WE ARE...THE BODY OF CHRIST (2)
Notes
Transcript
BODY BUILDING AT ITS BEST
BODY BUILDING AT ITS BEST
based on a message by James Merritt
1 I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,
2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
3 making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling,
5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
7 But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
8 Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.”
9 (When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?
10 He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.)
11 The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.
14 We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.
15 But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
Two weeks ago we looked at the Nature of The Church and we found that the Bible calls The Church:
The Nature of the Church
1. A FELLOWSHIP.
2. A FAMILY.
3. A BODY.
4. A FLOCK.
Each one of these metaphors have special implications on how we are to treat other members of the church.
Last week we used the word SHINE as an acrostic and discussed five purposes of The Church.
Five Purposes of the Church
S – SEEK and to SAVE.
H – HELP.
I – INCLUDE.
N – NURTURE.
E – EXALT.
Today I want to talk to you about body building. No, we are not putting in a room to lift weights. But, we are..The Body of Christ - How do we build that body?
Body Building at Its Best
Take a moment and just think about your body, and how it works. No matter what shape it is in, it represents a state of engineering that IBM, Mercedes, and Lockheed combined, could not ever match.
Think about your eyes. Your eye muscles get the greatest day-to-day workout, moving some 100,000 times in any twenty-four hour period. To give the legs the same degree of exercise, 50 miles of walking would be required.2
Think about your ears. Depending on its origination, sound usually reaches one ear a fraction of a second faster than the other ear. By calculating the difference in receiving times between ears, the brain can pinpoint a sound source within two or three degrees.3
Think about your skin. Your skin waterproofs your body, blocks out and destroys harmful bacteria, regulates temperature, and continuously communicates with the brain. Functioning as the body's "feeler," it tells the brain what is cold and what is hot. It can sense an object as tiny as one one-hundredth of a millimeter. In only one square inch of human skin, there are 19 million cells, 625 sweat glands, 90 oil glands, 65 hairs, 19 feet of blood vessels, 19,000 sensory cells, and over 20 million microscopic animals.4
Think for a moment about your stomach. The human body is incredibly efficient at turning food into fuel. To ride a bicycle at ten miles an hour for one hour, the body needs the food energy contained in only three ounces of carbohydrates roughly the equivalent of 1.4 ounces of gasoline. If our bodies used gasoline instead of food we could ride over 900 miles on a single gallon of gas.5
That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how incredible the human body is. But as amazing and incredible as one human body is, it does not begin to compare with the body of Christ. I don't mean His literal body. I mean His spiritual body the church. Paul said in I Cor. 12:27, "You are the body of Christ."
The church is not an organization, it is an organism. It is not a dead building, it is a living body. We will never understand the place the church is to have in our life, and the place we are to have in the church, until we understand and grasp the implications of this truth the church is the body of Christ.
Body Building at Its Best
I. The Unity That Binds the Body
13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
This verse describes the unity of the body. We are many members, but we are one body. Now unity is not to be confused with union. For several years before the Civil War, the United States was a union, but it really wasn't in unity.
Unity is not to be confused with uniformity. Unity does not mean that we have to agree on every single thing. Unity does not mean that you have to be in lockstep with everyone else all the time. An orchestra must have three sections wind, string, and percussion, or else it is not an orchestra. And, think about it, if everybody plays strings, you won't have an orchestra. If everybody plays percussion, you won't have an orchestra. If everybody plays only wind instruments, you will not have an orchestra. Unity does not mean that everyone plays the same instrument. Unity means they play the same song, on the same key, in harmony with one another.
The unity that brings the members of the body together and binds them together is in what we believe and how that affects the life we live. In the passage we read this morning from Eph. 4 the Apostle Paul gives us the basis of this unity. We are told in v.3 that we are to be "making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.[3]"
We are told there is one body. (v.4) This means there is one true church made up of all believers of all the ages who have trusted Christ alone for salvation, been washed from their sins by His blood, and have been born again.
There is one Spirit. (v.4) This one Spirit, of course, is the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that creates the body. It is the Holy Spirit that coordinates the body. It is the Holy Spirit that consecrates the body, both corporately and individually. That one Spirit indwells every believer. The Holy Spirit living within us is the basis of our spiritual unity.
When that one Spirit fills every believer, you will then have practical unity. You see, the Holy Spirit has one desire - to glorify the Son of God. The Holy Spirit leads in one direction to identify the will of God. The Holy Spirit has one design to magnify the Word of God. The Holy Spirit has one determination to edify the church of God. To the extent that every believer is filled with the Holy Spirit, there will be Spirit-filled unity.
There is one hope. (v. 4) This one hope is that Jesus is alive and working through His church and that He will come to take us to be with Him some day.
There is one Lord. (v.5) And we know that He is our savior, Jesus the Christ.
There is one faith. (v.5) Now faith here is not describing the act of believing in the Lord Jesus. It is talking about the body of truth as revealed in the Bible. There is one faith. Jude said that we are to "contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." (v.3) The Bible is our source of truth, doctrine, and conviction.
