Advent - One Body (2)

 Advent - One Body? (2)

“For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). 

“Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:15–16).

It is important to know the nature of a person or of an animal. Consider the difference in nature between a lion and that of a kitten. If you were a stranger to both, and were to meet both, not knowing the difference in their nature might be to your detriment.  

When we don’t understand the change in nature of a Christian, when we don’t understand that we are new creatures in Christ (2 Cor. 5:14 – 17), it leads to failing to affirm the glorious work of Jesus Christ, to a diminished understanding of the Gospel, and to faulty premises in our preaching, teaching, and self-understanding. 

Similarly, when we don’t recognize the Divine Nature of Christ which fills His Body, we fail to know the Body and live in the Body as functioning members of the Divine Body. 

Again, I’m pondering this because this is the season of Advent. I suppose I’m also pondering it because the professing church in the U.S.A. seems to have pretty much sold its birthright for a mess of pig’s food, we haven’t even obtained decent pottage in the transaction. Regarding the latter, we have abdicated (if we ever had it) our testimony as children of another world, as citizens of heaven. Regarding the former, because if we only knew the reality of the Incarnation, if we only knew that Christ has many members, then we would function as One People, as that City set on a hill, as the Light of the Word. 

We’ve sold ourselves in too many ways to count, and most of the things we’ve sold ourselves for look pretty good on the surface, and they usually look practical. However, it always comes down to Jesus Christ and our relationship with Him. Are we loving Him? Are we devoted to Him? Is Jesus our testimony? Is Jesus the center of our lives? Are we offering ourselves to Him every day in every way? Are we in love with Jesus?

In 2 Thessalonians 2:3 Paul writes of a falling away from the faith that precedes the unveiling of the man of lawlessness. Now I don’t know when the ultimate fulfillment of that will be, but I imagine it has had many degrees of fulfillment and expression – and I think we are living through a fulfillment of such apostasy right now, for I think the professing church in the United States has prostituted itself in myriad ways – many of which look quite respectable. 

From our epistemology (how do we “know” things, and how do we know that we know?) to hermeneutics (interpretation and communication of the Bible) to philosophy (the idea of a “Christian worldview” has displaced Jesus and the Gospel, a bronze serpent) to politics and nationalism to our emphasis on more and more money (personal and church). Then we have the dominance of the social and marketing “sciences” in the professing church, our repudiation of holiness as evidenced by our choices in entertainment and recreation (pretty much just like the world) and the giving of our children as offerings to the educational and economic systems of the world (we don’t care what our schools teach as long as the sports teams win and we are more interested in the money our adult children make than in their character and whether they know Jesus).

This is all about the Incarnation, all of it. Jesus came to be as we are so that we might be as He is – as individuals and as His People. If the Incarnation were real to us, if it were the dominant reality of our lives, that is, if Christ were the dominant reality of our lives – then we would be a distinctive People on this planet. We would be distinctive members of a distinctive Body – the Body of Christ. 

“The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:14) is not only about Jesus Christ and Bethlehem and thirty – three years, it is also about the Body of Jesus Christ, it is also pointing to the reality of the Bride, the Temple, the Church – the continuing reality of Jesus Christ being on the earth. 

“He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9) ought to be our testimony as the Body of Christ just as it was Jesus’ testimony in the Upper Room. In fact, it truly continues to be the testimony of Jesus Christ in His People, in His Body – the question is whether it is true of us. Is it true of me, of you, of our congregations?

The answer to this question is the answer as to whether Advent and the Incarnation are living to us…or simply a piece of history wrapped in songs and music and dramas and candlelight services. 

Are we truly celebrating Advent?