The Corporate Nature Of Scripture & The Church

INTRODUCTION

In change management, you always want to address those that must adopt the change by making the point of What’s in it for me? Why should I change what I am comfortable with for this new method of doing business? If you can’t adequately address this question the change will probably fail. This attitude carries over into my preaching. I want to show you that living for Christ has so many more benefits for your life that it is worth the efforts to change.

Although, I often try to demonstrate the “What’s in it for me?” question to spur you all on in your walk with Christ, I wonder if this direction leads us off the path into a self-centric attitude where scripture is all about me. My spiritual growth. My feelings of spirituality. My needs. My wants. My desires.

This self-centric attitude leads many to the thought process that they can be spiritual and follow after Christ without the Church. If it is about me and my spiritual growth, then why do I need to be part of a local body of believers? After all the church is just made up of imperfect sinners and people often are not as spiritual as me and therefore causes issues in my life. I am better off without the church! Did you hear all the talking about me in that?

We like to personalize scripture, and there is nothing wrong with that, but we need to keep the perspective that Christ really did not die for me. His plan of salvation that he had planned before the creation of the world was not to save me but rather to save His people.

Romans 9:25-26 ties in the passage from Hosea 2:23. Hosea’s wife is unfaithful. God is using Hosea’s wife as an example of how Israel was unfaithful to her husband God. God gives such hope in 2:23

23 I will plant her for myself in the land;

I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’

I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’;

and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”

In Romans 9:22-26 this passage is quoted again in reference to the church.

22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25 As he says in Hosea:

“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;

and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”

26 and,

“In the very place where it was said to them,

‘You are not my people,’

there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”

Notice that this great gospel message given here is not to the salvation of Arthur Miller. No it is to the Jews and the Gentiles. To all people. God from the very beginning is creating a kingdom. A bride. A church. John 3:14-17

14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

God’s plan has always been to create a kingdom. The kingdom is made up of everyone who believes. Everyone. The Church, the kingdom is not individualistic in nature but rather corporate.

We see this corporate nature from the very beginning of the church. After Peter’s gospel sermon in Acts 2 3,000 souls were added to the new church. We see following that event that the Christians were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common. Finally in verse 47 we have this statement:

47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Three thousand were added the first day and people kept being added daily. The kingdom of God was growing!

THE CHURCH IS MADE UP OF INDIVIDUALS BUT THE FOCUS IS ON THE WHOLE NOT THE PART

Now I am not here to say the individual is irrelevant. If we had no individuals where would the church be? A kingdom without a population is not much of a kingdom! But we must understand that the focus is on the kingdom and not the parts. I would love to read the full chapter of I Corinthians 12, but for time’s sake and our familiarity with this passage we won’t do that. The Corinthians were having trouble with the spiritual gifts given to them. Paul lays out that all the different gifts given were coming from the one Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that apportions to each one individually as he wills. Paul introduces the analogy of the body being one but with many parts with this statement in verses 12-14: