Bud was very encouraged by the response to his first article. Here is part two which should answer the questions raised in some minds by part one.

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

The Body of Christ – Part Two

By Bud Hancock

What Does It Mean To BE The Body Of Christ?

I must assume that, even as there are many religious denominations whose beliefs on every aspect of Christianity vary greatly, there will also be much disagreement on what the Body of Christ really means and what bearing that understanding should have on our conduct as Christians.

Jesus had a very specific assignment to accomplish when He came to Earth as a human baby. Once grown and ready to begin that assignment, He HAD to be baptized, not just IN water, but WITH the Holy Spirit. The prophecy of Isaiah specifically stated that “the Spirit of the Lord (the anointing) is upon me, for He has anointed me to……”. Knowing how important that anointing was to be in the life of Jesus, how much more so in the life of every true believer?

The essence of life for a flesh and blood human being is the blood coursing through the veins and arteries. Once He was resurrected from among the dead, Jesus had a new type of body, one that was flesh and bone, but with no blood (Luke 24:39), in other words, a “glorified body”, or one that was/is incapable of dying, an immortal body. But having no blood in His veins and arteries, Jesus was alive because the Holy Spirit had become the essence of His life.

After His ascension, He was to remain in heaven until the moment when He appears in the clouds to take the Church (His body) to be wherever He is eternally. Not physically being on earth would have placed a serious limitation on His ability to complete the ministry that God had given to Him. Enter the Church, that ecclesia, a “called out assembly or congregation”, that would travel the earth, preaching and teaching the message of the gospel (God’s good news) under the same Anointing that Jesus had.

The Son of God, the Redeemer, the Messiah, not only saved people from their sins, He healed them of every disease, He cast out evil spirits, He raised the dead and boldly confronted evil and hypocrisy everywhere He went. If that was all an integral part of His ministry, what would happen if it was turned over to a Church made up of flesh and blood human beings who were subject to temptation and failure?

That problem was solved by making available to every believer the same Anointing that Jesus had ministered with. That anointing enabled Jesus to heal the sick, cast out demons and raise the dead, but was it intended to work the same way for mortal humans? Without a doubt, it was; in John 14:12-17, Jesus said this to His disciples: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

That prophecy was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was given to the Church, the body of believers who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior.

The use of the word “Church” now seems to connote a group of people who claim to be Christian and who gather regularly at various buildings to…do what, exactly? The claim is that they must gather to worship God, and I agree that being in the company of other believers is a good thing, but God is worshipped in “spirit and in truth”, and that action can occur anywhere on Earth, either in the company of others or totally alone.

When Jesus commanded His disciples to “go into all the world”, what exactly were they to do out there among the heathen? The ministry of Jesus up to that point had been moderately successful, with the fame of Jesus spreading throughout Israel. Based on His words to the disciples, Jesus wanted them to continue doing exactly what He had done. The understanding was that children of Abraham, and indeed the entire world, were hurting, they were sick, in bondage and in need of someone to show them how to be healed, set free from their bondage and made whole.

This is what Jesus had intended when He commanded His disciples to go and do the same works that He did. He was building a BODY OF BELIEVERS, the Body of the Anointed One and His Anointing, that could take his previously limited ministry to the Jews and expand it into one that would reach the entire world.

But seriously, could a ragtag bunch of Jewish fishermen and a tax collector be expected to do what Jesus had done? The promise that Jesus gave them was that they would do the same works as He had done, but only after they had received the same anointing He had been given. Their instruction was to remain in Jerusalem until that Anointing was presented, and after that, they began to travel the land and were amazed that they also had power to heal, to cast out demons and teach and preach the gospel to all who would listen and receive it.

But wait a minute, surely the Christians of today cannot be expected to follow the disciples of Jesus in ministering to sick and hurting people; those were the disciples who walked three years with Jesus, watching Him in action, and listening to His teachings, right? Right, and so it seems ludicrous that we, the so-called Christians of this present time, should even consider such a thing; after all, none of us has ever seen Jesus, nor heard His voice, right? BUT, do not forget that the same anointing given to Jesus is available to all who will believe the words of Paul in Romans 10:9-10, “But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.  For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”.

It is extremely interesting, as well as critically important, to understand the word “saved” in verse nine; it is the Greek word “Sozo” (Strong’s 4982, pronounced sode’-zo) and it means: to save, to deliver, to protect, to heal, to preserve and to make whole or to be whole. Amazingly, each of those meanings corresponds exactly to what Jesus was sent into the world to do. Go back and read Luke 4:18-19 and you will see this for yourself. The word saved to a Christian should mean that he or she has the same status as Jesus, being saved, delivered, set free and made whole; and having those qualities, we are to share them with the hurting world, just as Jesus did.

