What does it mean when we say someone is “spiritual?”

What is a spiritual person?

What is spirituality?

Comments or email welcome.

What happens to you when you read the scriptures or go through a Bible study? Many people take their time with the word in stride like it was any other function of their day. I do that sometimes. Some people avoid time in the word, not wanting to be confronted with some transformational truth they know they will be accountable to. I’ve done that more times than I want to admit.

I think one of the difficulties for many Christians when it comes to spending time in the scriptures is not that they don’t understand what they are reading, or don’t want to learn, it’s that the scriptures do more than unfold principles about Christian living. The scriptures unavoidably and unmistakably point us, in all things, to the person of Jesus Christ.

In my own spiritual journey I’m beginning a recognize a new development. As I go into the word or go through a study or book that emphasizes scripture strongly, I feel a compelling, absolute need to share it with others, write about it, teach it—specifically how it relates to the person of Jesus. I’ve felt such strong feelings before, but not approaching this level. Has that ever happened to you?

Recently I took some friends from the States on a church visit. We settled in for the service as the auditorium began filling up. We noticed how people entered the church with joy, even expectation. The worship was exuberant and thankful. When the pastor arose to speak I noticed he had his notes prepared and laid out before him. He spoke passionately and with conviction. He told Bible stories. I’d say that at least half of his message was stories from the Bible. It was impressive. I can’t think of a sermon I’ve ever heard in the States that had so many stories. But there was one thing missing.

The Bible.

The pastor, obviously familiar with the scriptures, did not bring the Bible to the pulpit. He told stories from the Bible, but only abbreviated or summarized in his own words. There was no reading from the scripture, almost no referencing to the scripture itself, and no leading the congregants through the text of the living word of God. It was heartbreaking for me to watch because nearly half of the people I observed in the congregation were furiously scribbling notes of everything the pastor said. The hunger for spiritual truth in the room was prolific! I’ve never before seen so many people hanging so tightly onto every word out of a preacher’s mouth. Imagine the level of transformation that could come if the Bible wasn’t missing.

In thinking about this recent experience I was reminded of a passage from the book, God is the Gospel, by John Piper. In it Piper asks:

“The critical question for our generation—and for every generation is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there?”

He then provides what should be the answer for us:

“Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. If we don’t want God above all things we have not been converted by the gospel.”

This is not to say that anyone who does not have Christ as his or her supreme affection, at this moment, will not go to heaven. Rather, the transformation wrought by the Gospel through our spiritual growth should have the affect of making Christ our supreme affection. And can we be on such a path if the scriptures do not become to us as breath and blood?

Too often, way too often, the scripture has been missing from my life. I remember it, remind myself of its commands and stories and attempt to live by its precepts. But that’s not the same as giving myself over to the living word of God. Because when I open the pages and consume what is before me it is incredibly different than the occasional mental reminder. It is much deeper than that. It becomes absolutely compelling and the desire to let it transform me and come out of me becomes overwhelming.

It’s like the admonition of James 1:22, “Prove yourselves to be doers of the word.” That little Greek word for “doers,” is powerful. In virtually all other Greek literature of the period it was used to mean, “maker” or “producer,” as in someone who produces a stage play, or someone who creates something with inborn talent. Let that sink in. “Prove yourselves to be makers and producers of the word.” That only happens when the word of God populates our being so fully we cannot help but naturally and normally live lives with the intention of being the living, walking embodiment of what that word says.

For Christ to become our supreme affection we must have “Christ formed in [us]” (Galatians 4:19). That happens when we give God’s word primacy in our lives, because, “The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edge sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

We had a great time yesterday morning at the staff photo shoot. We usually do our annual shoot in December, but I was in the States and the staff didn’t want to do the pictures without me. Very thoughtful. (Click the image for the Flickr version.)

Of course we have to have a little goofiness with pictures each year, and yesterday was no different as you can see by Bayaraa’s approach to dealing with upper management.

As for other activity…today I’m picking up vistiors from Calvary Chapel of Albuquerque. One of them is my new friend, Servey, who will be moving to Mongolia to start a Calvary Chapel movement. He’ll be here learning about Mongolia life, visiting with Mongolian believers, and getting the lay of the land before moving his family here.

