In eternity, before the appearance of light or lands or any created thing, God spoke into the void that was to become the container of life and declared, \u201cLet us make man in our image, according to our likeness.\u201d <\/p>\n
An Expression of Intention<\/b><\/p>\n
With mysterious purpose, and in the perfection of the fellowship and relationship of heaven there was need for a body, a form, a physical and material expression of the eternal Creator-God, and the resulting Adam who became the First Man was to be the material template for the Second Man Who would endure the cross and save us from our sins. <\/p>\n
Indeed, beyond the one who was destined to become \u201ctemplate\u201d and the One ordained to become \u201cSacrifice,\u201d was the melding of the two, the joining together of \u201cThe first man Adam\u201d who \u201cbecame a living being\u201d and \u201cThe last Adam\u201d who \u201cbecame a life-giving spirit.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The union, the fusion of za\u014d\u00a0 psych\u0113\u00a0 and z\u014dopoie\u014d\u00a0 pneuma, bringing together\u00a0 \u201cliving soul\u201d and \u201clife-giving spirit\u201d would produce an entity that heaven had originally and eternally intended but that the world had never witnessed.<\/p>\n
And these two, \u201cliving soul\u201d and \u201clife-giving spirit,\u201d \u201cfirst Adam\u201d and \u201clast\u201d or \u201csecond Adam\u201d would form a Third Man; the full and final expression to be displayed to all that was created of the fullness of the Godhead and of heaven\u2019s ultimate purpose, which is to demonstrate to all of creation the justice and righteousness, the splendor and the glory of the God Who describes Himself, all of His deep and glorious characteristics the singular and most glaringly misunderstood and misused word in every language, \u201clove.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
An Embodiment of Essence<\/b><\/p>\n
The thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians provides a definition of the thing called \u201clove.\u201d Yet in itself Paul\u2019s description is incomplete, because in order for love to find expression, there must be a body out of which the intangible of love finds tangibility, and is made practical, receivable, comprehensible.<\/p>\n
Jesus has been revealed to us not only as the living Word or the only begotten of the Father or as Savior; Jesus is also the Head of the Body. The Head determines direction and activity, attitude, purpose, destination, pace, rest, communication: it all flows from the Head.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The Body responds to the desires and the impulses originating in the Head. The Body without the Head is uncoordinated, ungainly, without direction and purpose. The Body without the Head is out of order. One cannot express itself rightly without the other. <\/p>\n
Without the Body, Christ is only a concept, a mere suggestion. Without the Body, the non-believing world remains unconvinced of the Christ contained by our superior arguments or our pseudo-spiritual behaviors.<\/p>\n
Those who first knew Him beheld Him. Please do not miss this vital point. They saw Him. They saw Him with their eyes and their hands handled the Word of life.\u00a0 Jesus was God in flesh and blood reality.<\/p>\n
And when Jesus informed His friends, \u201cIt is expedient that I go away\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 He did not have in mind only the coming of the Comforter or of some multi-level evangelism program. His intent was more than to inaugurate the advent of a Spirit-age of otherworldly manifestations and spooky activity. <\/p>\n
More than merely enabling men to speak with other tongues or to give a thrill seeking church the cheap sensation of \u201cHoly Ghost goose bumps,\u201d He intended that through our transformed lives we might become to the world the very essence of the image of the risen, life-giving, life-changing Christ.<\/p>\n
When the Helper comes He not only infuses the believer with the Spirit of God, but He comes as the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit that filled the body, the vessel, the being of Jesus. <\/p>\n
It is with this truth in mind that Dr. Steve Crosby writes, \u201cThe whole purpose of Pentecost was to continue His life in the flesh, on earth, not in heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heaven needs a Body in order to give full expression to the Person and Purpose of God:<\/p>\n
A Body that feeds the hungry, and visits the imprisoned, that clothes the naked, loves the unlovable and touches the untouchable: A Body that brings heaven to earth, and makes understandable the mysteries of a kingdom not of this world.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Paul wrote of a Body in Romans 9:23 in whom God \u201chas made known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, as He says also in Hosea: I will call them My people who were not My people and they shall be called sons of the living God.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the Body that preaches the Message of good news to the poor, that comes to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
This Body, the visible manifestation of the Person, the Man of whom John declared was the \u201cSon of God Who takes away the sin of the world\u201d\u00a0 is the Body, \u201cthe fullness of Him,\u201d\u00a0 of Jesus the Christ, the eternal Logos, the Word made flesh, Who is given speech through our lips, Who sees with our eyes, walks with our feet and touches with our hands.<\/p>\n
This is the Body of which every true God-connected human is a part, and what we long for is the dawning of the morning of our full expression, the time of the manifestation of what has not been seen and of what has not been heard, but of what has been revealed to us by His Spirit. <\/p>\n
And that Body is moving from earnest expectation to impassioned realization of the revealing of the sons of God, a unified, interconnected \u201cmany\u201d becoming \u201cone\u201d even as Jesus prayed to the Father in John 17 \u201cthat they may be one.\u201d Five times in this single prayer, Jesus utters the yearning that \u201cthey,\u201d that \u201cwe\u201d \u201cmay become one.\u201d<\/p>\n
This great high priestly prayer, this ultimate expression of the heart of God in the flesh before being offered up as an atonement for the sins of man reveals the central desire, the chief aim and the highest appeal of the heart of God. <\/p>\n
And that appeal is not that we might be endued with power from on high: He does not pray that we might be adorned with all the gifts of the Spirit or that we should be looked upon with envy by the world. <\/p>\n
Instead the great cry of God is that we the Body, the followers of Jesus might be \u201cone.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Greek in John 17 translated \u201cone\u201d is heis (pronounced \u201chice\u201d), and means \u201cagreement, one thing, unity.\u201d It is of interest to note that the transliteration of the Greek heis is \u201cman,\u201d which suggests growing up, becoming from a child, a man.