Wait a minute, do you mean Christians should lay hands on the sick and expect them to be healed? Or cast out the demons possessing them and expect them to be delivered? ABSOLUTELY! If we cannot do that, how can we be called “The Body of Christ”? or even be considered Christians, or Christ-like. Did not our Lord do these same works everywhere He went?

If we assume that these works ended when Jesus ascended to heaven or when the original apostles died, then we have seriously misjudged the word of God and have severely limited the ministry Jesus gave to us to do in His place.

With that “sozo”, that salvation, comes great and wonderful promises and blessings, but it also includes a great responsibility to spread the gospel and make disciples of all, and nothing works better to bring an unbeliever to Jesus than performing the same works that Jesus did. A person who has a terrible disease or a terminal illness and knows death is imminent is searching for anything that will give him hope, and a person possessed with a demon only wants someone to cast that demon out and liberate him from the evil.

Is the Body of Christ STILL the Body of Christ?

So now, after nearly 2,000 years, has the Body of Christ been totally successful in accomplishing  what Jesus expected? Unfortunately, far from it. We now must admit that, for the most part, “Christendom” has become about building larger, more glamourous buildings and cathedrals in the hope that the unsaved will come flooding in and want to join the church and pay tithes. Cha-ching! Just look at all that revenue rolling in so that another luxurious building can be built and the Church can keep growing. Meanwhile, the world is still in bondage, still sick and afflicted and many are demon-possessed.

I question how today’s Christians can call themselves the Body of Christ, supposedly imitating Jesus, that Jewish teacher who healed the sick of blindness, palsy, leprosy and other foul diseases when most cannot even fight the devil over a simple headache. What? Pray against this headache? No thanks, pass the Tylenol! I can pop a few of those babies without exercising my faith, because you know, that faith stuff just takes too much energy and it seldom works anyway.

How much faith and energy do you think it took for Jesus to carry His own cross up to Golgotha where He was nailed to it? How much faith and energy do you think it took for Him to withstand the most horrible torture any human being has ever endured?

My personal opinion is that the Church of today has become spiritually lazy, from the pulpit down to the lay person. Lazy Christians would rather sit in the pew for an hour on Sunday and listen to a watered down pseudo-version of the gospel than to spend time searching the Word for their own revelation of Jesus, the Anointed One.

Unfortunately, I must wonder what Jesus thinks about the Body of Christ that exists in the world today. But one need not wonder because we are living in the Laodicean Church period and Jesus told the Apostle John what He truly thinks of those in that Church.

Read Revelation 3:14-21:

“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

Conclusion

Can the Ecclesia, that body of believers called and set apart to be the Body of Christ finally throw off the confines of religion and truly become what God intended it to be? If my premise is true, that the entire congregation of Christians in the world were meant to be like Jesus in every way, then that body should be doing exactly what Jesus did, both before and after His death: spreading the gospel (good news), healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out devils and generally proving through our own lives that Jesus was, and still IS, the Anointed One, sent by God to do exactly those miracles, first while in His own body, then through OUR bodies. The only way we need not try to imitate Christ is through our physical death. Jesus did that ONCE for all and it needs not be repeated. Yes, we are to die, but only in that we die to self and the flesh and live our lives through His presence in us, under the Anointing of the Holy Spirit. That is what the Body Of Christ was truly meant to be!

There is precious little time left for what remains of the Body of Christ to repent of the spiritual laziness that has overtaken it and rise up to be that body and do the same works, and even greater works than Jesus did. If those works were the will of God for Jesus to do, would they not also be the works expected of us?

When we all stand at the judgment seat of Christ, awaiting the words of Jesus that will determine our position for eternity, what will we hear? Will it be “Well done thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.

Or will we hear the opposite words from the Lord, recorded in Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Now is a good time to take stock of our place in the Body of Christ and to ask the Lord to reveal any failures in our lives that might prevent us from doing the will of our Father in heaven.

Blessings and Maranatha!

budaroo@twc.com

Born and raised in a small textile town in North Carolina, Bud’s family moved to Michigan in the hope of finding better employment with General Motors.  After graduating from high school, Bud began an apprenticeship with General Motors to become a Metal Modelmaker.  Retiring after a 30 year career, which included an eight year stint as a Metrologist (Science of high precision measurement), he and his wife moved back to North Carolina to be near his elderly parents.  Shortly thereafter, with both of his parents having passed, he began a new career in the bank security/ATM business, advancing from an entry level technician to one of two North Carolina customer service managers for his employer.  Retiring again after 13 years, he and his wife of 51 years relocated to Tennessee where Bud began writing articles emphasizing Biblical teaching and geopolitical issues.  At age 75, he and his wife relocated to South Carolina with their Miniature Schnauzer, Baxter.  Bud continues to study God’s word and write articles on Christian living and geopolitical issues from the Biblical end times  perspective.