The Body of Christ

Scripture tells us that flesh and blood can not inherit the Kingdom of God, and that corruption shall not inherit incorruption. Of course, if ever there was an example of human flesh being uncorrupted, it was Jesus Christ, in the flesh. But, we know that Jesus existed before He became flesh (John 1:1, 14, 1 Timothy 3:16, John 10:30), and we know that He continues to exist, free of His mortal body. In other words, even though He ascended, and left no body behind (at least, not that we know of; that could be an interesting discussion some other time). He would appear to have translated, as Enoch did.

So there is a definite difference between Jesus, the man, and Jesus’ Spirit. That flesh only existed for a finite period of time—about 33 years—from the time that Mary gave birth until the Ascension. The flesh was only part of the story. While Jesus walked the earth, He was very careful about what He said and did in regards to His flesh, because He did not want anyone to worship that human body. It was never the body that was extraordinary, in fact, He had no physical attractiveness about Him. Clearly, though, there was something that drew people to Him.

When Jesus appeared to His disciples after the resurrection, many of them did not know what to think of it. Some thought that they were seeing a ghost. Jesus assured them that He was flesh and blood, even going so far as to eat something to prove it (a spiritual being doesn’t need physical sustenance, although, under certain circumstances, a spiritual being can take on physical form, and then eat, but Jesus wanted them to know that He was at least in physical form).

It is also important to note that now we are the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul takes the Corinthians to task because some of their members thought that they weren’t important, or perhaps, some of the Corinthians thought that they were more important than others. If you don’t think that you are important, then be sure to read that chapter, but just to recap, Paul compared the Body of Christ to a natural body. He talked about if the foot compared itself to the hand, and decided that it wasn’t really part of the body, because it couldn’t do what the hand did, well, quite frankly, it would be hard for a person to walk around with no feet. Sometimes we get hung up on what somebody else is good at, but God has given each of us the talents and abilities that we need to do whatever it is that He would have us to do. Comparing yourself to someone else just doesn’t make sense. They almost certainly have faults that you are completely unaware of, and their purpose in the Body of Christ is different than yours is (other than the obvious common purposes of staying saved and seeing others saved). If someone else has a great singing voice, but your talents run more toward office skills; so what? Where would the church be without people keeping records? If you want to be a cook, but have trouble boiling water, well, maybe you need to spend more time developing your talents—and accept the fact that maybe God didn’t call you to be a cook (pray it through, though, because that desire may be of God, and it just takes more work to build up that particular ability). The important thing, though, is that you understand that you matter to God. John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, but, understand that gift is for you personally. Don’t think abut that in terms of how many people God offered it to; understand that He offered it specifically to you. We know that most people will never even accept the gift of salvation; what you may not understand is that the gift is there for you, even if you were the only one who ever truly accepted it. Take that personally; God meant for you to.