One man \u2013 one unified, integrated, cohesively fused Body with many members, moving together as a symphonic orchestra, each playing his part, each moving in response only to the great Orchestrator of the universe, even our Father, Whose Son is the Head from whom flow command and order, direction and purpose to move, to go, to speak and to fill.<\/p>\n
With this truth in mind consider Paul\u2019s anointed instructive to the Ephesian believers: \u201cHe has broken down the middle wall of separation, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two. Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201c . . . So as to create in Himself one new man from the two.\u201d So much of the practice of the Christian church hinges on a sense of unique individuality.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Learning from corrupt humanistic governmental systems, the church bought into a lie that has bred a dangerous and deadly cohort to sin \u2013 the result of which says \u201cI don\u2019t need you. I can develop my own gifts, I can succeed without your help,\u201d and that damning lie from the pit of hell not only crushes souls and alienates brother from brother and sister from sister, but it exemplifies the attitude of denominations and independent fellowships alike. Far too long believers, joined together in one heavenly family have lived as though they haven\u2019t needed one another.
In Himself One New Man <\/b>
We are watching today, thankfully the demise of denominationalism and the death of religious sectarianism that has separated and prevented the Body of Christ from being the Body of Christ. <\/p>\n
And it is symptomatic of the problem of disunity and disconnection and it is the reason that heaven cried to heaven; Jesus lifted up His eyes to the Father and cried, \u201cIf there is one, singular request that I can make before I lay down my life for all of mankind, let it be \u201cthat they all may be one, as You, Father are in Me and I in You that they also may be one in Us that the world may believe that You sent Me.\u201d <\/p>\n
Man believes he has no need of anybody else. Believer doesn\u2019t need his brother or sister and it\u2019s a manifestation of the curse of hell, this false belief that we can function without one another.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Because to the extent we are convinced we don\u2019t need others, we frustrate the work of Grace, we delay the deliverance of creation, we labor against the purpose and intention of heaven.<\/p>\n
We are called, intended to become, to manifest His glory and nature, His Person to a world that is disjointed, disordered, that is discordant; a world desperately seeking something that not only makes sense, but more, a Body that speaks with one voice, sees with a single eye, moves with one purpose and touches with one heart.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s this concept of \u201cone\u201d that most believers know little about. We know about the corporate \u201cone,\u201d we know \u201cThe Lord is One.\u201d We know academically there is one church.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
But we are convinced both by training and by human nature that we can go it alone, that we are somehow single-handedly building the Kingdom of God that cannot be established, cannot be manifested until the Head is acknowledged as the Head and the Body represents His Body. <\/p>\n
For too long the world has been confounded by the monstrosity that has called itself Christ\u2019s \u201cchurch.\u201d What the world has seen has been an arm here, a leg there, an eye and an ear, all disjointed, disconnected, each one claiming \u201cI am the Body of Christ\u201d when in fact we were more Frankenstein than any kind of \u201cone new man.\u201d <\/p>\n
It is a stunning revelation: Jesus is the Head and we are His Body and we need to say this, to enunciate this elemental reality because in practice many so-called followers of The Way have neglected, forgotten or never learned spiritual anatomy sufficiently to understand the correlation between head and body. <\/p>\n
We are separated and by nature we are separators and in our separateness we can\u2019t truly know God, and until we know God we cannot become a part of the thing we long to experience.<\/p>\n
But we cannot become the true Body of Christ until and unless we are filled with that which filled the Body of Jesus.<\/p>\n
We cannot in our separateness and so long as we hold onto our darling issues, our pet theologies, our parochial views, our exclusive clubs for those alone who think exactly like we do, we cannot in our elite and restricted fellowships begin to demonstrate to a hopeless world the hope that is within us by virtue of His indwelling Presence.<\/p>\n
A Body, in order to move and function, to be a living entity must be filled. The natural, physical body, what the Greeks called sarx must be filled with blood and oxygen, the organs of life \u2013 lung and heart and brain; so, too, the spiritual body must be filled with life-giving substance.<\/p>\n
So the question is not, \u201cDo we need to become His Body?\u201d or \u201cAre we truly His Body?\u201d These are obvious. The questions are these: \u201cWhat is it that fills His body that makes us to become uniquely \u201cthe fullness of Him?\u201d \u201cHow can we who follower the Lord Jesus Christ truly become one; how can we accurately, authentically reflect Him to the world around us?\u201d <\/p>\n
These questions and that enigma beckon to be answered.<\/p>\n
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