Good morning.
Let me start with an apology this morning. I know you’re not supposed to do that, but I just want to apologize because I have no funny story to start off my message this morning. I’m sorry. I know that’s wild. Most of y’all are here.
But I guess, to back that up, I trust that the Lord will reveal Himself to us today. I feel like this message may be a little different—a little different for me. I feel like I’ve been under a lot of attack to get up here and give this message.
Let’s go to the Lord and seek Him.
Father, we just thank You, Lord, for giving us Your life, giving us Your quickening, Lord. And Father, I pray that You would reveal Yourself to us today, Lord.
Father, I know that all I can do is speak, but You, Lord, can reveal. I ask, Lord, that You reveal Yourself and reveal Your desires, Your plan, and Your purpose to us today, Lord. I pray this in Christ’s most holy name. Amen.
Okay, today’s message is going to be a little different, as you can tell. I’ve got some props up here. I did the most radical thing possible: I put the table on the other side of the podium. But you probably figured it was going to be different because I’m up here today.
What I want to talk about today is God’s creation, along with some very familiar Scripture. I think within God’s creation, we can learn more about what the Spirit is telling us through some very familiar Scripture in the New Testament.
What I want to talk about today is going to be a refresher for most of y’all, but occasionally we need refreshing.
Now, I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t believe that we can ignore creation. If we ignore creation, we’ll miss part of the Lord’s glory. He has revealed Himself in creation, and we can use that, under the subjection of the Scriptures, to learn more about Him and about His character.
I don’t believe that science and faith are mutually exclusive. They can both exist, and we can enjoy science and have a wonderful, living faith at the same time.
All this talk of science probably leads you to believe that the discussion today is going to be somewhat technical. Well, it is going to be somewhat technical, but I’ll try to make it simple—try to explain what I’m talking about when I get into technical stuff.
If you need a title, it’s Spiritual Biology. That’s what we’ll be talking about today.
What I’m going to do is compare and contrast the biology of various organisms with what Paul—or the Spirit through Paul—described as the body of Christ. We’ll look at different types of organisms and see why those are not reflections of the body of Christ.
When we see what the body of Christ is, when we can relate it to something that we can see with our hands, I think we’ll see what privileges and responsibilities being a member of the body entails—not entrails, but entails.
Okay, turn to Ephesians 4:1. This is a very familiar passage. We’ll read several verses in here.
Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love,
being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
I’ll skip down to verse 11.
And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,
for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;
until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man,
to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine,
by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;
but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,
from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies,
according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body
for the building up of itself in love.
Let us flip over to 1 Corinthians 12:12. It’s another passage that Paul wrote about the body of Christ.
For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.
For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free,
and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
For the body is not one member, but many.
If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.
And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.
If they were all one member, where would the body be?
But now there are many members, but one body.
And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; or again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”
On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary;
and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor,
and our less presentable members become much more presentable,
whereas our more presentable members have no need of it.
But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked,
so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.
In these Scriptures, Paul is describing a very specific anatomy and physiology of the body of Christ. When I started college, I was a pre-med major, and that lasted for about a year until I discovered computers. But during that year, I took a course in anatomy and physiology.
Anatomy is how the body is put together, and physiology is how the body works together. We’ll look back at these Scriptures and see some principles of how the body is put together and how it works together, all for the glory of the Lord.
The first thing that we see in this anatomy and physiology is that there is a head. In Ephesians 4:15, the body has a head, and that head is Jesus Christ.
Everything that is sensed and comes into the body is received by the head. All these senses are communicated to the head, and then the head makes a decision about what the body should do.
The parts of the body do not decide on their own how to react to the incoming stimulus. The eyes may see something, and the head may direct the hands to do something else. So it is a nice division of responsibilities, but the head makes a decision and directs the parts of the body what to do. That’s pretty basic.
The next thing, in Ephesians 4:16, is that the body is composed of many parts. Again, that is very obvious. We look at our own bodies and see many, many parts. Because of this diversity of parts, there are a lot of good things that we can do—good characteristics of a body that has many parts.
Ephesians 4:16 also says that we are fitted and held together. Again, it seems kind of obvious that we all do not look like the meat cooler at Ukrop’s. We are in one piece. We’re held together.
But have you ever thought about what holds you together? Have you ever thought about why, when you wake up in the morning, you’re not just a big puddle of goo? I actually thought about that, and we’ll talk about it later—why, when we wake up in the morning, we’re not just a puddle of goo.
