The Fellowship of the Lamb

 

“Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me” (John 16:32).

 

Jesus looks beyond our doubts and fears, He looks beyond our cowardice, He looks beyond our abandonment of Him, and He affirms that we are His brothers and sisters, He affirms our belief (even the midst of our doubt!), and He affirms our Father’s destiny for us from the foundation of the world. However, not only does Jesus not deny our unbelief, He reveals our unbelief. “Do you now believe? You will leave Me alone.”

 

Earlier in the Upper Room when Peter proclaims his willingness to die for Jesus, Jesus replies, “Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times” (John 13:36).

 

After all, Jesus is the Light of the world, He is the Truth, we ought to expect Jesus to reveal the truth and not hide it. Jesus reveals our doubts and fears and exposes our grand pronouncements that are without foundation so that He may burn away the dross within us and bring us out of the furnace as pure gold in Him. Jesus is always seeing the end from the beginning, and if Jesus see us this way, ought we not learn to see one another this way in Him?

 

The ”hour” is upon Jesus and the disciples, it is an hour with many facets; an hour of betrayal, an hour of darkness, an hour of sacrifice, an hour of scattering; yet also an hour of glory, of completion, of resurrection, of a new Day dawning, of gathering – an hour that is still unfolding in eternal victory in the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Family of God.

 

The disciples will be scattered, but they will also be gathered, and while Jesus will speak of victory in the next verse, He will not deny the reality of verse 32. Let’s recall what Jesus says at the beginning of our chapter, “But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them.” The hour has come for the disciples to enter into “the cost of witness” that Jesus spoke of in John 15:18 – 16:4.

 

As we read this passage, and the Gospel account of disciples abandoning Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, we may feel sorrow for times when have abandoned Jesus and we may hope that we shall never do so again. But let me ask a question, “Are we willing to be abandoned by other Christians as we are faithful to Jesus? Are we willing to stand alone for Him?”

 

You see, we may read the passages of Peter’s denial and of the collective desertion of Jesus in Gethsemane, and experience both conviction and a desire to faithful to Jesus amid persecution. This is as it ought to be. However, I want to take us a step further, I want to ask whether we will positively commit ourselves on the heavenly Altar of the Cross to a sacrificial witness for Christ in which we ourselves are abandoned.

 

Paul knew what it is to be such a witness.

 

“At my first defense no one supported me, but all deserted me; may it not be counted against them” (2 Tim. 4:16).

 

Perhaps this was, in part, an answer to Paul’s desire that, “I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His sufferings” (Phil. 3:10)? To be alone, to be abandoned, is an exquisite form of suffering; to look for your friends and to see no friends, that pieces the heart and soul, that is agony.

 

Yet, as the Father was with Jesus so that He was not alone, so Jesus was with Paul so that Paul was not alone. “But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me” (2 Tim. 4:17). You and I can be certain that Jesus Christ will always be with us. We can also be certain that if we are faithful to Jesus and to others that we will experience what it is to stand alone for Jesus Christ, that we will know what it is to be abandoned…if only for enough time to be accused, rejected, and crucified!

 

This is the entrance to John 17, the entrance to the Holy of Holies, the passageway into koinonia with the Trinity, the entering into the glory which Christ Jesus has given us (John 17:22; Rom. 8:17; 1 Pt. 4:12 – 14).  

 

This, my friends, is the fellowship of the Lamb.

 

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (11)

 

 

“Through the Holy Spirit, the crucified and risen Christ exists as the church-community, as the “new human being.” For Christ truly is and eternally remains the incarnate one, and the new humanity truly is his body. Just as the fullness of the godhead became incarnate in him and dwelled in him, so are Christian believers filled with Christ (Col. 2:9; Eph. 3:19). Indeed, they themselves are that divine fulness by being his body, and yet it is Christ alone who fills all in all” (page 200).

 

I will add Ephesians 1:23 to Bonhoeffer’s passages, I’ll quote it along with Ephesians 1:22 which Bonhoeffer references in the following paragraph on page 200:

 

“And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

 

Then Bonhoeffer writes, “The unity between Christ and his body, the church, demands that we at the same time recognize Christ’s lordship over his body. This is why Paul, in developing further the concept of the body, calls Christ the head of the body (Eph. 1:22; Col. 1:18; 2:19). The distinction is clearly preserved; Christ is the Lord” (page 200).

