Body and Spirit
W. Carl Ketcherside
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Sectarians are those who would make fellowship with Christ their exclusive privilege. They are not satisfied with belonging to Jesus, they would ,make Jesus belong to them. (Kokichi Kurosaki in "One Body in Christ," page 42).
Once upon a time all the world had become guilty before God. Men were dead in their sins and wickedness. They obeyed the commander of the spiritual powers of the air, the spirit now at work among God's rebel subjects. One who was freed from this dire state wrote about it in these words, "In our natural condition we, like the rest, lay under the dreadful judgment of God."
When the condition seemed hopeless because of the ignorance, alienation and enmity of man, God intervened. This represented no change or alteration of character upon the part of God. He did not suddenly realize that he must do something to correct an intolerable situation. It was just that "the fulness of the times" had arrived and grace reacted as it had to do in order to display in the ages to come how immense are its resources.
God's direct involvement with mankind occurred through the Word becoming flesh. Although the divine nature belonged to the Word from the first, he assumed the nature of a slave, and bearing the human likeness, was revealed in human shape. This culminated the divine program of sacrifices for sin which previously had required the death of lower animals. Even though sacrifices, offerings and sin-offerings had been prescribed by law, God did not desire or delight in them, but used them as object-lessons until a body was prepared for the Son who declared, "Here I am, as it is written of me in the scroll, I have come, O God, to do thy will."
The divine encounter with man since the incarnation of the word has always been through the body of Christ. At first it was the body of flesh which was prepared, but now it is the spiritual body. The same word--soma--is used for both. Jesus entered the physical body of man to do God's will; man must enter the spiritual body of Christ to do God's will.
The body embraces all who are in covenant relationship with God, but it is not enough to say that such believers alone constitute the body. Inseparably connected with it also are Jesus and the Holy Spirit. One who is not in Christ is not in the body, and one in whom the Spirit does not dwell is not in the body. It is believers who are incorporated in Christ by the Spirit who are in the body. The body is more than just members, it is a unit.
The divine community is made up of the new humanity, those who have been born again and who share in the life of the Spirit. These died to sin but were quickened by the Spirit. They received the divine nature by the indwelling Spirit,
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These are the ekklesia, the body of the called out ones. The call is by proclamation, and it is an invitation to reconciliation. The message is designated the good news, the gospel. One responds to it by faith and obedience. The belief of one fact and the obedience of one act is all that is necessary to induct one into covenant relationship. That relationship is the result of the call and those who are in it are the called ones. It is a living and vital relationship, throbbing and pulsating with the divine life.
The community of saints is not a human organization. It did not originate with men, it is not perpetuated by men, and it cannot be maintained by human wisdom, ingenuity or power. No man can add another to it, no man can remove another from it. The citizenship of those within it is inscribed in heaven.
Fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the previously prepared disciples of the Lord and the body became a living reality. Just as the body of Adam was inanimate until God breathed into his nostrils, so the company of believers was powerless until invested with the Spirit of God. And it is only as the Spirit operates in and through the members of the body that the new man can accomplish God's design now. The motivating power of the body is the Spirit. The body without the Spirit is dead.
We are asked if the Spirit was not given before the new covenant was validated. The answer is that the Spirit was bestowed upon certain select individuals under the old covenant, but not upon the community as a whole. Upon the day of Pentecost the apostles were all in one place, constituting a unit. It was in this sense the Spirit was shed forth, and upon that day all who had acknowledged that God had raised up Jesus and made him Lord and Christ were promised the Spirit as a gift and were added unto them.
The body of Christ is a fellowship of the Spirit, and it was created as a historical community, a holy temple in which God could dwell through the Spirit. It is true that each stone in this temple is a living stone, and a recipient of the Spirit, but they do not receive the gift in isolation. The purpose of the Spirit in each one is to bind all together in a holy structure for an habitation of God.
To view our life in the Spirit from the standpoint of purely individual gifts is to return to the old covenant view. It is simply to extend the old covenant system to more people while it ignores that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead to make him head over the called-out community, which is his body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
It is important to remember that the body is a creation of the Spirit. It is the action of the Spirit in and through baptism which brings us into our corporate relationship with one another and with Christ. "For Christ is like a single body with its many limbs and organs, which, many as they are, together make up one body. For indeed we were all brought together into one body by baptism, in the Spirit, whether we be Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free men, and that one Holy Spirit was poured out for all of us to drink" (1 Corinthians 12:12, 13).
This passage says a great deal about the soma, the body in which the Spirit dwells. We propose to mention a few things which we believe to be important for those who love the Lord Jesus Christ.
1. The body of Christ is not composed of sects, denominations or parties. No
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2. The Holy Spirit never created a sect or faction. Every sect is a work of the flesh, and results from a refusal to be led by the Spirit (Galatians 5:20). The Spirit baptizes only into one body, never into a fragment, splinter or party created by men. Men may try to capture baptism and use it as a portal to a party, but no man can baptize a sincere penitent believer in the Lord into a party. The Spirit will defeat all attempts to restrict, restrain and confine him, and will bring the humble trusting soul into relationship with Jesus.
Men may define baptism in terms of a sectarian sacrament, they may hedge it about with intellectual requirements and impose their own criteria by which to judge its validity, but the Spirit will ignore all such attempts to dictate to God. They mean nothing in the standing of one who "dies with Christ and passes beyond reach of the elemental spirits of the world." Every person on this earth who surrenders himself unreservedly to Christ and is baptized on the basis of his trust in Jesus as God's Son and the Messiah, is in the one body. He may be ignorant of many things, and even of some things related to baptism, but his incorporation with Christ is not based upon knowledge, but upon faith.
