There is no other form of the Christian life except a common one. This is even a matter of culture, which is shared and passed on. Until and unless Christ is someone happening between people, the gospel remains largely a daydream.
Certainly, we must deal with individuals but our very lifestyle and our church teaching must declare from the beginning what the goal is—the communion of saints, a shared life together as a family, the trinitarian life of God – that the kingdom is here!
We continue to think that we can work with the world’s agenda, where career and individual fulfillment are the basic building blocks of society. We think we can build the church from those well-educated and well-saved blocks, but God needs “living stones making a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5).
For Jesus, such teachings as forgiveness, healing, and justice are not just a spiritual test or obstacle course. They are the necessary requirements for a basic shared life. Peacemaking and reconciliation are not some special tickets to heaven. They are the price of peoplehood. They express the truth in the heart of God, the truth that has been shared with us in the Holy Spirit, the union in Jesus Christ who is reconciling all people to God (2 Corinthians 5:18–19).
The Body of Christ is a collective reality; we need each other to live the gospel – God’s strategy! The Body of Christ, the spiritual family, is both medium and message. It is both beginning and end.
John 17:21–23 “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.”
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