Walking Worthy of the Calling – Part II (8)

 The Christ

 

“But you did not learn the Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former way of life, you are to put off the old man, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new man, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Ephesians 4:20 – 24.

 

“But you did not learn the Christ in this way…” That is, verses 17 – 19 are not how Paul’s readers were taught to know the Christ and live in the Christ.

 

If you are looking at your own Bible while reading this, you will notice that I have chosen to maintain the Greek definite article before “Christ.” I have done this because it is possible that we have a dual in-depth meaning with the word Christ, a meaning better seen with the definite article.

 

In Ephesians 4:11 – 16 we have a picture of the organic Body of Christ, a Living Body in which every joint and every member is giving to the rest of the Body, “building itself up in love” and growing up in all aspects into the Head, even Christ. We see “the Christ” as the Head in 4:15, and in 4:13 we read, “a mature man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ.”

 

This “Body” that we see in 4:11 – 16 has the Christ as its Head, with the Christ as its Head this Body is known as the Body of the Christ. This is seen in 1 Corinthians 12:12:

 

“For even as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.” (NASB).

 

We know a body by the head and face of the body. I see Susan’s face on Susan’s head and I know that the body beneath the head and face are Susan’s; I see a head, face, and body and what I see I call “Susan.” This is so natural that we don’t even think about it, it is the way we live, it is the way we have always lived.

 

Yet, when it comes to seeing and understanding Jesus Christ and His Body we become blind men and women.

 

Let’s read 1 Cor. 12:12 again (noting that its context is the Body of Christ!) but this time with the definitive article that is in the Greek NT: “For even as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is the Christ.”

 

Now consider 1 Cor. 10:16 – 17: “Is not the cup of blessing which we bless koinonia [a sharing of life] in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break koinonia [a sharing of life] in the body of Christ? Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of one bread.”

 

If, when we approach the Lord’s Supper we are only thinking vertically, of the Head of Body; we are only thinking and meditating of one dimension of the blood and bread. The Table is sacramental and we receive His grace and life through both the Head of the Body and the members of the Body, through whom the Head pours His Divine Life.

 

“…what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have koinonia with us; and indeed our koinonia is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” 1 John 1:3.

 

The Apostle John does not write, “so that you too may have koinonia with the Father and Son,” but rather, “so that you too may have koinonia with us.” Why? Because John and his brothers and sisters have koinonia with the Father and Son and therefore to have koinonia with John and his brothers and sisters is to have koinonia with the Father and Son. To be sure, as we read John’s letter, and as we read John’s Gospel, John directs our attention to koinonia with the Trinity, but we also see the nonnegotiable understanding that our koinonia with the Trinity and our koinonia with one another are a unity.

 

(On the foregoing see John 13:14, 20, 34-35; 15:12; 17:20-26; 1 John 2:7-11; 3:11 – 16, 23; 4:7 – 5:2).

 

Whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, or Protestant; if we do not understand the above then we do not understand the Nature of the Church, the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Trinity – how can we “be” and live who we are if we do not know who we are? How can we understand the nature of the person who sits next to us on Sunday morning, in a Sunday school class, or in a small group?

 

C.S. Lewis pointed out in The Weight of Glory, that if we really saw the glory of God in the person next to us that we’d want to fall down before him or her.

 

How can we speak of the Nature of Jesus Christ in the Incarnation and not teach the Nature of the Church – the ongoing Incarnation?

 

We see an example of this concept of Christ the Head and Christ the Whole (the latter term borrowed from Augustine) in Genesis with Jacob Israel. Here it is in a nutshell. Jacob has his named changed by Yahweh to Israel. When most of us read the name “Israel” in the Bible we think of a people, but that is not always the case, for the name Israel can also mean the individual Jacob. The name Israel began as a name for one person, but it also came to mean the name of a people all coming from Jacob’s 12 sons who in turn all came from Jacob-Israel. BUT, there is also a sense in which the people are a person for when Yahweh says, “Out of Egypt I have called My son,” we see the people Israel but we also see a person.

 

Ok, hang with me and look at Ephesians 4:13: “until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” When we read “a mature man,” do we see a people or a person? A mature man speaks to us of a person, and this Person is the Christ who has many members, this is what we also see in 1 Cor. 12:12 and its context.

 

Note that Paul begins the movement of what we term “chapter four” by laying a foundation of unity in the Trinity: “…the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace…one body and one Spirit…one Lord one faith one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” This is the foundation for all that follows, including what we see in Ephesians 4:17 – 5:21 (the passage we are considering in this series).

 

The best example I know for what it looks like to read and understand the Bible in this way of vision is Augustine’s Expositions on the Psalms, this is one of the great treasures that God has preserved for His Church.

 

While what you are reading may be new to you, it is not new to the Church for it reaches back into Genesis and is gloriously manifested in Revelation. This vision has continued throughout Church history, though at times it has been more of an underground river than a visible river. There is contemporary discussion of it today and a realization that we have lost an essential element, and I do mean essential, of our understanding and participation in the Eucharist.

 

Interestingly to me, my first glimpse of this was when I was with the Jesus People in California in the 1960s. As I reflect on this, it demonstrates how God can speak to those who read the Bible in a pristine fashion, in new wineskins. Since then I have found on more than one occasion folks in academia who write of subjects as if they were recovering insights from a bygone time, when I can look to people and groups I have known who knew and taught those very things as a way of life. This is not to say that we don’t need scholars who love Jesus Christ and His Word, we most certainly do. We need clarity in our thinking, we need precision, we need to see how our House is constructed, we need to understand how to live in the House – I guess in short, we need each other.

 

Yes, I understand that this is probably a new way of seeing to most readers (I have touched on this before); but let me assure you that Jesus Christ and His People are worth all that we have and all that we are. It is worth your time and energy and effort to ponder the glory of the Christ, the Temple, the Bride, the People of God.