Heavenly Mindedness (20)

 

Continuing with the quote from Vos’s message in our last post:

 

“In the city of the living God believers are joined to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, and mingle with the spirits of just men made perfect. And all this faith recognizes.” G. Vos. (See Hebrews 12:18 – 24).

 

What does it mean to be “joined to the general assembly and church of the firstborn”?

 

In 1 Corinthians 12:12 – 14 we read, “For even as the body is one and 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.”

 

Colossians 1:18 tells us that Christ “is the head of the body, the church.”

 

In Ephesians 4:15 – 16 we see that we, God’s People, are to live “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, 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.”

 

The “joining” of which Vos speaks is an organic joining, an experience, a new and present reality. This joining is a baptism, an immersion, into One Body and it is a drinking of One Spirit as our source of life; not simply or primarily as our individual source of life, but our source of life as the Body of Christ. Jesus baptizes us into the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit baptizes us into the Body of Christ. We ought not to be surprised at this mutuality of the Trinity; we should be amazed and overwhelmed that we are recipients of the glory of the Trinity, but we should expect nothing less than that the prayer of Jesus Christ would be answered (John 17).

 

Note that Paul makes the point that this organic unity is without respect of earthly status or condition, “whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free.” These were the two of three prominent lines of demarcation in the ancient world, with the third being male and female. Consider Galatians 3:27 – 29:

 

“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.”

 

Do we view the Church, the Bride, the Body of Christ, as organic? Do we experience this organic life as a way of life? Do we see the universality of the Body? Do we see the catholicity of the Body? Do we see that the Body of Christ not only transcends our congregations, denominations, and traditions, but that it also transcends time and space – for after all, we are speaking of the Body of Christ and Christ is not only at the right hand of the Father, He lives in us and He has given us His promise that He will be with us to the ends of the world and ages.

 

Do we see that we are all Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promises which God gave to him? Do we not “see” that Christ has broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile so that “in Himself He might make the two into one new man”? (Ephesians 2:11 – 3:13)?

 

Consider that from ages past, in the secret counsels of God, there was a great mystery ready to be revealed at the proper season, a mystery which “in other generations was not made known to the sons of men” (Ephesians 3:5) “but which has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel…”

 

How great is this mystery? How powerful is its witness? It is so great and powerful that Paul writes (Eph. 3:10 – 11), “…so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places, in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

How sad it would be if the church were divided between slave and free (of course in America it has been so and this sinful legacy continues). How sad it would be if the church were divided between male and female (history testifies to this sadness). How sad it is that that church is often divided between Jew and Gentile – for to think that we are called to build again the barrier that Jesus Christ destroyed is to work against the great mystery that Paul writes of in Ephesians 2:11 – 3:13, it is to cut the Body of Christ in half, to render it asunder, and to poke our own eyes out so that we cannot see the glory of the many-membered Christ.

 

“That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as the seed” Romans 9:8. How often are we like Peter, who in a moment of disorientation sought to “build again what I have destroyed” (Galatians 2:18).

 

Peter himself comes to write that we are, “A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession…” (1 Peter 2:9). Is this the way we see ourselves? Or are we bound up in our fragmented traditions, denominations, distinctions, local congregations, and problematic eschatology which divides Jew and Gentile? Are we sons and daughters of Babylon, or sons and daughters of Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem?

 

Friends, we have been released from Babylonian captivity not to build our own houses, but to build the House of God (Haggai). If the House of God, the Temple of God, the Bride, the Body, is not our orientation, then we have squandered our deliverance.

 

To be “joined to the general assembly and church of the firstborn” is something that we seldom consider, and yet it is our birthright and most certainly our calling. It is where the heavenly-minded are called to live. The heavenly-minded learn to live above and beyond their traditions, denominations, distinctions; and they learn to see that there is no longer a distinction between male and female, slave and free, and most decidedly Jew and Gentile. The heavenly-minded are committed to promoting the growth and unity of the Body of Christ, and are most assuredly opposed to its dismemberment.

 

Perhaps as we next consider what it is to “mingle with the spirits of just men made perfect” we’ll have more clarity in this.