I was ordained to this ministry in a previous church than the one I now attend. The congregation was (and I guess still is) quite large, consisting of about six hundred members. Now, based on pure statistics alone, in a congregation of that size one would expect to find more than a few hurting and needy people at any given time: people going through marriage difficulties, people who have lost a job, or worse, a vocation; people who have lost a loved one or are facing death themselves.
The ministry was in full swing for the entire time I attended the church and yet not a single Stephen Minister was in fact ministering to the needs of anyone. This was not the fault of the ministry, or its leader, my good friend and brother Bob Barclay. In spite of encouragement from the pulpit, no one ever came forward to say, “Brother (or sister), I need to lean on you for a little while, just till I catch my breath.” We attended meetings, upgraded our training, prayed for one another and the congregation but still we seemed like an answer in search of a question. Was this a healthy congregation? Were its members strong and balanced all the time; immune from heartache, depression, grief or sadness? Of course not, no congregation is like that. So why didn’t people come to us and say, “Jamie or Bob or Margaret, I need some help.”
It seems to me that the whole notion we might not be emotionally, mentally or spiritually strong is loathsome to us. We’re ashamed to admit our need because this makes us seem weak. In our own eyes it diminishes our worth as Christians in comparison to those around us. Never mind that we’re called to bear one another’s burdens—and therefore, by implication, to share them with others (Gal. 6:2); never mind that we all have equal worth in the eyes of Him who made us as well as saved us; never mind that in the body of Christ, all the members have value and worth, even the weakest or most needy (1 Cor. 12:22, 23); never mind that, “if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart” (Ecc. 4:12). We somehow have the idea that because we as individuals have been given the Spirit of Comfort, Counsellor, and Paraclete in Christ’s very own Holy Spirit, somehow that same Spirit would not work just as well—or better—through the Body of Christ, which is His Church manifested in any local congregation or fellowship of other Christians. Perhaps we can attribute this attitude to the extreme individualism that is so characteristic of the age and which is so unchristian.
Speaking of His own impending crucifixion, Christ said, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). The obvious key words in this verse are peace, tribulation, courage and overcome. But there is a key phrase here that most people overlook simply because of its starkness and simplicity. It is the phrase, “in Me.” This is what gives meaning to the rest of the verse. It is only in Christ that we can get the courage to face the tribulations that are inherent in the world and so find the lasting peace we all crave. No two words, taken together, have nearly the richness, depth and importance of meaning than do these two words, in Christ. They are the very heart and soul of the Gospel and the Bible itself. If we do not have a sense of what this phrase in Christ (or in Me, when Christ refers to Himself) means, we will never understand what it is to be a Christian and will never understand God’s revelation of Himself in the Scriptures.
This is not the place to unpack the freight of meaning behind these two little words. Suffice to say that when we are in Christ, we have His very own indwelling Spirit in us as well, so that “He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man” (Eph. 3:16). But too often forgotten or overlooked, the Spirit of Christ always works in and amongst His chosen people, which is the true Church; not the church as an institution but the Church as the organic, dynamic, vibrant, and vital body of Christ! It is in Christ’s Body, the Church, that the Holy Spirit carries on His greatest work as Paraclete—Helper. It is in the Body of Christ, the assembly of all true, born-again believers, that the Spirit does His greatest work of healing. It is through one another, as members of the Body of which Christ is the Head, that we gain access to the comforting, healing power of Christ’s Spirit. But I believe many Christians have never actually worked out the ramifications, implications and consequences of being members of Christ’s Body.
In Romans 12:5 Paul says, “so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” I wonder if you are hearing what he is saying? Even though we are many in the sense of being individually unique, with our own personalities, talents and gifts, in another sense we are in fact one. And not one in the manner that a chunk of peanut brittle is one or that two things joined together by glue is one. No, we are organically one and indivisible in the same way a physical body is one. And when a physical body loses one of its members—an eye, a hand, a foot, an ear—it is diminished as a whole. This reality is reflected in the tone of the Meditation # 17 of John Donne: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind....”
In Romans 12:5 Paul says that we are members one of another. We belong to each other as members of Christ’s body in the same way a wife belongs to her husband and a husband to his wife. We don’t merely have the privilege of caring for one another’s needs; we have a God-given duty and responsibility to care and to be cared for! A Christian who does not allow himself to be cared for by a brother or sister is not just doing harm to that individual; he is doing harm to the body of Christ and therefore to Christ himself.
It is instructive to listen to Paul once again, at length:
For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body…. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; or again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” …But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it (1 Cor. 12:12-16, 24b-26).
A person who does not grasp the fact that the members of his or her congregation are not like members of his or her curling club, tennis club, golf club, book club or whatever, simply does not understand the collective and essentially covenantal nature of salvation. Although we are saved as individuals, we are not saved merely or only as individuals, but rather as members of a body. The terms “brother” or “sister”, as they are used in Christianity, are not mere euphemisms; they are accurate descriptions of the fact of the new, regenerated life we share in Christ.
For this reason it behooves us to be willing and courageous enough to trust—as an act of the will—our brother and sister with whatever problems we might be faced with. If nothing else, we can get encouragement and prayer for our blessing, knowing that when these things come from a brother or sister who has the indwelling Spirit, they come from Christ.
Soli Deo Gloria.
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