Bymonline.org | August 2020
church body and we will work as a unit,
therefore I cannot answer as an individual.”
So far as you are concerned personally before
God, YOU are the Church; YOU are Christ's
Body.
We talk about the Church, or the Body of
Christ as being the mystical union of
believers, the spiritual community of calledout
ones, and this is all true. But like all truth,
it must become PERSONAL, otherwise it is
lost. We have regarded the Body of Christ in
its GENERAL collective sense, but not in its
PERSONAL application. Salvation is
personal. Christ must live in us personally.
The great “mystery which hath been hid from
ages and from generations, but now is made
manifest to His saints is CHRIST IN YOU!” (Col
1:26,27). Christ must have body to minister
through today. That is ME - and YOU. WE are
the Church - His Body - His Temple. This does
not imply that we ignore the body of Christ in
its “corporate” sense - made up of all true
believers; it means that YOU and I have
awakened to the fact that Jesus Christ in
born IN US and that WE are now His Body.
God Could Have Sent Angels
How often we have said: “God could have
sent angels to preach this Gospel, but He did
not; He has ordained that human beings
must preach it. If men do not preach it, it shall
not be preached - and souls shall be lost.” And
this is True! The preaching of the Gospel is
limited to the willingness of human beings to
step forth and open their mouths for Him to
speak through. But this same fact applies to
all phases of Christian living and witnessing.
Christ cannot go visit the prisoner unless He
can go in your body. He will go IN YOU. YOU
are the Church. When YOU visit the prisoner,
Christ will visit him. Otherwise He CANNOT.
As I said, we have made an errand-boy out of
God through our tradition of prayer. Do not
misunderstand me. Prayer is vital to each
Christian. Christ taught us to pray. But He
told us what to pray for. Christ prayed. But he
did more than pray; He “went about doing
good,” witnessing, comforting, visiting,
speaking, showing compassion,
demonstrating God in action.
With Us - But Now In Us
Isn't it strange: We talk about how the
Spirit was WITH men before Pentecost. Now
we rejoice that He is IN us. That's exactly
where He is. IN us. Not floating around all over
the world, hovering down over human beings
here and there as we direct Him, fixing their
problems, visiting them, encouraging them,
while we live our little selfish lives in privacy.
Through the redemption of Calvary, and the
new creation at Pentecost, Jesus Christ has
now returned through the Holy Spirit to “live
and move and have His being” IN US. Now
Christ is born in us! Now “it is God which
worketh IN you both to will and to do of His
good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). This is what God
did in Christ. Now He does the same in us
because now, WE are His Body. Now He
speaks through OUR lips. He visits the needy
and uplifts the fallen through US. He
encourages the discouraged and reaches
down to the fallen ones through US. He heals
the broken hearted and binds up the wounds
of the suffering ones through US. YOU and I
are His Body. We are the Church. Now you
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