LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
The Gospels and the Church
Today the Church is called to embody the characteristics of Christ which are shown in the gospels.
Rodrigo Abarca
In the Scriptures we find four gospels, each one of them with a different and distinct vision of the Lord. Although they all have many things in common, because their topic is basically the same, nevertheless they differ in respect to their emphasis in certain fundamental characteristics of the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Bible, the number four represents the total sum of the creation of God: four seasons, four cardinal points, four winds of heaven, four living creatures, etc. But, how is this fact related to the Lord Jesus Christ?
The apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians that God has purposed to sum up all things in Christ, those that are on the earth just as those that are in the heavens, (Eph. 1:9-11). And in Colossians he adds that everything was created through Him and for Him. But it also tells us that at the centre of all things and supreme among them, God prepared a body for His Son which was His perfect expression among all creation. It is a body called to be the decisive instrument through which His Son would sum up and fill all things with his fullness. That body is the Church.
Christ in the creation
It is astonishing to think of the magnitude of the divine purpose: A whole universe dedicated to expressing and reflecting in multiple and infinite ways His Son Jesus Christ. Full of meaning and purpose, each created form, from the atoms to the archangels, all contain a measure, great or small, of His Son's fullness: His power, wisdom, intelligence, truth, grace and mercy. But, how will God reach the fulfillment of His purpose? The apostle Paul tells us, 'by means of the church'. That is to say through man, because he was created with this expressed purpose: ´let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.' Colossians tells us that Christ is the image of God and in Hebrews He is called 'the exact image of His being'. So man was created to become the expression of Christ who is the image of God.
Thus we find that the centrality and supremacy of Christ in the universe is to be revealed and established through man. However, the secret of His divine purpose rested in the fact that Christ would first become the head of a corporate man. A higher reality exists beyond that of humans on an individual level, or even on a social and collective level. A mystery was rooted in the arrangement of the human creation itself, because God created man with the capacity to receive and to share the divine life that He alone possesses.
Through participation in His life, each man would also be made part of that vast purpose, being indissolubly joined together to all those who would share this life. In other words, each man was destined to become a member of Christ's body, participating in a class of life that only God knows within His trinitarian nature - a life of love and fellowship.
But man's participation in the divine life is subject to Christ becoming the head of the body that is the church. Only as members of His body can men participate in His eternal purpose. There's no other way. The object of that body is to express the fullness of Christ, its head. Each aspect of that fullness should be revealed and expressed through the church until all things are summed up and consummated in Christ; as much in vocation as in end purpose.
Christ in His incarnation
The execution of God's plan for creation therefore depended on the destiny of a small and weak creature called man, and his response to the will of God. Formed from the dust of the earth and the breath of God, the first man was placed in the Garden of Eden so that he could voluntarily eat of the tree of life and refuse to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Since in the universe a rebellion had broken out and the man could choose freely to whom he would unite his destiny: to God or the rebellious angels commanded by Satan. But we know his choice too well. The man united with the rebellion and became a fallen creature, unable to serve the plans of God. But He had foreseen the fall, and also prepared the remedy for it ahead of time. The man was not abandoned to the black destiny that he had chosen for himself.
'And the Word became flesh'. This is the heart of the gospel or good news of God for mankind. Having gone astray and become lost, being an infinite distance from God and His will and having been enslaved under the power of him whose voice we had chosen to obey before that of God, we were sought out and found by the One who has always been our reason and destiny. John adds that '... He dwelt among us and we saw His glory, glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth'. All the fullness of God became incarnate amongst men as He appeared among them, dressed with the flesh and blood of Adam's children, but free from sin. The gospels speak to us of 'God become man'. The Word of God made visible and accessible in the humble form of Jesus of Nazareth.
For the first time the world met the Man who was conformed according to the thought of God. His character, His words and His actions revealed to mankind what God was waiting for in order to carry out the most intimate desire of His will. That the One who was destined to be the supreme head of the universe, by means of the church, first would become the servant of all fallen humanity. His obedience utterly destroyed all the effects of rebellion and sin, to bring man back to his original and eternal calling.
Christ in the Gospels
However, since Christ is the full expression of God and His will for mankind, it was necessary that four gospels be written to describe and fully express His person and His work. Because He is destined to fill everything and four is the number of creation taken in its entirety. In Matthew we find Him as King and Christ, embodying, establishing and consummating the Kingdom of God. In Mark, as the tireless Servant of God who takes upon himself the sins, sufferings and illnesses of a fallen humanity oppressed by Satan. In Luke He is the perfect Man, that is to say, the perfect image of God on the earth, in character and behavior. In John He is the Son of God, the Word incarnate, in whom and for whom the life and glory of the Father has descended to dwell among men and to elevate them from the earthly sphere toward a heavenly and eternal one. They all speak to us of the same person, but emphasizing certain special characteristics about Him.
At this point a question arises: What is the purpose of the four gospels? If we study the history of the church, we find that the gospels were written when the church had been in existence on the earth for about 20 to 30 years. However, the things written in them were previously preached and taught by the apostles to the churches; first in Jerusalem, then Judea, later Samaria and finally the churches of the gentiles. The church, as we know, is on the earth with the purpose of fully expressing Jesus Christ. From a heavenly viewpoint, its only reason for existing resides in its condition as the body of Christ, a body whose purpose is to reproduce every aspect and characteristic of its heavenly Head. The gospels are the sum total of Christ; the fullness of what the church is called to reproduce and to manifest. They are not simply the inspired story of the actions and words of the Lord. If we have understood the mystery of God deeply, revealed to the apostle Paul, we will know that the church is Christ: 'Because we are members of His body, of His flesh and His bones' - the very same One who showed Himself among the twelve during those three and a half years of ministry.
Nevertheless, the twelve would not live forever, and when the original witnesses had left, the generations to come were to have access to the living knowledge of Christ that was passed over to the first church. On the other hand, the church of the first century would very soon begin a slow but steady journey towards spiritual declension, forgetting Jesus Christ as its life, centre and foundation, to replace him with creeds, doctrines, rites, traditions, customs and institutions which were as human as they were empty of spiritual reality. Therefore, when this process was beginning, God inspired His servants to write the gospels.
Christ in the Church
Consequently, the gospels show us the way of the Church. She is called to reproduce and to express the same class of life and ministry that the Lord lived out while He was on the earth. Because in the church, the Lord now has a collective body through which He can continue to express Himself on this earth. For this reason, in the book of Acts, Luke begins by saying 'in the former account (that is to say, Luke's gospel)… I spoke about all the things that Jesus began to do and to teach'.
Can we see the emphasis? The things that Jesus began... and that now, (if we follow the sense of the sentence) he will continue to do by means of His Church in the story of Acts. The individual and unique Christ of the gospels has now become, by means of the church, a corporate Christ, formed by many members with Christ as its head. So the Kingdom of God is now the possession of the church. She is called to embody it and to possess it until she completes the task begun by the Lord, just as Matthew shows us.
Service, deliverance, healing and salvation are also the present task of the church, just as Christ shows us in Mark's gospel. The mercy, the tenderness, the grace, the holiness, the power, the dignity, etc., in sum, Christ's perfect character should appear in her, as in the gospel of Luke. Finally, that heavenly and spiritual nature, so entirely different and separate from that of earthly man, full of life, light and divine love, rooted in an intimate communion and dependence upon the Father, should constitute the essence of her being, just as in Christ, the Son of God, according to John.
We must read the gospels again, not merely as history and information about Christ, but asking the Spirit of Truth to reveal to us our calling and purpose through them. Because the One who lived and walked among men two thousand years ago, full of grace and truth, continues to live and walk among his own. This was John's last vision in Revelation. The last message of Christ for His churches on the earth: 'He who has the seven stars in His right hand, who walks amid the seven golden candlesticks says this'; that is to say, the revelation of Himself to the churches.
We need to recover Christ's centrality in the church, with all His glory and supremacy. For that reason we have four gospels, through which we can know Him once again just as the apostles and brothers and sisters of the past did, reproducing each one of His characteristics and completing His mission on this earth. He has not changed: He lives today as the King, the Servant, the Man and the Son of God in his church. May the Spirit lead us to know Him and to manifest Him in the fullness of His person and ministry! In this way, one day, perhaps not too far off, when evil has been banished from the creation forever, the whole universe will finally contemplate Christ's glory in all its splendor and vastness, and will be filled with it just as the waters cover the sea.