Again, in Ephesians 4:16, the functioning of each part leads to the growth of the whole. As we are functioning in the body, the whole body grows.
Growth in the body does not come from some magical formula. There is not some program that we can enroll in or embark upon to grow the body of Christ. There is a whole industry in Christendom about church growth—all kinds of programs that you can subscribe to, get material for, and do all these things to grow your local assembly.
These believers spend so much time trying to manufacture growth, when growth will come naturally if the members of the body are functioning. That’s what Ephesians 4:16 says.
Also in Ephesians 4:16, the body’s growth is not an end unto itself. We are to grow, but we are to grow for a purpose. That purpose is not just to get bigger. It is not a Mr. Universe contest that we’re involved in to see who can be the biggest body or the biggest assembly.
The body gets bigger so that it can be more loving. As we grow, the opportunities to love abound more and more. Then this opportunity—this love that is abounding more and more—feeds back into the growth of the body. The body grows more because there is love of the Lord displayed by its properly functioning members.
In 1 Corinthians 12:13, another aspect of the anatomy and physiology of the body of Christ is that all the members of the body drink of one Spirit. We all have the same need for the water of the Spirit.
There are not some parts of the body that do not need it and other parts that do. We all have a need for it. Now, physically, we all need water. Without water, in about three days you’ll die. We’ll just dry up and blow away.
Actually, you’re mostly water. I think it is about seventy percent water. In my business, we call people big bags of water because that bag of water actually has an effect on the computer systems.
Without the Spirit, without the water of the Spirit, we will dry up. We will become parched and dry, and we really will not be living in His life. But with the Spirit, as we drink in the Spirit, our body—just like our natural body absorbs water and that water becomes part of it—the Spirit will become part of our spiritual body. We become more and more saturated with the Holy Spirit.
Another principle found in 1 Corinthians 12:14 is that the body is a diverse structure. There are many different types of members in the body, not just one type of member, and we are probably all very glad for that.
These members do different things. They have different callings and different purposes. Your hand is called to grasp things and hold on to things. Your knee is not called to grasp things; it is called to bear up a lot of weight over a lifetime and survive pounding day after day for seventy, eighty, or one hundred years.
Just because they are called to do different things does not mean one is more important or less important than the other. Though the body is a diverse structure, with all these diverse parts, we are all called to one calling: to build the body up in love.
Whether we are standing up under a lot of stress as a knee, grasping something as a hand, or seeing something as an eye, the purpose of that is to build the body up in love.
First Corinthians 12:18 tells us that God has placed the members of the body. He has put each part in its place, and He has done so not at a whim, but under the guidance of His desire.
His desire is for a beautiful body and a beautiful bride for His Son—a body that expresses and magnifies the love of Christ. It is not up to us to determine our place in the body. We need to function where the Lord places us.
It is also not up to us to determine what place others have in the body. They may not seem like they are in the right place, but the Lord knows the heart. He has placed each of us in a certain place by His desire. If we are functioning there, we will glorify the body, and we will glorify the Lord.
First Corinthians 12:22 tells us that honor is given to lowly members. Each member is important, even the ones that are unsightly or weird-looking, maybe act weird, or do things that we do not understand. They have a place. The Lord has placed them.
Even though they may be strange, or perhaps from a less affluent economic situation, the Lord has given them honor. There is great honor in abiding and thriving where the Lord has placed you, whether it is a lowly place or a high place.
Another principle is that the members of the body are interconnected. They go places together. I’m sure you are all glad of that this morning—that you did not leave your legs at home.
They have shared experiences, and they care for one another. The parts of the body are not going to injure one another when they are healthy.
There is something related to caring for one another: seeing each other’s pain and caring for one another’s pain. This mutual dependence upon each other is a very important factor, a key principle.
On the downside, we are not alone. We cannot just do what we want to do. We cannot just do what feels right, because we are not alone. But on the upside, we are not alone. We have others that we can lean on and others that we can depend on in the body of Christ.
Okay, so as I was recently mulling over these concepts of anatomy and physiology, and of individually being members of this anatomy and physiology, the question came to mind: Why a body? Why not some other form of life?
Why did the Spirit, through Paul, call the church the body of Christ and not some other type of organism?
