kid1body

One Body

Imagine that you're on a winning team with all the very best players in the sport, with all the best equipment, with a coach who is unbelievably capable and wise. You are one of the very best players yourself because you're on the team, and the coach has assigned you to play a great position.
Well, you don't have to imagine anymore because you really ARE a member of the best team that there is. It's a team that God has been waiting to put together since before time began. It's the body of Christ.
It should make you feel really great that having you on the team pleases God. God chose you. Nobody can ever kick you off of the team. You became a member of the team when you confessed Romans 10:9.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

You have probably heard all this many, many times; but it's worth hearing again because when we think about what God has given to us, it makes us thankful. The body of Christ is the church to which we belong. You can take advantage of being on the team because you know that you're a member. But there are people who are members who don't know that they are. God wants them to know the truth (I Timothy 2:4):

Who [God] will have all men to be saved, and to come unto a knowledge of he truth.

Part of this truth is expressed in I Corinthians 12:14-18:

For the body is not one member, but many.
If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?
But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.

So your position in the body is the one that God gave you. No matter what anyone says about their position in the church, it doesn't change the fact that he is part of the body. No matter what your position is, the body needs you and all its many members.

I Corinthians 12 goes on to remind us not to judge or compare ourselves to other members that the might seem prettier or stronger according to the world's standards. As members in particular of the body of Christ, we share in each other's strengths and accomplishments. Together all the members make one whole that God doesn't want to see torn apart. I Corinthians 12:24-27:

For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked:
That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.
And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.
Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.

Before I close, I want to focus on Jesus Christ, our "team captain," and how he prayed for us before his crucifixion (before anybody joined the team). It expresses the "same care" heart that God wants us to have for one another.

John 17:10,11
And all thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.
Ahd now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee, Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
John 17:17
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
John 17:20-24
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world.

His heart is that we all be one with God in him. He says that he is glorified in us. He also speaks about the world believing that he came into the world through us. Now we can demonstrate the proof of the accomplishments of Jesus Christ by the manifestations of the spirit and by the love we show one another. Every Christian is a member of the same body. Let's love them.

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