Dear Church Member: Don’t Amputate Yourself from the Body of Christ
I’ve never been the type of person who enjoys horror-thriller movies. If I am going to use what little free time I have enjoying a film, I can assure you it will not be one riddled with gory images of people screaming and writhing in pain.
However, there is one horror movie I can vaguely recall moments from: Saw. I specifically remember a scene where a shackled man was forced to amputate his foot in order to hopefully save his family. The brutal nature of the scene has a way of forcing the viewer to wrestle with what they might do in the same situation.
The Importance of Every Member in the Body of Christ
Of all the different parts of creation the Lord has blessed us to see and study, the human body might be the most glorious. The body works like a well-oiled machine, delivering blood to the right places at the right time, delivering sweat when we are overheating, and even sensing pressure changes in a room when a door opens. But of all the mind-blowing things our bodies can do, I find most fascinating the body’s ability to heal. Even a deep cut, if properly treated, may months later appear as only a tiny scar.
But an amputation is quite different than a cut, even a bad cut. That man in the movie Saw won’t grow back his foot.
In 1 Corinthians, it is no coincidence that Paul precedes his well-known remarks on love with a discussion of the value of each member of the body of Christ. For the sake of unity and diversity in the church, Paul extols the value of every single person in a local body. In 1 Corinthians 12:21 he begins by showing how absurd it is for one part of the body to say it doesn’t need another part. This is why amputation from the body of Christ has such tragic consequences. Needed limbs don’t grow back.
Sometimes, however, a church situation might get so bad that a member could be tempted to think that amputating themselves from the body might be the best (or only) solution—to just cut away and be done. Perhaps in a terrible abuse situation, this is what should happen.
But what if you’ve experienced hurt or disappointment to the degree that you considered walking away from the church the Lord called you to love and serve? Or what if you just felt your role in the church is so insignificant that no one would even know you left?
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The Holy Spirit’s Most Supernatural Work
The Holy Spirit convicts sinners (Jn 16:8), but he does so by means of the Word he inspired, which is profitable for such conviction (2 Tm 3:16). The Holy Spirit regenerates dead hearts, but he does so by means of his Word. He does not “zap” new life in a person’s heart independently of the Word—”faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). Part of the Spirit’s work of creating new life is putting his law within new believers and writing it on their hearts (Jer 31:33).
Many of the Holy Spirit’s works in history unique in unfolding God’s eternal plan in past history. The purpose of ordering the plans of God accomplished by the Spirit through creation, revelation, and special empowerment have been finished. Creation is complete, the Spirit-inspired Word is complete, and Spirit empowerment functioned at key transitional periods in the history of redemption that finished their intended purpose. Therefore, we should not expect these sorts of extraordinary works until the next stage in redemptive history—when the Anointed King comes again.
However, some of the ordinary activities of the Spirit have been at work since the beginning of time and will continue until the eternal kingdom. The most notable of these is the Holy Spirit’s work in salvation.
Scripture appropriates specific acts to each divine person of the godhead in the salvation of God’s elect. The Father planned salvation and sent his Son into the world to save his people. The Son took on flesh, lived a perfect life, and died to pay the penalty of sin, accomplishing redemption for his people. And as with other aspects of God’s eternal plans, the Spirit actively works to order and complete God’s plan of salvation in the lives of his elect.
This work begins with convicting sinners. Jesus promised that he would send the Spirit to “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (Jn 16:8). Without the Spirit’s conviction, sinners would have no spiritual awareness of their need of salvation. Conviction is the first step in bringing sinful, disordered souls into order and harmony with God’s perfect will.
Regeneration
Next, the Spirit gives new life. Jesus specifically identified the Spirit as the one who gives new birth (Jn 3:5, 8). Likewise, Paul describes him as “the Spirit of life” (Rom 8:2) and tells us in Titus 3:5 that God saved us “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” This work of the Spirit ties directly to his very first work—creation. The regenerating work of the Spirit is his recreation of dead sinners into new creations (2 Cor 5:17).
