Foundations of Faith
THE CHURCH (II)
More comparisons of the physical body with the body of Christ.
Scene 1. You have just finished stuffing yourself at a buffet. As you are walking down the street toward the car, your nose begins smelling the most wonderful aroma-roast pork. In response, your legs start carrying your body toward the smell, and your saliva and gastric juices start flowing. Then your stomach sends a message, “Hey, whoa there; don’t you know I am all filled up already?” Your legs get the message and start heading for the car once again.
But suppose your nose, tongue, taste buds, hands, and legs ignore the signal from your stomach. They say to the stomach, “You are just out to spoil our fun.” So you stuff your stomach with delicious roast pork until the stomach rebels and regurgitates it, which no longer is very pleasant to the nose, tongue, and taste buds.
Scene 2. A finger tip on your right hand accidentally touches a hot burner on the stove. What happens next? Does your left hand pick up a knife and chop off the careless finger? Of course not! Nerves in your finger shoot a message back to the spinal cord which shoots a message-all in split seconds-to the other bones of that finger, as well as the hand, wrist, lower and upper arm, elbow, and shoulder. All of these work together quickly to lift your finger tip from the hot stove. Then your legs quickly carry you to get an ice cube or piece of an aloe plant to soothe the hurting finger.
Scene 3. While walking on a sidewalk you do not notice the raised section ahead. Your toe hits it and you stumble and lose your balance. What then? Your arm shoots out to break the fall. Your arm or hand may get scraped up or broken, but you have kept your head from being injured.
We learn from 1 Corinthians 12 that God has placed every believer in Christ into the body of Christ so we can receive instruction from Christ the Head, and so we can assist, encourage, exhort, protect, build up, teach, correct, and help one another to grow “unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-16; also Rom. 12:3-8; 1 Cor. 14:3).
Most of all, we are placed in the body so we will exalt and honor our Head (as in Scene 3 above). We teach one another what we have learned about Christ our Head, and the older believers have a special responsibility to help the younger believers to know what Christ is like by the way they live. If we are allowing the Holy Spirit to do His desired work of changing us into the image of Christ, then this will help others in the body to learn to know Christ better.
As illustrated in Scenes 1 and 2 above, an important activity of the members of the body of Christ is correction and rescue. Messages from the stomach rescued other parts of the body from an unpleasant experience. The finger tip had little or no power to remove itself from the hot stove. Just so, we may know fellow Christians who need to be rescued from wallowing in sin. Most Christians tend to shy away from work like this. As a young person, you may sit back and wait for an older Christian do the rescue work. Lots of questions may fill your minds:How can I go up to someone else and tell him he is sinning when I still sin myself? What if he is offended by my doing this? What if he points out some of my sins in return? What if we have been real good friends and this destroys our friendship? Isn’t it unloving to criticize others?
Here is what the Bible says:”Brethren, if a man be overtaken with a fault, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness” (Gal. 6:1). “If your brother shall trespass against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone:if he shall hear you, you have gained your brother” (Matt. 18:15). The young man Timothy was told to “Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:2).
Rescuing our brother or sister from sin is a difficult work (they may not want to listen) and a risky work (they may reject you as their friend). But it is truly a work of love, showing real care and concern:”Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov. 27:5,6). When Peter writes, “Add … to brotherly kindness [love]” (2 Pet. 1:7), he means that being good friends with another (“brotherly kindness”) must not keep us from showing self-sacrificing, “agape” love if we see our friend heading down a path of sin. Let us make sure that our love for Christ and desire for His honor and glory takes priority over preserving human friendships. Besides, if your friend is a real born-again Christian, he/she will realize the value of your faithful rebuke, and your friendship will likely become closer and stronger in the long run.
Running the Race
HOW DO WE RESPOND TO REBUKE AND REPROOF?
Do you drive a car? If so, here is a situation most of you can identify with.
You are driving down the road and you see a stop sign ahead. A split second before you apply the brakes a passenger in the car shouts, “Stop sign!” How do you respond? Is it like this:
1. “Who’s driving, you or me?”
2. “Don’t you think I can see too?”
3. “Here, you drive if you think you are so smart!”
Or is it like this:
1. “I did see it but I was careless to wait so long to apply the brakes.”
2. “Thank you for the warning. I didn’t really need it this time, but I might the next time.”
If you are honest with yourself, you know that there are times when you really don’t see that car approaching the intersection or that is in the lane next to you in your blind spot. If you “turn off” the warnings of well-meaning family members or friends, you may be risking a bad accident in the future.
Similarly, if you, as a Christian, give a smart-aleck remark back to a loving friend who is concerned about your walk with the Lord, you may end up in deep trouble, making decisions that you will regret for the rest of your life.
Assignment 11: Write out verses in Proverbs 10, 12, and 15 that describe the person who refuses or hates reproof.