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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Pressured
Into The Body Of Christ I
believe what I'm about to say is both Biblically correct and prophetic.
Jesus is beginning the process by which He is forcing Christians
in the western church to
live as real members of the Body of Christ. Church
groups who resist will lose their lamp stand. (Revelation 2:5) We
see the phrase the "Body of Christ" in the New Testament.
Is this term merely symbolic or descriptive of what the church
should be, or is it literal? How
you answer this question will determine how you function as an
individual in the true The
apostle Paul said, "you are the Body of Christ and each one of you
are part of it. (1 Corinthians 12:24)
He also said Jesus has given us certain gifts "to prepare
God's people for works of service, so that the Body of Christ may be
built up". (Ephesians 4:12)
When
Paul said "you are the Body of Christ", does that sound
symbolic to you? It doesn't
to me. It's more literal
than symbolic. We are Jesus'
present earthly body. This
has major implications that many of us haven't thought through. In
John 14 Jesus said He'd soon return to His Father and then come back to
live in the believers. Jesus
returned on the Day of Pentecost when He, in the form of the Holy
Spirit, entered the lives of the believers, both individually and
collectively. Jesus' new
earthly body was born in Acts 2. Anyone
who gives his life to Jesus and receives the Holy Spirit is placed by
Jesus somewhere special in His earthly body.
Paul
said that once we are placed into Jesus' New Testament body, we have
"works of service to do".
1 Corinthians 12 clearly states that we all
have a job to perform, both as individuals, and with those few
other body parts to whom we are joined.
I call this joining "functional relationships". "Relationships"
imply we are joined to a few others for support which provides the flow
of life throughout the body. "Functional"
implies our joining together has a purpose beyond mutual support.
As a body part in Jesus' earthly body, we are joined to another
body part to do a specific job.
The
Bible teaches that we are joined to individual people.
Despite our common practice, the Bible does not teach that we are
joined to organizational structures like those that presently exist in
much of the western church. The
Bible also teaches that the work we do in the Body of Christ is a result
of us being personally and individually joined to a few other body
parts. The Bible does not
teach that our work is a result of a posting on an organization's
bulletin board. Our jobs are
determined by our placement in the body of Christ and the command that
emanates from the Head. This
may sound so foreign to some that many will fail to understand the
distinctions I've just made. They
will say, "that's what I do in our local denomination's
church". That's not
necessarily so. Most of the
work performed in a traditional church was created by the organization.
The work was not inspired and created by two or three individuals
whom Jesus personally joined together and told "them" to do
the work. The
simple fact is that the New Testament states that we are joined through
the Holy Spirit to individual people, and from this joining we find
support and ministry. Such
support and ministry does not depend on anything else, other than you,
I, and the Holy Spirit. Here's
the prophetic aspect to what I'm saying. I
believe we've placed too much emphases on our organizational structures
that "we" have built. Jesus
is beginning to dismantle our humanistic attempts to build His church,
the Body of Christ. He is
using our secular social systems with their non-Biblical
world view to accomplish His goal. If
you read the Bible, you'll note that God often uses secular societies
and governments to force His people into His will.
Governments
and societies are becoming more hostile towards Christians and the
church, making it progressively harder for the church to continue in its
present form. Governments
are now beginning to dictate how the traditional church should operate.
They dictate our hiring practices, what can or cannot be taught
from the pulpit, and more. Such
government intrusion into the life of the church was one reason why
Europeans migrated to Many
people for the sake of personal peace and prosperity will allow the
state to be lord of "their" church.
Jesus will then remove their lamp stand.
Others will embrace both the chance and the challenge to be
"networked" into a community of believers spreading across the
land as a counter-cultural church. We
won't care where we gather. We
won't care that the government doesn't recognize us as an official
church. There's all sorts of
things we won't care about. We
will care about being joined personally to a few others in the Body of
Christ, both for support and ministry.
So,
when you see governments and societies dictating to the Christian church
what it can or can't do, rejoice. Understand
that Jesus is using these secular institutions to
force us to live in "functional relationships" in the Body of
Christ. We will join other
brothers and sisters in Jesus in other parts of the world, and even some
in the west, who have been living this way for quite some time now.
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