also like living stones are built up into a holy priesthood, offering sacrifices of praise to celebrate our Risen Lord who is present with us in the meeting.

Can you imagine being in a room with Jesus and allowing someone other than Him to speak for over an hour? Can you imagine experiencing the awesome presence of the Spirit of the Living God and reading announcements?

The Body of Christ is an expression of the tangible, resurrected Christ. Have we settled for less? Have we become comfortable listening to the wisdom of Men rather than waiting quietly for the whisper of our Eternal Creator?

As I ponder these questions I am left with an awful question: Am I really practicing Christianity or am I practicing Churchianity? Because the more I read the New Testament the more I see a people who were caught up in something beyond themselves. They were the most common, uneducated, normal people you can imagine. Even their leaders were humble, ordinary, everyday men and women who saw themselves as fortunate participants in the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and the heart’s desire of Almighty God to reveal Himself to the World.

Is that how I see myself? Is that how I practice my faith? If what I am practicing doesn’t resemble Christianity as the New Testament reveals it, then what in the world am I practicing?
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kg