I was part of Calvary ABQ for four years when I lived in New Mexico during my KLYT days. Since last year we’ve been airing The Connection with Skip Heitzig. The program is very well received and the Calvary style of strong expositional teaching seems to work here, which is good, because expositional teaching is a bit of a rarity in Mongolia.

After the visit we all head back to the States together. They head home and I head to Board meetings and time with my doctor before returning home to Mongolia in March.

Here’s an interesting excerpt from an article pulled from LiveScience.com on the effects of religion on children, and by intimation, the home (all emphasis mine).

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Kids with religious parents are better behaved and adjusted than other children, according to a new study that is the first to look at the effects of religion on young child development.The conflict that arises when parents regularly argue over their faith at home, however, has the opposite effect.

John Bartkowski, a Mississippi State University sociologist and his colleagues asked the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 kids, most of them first-graders, to rate how much self control they believed the kids had, how often they exhibited poor or unhappy behavior and how well they respected and worked with their peers.

The researchers compared these scores to how frequently the children’s parents said they attended worship services, talked about religion with their child and argued abut religion in the home.

The kids whose parents regularly attended religious services—especially when both parents did so frequently—and talked with their kids about religion were rated by both parents and teachers as having better self-control, social skills and approaches to learning than kids with non-religious parents.

But when parents argued frequently about religion, the children were more likely to have problems. “Religion can hurt if faith is a source of conflict or tension in the family,” Bartkowski noted.

Why so good?

Bartkowski thinks religion can be good for kids for three reasons. First, religious networks provide social support to parents, he said, and this can improve their parenting skills. Children who are brought into such networks and hear parental messages reinforced by other adults may also “take more to heart the messages that they get in the home,” he said.

Secondly, the types of values and norms that circulate in religious congregations tend to be self-sacrificing and pro-family, Bartkowski told LiveScience. These “could be very, very important in shaping how parents relate to their kids, and then how children develop in response,” he said.

Finally, religious organizations imbue parenting with sacred meaning and significance, he said.

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What I find most interesting in the article is this statement: “The kids whose parents regularly attended religious services—especially when both parents did so frequently—and talked with their kids about religion were rated by both parents and teachers as having better self-control, social skills and approaches to learning than kids with non-religious parents.”

Following the command to “Love the your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might,” comes this command in Deuteronomy 6:7, “You shall teach them (God’s commands) diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” In fact the whole picture in Deuteronomy 6 is one where expressing the love of and for God and his Word is paramount in every aspect of life. Look at the whole chapter carefully and you will find elements of expressing love for God to him directly, within the home (and especially to children), in the neighborhood, and workplace/community. Even expressing love for God through heritage and history is presented in the latter part of the chapter. When God’s love permeates every area of our lives, our lives are transformed.

Reinforcing at home the messages that kids hear outside the home is critical to understanding the mess that arisen in much of Western culture. When kids are bombarded with negative, sexual, criminal, and immoral messages through media and popular entertainment, when the values in 6-8 hours of daily schooling are “value-neutral” or worse, then what is to be expected when the parents of those same children leave their kids to their own devices to “find their own way” rather then intentionally instructing and encouraging them in a love for God and his Word?

Is it any wonder that when a love for God is absent, and the expression of God’s love is absent from the most important areas of life, that complications arise? This is not to say that people who know Christ don’t have problems – indeed they do. But a strong foundation in God’s love, expressed through and for Jesus Christ, is a strong foundation that remains even when the rafters sometimes shake loose.

For several weeks I’ve been thinking through the issue of Christian unity. In Mongolian culture the idea of unity is very important. In fact it may be the single most important value. I see this at virtually all levels, from politics to general society, and even in the Christian church. Most analysts consider that for a society to be healthy it must be unified around a set of principles or a history that defines what that unity looks like. Most importantly, unity is seen as agreement on important issues – especially controversial ones.

However, the idea of Christian unity as presented in the Bible is different from the secular unity that is often promoted in culture and politics. This is true not just in Mongolia but also worldwide. Most secular unity is achieved by reaching agreement on common ideas. Those who are not in agreement on those ideas not unified, or perhaps even viewed as divisive. Examples include business partnerships or political platforms. For some nations, such as those of the Islamic world, a common religious heritage is the driving force of perceived unity. For many in Mongolia, especially during this year’s 800th anniversary of the Great Mongolian State, unity often revolves around a history – Chinggis Khan, and the unity of the Mongolian tribes into one nation. These are all examples of a secular-focused unity.

