ALL THE PARTS

The greatest commandment from the beginning is “to love God with all your heart” and “a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Loving God forms us into His body and loving our neighbor forms us into community.

The body is viable only by the inter-connectedness of the parts of the body. Paul, an apostle, to the Ephesians wrote, “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up into all aspects into Him, who is the Head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, and causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” The body is defined as all the parts that are connected to the Head by the Holy Spirit. The body is the spiritual parts connected to the spiritual Head and there is no organization, group, building, “church,” ministry or meeting or gathering, that is “the body.” All of these are the body if connected to the Head, which is Christ. There are “many members though one body,” so also is Christ (literally The Christ), or the only Christ, and so to speak of the “the body” is not a localized or personal designation but a universal and complete idea with each person being “a part.”

“I pray not only for them, but also for those who believe in me because of their message. I pray that they may all be one. Father! May they be in us, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they be one, so that the world will believe that you sent me. I gave them the same glory you gave me, so that they may be one, just as you and I are one: I in them and you in me, so that they may be completely one, in order that the world may know that you sent me and that you love them as you love me.” Jesus