 

Do we see what Bonhoeffer has been saying? Do we hear what Bonhoeffer is saying being taught in our churches? Are we and our congregations and movements and denominations and institutions living out the Biblical truth expressed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

 

Of course the answer is “No.” Hopefully there are exceptions, hopefully there are individuals who are attempting to be faithful to the Biblical picture of the Body of Christ, the Church, the Temple, the Bride; hopefully there are pastors who are trying to bring their flocks into a Biblical understanding and practice of the Body of Christ, organic unity with Jesus Christ and with His People.

 

The barrier to such vision and practice seems insurmountable. Does this mean we don’t try? Does this mean that we do not ask God for grace to be microcosms of the reality of Christ the Body? Does this mean that we do not strive to serve our brethren as best we can, by God’s grace, even if they reject us and think us a bit strange, or worse, even if they denounce us?

 

I think we have no alternative but to be faithful to the heavenly vision, to be faithful to Christ the Head and Christ the Body and Christ the Whole. I do not see how we can participate in discipleship and do any less – nor did Bonhoeffer, nor did Paul.

 

With Paul, even though so many had rejected him by the time he wrote 2 Timothy, he continued to “Endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen” (2 Tim. 2:10). With Bonhoeffer, even though much of the professing church in Germany rejected him, he continued to train others to be pastors, to strengthen pastors, to equip the Church for what she was experiencing (whether the professing church realized it or not), and to do what he could to help the church recover when darkness should lift from the German people by his writing and teaching.

 

When we read Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship, we do him and ourselves a terrible disservice if we only consider and teach the first half, which focuses on the individual. Individual discipleship must lead to Part II, The Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship. In fact, we really can’t have one without the other. We learn discipleship within the Body of Christ, and the Body of Christ grows as our discipleship grows, for our discipleship consists not only of communion with the Head, but with His Body (1 John 1:3; Eph. 4:15-16).

 

We see this pattern in Paul’s letter to the Romans; chapters 1 – 8 speak to us as individuals, chapters 9 – 16 as the Body of Christ. In Ephesians we see the individual in 1:1 – 2:10, beyond 2:10 we see the unfolding of the Body of Christ, the Living Temple of God.

 

As with so many things, perhaps our recovery of the truth of the Body of Christ and living as the Body of Christ begins with an acknowledgement that there is a wide and deep chasm between what the Bible teaches us and what we believe and practice. Is recovery even possible?

 

Is it possible that institutions and denominations and movements will acknowledge that they have not been faithful to Christ and His Word? Is it possible that pastors and congregational leaders will acknowledge that they have missed seeing the Body of Christ, missed seeing their people as the saints of God in Christ, missed viewing other Christians in their own towns and cities and regions as the Body of Christ?

 

Perhaps it begins with what Bonhoeffer wrote on page 199: “Since the ascension, Jesus Christ’s place on earth has been taken by his body, the church. The church is the present Christ himself. With this statement we are recovering an insight about the church which has been almost totally forgotten. While we are used to thinking of the church as an institution, we ought instead to think of it as a person with a body, although of course in a unique sense” (italics mine).

 

If we do not begin to think and speak differently, it is unlikely that we will live differently. Old habits are difficult to change, old ways of thinking hard to overcome, especially when the new ways go against the popular grain, when they are invisible to most people and make no sense to the masses and can even be perceived as a threat.

 

Are we able to teach our people to be more than who they are?

 

If we are Baptists, can we teach our people to be more than Baptists, can we teach them to be Christ’s Body? If we are Presbyterians or Pentecostals or Methodists, can we teach our people to be more than our denominations and traditions, can we teach them to be the Body of Christ and to serve the Body of Christ? If we identify as Reformed, Pentecostal, Wesleyan, Anglican, or Lutheran, can we learn to be more than what we are, can we learn to see the Body of Christ, to serve the Body of Christ, to live as the Body of Christ?

 

Is Jesus Christ truly our Head? Or is Jesus Christ actually a figurehead?

 

If Jesus is our Head, then what warrant do we have to propagate anything less than what the Bible teaches us is the Temple of the Living God, and to seek anything less than the fulfillment of Christ’s prayer that we be one as the Trinity is One? (see John 17).

 

Perhaps it must begin with, as Bonhoeffer writes, seeing and thinking and speaking of the church not as an institution, but as a person with a body, a very unique body.

 

How have you thought of the church?

 

How might you begin to think of the church in a Biblical way?