"The Church, which
is His Body" is the vessel, the
‘embodiment’, of the Lord the Spirit, in which
and by which He is to express Himself. If the Church, as
we met it and moved amongst its members, accorded with
the Divine idea, we should know what the Lord was like.
Let us take this to heart: that our very existence as the
Church is in order that people may know what Christ is
like. Alas, we fail Him so much in this. It is often so
difficult to detect the real character of the Lord Jesus
in His people. But that is the very first meaning of the
Body of Christ.
But further — and
here we are on familiar ground — a physical body is
an organic whole. It is not something put together from
the outside. It is something that is marked by a oneness,
by reason of a life within; it is related and
inter-related in every part, dependent and
inter-dependent; every remotest part is affected by what
happens in any other part. That could be much enlarged
upon. But we have much more yet to learn as to the actual
spiritual application of this reality about the Church as
the Body of Christ. We need to be brought right into that
great ‘sympathetic system’ of the Body. And
that demands a real work of grace in us. There are many
ways in which that is expressed in the Word. We are to
"remember them that are in bonds, as bound with
them; them that are evil entreated, as being yourselves
also in the body" (Heb. 13:3); that is, we are to
get into their situations by the Spirit. It is an organic
whole. ‘If one member suffer, all the members suffer
with it’ (I Cor. 12:26). It is probable that we
suffer a good deal for things that we know nothing about.
There is suffering going on, and we are involved in it:
the Lord is seeking to involve us in the needs of others,
to bring us into their conflict.
But, whether or not we
apprehend this truth, whether or not we are alive to it
and understand it, it is God’s fact that it is so.
Believers in one place are dependent upon believers in
another place; they are affected. This is such a whole;
there is one sympathetic nerve-system running through the
whole body. If only you and I really became spiritually
more alive, the expression of the Body would be much more
perfect. Our deadness, our insensitiveness, our lack of
real spiritual aliveness, results in there being more
suffering, more loss, than there need be.
If only we could —
not mechanically, and not by information, but on the
principle of the Body — be moved into a universal
sympathy and co-operation with the people of God! Our
moving is so often mechanical; we have to read or hear
letters, somehow receive information, in order to be
stimulated to some measure of prayer. But I believe that,
altogether apart from those means, if we were really in
the Spirit, the Spirit would lay burdens for people on
our hearts. Do you not think that it is a matter that we
ought continually to bring before the Lord? ‘Lord,
there is someone praying to-day for something: is it
possible that I might be the answer to their
prayer? If so, show me, lead me, lay it on me.’ That
is spiritual relatedness, aliveness. The oneness of the
Body is a great vocation.
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