Monday, July 25, 2016

We are the Church!

You have likely heard your pastor or people in your church say, “Don’t just go to church; BE the church.”

Often, what well-minded people are trying to convey is that many of the services and activities that people associate with the church can actually be done individually or in small groups - -things like bringing meals to those that can’t get out, helping out a neighbor in need, getting a group of people to help clean up a park or a church etc.

While these are very good and useful activities, that is not at all what the Apostle Paul meant when he told the Corinthians, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Cor 12:27)

When the Apostle Paul refers to the church he calls it, ‘the body of Christ.’   He doesn’t refer to it as the body of Christians.   While the body of Christians may be divide, the body of Christ cannot.  
“ For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. 14 For in fact the body is not one member but many.” (1 Cor 12:12-14)

We are the church when we recognize that while all of us have different gifts and different callings, all of us can and should contribute to the body “But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. 21 And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” (1 Cor 12:20-21)

We are the church when each of us individually realizes that the Great Commandment (that we love God with all our heart, soul and mind and our neighbor as ourselves) and the Great Commission (go and make disciples) applies to us, not just a ministry within the institutional church.

Institutionally, the church has had many problems over the past 2,000 years.  But as the body of Christ, we have the most profound impact and collectively work together for the fulfillment of the Gospel.

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