The unity that the Bible prescribes for Christians is very different. It is a unity that transcends ideas and opinions in pursuit of something far greater. The idea of unity in Christ, as presented in the Bible has very little to do with a common set of ideas, and almost nothing to do with agreement on practical or controversial issues. Rather, biblical unity always centers on behavior. Psalm 133:1 declares, “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.” Conspicuously absent from Psalm 133 is any reference to philosophical agreement. In fact, it is absent on purpose.

The Bible provides the only authoritative model of unity for Christians. While many passages touch on the subject, it is best modeled in Ephesians 4:2-3 when the Apostle Paul says, “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forgiveness to one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” It is no coincidence that the idea of unity is tied to the Holy Spirit and issues of behavior. In fact, in almost every New Testament passage a Christian’s behavior and the Holy Spirit are linked when the idea of unity is discussed. And there is another subject not far behind: Truth.

Continuing on his theme of unity, Paul later says in Ephesians 4:13-15, “…until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the Head, even Christ.”

I’ve emphasized the words in the above passages because of the focus on truth. In fact biblical unity always looks like this: TRUTH + LOVE = UNITY. Where else does the Scripture provide this model? One book earlier in Galatians 5:22-26 Paul ties the “Fruit of the Spirit” (moral behaviors) with a life empowered by the Holy Spirit. But earlier in the chapter as he prepares to touch the topic Paul rebukes the Galatians for abandoning the purity of the Gospel message in Galatians 5:7 by saying, “You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?” What “truth” is Paul referring to? He reveals it in Galatians 5:1; “It was for freedom that Christ set you free.”

Paul also makes these connections in his famous love chapter in I Corinthians 13 when in verse 6 he notes that love “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.” The entire chapter is part of a much larger context from chapters 12 through 14 about how the Holy Spirit expresses Himself through the life of the believer and the church at large. Paul’s focus in these chapters in spiritual unity among people of different motivations, gifts, and talents, based upon the simplicity of Christ’s identity and expressions of love.

The model presented in Colossians 3 is the same, with a much heavier emphasis on personal behavior along with Paul’s note that in Christ there is “no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). The implication – and application – for our modern times is that it doesn’t matter if you are Mongolian, or American, or Chinese, or Russian, Korean, or any other nationality. In Christ such temporary distinctions are to be washed away in favor of a much higher citizenship in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus Himself also tied together this notion that TRUTH + LOVE = UNITY. In John 16:13-14 Jesus revealed, “When He, the Spirit of Truth comes He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever he hears He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.” With this important background on the Holy Spirit’s role in revealing truth, Jesus then prays for unity and truth in John 17:11, asking God, “Holy Father keep them in your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are,” then in verse 17, “Sanctify them in truth, your word is truth.”

At this point the real question becomes, “What is truth?” Pilate asked the same question just before Jesus’ trial, not understanding that the truth was standing before Him. That truth refers to the fact that we are all sinners equally reprobate before a Holy God. Just before speaking of unity and truth Jesus said in John 16:8-9, “And He, when He comes (the Holy Spirit), will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment, concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me.” Even the passages in Galatians 5, Colossians 3, and I Corinthians demonstrate that we are sinners in need of unity with Christ that comes first by recognizing our sin and embracing Jesus as the only solution to our sin.

So while the secular model of unity is based upon heritage, or philosophy, political principles, or some set of ideas, the biblical model is different – so different as to be foreign to the way the world works. Biblical unity is not a unity of ideas, but a unity of behavior based upon the identity and work of Jesus Christ. Even Paul’s example of marriage in Ephesians 5 and 6 reveals this as each person is different, and can have different motivations and even be in disagreement, but their behavior toward one another unifies them as a family.

Christians can have many different ideas and disagree on a wide range of issues. We always have and we always will. Jesus didn’t say people would know we are His disciples because we agree, rather because of our love for one another. Disagreements don’t need to be wiped away to unify the church – only the sinful behavior that elevates personal opinion to the status of godly conviction and thus dishonors the brother or sister for whom Christ died.

TRUTH + LOVE = UNITY.