3. "Christ is like a single body." "We were all brought together into one body by baptism." The body of Christ is a historical entity, a community of grace--sharers, a fellowship of the hopeful, which was vitalized by the coming of the Spirit upon Pentecost. That body has never died. The Spirit has never been withdrawn. Indeed it was the promise of Jesus that the Spirit would abide with his disciples throughout the age in which he is absent from the earth.
It is a constantly recurring symptom of human pride that men create movements which they then identify with the one body. The motivations for these vary and many of the ideals are commendatory. Some are attempts to recapture personal holiness and sanctification, some a reemphasis upon the supernatural, some stem from a desire to restore the original faith and order.
The sectarian spirit is very strong and very alluring since it pampers egotism and produces assurance based on the belief that the party is favored by God above all others and is composed of the elect. There have been many restoration movements which crystallized when reformers were driven out of the existing religious framework, and regardless of the special emphasis, almost every one of these has been designated "the Lord's church," and has arrogantly disdained association with any of the others.
In every case, as the unity of the Spirit receded from view, and conformity to creedal interpretations came into ascendancy, the tests of loyalty devised would exclude even those who launched the movement and gave their lives in its defense in an earlier day. Of course, none of the debates or arguments engaged in by proponents of such movements have any real relationship to the one body.
The vital principle of each party is the thing which it was created to propose or oppose. It lives, eats, breathes and proclaims this thing. It is this thing which gives the party being and a sense of destiny. It searches the scriptures, prints journals, writes books, and purchases radio time to advance this thing. The party owes its life to this issue. But the vital principle of the one body is the Holy Spirit. Thus God's word says, "If the Spirit is the source of our life, let the Spirit also direct our course" (Galatians 5:25).
4. The party spirit is always working to divide. It is a manifestation of our lower nature and this nature "sets its
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The party spirit always seeks to perpetuate divisions which exist. It finds excuses for evading every honest attempt to narrow chasms made wider by the erosion of time. It creates barriers of suspicion, throws up roadblocks of hate, and monotonously repeats the old clichés and slogans which have been used as sedatives for years.
But the Holy Spirit is actively at work always promoting unity, and the Holy Spirit is more powerful than the party spirit. The Holy Spirit is of God and possesses the dynamic of God; the party spirit is of the flesh and possesses the weaknesses of the flesh. The party spirit with its doctrinal fences and creedal iron curtains can contain men only so long, and then the Spirit bursts its bonds and seeks freedom.
As deep calls to deep, so the Spirit in one heart cries out to the Spirit in another heart, and an invisible cord draws their possessors closer to one another. The Spirit transcends all sectarian alliances, for these are based upon artificial or secondary considerations. All of the clay vessels may remain in their own environment but those which contain the Spirit may feel closer together than each does to others on his own shelf.
The community which results from the undeserved kindness of God is not composed of mechanical men or human robots. Its citizens were not stamped out by a cookie cutter like so many gingerbread men. There is a healthy divergency of views, attitudes and insights. They can never be united on the basis of attainment to a certain level of knowledge. The fact is that their oneness stems from the Spirit which dwells within them all. And "there is one Spirit."
5. The unity of the Spirit is absolutely unaffected by racial or social differences. "We were all brought together into one body by baptism, in the Spirit, whether we be Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free men." The apostle Paul says "there is no distinction." Those who make such distinctions do not walk in love. "They are inconsistent and judge by false standards (James 2:4).
There is no "color problem" among men who are led by the Spirit. Where such a problem does exist it is because men walk after the flesh. To talk about "white churches" and "colored churches" as if Jesus drew a color line at the Lord's table, is a clear indication that one is not being led of the Spirit. In the body of Christ there is no such thing as black power or white power. There is only the dynamic of the Spirit. Power has no color but the ambition to exercise it may color our whole approach to life.
6. We must not forget that the work of the Spirit does not cease with our introduction into the one body. "That one Holy Spirit was poured out for all of us to drink." We are refreshed and invigorated by the Spirit and thus sustained in our relationship as a family. Perhaps it is lack of recognition of this which causes so many to become spiritually de-hydrated and to languish by the way.
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The members of the body are those in whom the Spirit dwells. They are members in the sense of being limbs and organs, that is, they sustain a vital organic and functional relationship to the body. There is no word in the Greek for member in the sense of belonging to a society or institution. And the word "member" always occurs in conjunction with the word body. The Bible never speaks, for instance, of a "member of the church." Because we are organs in a body we are all dependent upon each other.
One organ cannot tell another it is not needed. Nor can an individual conclude that because he does not possess the same ability as another he is not of the body. All are in their respective positions by divine appointment. All are to feel the same concern for one another.
We are liable to think of the body in a purely local sense and may conceive of our obligation to the body as limited only to those whom we see at meetings or who have their names on a congregational roster. But God is not so limited in his vision. He views the one body as containing every saved person on earth. If the Spirit dwells in me I am a unit with every other person in the universe in whom the Spirit dwells.
I dare not limit fellowship to the adherents of any one historical movement, or consider that such a movement embraces the ekklesia of God to the exclusion of all others on earth. The brotherhood which I am to love must involve every child of God in the universe, else I am sectarian in heart and mind. I must not treat any of the saints as second-class citizens of the kingdom, for to do so is to flout the work of God. "And if you and we belong to Christ, guaranteed as his and anointed, it is all God's doing; it is God also who has set his seal upon •us, and as a pledge of what is to come has given us the Spirit to dwell in our hearts" (2 Corinthians 1:21, 22).