The church is identified as “the purified ones” in Christ Jesus. The Greek word I translate, “purified ones:” is the famous “hagiazo”, the noun form being the term we know as “saints” Paul is noting that the church is all those who have been made saints, or to put it more precisely, purified and separated out from the rest of the world. This is not a work of the church, nor something any individuals within the church accomplish. It is an action outside the church, a doing that is incomprehensible in a purely natural sense. We look at physical, emotional and even spiritual qualities and try to mark the church by what we see but according to Paul, it has nothing to do with what we perceive. The Church is comprised of all those who are supernaturally purified in Christ Jesus.
The picture is of a container, being Christ Himself and those who are purified have been dropped in Him. Mysteriously, mystically, each one placed in Christ is made purified and set apart as God’s own…the collection of whom is the “Church”. The very meaning of the word church hints at this process. Ekklesia or church means “called out ones”. It is the assembly of the transformed; those who have been pulled out of their circumstances and placed within Jesus Christ in whom everything changes. Paul probably felt this sense of being taken out and dropped in more than anyone he knew. Enemy of Christians and persecutor of the Church, by the supernatural sky hook of the Holy Spirit, Paul was torn out of his old life and dropped without warning into a completely different world of Christian faith. Flying overseas has a bit of that same feel to it. One hour you are in a familiar airport within your own country, twelve hours later you are in Seoul Korea and no one talks like you and no one looks like you and everyone bows and likes kimchi. Paul was catapulted into a new world by Jesus and he could honestly say, “it wasn’t my fault”. The only difference between Paul’s transformation and the example given is that not only was Paul put into a new world, he was made into a new person, it is as if he was suddenly Korean without looking any different, and that is what makes the church the church.
Our identity as a church is not based on what we have done: it is completely determined by where we are placed. We are, as Paul puts it, “in Christ Jesus”. Now the question could easily be raised, “what part do we play in all of this”. Intuitively it feels like we are not just robotically programmed into following Jesus. The end of verse two explains the connection between God’s call to us and our interest in following Him. It literally reads, “with all the ones calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in all the places of them and us.” A true Christian is marked by this lovely quality. She is continually calling upon Jesus everywhere she goes. We cannot let the expression “name of our Lord Jesus Christ” confuse us in this. The name is simply the person, the cry to the Lord Himself. The Christian community is a dependent collection of misfits who are only really at home in the bond they have to Jesus. Take out the stuff of Christian activity…whether it be the prayer meetings or evangelistic events or the Bible classes and the core of Christian life is this dependence on Jesus that finds no other outlet but Him.
To Be Continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment