LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Body Dimension
As the world becomes more hostile, as the forces of evil increase, as love grows cold, as faith wanes, as individual efforts become insufficient, it becomes imperative to see the body functioning as a body and fighting as a body – as the body of Christ.
We probably met the Lord in an environment where faith was intensely individual, where self-initiative was encouraged; we probably fought the battle for years, as independent Christians or together with others who made up "our group", looking out for our particular interest and knowing our particular problems. However, at some point, God led us down a path of individual failure, so that we entered a previously unknown dimension.
God led us, perhaps little by little, or perhaps more strongly, to verify that, alone, we fail, that we are insufficient, that we cannot prevail by our own strength, because God's will from remote times has always been the body – we just never saw it like this. For years we thought that we –our little “group”– were the focus of God's interest, and that outside of our very special environment, nothing was possible, everything was in ruins.
At first we resisted that idea, because it is not easy to accept that we are a failure. We still had hero arrests – the last blows of a lost cause. We cling to the principles that, for years, seemed to be successful; we multiply the effort, prayer and fasting. We even desperately seek help. However, nothing came of it.
Then, suddenly, God led us to look to the side. And what did we see? We saw others – our brothers – who were in the same condition: As wounded after a battle; as war veterans soon given up. So we begin to tell each other our hardships, to confess our failures. And then together – thank God – we began to gain strength, to look towards the throne of God's grace. We had the hope that if we got together, all the failures, the ones overwhelmed by the enemy, we could maybe survive.
Then the Word became clearer to us, and we saw that the Bible is intensely corporate. That the epistles of the New Testament are 'ecclesiological' and not personalistic. That the will of God has to do with the body and not with the individual. That the most consistent promises of God in times of struggle, danger, and scarcity are for the church and not for the individual Christian.
We saw the beauty of the word "member" instead of "individual"; the beauty of the many members acting in concert under the direction of the Spirit, and not the human wisdom of a finely structured system. We verify the preciousness of the "acceptable and perfect" will of God, which is to live the precious risen life of the Son of God in a collective way, and that unites us to all the precious body of Christ on earth.