Treating Christ Well

Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.--1 Corinthians 8:12 (ESV)

In a chapel address at the Master's College, Mark Dever made the following statement: "Christ so identifies with His Church, that how you treat each other as Christians is the way you treat Christ." Now that is a convicting truth! Paul clearly states in 1 Corinthians 12:27 that "Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it." In 6:17, he wrote "But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one with Him in spirit." Therefore, when we sin against our brothers, who are members of Christ, we sin against Christ. Gossiping about our brothers, lying to our sisters, or weakening the consciences of our fellow church members are ways in which we can sin against our very Savior.

No other truth in the Bible can give us such love for our brothers and sisters as this: They are part of Christ. We should give fellow Christians the love due to Christ. Anything short of this (admittedly rather high) mark offends Christ and sins against Him.

The Spiritual Gymnasium

Train yourselves for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.--1 Timothy 4:8 (ESV)

As I pedaled on a stationary bike this morning, I read this passage.  As I looked around at my schoolmates, I saw many people training themselves bodily.  But they were not alone, nor were they using their own equipment.  We needed the gym.  We could do some calisthenics outside, but the gym equipment took our exercise to a whole new level.  In the same way, Christians need the local church.

We can expect some growth in godliness through disciplines such as personal Bible reading, private prayer, and secret fasting.  But we severely hamper ourselves if we neglect God's spiritual gymnasium: the local church.  Preaching, corporate worship, and corporate prayer are essential duties of the Christian life.  Think on 1 Timothy 4:13--"Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching."

As brothers and sisters in a local church, we fulfill the many "one anothers" of the New Testament.  We love one another.  We admonish one another.  We prophesy to one another.  We correct, protect, encourage, pray for, and teach one another--in the church.  Most of the New Testament epistles were written to churches for a reason.  The pattern for Christians that we find in the early church can be simplified to (1) Belief, (2) Baptism, (3) Church membership.

If godliness truly holds promise for both the present life and the life to come, we should be striving for it as hard as we can--in both our private lives and in the local church.