While beginning a study on the biblical definitions of love, I ran across an interesting list by Professor Wayne Grudem from his book, Systematic Theology, on the “Signs of a More-Pure Church.” In this highly esteemed volume, Professor Grudem defines a pure church as, “[The] degree of freedom from wrong doctrine and conduct, and its degree of conformity to God’s revealed will for the church” (Chapter 45, page 873). Two things about this definition and Grudem’s list of church attributes caught my attention.

First, Grudem places doctrine and behavior hand-in-hand. Improper doctrine does not naturally or organically work itself out to become proper biblical behavior in a Christian’s life. Jesus remarked about this is Matthew 7:17-20 when He said:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits” (ESV).

Second, Grudem’s list (presented below) can be used to not only help determine if a particular church is near biblical standards, but also if individual believers are near those standards as well. Before I comment on this it behooves me to point out that not all Christians are mature (no matter how old they are or what their position is – that goes for pastors and missionaries too). Christians are all over the scale when it comes to spiritual understanding, insight, biblical knowledge, practical application, and the Fruit of the Spirit. However, a Christian as well as a church body should be growing toward the attributes listed below.

I’m going to take a liberty and rename this list from Grudem’s “Signs of a More-Pure Church” to:

Attributes of a Spiritually Mature Church

1. Biblical Doctrine (or right preaching of the Word)
2. Proper use of the sacraments (or ordinances)
3. Right use of church discipline
4. Genuine worship
5. Effective prayer
6. Effective witness
7. Effective fellowship
8. Biblical church government
9. Spiritual power in ministry
10. Personal holiness of life among members
11. Care for the poor
12. Love for Christ

That’s a whopper of a list and its certainly true that not many churches that I am aware of are at the top of their game when it comes to meeting all of these standards. Every church has a mixture of believers who are following Christ, believers who struggle with sin or live defiantly in sin, people who think they are believers or are pretending to be believers, and unbelievers. All of these affect what a church body looks like from the outside in. But a genuine church that is seeking to know God and live obediently to Christ is a church that is pursuing these attributes.

I won’t spend an entire article on each attribute, that’s something you can do on your own. However, I want to point out what Grudem mentions is the one thing that can corrupt these attributes and lead to the spiritual downfall of a church: A focus on the ideas and concerns of man rather than the ideas and concerns of God. This comes (in part) when we define our Christianity and service to God first by our culture or national heritage rather than approaching the Bible for what it instructs regardless of, or transcendent of what our culture or heritage teaches us. God is transcendent of culture and above it. Sometimes He calls believers to embrace certain cultures and norms, and other times he calls us to transform culture in keeping with His attributes of holiness. Grudem wisely asserts:

“When a church begins to stray from faithfulness to Christ, this will be evident not only in the shift to impure doctrine but also in the daily life of the church: its activities, its preaching, its counseling, and even casual conversations among members will tend to become more and more man-centered and less and less God-centered…The conversation and activities of the church will have very little genuine spiritual content [prayer, scripture, forgiveness of sin, trusting Christ]. Where there are admonitions to moral reforms, these will often be viewed as human deficiencies that people can correct by their own discipline and effort, and perhaps encouragement from others, but these moral aspects of life will not primarily be viewed as sin against a Holy God, sin which can only be overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit working within” (emphasis mine).

Grudem then goes on to drop this nuclear bomb: “When such humanistic emphases become dominant in a church…it is moving in the direction of becoming a false church” (Chapter 45, page 876).

Boom.

As Christians, even as corporate church bodies, we can be mistaken in our doctrine, exhibit a few bad behaviors from time-to-time, screw up church discipline and our witness. We can get all of the attributes wrong. We are human, sinful, prone to going our own way rather than God’s. But when we keep our attention upon Christ and obedience to the scriptures, even if we get it wrong we will still be in a process of maturing to become like Him. But when our focus is on ourselves, our culture, our ideas, we will always go astray. Always.

We may take as an example the lives of kings Saul and David. If you read carefully about Saul’s life you discover that he really wasn’t that bad a guy, in fact, he was a pretty good guy. He kept his zipper shut (unlike David), he raised his kids to be loyal and trustworthy (unlike David), he didn’t use his political power to amass wealth to himself (unlike David), he wasn’t known for cruelty to his friends or enemies (unlike David), he was not given to bouts of misjudgment that resulted in injustice (unlike David). Yet God said of Saul, “You have rejected the Word of the Lord” (I Samuel 15:23), and called David a “Man after my own heart” (I Samuel 16:7, 13:14). Of course it is true that Saul had many serious faults, however, considering the violence, immorality, and chaos of David’s life, what was the difference that set him apart as a man of God instead of Saul who seemed to have so many of the right behaviors? A hint is found in Saul’s confession in I Samuel 15:24:

“I feared the people and listened to their voice.”

