How to Function in the Body
Selected Scriptures
Our Father, we really do thank You today for this morning and this opportunity of another day to use for Your glory, to be fruitful in that You might be praised. We thank You for those who have come this morning, anticipating further exposure to truth, a further understanding of the basics of the Christian experience and we pray, Father, that You'll reward them with a joyous time, that You'll make them happy and blessed because they've been here that they might go out and bear fruit. We thank You for calling us together into the body of Christ to minister to one another, to serve You and to reach the world with the news that has so changed our lives. May our study this morning help us to better be able to do that. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.
Okay, our session number one, we're going to talk about how to function in the body of Christ. All right, we're talking about how to function in the body, this is our session number three. If you want to pull that sheet out and look along with it. How to function in the body of Christ.
Now there's a very important verse in the Bible that would be the place to start and that would be 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 13. "For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body." The moment you received Jesus Christ as Savior, you were placed into the body of Christ. Whether we be Jews or Greeks, bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. When you became a Christian, you were placed...and that's what the baptizing of the Holy Spirit means, you were baptized or placed in to the body of Christ. It's like baptism means dipping somebody under, or putting somebody into. You were put into the body of Christ. You became a member of the body of Christ. That's synonymous with the concept of the church. You became a member of the church of Christ. You may not join a local church yet, you may not have an official membership in a local church, but the moment you were saved you became a member of the church of Christ's body. And that's one of the terms used for the church.
The Bible uses several terms for the church. It calls us a flock, Christ is the Shepherd. It calls us branches and He is the vine. It calls us subjects of a Kingdom and He is the King. It calls us children in a family and He is the Father. There are many metaphors for the church but one of them, and the very unique one, is the concept of the body, that we are members of the body of Christ.
Now when we came into the family we came into that body. And 1 Corinthians 12:14 says, "The body is not one member but many." So we're all part of the body of Christ. Now this occurs at your salvation. So point number one is to understand your salvation. It's very important that we understand what took place when we were saved.
Maybe a simple way to approach this would be to have you turn to Ephesians and look with me at chapter 2. Chapter 2 verse 11 says, "Wherefore remember that you in time past were heathen in the flesh," now that's specifically directed to the Christians who were Gentile Christians. Verse 12 says, "That at that time you were without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise having no hope and without God in the world." Now that is a picture of an unbeliever...without Christ, without God, without hope, without promise, empty.
But, verse 13, "Now in Christ Jesus ye who once were far off are made near by the blood of Christ." You once were far off from God, without God, without Christ, without hope, without promise, but in Christ you have been made near. "For He is our peace who has made both one and broken down the middle wall of partition between us." It's as if you and God were rebels and Christ took the hand of God and your hand and brought them together. And often, you know, someone who is mutually loved by two people can succeed in doing that. Sometimes you have a mother and a father who become estranged and a child who is loved by both of them can be the catalyst to bring them back together.
There's a great story that came out of World War II, the French and the Germans were fighting. The Germans occupied a farmhouse and the French were trying to take the farmhouse and they were shooting across a field at each other. And all of a sudden one of the soldiers screamed out, "Hold your fire," because there was a little baby crawling across the field. Somehow it had gotten out of the farmhouse. And, of course, the Germans saw the little baby and had the same response. And the interesting result of the story was that all the firing ceased and some newspaper reporter when he wrote down the interesting article in relation to that incident said that a babe had brought peace. In a real sense, that's precisely what happened with Jesus Christ. He came into the world to bring peace between those who were enemies, God and man. And the reason we are enemies with God is because He is holy and we are sinful. And that estranges us. And Christ comes and takes the two parties and brings them together. He is our peace. And the metaphor here is it's like breaking down a wall that was between us. And it's not just talking about us and God but between Jew and Gentile.
Now further on, it says in verse 16, "He desires to reconcile both Jew and Gentile unto God in one body by the cross." So Jew and Gentile are brought together and then both of them in the church are brought together with God. And the cross accomplishes this. The cross is the thing, the act which took away sin and sin was the wall, sin was the barrier between us and God. And so when the cross is accomplished and we put our faith in Christ, the barrier is removed, we are brought to God in one body. And so the church is all one, whether you're a Baptist, a Presbyterian, Episcopal, a whatever denomination you might be, if you love the Lord Jesus Christ and you've been born again, you are one in the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 6:17 it says, "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," so all those who are joined to Christ are one in Christ.
