Putting the "Unity" in "Community"
In our worship services this morning, our communion thought was shared by Bob Bacon, former youth pastor and current campus ministry leader at Sojourn in Boston, MA. He read Colossians 2:18-19 (CEV):
It got me to thinking about the unity of Christ's body. If Christ is the only thing that holds the body together, using the joints and muscles of the Church, then what is happening when the body experiences disunity and dissension? Can we conversely speculate that disunity is when Christ is no longer holding the body together as it should be? Can we also infer that if the disunity is caused by individuals that those individuals are in some way disjoined from Christ, as He is the one that maintains the unity of His church?
This definitely puts a new spin of responsibility on each of us as members of the Church of Jesus Christ. If Christ holds the church together and gives it its strength, then when His church is disunited and weakened, it is highly possible that someone is not acting in the Spirit of God nor with the mind of Christ. Moreover, it is highly probably that when we are acting outside the will of God and the mind of Christ, that Satan has been given a foothold that we should not have given him.
But that is the negative side of it. The positive side of it is the side where believers grow stronger and develop Spiritually and grow closer to Christ through the unity they have one with another. A great example of this kind of unity is the relationship between Pastor Francis Chan and the elders from his former church. (Watch a video of Francis Chan talking about this by clicking here.) Their example and the relationship that they share lasted beyond Chan's employment at the church and is a beautiful example of what God intended the unity of the body to be like.
May God bless our reading of His word and open our eyes to His truths above all else.
18 Don’t be cheated by people who make a show of acting humble and who worship angels. They brag about seeing visions. But it is all nonsense, because their minds are filled with selfish desires. 19 They are no longer part of Christ, who is the head of the whole body. Christ gives the body its strength, and he uses its joints and muscles to hold it together, as it grows by the power of God.
It got me to thinking about the unity of Christ's body. If Christ is the only thing that holds the body together, using the joints and muscles of the Church, then what is happening when the body experiences disunity and dissension? Can we conversely speculate that disunity is when Christ is no longer holding the body together as it should be? Can we also infer that if the disunity is caused by individuals that those individuals are in some way disjoined from Christ, as He is the one that maintains the unity of His church?
This definitely puts a new spin of responsibility on each of us as members of the Church of Jesus Christ. If Christ holds the church together and gives it its strength, then when His church is disunited and weakened, it is highly possible that someone is not acting in the Spirit of God nor with the mind of Christ. Moreover, it is highly probably that when we are acting outside the will of God and the mind of Christ, that Satan has been given a foothold that we should not have given him.
But that is the negative side of it. The positive side of it is the side where believers grow stronger and develop Spiritually and grow closer to Christ through the unity they have one with another. A great example of this kind of unity is the relationship between Pastor Francis Chan and the elders from his former church. (Watch a video of Francis Chan talking about this by clicking here.) Their example and the relationship that they share lasted beyond Chan's employment at the church and is a beautiful example of what God intended the unity of the body to be like.
May God bless our reading of His word and open our eyes to His truths above all else.
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