Saul was a people pleaser instead of having a life focused on pleasing God. For all of the good that Saul did to establish his nation (read: church), his primary attention was his service to his people to benefit his people rather than his service to God, which would have brought greater benefit.

Look carefully at the lives of Saul and David and you will see one attribute of David too often missing from Saul – repentance. David was always screwing up – big time – so his life reads like a movement from one moment of repentance to another, signifying that his focus was always on his Lord. As a result God used David to far outclass the work and reputation of Saul. He built a mature nation, but under Saul the spiritual life of Israel was withering away until even Saul himself consulted a spiritist medium to learn his fate – a fate that God had declared to him long ago.

When our focus is on obedience to Christ through the scriptures, we can rest in the understanding that though we make mistakes and sin, God can redeem each moment for His glory and purposes. Then we will know that we are growing into the attributes of maturity, whether as an individual believer, or a community of believers. When our faces are bowed in repentance, God always gives us a look from Heaven.

Since we are in a process of re-ordering things at Eagle TV, I thought this would be a good time to do the same with this blog, beginning with a new weekly feature: Friday Fundamentals. Each Friday I will post a new Bible study or commenterry on a different biblical issue that is fundamental to our expression of Christianity. My first topic, especially appropriate in Mongolia with its emphasis on the value of unity, is The Body of Christ.

Read I Corinthians 12:1,4,11-30 then click the back button to return here.

The Bible’s two primary dissertations on the Body of Christ (the Church) are found in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12. The Apostle Paul, though writing to different audiences, penned both passages in the same year – 56 or 57 A.D. Thus they have some ideas in common, especially on the theme of the Body of Christ:

• The body has many members (Romans 12:4, I Cor. 12:14)
• Each member has its own function (Romans 12:4,6-8, I Cor. 12:4-7
• Each member belongs to the other (Romans12:5, I Cor. 12:14-21
• Each function of the members directly benefits the whole body and its individual members (Romans 12:6-8, I Cor. 12:7-11)
• Both passages on the body are followed by a dissertation about love (Romans 12:9-21, I Cor. 12:31-13:1-13)

Paul’s use of the human body as an illustration of the nature of the church is not accidental. Elsewhere Paul says very clearly to his readers that Jesus Christ “is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). Paul, a Jew, was writing to Romans and Corinthian Greeks. Corinth, in fact, was made up of nearly half a million people from all over the empire, from diverse cultures. They were people with different histories and backgrounds, and moral values, though still of the same political empire. Though Paul was a foreigner to both peoples (Romans and Greeks), and from a despised race (Jews), he wrote to both with the same authority as an Apostle of Christ, his authority signifying that his words were the standard by which the churches from both cultures must operate. Paul established one of the churches himself (Corinth) in 51 A.D., but had not been to Rome. In spite of this he writes with the same binding authority to both – authority that binds us even today.

Paul’s emphasis on the members of the body belonging to one another is prefaced first with the necessity of personal humility. Paul writes in Romans 12:3, “For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think…” then he proceeds to teach about equal membership in the body of Christ. Equal membership in the body of Christ implies equal rights in that same body.

In I Corinthians 11:23-26 Paul prefaces his dissertation on the body by giving an example of humility during the Last Supper, as Christ prepared to die for mere men. Paul himself demonstrated his own humility by referring to his apostleship and the authority under which he wrote as “the grace given to me” (Romans 12:3). He again wrapped the topic in humility in Romans 12:16 when he says, “Do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation.”

With such a preface Paul states to his foreign brothers in Christ that their membership in Christ’s body is not determined by them individually or collectively, rather, they are “all members of one another” (Romans 12:5), that we were all baptized by the same Holy Spirit into the same body, with Paul intentionally stating that equal membership was given to Jews and Greeks (I Corinthians 12:13). Paul’s meaning is plain; there is no such thing as a national church, or race church. It does not matter if the believer or group of believes is Mongolian, or American, or Korean, or even – gasp – Chinese! All are equal members of Christ, receiving the same salvation, the same grace, and the same Spirit, by the same means. Thus all deserve the same love and respect. Paul states as much by saying, “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love, give preference to one another in honor” (Romans 12:10). Paul even goes so far as to reprimand his readers when he writes of the Christian who says of his brother, “I have no need of you” (I Corinthians 12:21). Look at his context:

”The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you;’ or again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’”

Did you catch the most important word in that passage?

