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The Daily Word of Righteousness
The Church
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. (Matthew 16:18—NIV)
One of the great purposes of the past two thousand years of the Christian era has been the creating of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is the Church, the Wife of the Lamb, the very representation of Christ and God in Him to the world. It is our point of view that as yet we possess but a faint notion of what God means by the Church. The seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John may be the best description in the Scriptures of the Church of Christ.
Christ has sent the Church, His Body, into the world as the living revelation of the Person, the Word, the way, the Nature, the Substance, the eternal purpose of Christ. All that the Lord Jesus is He has placed forever in the Church so that the Church may be the perfect and complete manifestation of all Christ is and does.
What do the Christian ministries achieve as they serve the Lord? They build the Church, the Body of Christ.
One of the purposes—if not the purpose—of the past two thousand years of the Christian Era has been the creating of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is the Church, the Wife of the Lamb, the representation of Christ, and God in Him, to the world.
The Church, the Body of Christ, is not of the world, It consists of people who have been chosen out of the world to become part of Christ, to become the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:23).
As yet we possess but a faint understanding of what God means by the Church. The prayer of the Lord, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John, helps us grasp the extent to which the Church is separate from the world, having been chosen to be one with the Father through Christ and to be filled with the same Glory the Father has given to the Son.
We are as far from what Christ prayed in John, Chapter 17 as the dry bones of Ezekiel, Chapter 37 were from the "exceeding great army" of the Lord.
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 (John 17:21).
The "very dry" bones in the valley, among which Ezekiel passed (Ezekiel 37:2), were about as far removed from being an army as one could imagine. Yet when the Spirit of God moved on them they were recreated as human beings and filled with eternal life. There they stood, the army of God, ready to enter their inheritance.
As we pass among the churches of today and think of the Lord's prayer "that they all may be one," the question comes to us again: "Can these bones live?"
Only the Lord God of Heaven knows the destiny of the Church of Christ. The Spirit of God has proclaimed in the Word that the Church shall be perfect and unblemished, the holy city, the new Jerusalem. Therefore we look up to God in absolute faith and trust that the Christian Church eventually will be one Body of Christ. It will be one in the Father and the Son, radiant with the beauty of holiness.
To be continued.