Like Jesus

In this world we are like Jesus.

1 John 4:17b

The picture figure of the body helps us to understand the true work of the church — what the church is here for. The purpose of the body is to let your personality become visible and to make an impact upon the world, whether for good or for evil. That's why you have a body, and therefore the purpose for the church as a body, its one reason for existing as a body, is not to change law, or to cure social ills, or to teach moral values. The one thing it exists for, is to manifest the life within. That life is the life of Jesus Christ, his life, to be in the world what he is.

John knows this and says that very thing in his first epistle, In this world we are like Jesus (I John 4:17). That's what we are here for. One of the clearest words in scripture along this line is found in 1 Peter 2:9, and Peter was the great authority of the church. He says, But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may show forth the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You are — in order that. You are these things in order that you may be a continual manifestation of his life and may show forth the deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. It is Christ at work in the world, and only as society is touched by that living life of the Lord within, through the church, does anything take place.

The same thing takes place through a vital living church that took place when men and women came in contact with the Lord himself. He turned the nation upside down. People couldn't leave him alone. The marvelous fascination of his person drew people to him so that they left their work and their homes and came after to hear his word. This is because they sensed that here is one who knew, here is one who cared, here is one who loved and who had life, who knew the secrets of it. And they listened. This is what the church needs to be. What did he come to do after all? That is what the church is to be doing, for it is him doing it through the church, his Body.

The more clearly we understand what we are, the more consistently we demonstrate it. All that is needed for the church to be effective is to simply stop talking about struggling, be what we ought to be, and start believing what we are. As long as we talk about what we ought to be, we never gain it. It is when we quietly believe that Jesus Christ indwelling us is all that we need and start believing what we are, we begin to demonstrate the wonderful deeds of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Father, your indwelling within us is all that we need to become messengers of your grace and mercy.