Well, as you might guess, there are a lot of reasons why we are called a body rather than something else. That is based on what other organisms do, how other organisms interact with one another, and how they live together with one another.
If we are looking at an organism and it is not a body, but it is lacking some feature of a body, we can still look at it and say, “Look, it’s an organism.” But it is not an organism that can contain the fullness of the stature of Christ.
If we neglect certain aspects of the body and treat it as some other type of organization, then it will not have that fullness of Christ in it. We need to be a suitable vessel. We need to keep in mind that we need to be a suitable vessel for the fullness of the stature of Christ.
He does not want a church that is some cheap imitation or partial representation. He wants a church that can contain His fullness.
What I want to do today, to hopefully bring some light to this issue, is point out some similarities and differences between different types of organisms and how we sometimes reduce the church to a lower-order organism. When we do reduce it to a lower-order organism, we need to consider the effect that has on the body of Christ.
I am going to divide the entire living world up into three different types of organisms. I ask the forgiveness of all the biologists in here, because it is a gross oversimplification of the creation that God has made.
There are untold numbers of different types of organisms, even between these three major categories. It is amazing that we keep finding new types of organisms. Every year, scientists go somewhere and find something else.
But I want to divide it into three different types of organisms: an animal, a plant, and a single-celled organism.
First off, an animal. What is an animal? To give you a quick definition, animals are a major group of organisms classified as the kingdom Animalia, or Metazoa. In general, they are multicellular, capable of locomotion at some stage in their life, and responsive to their environment.
For the purpose of this message, we will consider an animal life form as the body of Christ. I hate to say it, but we are all mammals. We are mammals with a soul and a spirit unlike any other mammal, but physically we have the body structure of an animal and a mammal.
So we will use an animal as the representation of the church as it should function.
The next type is a plant. Plants are a little more difficult to classify than animals. They are a major group of organisms that include ferns, trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, and a lot of different things like that.
For the purpose of this message, we will consider a plant to be an insufficient picture of the body of Christ. We will get into why it is an insufficient picture, what plants are lacking, and how sometimes we can be a plant instead of being a body.
Finally, the last kind is a single-celled organism. These are even more difficult to classify because there is a tremendously huge, wide range of single-celled organisms.
Some scientists consider viruses and prions to be organisms, but a lot of them consider them to be pre-life. Then you have things between single-celled organisms and plants that are in a very gray area.
For the purpose of this message, we are going to talk about microbes, protozoa, algae, fungi, and other organisms that exist as a single cell, that have a nucleus and a cell wall, and all those wonderful things you learned about in eighth-grade biology—or maybe twelfth-grade biology.
Again, for the purpose of this message, single-celled organisms are not reflecting the true nature, the true character, of the body of Christ. We will see later in the message why that is the case.
First, we will look at how all these organisms are similar. When you get down to the microscopic level of these organisms, they all look the same. They all have a cell surrounded by a cell wall that keeps all the goop in. They have a nucleus, which has DNA, and they have other little structures inside them to do things like convert molecules to produce energy.
If you look at them under a microscope, they can be very similar. You can look at algae and a human skin cell and say they have the same structure, at least to the untrained eye. You might conclude that they must be the same and both fully able to contain the glory of God.
Well, that is true at the microscopic level. Individually, we are an amazing creation. Each one of us, as a redeemed individual, is like a cell. Whether we are living in a body, as a microbe, or as a plant, each individual cell is created with an amazing and beautiful structure.
But when you zoom out and look at these cells at a macro level, you will see that what they result in is very different. You will see that some of them are better at representing the body of Christ—or the fullness of Christ—than others.
As we look at these three organisms, we are going to look at them from four different angles:
To do this, I brought some visual aids to help things along here.
First, we have Alice. Can y’all see that up there? There is some algae in the bottom of this jar. We will call it Alice. It is a group of cells that are all the same type, clustered together and living in this little broth of water.
I’ve actually had it for about two days, and I think they have grown a little bit in this jar in that time. Pretty interesting little critters. But this is Alice.
For a plant, I went out yesterday and got a plant. We will call him Robert. See if y’all figure out why we call him Robert—Robert the Plant.
For the third type of organism, I am going to need a volunteer. Who wants to volunteer? Pierce? You’ll do good, Pierce.
Pierce is not a single-celled organism.
First off, how are different organisms organized? When we look at Alice, we really see no discernible organization. If we were to look at her microscopically, the cells are just kind of floating there, somewhat sticking to one another, but there is really no organization to it at all.