There is one baptism. (v.5) There is only one physical baptism.
But there is also only one spiritual baptism the baptism of the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ. To be part of the one church, we are to be baptized into that faith. If you have not yet been baptized, but would like to be, please come and talk with me about your desire. If there are those that would like to be baptized, we will plan a baptismal service.
There is one God and Father of all. (v.6). If He is our Father, then we are brothers and sisters. If we are brothers and sisters then we are family. We are family because we have one Father and one God.
II. The Diversity That Blesses the Body
It is true that we are one body, but the other side of this truth is that the body is made up of many members. Paul said: "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.[4]" (I Cor. 12:12) This entire passage is in the context of spiritual gifts. God has given to all of his children spiritual gifts. He gives different gifts to different people. But he gives us different gifts, not so that we might separate from one another, but that we might be joined to one another.
Why are the pieces of a puzzle all different? So they will all fit together. We have different gifts, different interests, different personalities, different ideas, so that we all might fit together in the body of Christ. That is why Paul uses the very analogy of a body, beginning in v.12, to illustrate that we are to be joined and work together just like the different parts of a body. So, as members of the body of Christ,
a. We Are To Be Different From One Another
"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ." (v.12)
You see, there is not only to be a unity, there is to be a diversity in the church. There is to be a unity in our diversity, but our diversity will strengthen our unity, not weaken it. You are who you are and I am who I am. I am gifted the way I am gifted and you are gifted the way you are gifted. We are all different, and we are meant to be different. We are not meant to be the same.
b. We Are To Be Dependent On One Another
It takes every part working together to have a healthy body that will function properly. Every part of my body is dependent on another to do its work. That was Paul's point when he said in 1 Corinthians 12: 14-17 “14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?”
And he goes on in that passage to say that although we are all different, we are all still members of the same body.
The eye can do things the foot cannot do. The foot can do things the eye cannot do, but both need the other. There is no such thing as "lone ranger Christianity." There is no such thing as a Christian who does not need to be in church. There is no such thing as a church that does not need every member to be involved.
You may be a foot in the body of Christ, but if you don't take part in the church you cripple the body. You may be an ear in the body, and if you don't get involved in church you deafen the body. You may be an eye in the body, and if you don't take part in church you blind the body. Just as your body needs every part working together, so does the body of Christ. Everybody is needed.
But not only is every member of the body equally needed, every member is equally important. Some of us are outspoken, others are quiet; some are dynamic, some are laid back; there are leaders, then there are followers. Some of us are noticeable, some of us are inconspicuous. But we are all equally needed, and all equally necessary. Everybody is somebody in the body of Christ.
We all need to learn one lesson since we are a part of the same body, and members of that body: It does not matter who gets the credit as long as the job gets done, and God gets the glory.
c. We Are To Be Devoted To One Another
Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 12: 24-26 “24 whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25 that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
When one member hurts, the body hurts because the many members are one body. We are to be one in sorrow, and one in success; one in remorse, one in rejoicing; one in our spirit of worship, one in working; one in going, one in giving; for we are all one body.
III. The Maturity That Builds the Body
A healthy body is a maturing body which grows into a full body. There are two areas in which the body of Christ is to always be maturing.
a. We Are To Mature In Our Love
I Cor. 13, which as you know as the famous "love" chapter in the Bible, is not really a parenthesis, it goes right along with everything else Paul has been saying about the body. You see, love is the proof of maturity in the body. Jesus said in Jn. 13:35, " By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.[8]" Love either grows or it dies. Nothing else matters, not buildings, budgets, or baptisms, if we don't love one another. We ought to love each other more today than we did yesterday, and less today than we will tomorrow.
b. We Are To Mature In Our Likeness
We ought to celebrate our unity. We ought to appreciate our diversity. But it is all so that we might grow in Christlikeness. Paul said in Eph. 4:13, "until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.[9]"
Back during World War II the Nazis incessantly bombed London, and in the process destroyed a beautiful cathedral. In front of that cathedral was a statue of Jesus that was badly damaged. Some students got together after the bombing stopped to rebuild this cathedral. After they finished rebuilding the cathedral they decided to rebuild the statue of Christ.
They put the entire statue back together except his arms and his hands, which were so badly damaged and destroyed they could not be replaced. Then they came up with a brilliant idea. The inscription at the bottom of the statue read originally "Come unto Me." But they simply changed that inscription to read, "Christ has no hands but our hands."
Jesus is the invisible part of the visible Christian, and we are to be the visible part of the invisible Christ. We are to be His eyes that see a lost and dying world; His ears that hear the cries of the hurting and the hopeless; His hands to help the poor and the weary; His feet to go to the ends of the earth, and His mouth to share the gospel of eternal life. When we do that, motivated by love for the Savior, a love for the saint, and a love for the sinner, that is body building at its best.