Now over in chapter 4 of Ephesians verse 17 tells a little bit about our life before we were Christians, "This I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you henceforth walked not as other Gentiles walked." How do other Gentiles walk? How do unsaved people act? "In the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart. They are past feeling, in other words, their consciences no longer really control them, they have seared their conscience, they've disobeyed it so long it has little effect." So that's the picture of an unsaved person. He walks like the heathen in the vanity of his mind, he's guided by his own thoughts, his understanding is darkened, he can't really know the truth, he is alienated from the life of God, spiritually dead. His heart is blind, he has no feeling toward God, etc. He gives himself over to evil things, to wild kind of living, uncleanness, greediness and all that.
"But you have not so learned Christ." When you receive Christ a whole new life begins. And all of that ceases to exist in the newness of life in Christ. So there's a tremendous transformation.
One other passage in Ephesians 2, to look at it, chapter 2 verse 1. Ephesians 2:1 says, "And you hath He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sin." Before you were a Christian you were dead, not physically dead but spiritually dead. And when we talk about spiritual death we mean an inability to respond to God.
I remember one day when I was sitting over in my office a little boy came running in and said, "Please come down the street, my mother needs help, our baby sister just died." And down here on Roscoe Boulevard about a half a dozen houses or so I hurried down the street and went in and there was a little baby, beautiful little baby, I guess maybe about four months old, lying on the bed just blue as it could be, stone‑cold dead. And the mother was just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. And there was no explanation as far as she knew as to how the baby died and she would kiss the baby and hold the baby and nothing she could do would make that baby live because physical death is an inability to respond. And it served to me as a good illustration because probably the strongest of all affections in human terms would be the affection of a mother for a child. That's the most basic kind of affection, the strongest kind of tie, that mother tied to that very life that came out of her own womb. But all the love she had and all of that energy that she was giving to that little child was totally unreceived because death is an inability to respond. It doesn't matter what the stimulus is, it can't respond.
Spiritual death is the same thing. It is to be unable to respond to God. It is to have God doing things and God moving and totally be indifferent, unresponsive to what God is doing, that's spiritual death, the inability to respond to God. And that's precisely what Paul is saying. Before you were a Christian you were dead in trespasses and sins. Your life was characterized by the flesh, by the desires of the flesh, the desires of the mind, verse 3 says, you walked according to the course of the world. Whatever the world said you did. You followed the prince of the power of the air, Satan, and you were totally tuned out to God, as if you were physically dead and couldn't feel the stimulus of a physical factor, so spiritually dead you can't feel the stimulus of a spiritual reality.
That all changed. Ephesians chapter 2 says and verse 4, "But God who is rich in mercy for His great love with which He loved us," and, of course, the whole change was begun with God, it was His love and His mercy, "even when we were dead in sins has...what?...made us alive." What's the one thing a dead man needs most? Life. And that's precisely what God gives. And what does he mean by life? It simply means that he turned on your spiritual sensitivities. And you became aware of God. You were able to sense God. You now walk in the presence of God. The Scripture starts to mean something to you. Prayer means something to you. A whole new dimension opens up of existence and that's because you became alive spiritually. That is you opened up to be able to sense God.
So, your salvation then is an awakening into the realm of the presence of God. When you were saved you became alive. Now part of that new life includes you being incorporated in the body of Christ, a very important concept. So your salvation then was a great transformation. You belonged to the world, you were insensitive to God, all of a sudden by the transformation of salvation you have been placed in the body of Christ, you've been saved from deadness unto life. And you can sense God, you can feel God, you know God, you walk in eternal life. And incidentally, eternal life isn't a length of time, eternal life is a kind of living. And that is the new life that comes in Christ. So you understand your salvation and what it did.
Now secondly I want you to look a little bit at this idea of understanding your position. Now that you are in the body of Christ, now that you are Christian, what does that mean? Now listen to me. What it means is that you are in Christ in the truest sense of the word. Your position to begin with, (a) is you are in Christ. Now I mean that in the most realistic sense. When God looks at you He sees you, as it were, incorporated in Christ. You don't even have any identity apart from Christ. Now you're like an embryo, you're like a fetus in a womb, you're like a child not yet born. When you look at the mother the child is without personality, the child has no existence of its own, it is totally a part of the mother. Well in the spiritual sense when God looks at you He sees you only in Christ. You don't even exist apart from Christ. Everything about you is in Christ. And that's why God can input righteousness to you because He sees you in Christ. That's why God can forgive your sin because He sees you in Christ. That's why Romans 8 says you are a joint‑heir because everything that comes to Christ comes to you because you are in Christ. So when you became a Christian you were made to be identified uniquely in the person of Jesus Christ. That's a tremendous concept.
In 2 Timothy 1:9 it says, "Who has saved us, God who has saved us, called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ." God even had you in Christ before the world began. He saw you that way even then, now manifest since Christ has come.
In Ephesians chapter 1, I think it's verse 6, it says this, "God has predestinated us," verse 5, "to the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ who Himself according to the good pleasure of His will to the praise of the glory of His grace...listen...through which He has made us accepted." How? How has God made us accepted? "In the beloved one." The only way God can accept you is in Christ. And when you become a Christian and you receive Christ, you literally become in Christ. You literally move into Him, as it were. And His personality shelters you so that God sees you in Christ.
Ephesians 1:17 is really a prayer that you would understand this. He says, "I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of glory may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, that the eyes of your understanding would be enlightened, that you would know what is the hope of His calling and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and set Him on His own right hand in the heavenly places." Now what he is saying there is I pray that you will understand what it means to be in Christ. It is to inherit all that is His, of the riches and the glory. It is to inherit all of His, verse 19, of the power, the mighty power which raised Him from the dead. Every possession of Christ and every empowering of Christ becomes ours because we're in Christ. It's a tremendous concept.
And, of course, this is why we say a believer, for one reason, cannot lose his salvation. Because that would be to have Christ lose His salvation and He's God, you're in Christ. There is security there, you see. Your identification is in Him.
In Ecclesiastes there is an interesting verse, there's a lot of interesting ones, but one for our thoughts. Ecclesiastes 3:14, I just point this out because I want you to understand how complete you are in Christ, "I know that whatsoever God does, it shall be forever." Now that's a good principle. If God does anything it's a forever thing. "Nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it. And God doeth it that men should fear before Him." Now when God does something there is nothing that can be added to it and there is nothing that could be taken away from it. That's true of anything. And it's even true of your salvation. If God saved you, that settles it. It's total, it's complete, you're not half‑saved, three‑quarters saved or saved to a point and you've got to add a few little items along the way. If you're saved, God did it, you can't add anything to it, you can't take anything away from it. You became a total Christian the moment you believed.
You know, when a baby is born into the world it isn't born like a polliwog, it doesn't come in and all of a sudden at three months sprouts a right arm and then all of a sudden at six months a leg pops out and pretty soon you've got a little toad‑type thing. No. Babies come into the world from the time they're the tiniest little thing they have all the parts, right? They have all the parts, the parts just get bigger. That's all. When you become a Christian you're not a spiritual polliwog with just a squiggly little tail and as you mature you pop out the new parts, you're a total Christian. The only question is the process of growing, do you see what I mean? It's only a process of developing what you already are because you are complete in Him. Colossians 2:10 says, "For you are complete in Him." Second Peter 1:3 says, "You have all things pertaining to life and godliness," you lack absolutely nothing, there are no ingredients you don't have, there is nothing missing, you are a totally perfectly formed baby in Christ. Now you need to grow and you need to mature those parts to bring them to a place where they can really operate for maximum effect but no parts are missing. You are totally complete. That's a very very important concept.
Now because we are in Christ God sees us then in fulfillment of all of His requirements. Christ came and fulfilled the whole law. Since you're in Christ, in the eyes of God you also fulfill the whole law.
Now to give you an idea of how this works, there is a white sheet that I handed you and it's called "Practicing your position." And I want to show you something that's just very important about it and then you can take it and study it. This also is in the book, "The Church, the Body of Christ." So if you have the book you'll have it there, too. You'll notice on the left side of the columns you see all of the things that you are in Christ. They're all there. You are spiritually alive to God, you're dead to sin, you're forgiven. How much forgiven are you? He's forgiven you all your trespasses. You're righteous, you're a child of God, you're God's possession, heirs of God, blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, you're heavenly citizens, you're servants of God. You have new life, you're free from the law, crucified to the world, you're a light to the world, victorious over Satan, you're cleansed, you're holy without blame, you're free, you're in Christ, you're secure in Christ, you're possessors of peace, you're one, you're in grace, you're in fellowship, you're joyful, you're Spirit indwelt and led. You're Spirit gifted, you're empowered for service and you have love. Now that's pretty exciting, isn't it? That's who you are. In the eyes of God that is your position.
Now the other column tells you how to live up to your position. That's your practice. Since you're spiritually alive to God, live the life. Since you're dead to sin, don't give sin any place.