Each little cell is doing whatever it needs to do, living on its own.
When we look at Robert, on the other hand, Robert has structure. He has leaves, stems that soak up water, roots down underneath here, and I think he might bloom someday—if he survives today. If he were blooming, he would have little reproductive parts on there.
So Robert has structure and organization, which is good, right? This could be the church. It has structural organization.
Now let us look at Pierce. Pierce looks pretty well organized, actually, for a couple billion cells slapped together. He has two eyes in the right place. He has one—count them—two ears.
And lo and behold, he has a head, which is a good thing for Pierce to have.
What is interesting about Pierce’s parts is that, because he has a head, he can do things that he has not imagined. His head can direct his parts to do all kinds of new and different things. His parts will do whatever his head tells them to do—usually, sometimes.
So we take this back to the spiritual picture, and we can see some principles on the spiritual side.
First off, cells that are living on their own are basically serving their own needs. They are not depending on anybody else, and no one else can depend on them. They are just doing whatever they want to do, floating around there, soaking up sunlight, just having a happy old life as a single-celled organism.
A lot of freelance believers will say, “It’s just me and the Lord.” They are floating around, not really attached to anybody. They may have a weak attachment to some people, but they float from attachment to attachment, doing their own thing and doing whatever seems to suit their needs the best.
“Does this assembly meet my needs? Does this job meet my needs? Is this Bible study really meeting my needs, or do I need to go somewhere else?” It is all about me, me, me.
But, as we see from the plant, it is not enough just to have organization. What is Robert missing? He is missing a head. Poor guy.
This organism that is a plant is just going to sit here and do the same old thing it has always done. It has a very rote, predescribed existence. It is going to grow, put out roots, bloom or not bloom, drop leaves, and do the same thing over and over again because it does not have a head.
It is not attached to any head to tell it what to do or to tell it to do something different.
Under the direction of the head, the body of Christ is a living and dynamic organism. It can do things that it has not thought of. It can do things that are very dynamic, unlike any other organism out there, all because it has a head that is guiding and directing all of its associated parts.
When we, as individual parts, respond to the prompting of the head, we will serve the head. We will serve the whole body, building up the whole body in love.
Okay, let us look at another facet of organization, and that is whether they move or not. We can look at Alice and see that these little cells move a little bit on their own.
Actually, algae do not move a whole lot on their own. Protozoa are more likely to move on their own because they have little cilia on the outside and little ways of moving. But even protozoa and algae that have means of single-cellular locomotion do not have the ability to move on their own against any kind of current.
Any kind of wind or tide comes along, and they are just going whatever way the tide takes them, being blown to and fro without any real attachment to one another and without any real direction other than the direction the wind is blowing at the time.
When these little guys are alone, they just cannot stand up against the forces of the world. They are going to get pushed back and forth, blown back and forth.
I missed one point. I do not know how many of y’all have ever felt like the little cells in here as I am shaking it. You feel like you are just in a bottle, getting whipped around just for fun because somebody wants to shake you. I feel like that sometimes.
Robert the Plant does not move a lot either. He has been sitting there the whole time we have been talking. He sat in our kitchen overnight. I do not think he is going to move right now on his own, do you, Pierce?
He will blow a little bit with the wind, but he does not move because he is structurally incapable of moving. He lives a very rote, predefined life that dictates that he is stuck in the ground wherever he was planted.
Even if he were free to move around, he has no head to tell him where to go. He is just going to be a log. He may roll down the hill, but he is just going to sit there. He is structurally incapable of moving.
Okay, Pierce, I want you to get up and pace back and forth.
We see our Pierce here. He is capable of moving. He has all the necessary parts required to move. He has legs, knees, ankles, feet—big feet, wow. He could probably water ski.
Anyway, he is moving back and forth, walking pretty well. But none of those individual parts are capable of walking on their own. They need each other to move around and walk.
There are also a lot of non-obvious parts that go into his walking. You may be seated now. There are the little bones in his ears that help him keep balance, his eyes that help keep him from tripping over things, and even his arms, which he can swing to help him remain balanced.
All that happens under the direction of the head. If you took his legs off and stood them up here, would they be able to walk? No, because they have no head to guide them. They are just going to sit there. All these parts need the head to tell them what to do.
