February 26, 2009
Co-Workers
Whether it’s a committee, a board or a council, each member is nothing more than an individual until they come together as a group. Only then are they are empowered and have authority to make decisions, give direction and set goals. I think there is a similar situation for believers. “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ…Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (I Cor 12:12, 27 NIV) Individually we all have the Spirit living within us, however we need to be reminded that it’s only when we come together that we are transformed into the body of Christ.
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Gail;
-----As a manner of speaking, you are correct. But a thought cast to the whole body of Christ sees many churches in many communities of many countries. They’ve not come together in councils of leaders to carry back to all the individuals their daily duties. And they should not. Yet they are all together one. I do not see I Corinthians 12:12 as a foundation to carry man’s authority over the church. The Catholics probably do. I see it working with Romans 14:22, Philippians 2:3-4, I Peter 5:3, etc. to limit the authority expressed in Hebrews 13:17 and implied in I Timothy 5:17. The Bible extends to man enough authority so that all things are done decently and in order, but not so much that God’s direction of each person’s footsteps does not sum up to lock-step marching according to the council of a few. I believe I Corinthians 12:12 recognizes the collective nature of the church without subjecting her to collectivism.
-----I believe what makes the church a body is more in the nature of what makes an anthill a colony than what makes a military unit a regiment. The ant who marches down the trail to find food does so by the driving nature he has from being an ant. Other ants have a bit different bent in their nature of ant-hood, and they leave the trail to wander around at random until they stumble upon food. And yet others spend their existence inside the hill carrying the brats around. But together, they all make the hill. None of them were directed by authority of any ant council to go do what they did. They just went and did what they did by the nature of what they were. Even though the anthill is a collective, the freedom of each ant to do what he was made to do is equally important.
-----The human anthill is much more complex. There is far more to the human character and personality, and many more different things are necessary to construct his habitat and society. Like the ant hill, it will grow out of the sum of everyone’s individually given effort. It needs only some co-ordination and lots of peace keeping. But the implementation of these two necessities keeps spilling over unto the control of individual interests and activities. Human nature has a healthy ego, and human authority in the church or the state is multiplied by it into a suffocating blanket. Eventually people are so often told what they need to be and what they need to do that they loose their understanding of who they are and how they fit with everyone else in making habitat and society. The whole becomes so overwhelming they can fathom neither it nor how it works. Soon they are intellectually incapable of functioning according to individual nature and must have the controlling arm of the human council guide their activities. They cease being slaves to the survival of mankind (or in the church - to the Lord) and become slaves to the taxes, powers, and wars of the human council which misleads them (or in the church - of the tithes, doctrines, and programs of the council.)
-----The real body of the Lord is just as remarkable as is the literal human body. The arms, legs, hands, feet, and all its parts are not controlled by a council of a few of them. They are all controlled by the head, which is Christ Jesus..
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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