The Body of Christ is a faith organisation. Everything we do as believers is a faith project. We can’t practically do life without faith.
Of course you can try to do life without faith, but living in doubt isn’t going to get the job done. Don’t get me wrong, we all have doubts at times, but it’s still true to say that those doubts are more likely to hinder our progress than enable it. We need to build faith so that the doubts subside.
So how do we move away from doubting? The answer is to stay in the Word and Spirit. Both. The Word depends on the Spirit and the Spirit on the Word. The Word confirms the Spirit and the Spirit the Word. If we try to live by the Word only, it can tend towards legalism. If we are in the Spirit alone we can veer off course.
There are many examples of both where people go off the rails because they are overly legalistic, or because they are spiritually devoid of the Word. If you deny the Word, you deny the Spirit and vice versa. As Paul puts it, “the letter kills but the Spirit gives life (2Cor.3:6).” The letter is life when it is spiritually defined. We need both in unison.
And it’s the Word through the Spirit that builds faith. ‘The just shall live by faith’ we are told (Rom.1:17). We are of the Body of faith.
In the Body
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many.
1 Corinthians 12:12-13
The Body of Christ is a unit. We are corporately and individually led by the Spirit. We are organised through the Word of God.
This takes place in a few ways. First, we need to be constantly reading, studying and applying the Word of God to our lives. Second we need to be in prayer, including prayer in the Spirit. When we pray in the Spirit we are in direct vocal and personal contact with the Spirit of Christ. When we are reading the Word we are allowing the Rhema, the Living Word, to permeate our lives.
We also need to engage with other believers, including those who are set apart to teach, preach and minister specifically to the Body. This ministry team is made up of pastors, teachers, evangelists, prophets and apostles. They train and equip us for the work of the ministry (Eph.4:11-12). This is God’s pattern for oversight, leadership and training.
Then there is the presbytery, the overseers and pastoral care team, the arrangement of local and community Church leadership that helps maintain a vibrant orderly communion of believers that is constantly welcoming to new souls as they come into faith and engage with the existing Body.
We need each other. We cannot do this without being linked in a positive and dynamic way that makes the Body of Christ an attractive proposition for those who are within and those who are without.
Cooperation
The Body is built on faith, hope and love. We need each other. We are joined together. Knit together. Interlaced. Interwoven. Always rubbing up against one another. You know that the basis of the word for ‘anointing’ is to smear or rub with oil, you could say, in this context, to rub up against in an influential and inspirational way.
The Holy Spirit is constantly rubbing up against us, leaving a deposit of His nature upon us, and so it is with each of us within the Body. We leave a residue of ourselves with others when we are connected through faith, hope and love.
Scripture calls it growing up ‘in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love (Eph.4:15-16).’ This way we build each other up. We encourage one another. We let love rub off on us and pass it on to others.
We are a tapestry of life to each other. That is why we need to walk in holiness, and in virtue, and in righteousness, not only towards God, but towards each other. It’s the righteous that live by faith that works by love (Gal.5:6).
We are essentially a faith collective in Christ. This faith works by love. Our common ground is built on faith and is glued together with love. We believe together. We interact on the basis of our common faith. We walk in love–together.