If we look at this facet in the spiritual realm, we see some similarities. Again, single-celled organisms are just kind of moving on their own, going where they want to go and doing what they want to do.
They are easily tossed and shaken to and fro because they have no real attachment to anybody, and they obviously do not have a head to tell them what to do.
If we are living a rote, rigid, and well-defined Christian life where we have all the answers, we are going to be like a plant. We really do not have a need for a head, because we are not going to go anywhere. We know all the answers, and we know exactly how to live this life.
But if we are living in a body like Pierce is, one that can move under the direction of the head, then there is great glory for the Lord.
I mean, think about it. There is no Olympic sport for grass growing or shrubbery, because there is no movement. There is nothing dynamic. There is nothing beautiful about it.
But for the human body to move and do the things it does is a very beautiful and glorious thing, just on a physical level. With the body of Christ, with the church, when it is moving and responding to outside stimulus and responsive to the direction of the head, it is a very beautiful and glorious thing.
That movement will cause each part to love one another, and that love will feed back and cause the body to grow even further.
But because we can move and know all these things does not mean that we can just go off and sit and soak up the sun. The Lord wants us, as a local expression of the body of Christ, to serve—to go out and serve.
If we are functioning as a body, we have love to share: the Lord’s love to share, not just human love.
Okay, let us look at another facet of these organisms: how diversified or similar they are.
If we look at Alice and take parts of Alice out to look at them under a microscope, they would all look the same—maybe a slightly different shape here and there, but they would all be the same kind of cell. They would all have the same internal structures and the same biological functions.
Each cell in Alice, each piece of Alice, has to fully support its own life. Alice can only do what one cell can do. No matter how many cells of Alice there are, she can only do what her individual cells are capable of doing.
There is no cooperation. There is no synergy. The cells are just doing their own old thing, their own old desires. I do not know what desires algae have, but they are doing their own little desires.
Also, no one part of Alice is special because they are all the same. They are all replaceable and interchangeable. There is no specialness to each individual part of Alice.
When we look at Robert, we see that Robert does have some diversification. There are cells making the leaves, the stem, and the roots, and there are differences between those cells. Especially when you get into the reproductive organs of a plant, there are some significant differences.
But you know what? They are replaceable. None of these leaves are special. If I were to pluck one off, another one just like it would grow back. There is nothing unique or special about each individual leaf or part of this plant.
Now, Robert may think differently, but it is true that his leaves will grow back. So there is cooperative life going on in the plant, but it is not really of any particular value because it is easy to replace each individual part that is cooperating.
Okay, let us look at Pierce here, our volunteer. He has some amazing diversification in his body. It is really amazing considering that it all started from the same cells—actually, from the same cell. Yet it grew up into this prime example of manhood known as Pierce.
Okay, stick out your tongue. Notice the tongue. The tongue has very similar skin to a lot of the other parts of the body, especially the ears, the nose, and other body cavities. I did not tell you to put it back in.
But the cells and structure of the tongue are unique in their own right, even within the mouth where its closest neighbor is. Even within the tongue, it is unique. There are zones in the tongue where there are different taste regions. It tastes different things on Pierce’s tongue. You can stick your tongue back in now.
So there is great diversification within Pierce, within the body. Each part is uniquely valuable.
Take, for example, the pancreas. There are some people here who have very intimate experience with the pancreas. The pancreas is this ugly, ugly little organ, and it sits down stuck underneath a couple of other ugly and smelly organisms.
It is just sitting there from almost day one, doing its little job. I cannot really tell you what that job is, but I know that if the pancreas stops doing its job, the entire body will, in short order, start to fade and eventually die.
So we have these few, really unappreciated cells very deep down inside us that, without them, the body cannot function at all.
Even if a part is not life-critical, it is still important because it is irreplaceable. Which one of your parts would grow back if I removed it? Keep in mind, it is just cutting your hair. If you pull the roots out, it does not grow back.
There are really very few parts of your body that will grow back if completely removed. Each part is uniquely valuable.
You are starting to get nervous there, Pierce. The liver can grow back only if you leave something of the liver there for it to grow back. So do not be going home taking your liver out, waiting for it to grow back, because it ain’t going to happen.
So, on the spiritual level, what can we learn from this facet of life? If we are living independently, not really attached to anybody and doing our own little thing, then we must provide for everything.
