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.