Some theologians also refer to this regenerating act of the Spirit as “illumination.” This doctrine of illumination is one area where many Christians have unbiblical thinking in which they assume illumination means that the Spirit will reveal to us the meaning of Scripture. However, the reality is that Spirit illumination is part of the Spirit’s regeneration that happens at conversion.
One of the key texts is 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:16. In this passage, Paul describes the fact that “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18). This passage clearly teaches that a key difference between believers and unbelievers is the fact that unbelievers simply do not recognize the truthfulness, beauty, and authority of God’s Word (specifically the gospel), while a believer is one who has come to recognize Scripture as such, not because of any human persuasion, but simply through “the Spirit and of power” (2:4).
Another key passage is 1 Corinthians 2. Verses 10–13 speak of the inspiration of Scripture by means of apostles and prophets. However, verses 14–16 do touch on what we may describe as Spirit illumination.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
The key phrase is “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.” When the natural man reads Scripture, he does not accept it as God’s authoritative revelation. Rather, he sees it as foolishness. He does not understand its spiritual significance.
On the other hand, the spiritual person recognizes the Word of God for what it is and therefore submits himself to it. These verses do not speak of intellectual understanding but spiritual understanding. If we want to use the term illumination to describe what’s going on in these verses, it refers to the Spirit’s regenerating work to cause his elect to recognize the significance and authority of the written Word of God. Furthermore, this act of the Spirit is not something that necessarily happens in separate points of time as we read the Word; rather, it is something that comes as a result of the new birth—the Spirit gives us new life and enlightens our hearts and minds to recognize the significance of his Word.
In other words, 1 Corinthians 2 refers to two acts of the Spirit: inspiration, whereby the authors of Scripture wrote the very words of God, and illumination, whereby believers are enabled to recognize the spiritual significance of the Word of God.
Second Corinthians 4 makes a similar assertion, this time using explicit language of “enlightening.” The gospel is “veiled to those who are perishing” (2 Cor 4:3), Paul argues. Believers accept and submit to the gospel only because God has enlightened their hearts:
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 4:6)
This is illumination—a work of God’s Spirit upon a believer whereby he recognizes the beauty and glory of the gospel and therefore willingly submits himself to it. It should not surprise us that the same divine person who brought order out of chaos and light out of darkness at the beginning of time is the same one who enlightens dark hearts and brings order to disordered souls in conversion.
John Calvin argued, “Man’s mind can become spiritually wise only in so far as God illumines it. . . . The way to the kingdom of God is open only to him whose mind has been made new by the illumination of the Holy Spirit.”1
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By Faith We See In the Dark
According to Hebrews, it is by faith that we understand. And of course, if Christianity is actually true, that understanding requires knowledge of the invisible. By faith we know who God is, the truth that He created all things in the beginning and will judge all things in the future, and even present unseen realities like our union with Christ, our nature as Image of God, and the moral order. These invisible realities and their interconnections are at the heart of Christianity. Faith, therefore, is necessary for grasping the Christian vision of the world: it is by faith that we understand reality as it really is.
The things I love deeply are also the things that irk me most easily. And most profoundly. This makes sense: when we love, we care. (Likewise, indifference breeds apathy.) For nerds like me, this applies especially to books.
Let me first say that I love Luc Ferry’s little gem A Brief History of Thought. It’s a gem because it succinctly if simplistically traces through the whole history of the Western intellectual tradition by articulating four major epochs; and it does this by charting the ligaments between metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. So, so helpful.
But as this is the internet, we must race past vague, general praise toward concrete, specific, detailed, brash criticism.
Allow me, dear reader, to explain what irks me about Ferry’s book. Ferry thinks of philosophy as an attempt to construct a theory of salvation without recourse to divine revelation. In religious traditions, the divine brings salvation to humanity. In philosophical traditions, humanity seeks salvation on its own. In the introduction, Ferry puts it this way: “Unable to bring himself to believe in a God who offers salvation, the philosopher is above all one who believes that by understanding the world, by understanding ourselves and others as far as our intelligence permits, we shall succeed in overcoming fear, through clear-sightedness rather than blind faith.” (p. 6) I happen to think this is an unhelpful way to differentiate religion and philosophy, but what really irks me is that word ‘blind’…
Ferry is, of course, not alone in insinuating that religious faith is an agent of blindness, that to have faith is to shut oneself off from some aspect of reality, that faith requires persistent belief without evidence or even in the fact of evidence to the contrary. Both outside the church and, more troublingly, inside, Christians are often told that the claims they are meant to hold most dear, the claims they ought to order their lives around, are either irrational or, at best, a-rational. Anyway, the central, credal claims of Christians throughout history aren’t subject to the sort of careful, reasoned investigation that, in the physical universe known to humanity, only humans can undertake. We must simply believe.
1. Seeing the Invisible
The Scriptures paint a different picture of faith’s relationship to sight.
In the letter we know as 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul connects faith in God to Christians’ ability to suffer well. He writes:
For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. … Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, ‘I believe, and so I spoke,’ we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. … So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. … So we are always of good courage. … [F]or we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor. 4:6-10, 13-14, 16-18; 5:6a, 7)
Notice that Paul runs headlong into a connection between faith and knowledge: we believe by faith, and so speak, because we know we will be raised. This connection between faith and knowing, which is not unique to Paul, eliminates the idea that faith is opposed to knowing, and therefore to reasonable belief. Notice that Paul includes the faith-sight contrast in this very context. In whatever sense faith is opposed to sight, faith simply is not opposed to knowledge.
We can go further.
The author of Hebrews toys with the idea of knowing by faith through seeing the unseen as well. Moses is said to have endured the wrath of Pharaoh “as seeing him [that is, God] who is invisible”. (11:23) Moses looked to his unseen future reward. (11:22)
Hebrews goes beyond Paul: “By faith we understand”, it says. (11:3) The things understood are themselves invisible: the creation of the world by the Word, the promises of God fulfilled, Jesus seated at the right hand of God. This goes further than mere knowledge because understanding requires knowledge but is more than knowledge. Understanding is knowledge organized and applied. To understand is to systematize what you know and be able to utilize that knowledge in the right circumstances.
2. Understanding by Faith
In the context of religion—or, more broadly, any perspective on the whole of reality—understanding involves not just knowledge of certain religious facts, but the systematization of those facts.
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The Hard, Valuable Art of Waiting
A good spiritual waiter knows that God has the power to do anything. He can do “exceedingly, abundantly beyond all we can ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). Because we believe in His power, we know we are in capable hands as we wait on Him.
Most of us hate it. There are very few people who enjoy waiting. The closest I’ve found to good “waiters” are some farmers I’ve known who understand the laws of the harvest. They work incredibly hard but realize they can’t rush the ingathering. It will come in due time.
Our instant world doesn’t help. Everything has sped up. Instant news coverage, instant fast food, instant answers on the internet. We don’t even have to get dressed and go to the store. We can order immediately in our pajamas with the click of a button. We are in love with instant, and it makes waiting harder.
Maturity Breeds Patience
I waited patiently for the Lord and He inclined to me and heard my cry. (Psalm 40:1)
Over time, godly men and women have come to see that the Lord is never in a hurry but always on time. There are things that God accomplishes through time that cannot be done any faster. God molds us during seasons of waiting. He brings us to dependence. His promises become real and His presence precious. And God is preparing outcomes that are stunning … if we will wait.
Not Passive but Patient
Spiritual waiting is not a mindless, passive exercise. If you see it that way, you will become restless, worried, and bothered.A seasoned believer knows that they are waiting not merely for something but for Someone. “I waited patiently for the Lord,” the Psalmist said. He had turned his trust heavenward and was content to leave the timing in God’s sovereign hands. Waiting in an exercise in dependency upon God Himself.
How blessed is the man who has made the LORD his trust. (Psalm 40:4)
An excellent spiritual waiter is like a veteran waiter in a fine restaurant. He stands at attention, actively looking toward those he serves.
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