With One Another – Forever!!! (5)

 

 

I hope we’ve seen that our Father has not only created us for koinonia with Himself, but also for koinonia with one another – so much so, that to have koinonia with one another is to have koinonia with the Father and the Son – we saw this in 1 John 1:3. If our experience and concept of the Church and the Body of Christ falls short of this, perhaps we ought to revisit just what the Bible teaches us about who Christ Jesus is and who we are called to be in Him.

 

When we read passages such as 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,” we are not reading an analogy or metaphor, we are reading about an organic reality. Now for sure we may begin with metaphor and analogy, but as we enter into the depths of God’s Word we will come to experience the organic life of the Body of Christ, with Jesus Christ as the Head of His Body (Eph. 1:22 – 23; 4:11 – 16; Col. 1:18; 2:19).

 

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

 

I’ll close this reflection with the conclusion from what is perhaps, with good reason, C. S. Lewis’s most famous sermon, The Weight of Glory:

 

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

 

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

 

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.

 

Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

 

This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat– the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself is truly hidden.”

 

In reading the above, I'm reminded of Paul's words to the Colossians:

 

“For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” (Colossians 3:3 – 4).

 

To be continued…