Every single function that needs to be performed in the church needs to be done by each individual person. You would have to love your neighbor, be able to speak, be able to teach, have all the gifts—and what else would you have to do? You would have to be able to clean the bathrooms.
There are a lot of things you would have to do, because everything Alice can do is embodied in each individual cell. If you are an independent, freelance believer, everything the church can do has to be embodied in you, because there is no cooperation. There is no synergy between the different cells.
Now, if we look at Robert, with his rote and headless life, there is some diversification, and there are a few little different things going on. Each part does not have to support the full function of the body, but the parts are replaceable. They are not special. They are not unique.
You can pluck a leaf off, and a new one will grow back just like nothing ever happened.
But if you look at Pierce—look at a body—every part is important. Even if it is a non-life-critical part, it is irreplaceable, unique, and placed and fitted together by God under His desire to have a church and have a bride.
Okay, the last facet of organization I want to look at is independence, or dependence, within the organization.
If we look at Alice, now is a good time to look at her. You will see that if things are calm, Alice will float together, and there is some small line of cohesion between the different cells of Alice. They are kind of stuck together. They kind of bind a little bit.
Algae is a good example because they are one of the cells that do this. Other types of protozoa never stick together because there is no cohesion between them.
But if I shake them up, they easily come apart. Things get shaken, each cell moves out on its own, becomes individual again, or perhaps stays in a small cluster if I do not shake it real hard.
To further demonstrate this independent spirit of Alice, I need a couple more volunteers.
You will notice that there are now three Alices in this room, filled with little individual freelance cells. They are all spread out, all doing their own little thing.
These Alices do not even need to be in the same bottle. They can be spread all over the place, and they can still thrive. You could take your Alice home, put it in some non-chlorinated water, and it would continue to grow. You would have your own little Alice.
Now we have Alice all back in the same bottle, and it is like nothing ever happened. They are all back together again, as happy as can be, doing their own little thing.
Let us look at Robert. Plants are organized. They have some dependency on one another, but I can reach out and snip off a leaf.
This leaf will eventually die if we leave it alone, but we could actually graft this leaf back into another plant. If we do it right, it would continue to grow. This plant, as I said before, will just grow back another leaf, because it is just another role in the body that can be filled by anybody that fits in that position.
I sort of envy Robert and Alice because we in America are taught that independence is a really good thing, that we should be independent from one another, and that depending on one another is not a good thing.
In fact, depending on one another is just death. It is the cross to us in the church to depend on one another, and it is the cross to have others depending on us.
Judging from y’all’s reaction, there are four principles—actually, maybe five principles—that are displayed about the dependence and interdependence of the body.
First off, there is revulsion at the idea of separating the body, pulling members off the body. The revulsion was evident in the observers who gasped that I would whip out a giant butcher knife and even consider cutting off Pierce’s fingers, which he would need to play the guitar.
There was revulsion on Pierce’s part too. At first, he would not even put his hand down here. We are rightly repulsed by the idea of separating the body because it should be intact.
Second, there is great violence in separating the body. It is not something that happens easily. It takes something coming down and performing a violent act. Even in surgery, to remove a limb is a fairly traumatic, bloody, messy ordeal.
There is really no separation without violence. There is no separation without attack.
That leads to principle three: there are always outside forces involved in separating the body. The body just does not come apart. The body does not willingly separate from its own. There must be something attacking from the outside for a body to come apart.
I do not know if y’all know this, but I have acid reflux disease. I suffer from it occasionally, and it usually wakes me up in the middle of the night. It feels like a hot knife being stabbed between my shoulder blades.
Acid reflux is caused by the stomach and the esophagus really disagreeing with one another. The stomach is malfunctioning, and there is a little sphincter muscle at the top of the stomach that is not quite tight enough, so it lets some of the stomach acid up into the esophagus.
The esophagus is not designed—it’s not called—to hold stomach acid, so it has a lot of pain when that happens.
But even in the worst pain of reflux, my arm has never wanted to go sleep somewhere else. My arm is concerned for my stomach and my esophagus. It presses and tries to stretch out, just to try to eliminate the pain, but my arm has never wanted to go off and sleep somewhere else.
Neither has my esophagus, even though it is the one being offended and damaged. It has never wanted to climb out my mouth and go sleep in Brenda’s mouth. It is a horrible, horrible picture. I’m sorry.
When these two parts are having an argument, it is not in the nature of the body to pull itself apart, even though one part is hurting another part. It is in the nature of the body to pull itself together, to try to heal itself, and to try to fix itself.