”The head.”

Paul teaches that even Christ – the head of the church – considers even the lowliest regarded member of the body – the feet – as if He needs them equally. In fact, Paul calls such members, “Indispensable” (I Corinthians 12:22). What a strong statement! The God who created the universe, who is self-existent and needs nothing to sustain himself, says that He, the head, “needs” us. What a remarkable picture of God’s grace. If he needs us, then how much more do we need one another? Desperately!

Sadly, there are always some in the body of Christ who regard other members as unnecessary or undesirable. It is a sad and all too often frequent thing. We usually do this over areas of disagreement, theology, personal or worship expression, and so on. And while it’s important not to associate ourselves with false religion, a false teacher, or false prophet (Deuteronomy 18:12-14, 20), Paul makes no distinction between members of the body of different ideas, motivations, or functions. Paul says we have “gifts that differ according to the grace given to us” (Romans 12:6). Intimating of the offenses and wrongs often done by members of the body to one another, Paul says, “Never pay back evil for evil…Never take your own revenge…Do not be overcome with evil” (Romans 12:17-21).

Imagine the sad state of affairs for a church if a member or members of the body of Christ, against Paul’s admonitions in I Corinthians 12:21, refused to have anything to do with a fellow and equal brother over such minor things as personal disagreements or personality conflicts. Certainly such things are “normal,” even in the Christian church! But God has not called the church and its members to be “normal.” He has called us to live supernatural lives of forgiveness, grace, and peace.

As a conservative non-charismatic I cannot say that I don’t need charismatics. The beauty of Paul’s words is that I need charismatics, and they need non-charismatics equally, and we both need the head, who is Christ, who himself declares that he needs us! The Mongolian believer or church cannot say he/they do not need the “foreigner” – especially when his faith was birthed from a foreign source! Paul did this for the Corinthian church. Nor could the Romans declare they did not need him though they had never met (Romans 1:11-13), as Paul’s writings set the tone for what the church in Rome would eventually become. Nor can the foreigner say he is separate from, or does not need the Mongolian church. The foreign believer needs the Mongolian believer in no less or greater way than the Mongolian needs him. In Christ he is not a foreigner. In Christ he is not a Mongolian. There is no Mongolian church! There is no American, British, Korean, or even – gasp! – Chinese church. As Paul wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

Paul’s emphasis on the equal membership and rights within the body of Christ concludes with his strong admonition to love in Romans 12:9-16 and I Corinthians 13. His meaning is clear for all. Those who shun their brothers without just cause are not following Christ’s command to love. It is no coincidence that immediately after detailing the various roles of the members of the body that Paul says in the same breath, “Let love be without hypocrisy” (Romans 12:9). Even the Apostle John noted something similar when he said, “We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (I John 3:14-15).

The roles we play as members of the body of Christ are more than mere functions. God has designed that our gifts be expressions of His love. For if the roles we have within the body of Christ are gifts from God, empowered in us by His Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 12:4), then how much more that which Paul calls “a more excellent way” (I Corinthians 12:31) – love! Even Paul notes that our roles as members of the body become meaningless unless exercised in love (I Corinthians 13:1-3, 8-9).

Sometimes we refer to person who acts out of sorts by saying that he doesn’t have his head on straight. In the church we always have our head (Christ) on straight – but we sometimes don’t accept the signals He sends to control our functions, we disobey – we have a spasm.

The world is filled with spastic Christians. Join me at looking into the mirror.

May you and I always be in regular and obedient communion with Christ, allowing Him to express Himself through our lives with His very own love. As Bill Bright used to say, we must allow Christ to walk with our feet, work with our hands, think with our minds, and love with our hearts. Without true, Christ-like, Spirit-begotten love, we will not function properly, or meaningfully, and could find ourselves with the grievous attitude that we are the head and determiner of what the body is, and what it does, instead of ascribing that role to the only true head of the single church body, Jesus Christ.