Friends in Christ Weekly Message
January 20, 2007

     You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts - limbs, organs, cells - but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain - his Spirit - where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves - labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free - are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
1 Corinthians 12:12-13 (Message*)

As believers, we are no longer to call our own shots independently, but to live as part of a larger reality in Christ. And the things that often separate people in the world from each other - different ethnic heritages, different levels of income, different educational backgrounds, different personalities, different physical appearances, etc. - fade in importance. What becomes central is that we are united in Christ Jesus, and this transcends all those differences.

This is not a dream of a distant future, but a present reality for all who choose to live in it. Are you living as a part of the resurrection body of Christ?

Bill Samuel

* The Message version ©2002 by Eugene H. Peterson.

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