My stomach and my esophagus stick together even though one is causing the other pain. When there is improper functioning within a body, one part does not crawl off on a huff and go somewhere else because it has been offended or hurt.
I have had acid reflux for, I think, fourteen years now—actually, since Hannah was born. It is something I have had to deal with for a really long period of time, and it occasionally hurts. I cannot partake in some of the nice things I like to partake in, like Mountain Dew, because it will cause acid reflux.
Now, to get to this question about why we do not wake up as a puddle of goo in the morning: it is because the parts of the body are naturally attracted to one another.
Think about your skin cells. Why do your skin cells not just come apart? Why does your liver not just come apart? It is because the way God has made your cells, and the cells of an animal, is that the molecules on the outside of the cell have cohesion for one another. What they are made of is attractive to one another.
If we are embodied with the life of Christ, and if we are exhibiting His love, we are going to bind into one another. We are going to be attractive to one another. We are going to want to be with one another.
It is going to take an act of violence—an unnatural act of violence—to pull us apart.
Principle number four: there is pain in separation. If I had cut Pierce’s fingers off, he would have hurt, and his fingers would have hurt. But you would have hurt also, just from watching it. The empathetic pain of seeing a body get separated is painful.
There are a lot of different reactions people have when they experience pain. Some people withdraw and say, “I can’t handle that anymore. Church life is too painful. I’m going to go do something else.”
They do not want to be close because they know it is going to hurt when somebody offends them, when somebody leaves, or whatever. They pull in to protect themselves. Because of that, they become independent, free-floating, freelance believers.
Some people get crippled by the pain of separation. They do not pull away, but they just stand there. That is kind of like how I feel today—just stand there.
There are others who, like myself, just get angry when we have pain. We will not talk about that, though.
The fifth principle of separation is that there is permanent damage when the body is separated. With Robert, that leaf I plucked off will grow back. But with a body, there are no parts that will grow back. If you cut off a finger, it is not going to grow back.
We could run down to MCV, and Keene could take him into surgery with all the other doctors. After hours of tedious and laborious surgery, they could reattach that finger so that the finger is put back on the body.
But it is always going to have a scar. It is always going to be a little reminder that one day it was separated. It has been put back together, but one day it was separated.
It is not going to function quite as well because that scar is there and the memory of the separation is there.
Now, because there is going to be a scar is not a good reason not to reattach the finger. It is better to have a scarred finger than no finger at all. But the scar will still be there. It will never be the same.
Okay, to wrap things up: when you think that you are not part of the body, when you feel like you are not valued, underappreciated, not appreciated at all, or that people are against you or talking bad about you—whatever—take a look at your hand.
Ask yourself, “Which one of these fingers can I do without?” Because I think that is how Christ looks at His body when it is wanting to pull apart. He looks at it and says, “Which one of these fingers can I do without? Which knee can I do without? Which pancreas can I do without?”
We all know He does not want us to pull away, and He does not want us to separate. When we do separate, if that finger gets separated, it is useless. It is not going to do a whole lot anymore.
The Lord does not want us living as individual, free-floating cells, wandering around between casual attachment and casual attachment. Who wants a bride like that?
Who would want a bride that is a bunch of detached cells floating around in a bottle of goop?
He does not want us living as an organism without a head, because when we do not have a head, everything we do is rote and prescribed. There is no mystery or dynamic nature of the body.
It is just sitting there, doing what it has always done and what it is always going to do. It is just a plant. It is not going to get up and do anything more. A plant can be pretty, but it is not dynamic.
The Father wants us to be dynamic, to move around, to serve one another, and to serve the world around us. He wants us to be able to respond to the direction of the head. If we cannot respond to the direction of the head, then we are not really a body.
He wants all of His parts in the place where He put them, fitted together, functioning as He intended, and drinking up the life of the Spirit that He has given to us, so that the body can grow in love.
Let’s pray.
Father, we just thank You, Lord, for this picture. Thank You, Lord, that You have placed us in a body, that we are not alone, and that we are not static, but You have called us to do new and unusual things.
Your purpose does not change, Lord, but what You call us to do can be new and interesting every day.
Father, I pray that You would reveal Yourself to us as a picture of the body of Christ, as a local expression, the local example of the body of Christ. We pray this in Your holy name. Amen.