Many Members, One Body

My life has been totally mingled with the life of Jesus and the life of the Father.

Like a blood covenant, where the blood of two individuals is mingled together, I cannot be separated from the Father, the Son, or all other believers. Once mixed, how do you unmingle blood?

 At salvation we become Christ. He and we are the whole man. We are as inseparable from Him as He is from the Father. We are one with Him as He is one with the Father.

 We can now begin to finally understand the profound meaning of scriptures concerning the body of Christ. When one member suffers or rejoices, we all suffer and rejoice. To persecute you is to persecute me. To persecute us is to persecute Christ. No wonder I don’t have to defend myself when I am persecuted because of my stand as being a Christian. He defends me because He can defend Himself. “…Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). When someone breaks your arm, they have struck you. Jesus’ defense of Stephen caused His meeting with Saul.

 Saints from the Day of Pentecost until today form one great body of believers, the body of Christ. We are all part of Jesus, making up His spiritual body on earth. God has willed that the risen Jesus Christ and all believers since that day are to be the body of one Man, the Head, Christ.

The Crucifixion Seems to Be the Main Message of All Four Gospels

Jesus’ death marks the end of the historical, human Savior. It seems all four Gospels tell the same story; Jesus came to die. More detail is given surrounding Jesus’ arrest, trial, beatings, and crucifixion, than any of His works, His healings and miracles.

You might say the whole purpose of His life was to die. No biography of any person would give greater details and explanation to their means of death than the formation of their beliefs and their life’s accomplishments. Although Jesus rose from the dead, still more detail is given to His sufferings and death than His coming back to life. Greater detail is given to His arrest, beatings, whipping, crown of thorns, robe, carrying His own cross, nailing to the cross, the sign above His head, and His seven sayings from the cross. In fact, several chapters are dedicated to the details of this one event. More than any specific healing or miracle that occupy only a few verses of a chapter.

After this one dramatic event of His crucifixion, death, and resurrection, He remained on earth with His disciples. For forty days He showed Himself to a few at a time or before one great crowd to prove He was alive and had risen from the dead. During these forty days, He did not preach another sermon, perform another miracle, or heal any person. Then He ascended to heaven and was seated until He will return for the Church and later to rule the earth. The obvious question we ask is WHY?

Jesus’ Death Was the Introduction to the Main Message

 Jesus’ death and sudden departure only set the stage for the main message, the main act, the coming of the Church, His body. Act one was Jesus’ life and death on earth. The forty days after His resurrection was the intermission. Then the second and greatest act is the coming of Christ’s body. Out of His death came our life, “Christ in you the hope of glory.” The Head had to go to heaven so the body could be formed, filled with His same life, and anointed by the same Holy Spirit power and authority.

During His earthly ministry, Jesus preached God’s message and was God’s ambassador. The next sermon after Jesus’ last sermon was Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. Now we have been given God’s message and are God’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:17-20). This message and ministry were given to His Church forty days after His ascension on the Day of Pentecost. God’s desire was to replace His only Son with a multitude of sons and daughters.

Jesus who said, “I am the light,” had that light extinguished at His death. Now His light has been reignited in us. He told His disciples, “you are the light of the world.” Jesus, who also said, “I am the life,” saw that life killed on the cross. Now His eternal life has been given to anyone who will believe. He says to us, “My life I give to you,” and “Anyone who believes in me will never die.”

We Are Not Only Members With God, but Members With Each Other

If you are going blind, your nose cannot fill the place of the eye. If the heart is failing, the stomach cannot fill in and pump blood. Each part of our body plays a unique role as each of us do in the body of Christ.

We are as much one with each other as we are one with Christ and God the Father. God does not see us as Baptists, Methodists, or Pentecostals—He sees us as Christ’s One Body. If you are born again, you are a member of the body of Christ, one with the Father, Jesus Christ, and all other believers. The only one who is not part of the body of Christ is the one who does not believe in the work of Jesus as the only way to heaven.

 Without Jesus in our life, we can have no fellowship with God in life, and we will have no fellowship with God in eternity. We can have no fellowship with each other in life and no fellowship with each other in eternity.

When a radical Muslim beheads a Christian, he does not ask if he is Baptist, Methodist or Catholic. He thinks we are all Christians. WHY CAN’T WE?

 Sadly, we not only see ourselves separate from other denominations but also separate from each other, those of our own church group or fellowship. We separate from our own over the rapture, confession of sins (1 John 1:9), or whether or not we can lose our salvation. ONLY faith in Jesus makes us Christians, members of the body of Christ, and sends us to heaven. Not whether we are Spirit filled, believe in the rapture, or confession of sins. When God sees us, He sees hands, feet, ears, and eyes. When He sees us, He sees Christ. SO SHOULD WE.

Now John answered Him, saying, “Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us.”

But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can soon afterward speak evil of Me. For he who is not against us is on our side” (Mark 9:38-40).

 If two Christians arrived in heaven at the same time, one Spirit-filled and the other not, Jesus would receive both with the same joy. There is no such thing as a Baptist ear and a Methodist nose or a Presbyterian foot and an Assembly of God eye. We are part of Christ’s body only because we are born again.

 We may not agree on every doctrine, but we are each part of the body of Christ. We all have a mission to the world, and we are all going to heaven. I am connected to you, you are connected to me, and we are both connected to Christ. We all need each other.