Everyone has an opinion on what level of autonomy we have over our bodies (especially when a mother wants to put to death the other body in her body). However, those who are born again by the power of the gospel are now members of the body of Christ. This means we have no autonomy whatsoever, and no right to decide for ourselves what we do with Jesus body!
I’m addressing this today because I’m nearing the end of Nehemiah’s journal and he is still finding house-cleaning needs among the people. Ezra had come back to Jerusalem decades earlier to lead the way in rebuilding the temple after the exile. Nehemiah followed with the aim of rebuilding the wall around the city so the remnant could reestablish themselves in their land.
The first twelve chapters of Nehemiah chronicle the steps he took to lead the rebuilding project, and then we see how the people returned to their covenant relationship with Yahweh, the only true God. This included the repentance that removed any practices that were against their covenant with God, and faith that returned to all the requirements of the Law of God.
Today we find Nehemiah discovering one more problem situation that needed addressing. It is described like this:
Now before this, Eliashib the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God, and who was related to Tobiah, prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had previously put the grain offering, the frankincense, the vessels, and the tithes of grain, wine, and oil, which were given by commandment to the Levites, singers, and gatekeepers, and the contributions for the priests.[1]
Tobiah was one of the men who had opposed Nehemiah coming to Jerusalem and rebuilding the wall around the city. Not only was no one given accommodations in the temple, but Tobiah was against God so shouldn’t have been anywhere near there!
Nehemiah is going to address this, but my focus was on considering possible ways we invite friends and relatives into the temple of God and give them a home when they are still opposing the work of God. At no time in the history of God’s people have favoritism and partiality been acceptable practices. In fact, in the essence of the new covenant, we find the apostles teaching the churches to get rid of people who shouldn’t be there because of their false teachings, sinful practices, or divisive activities.
The issue is all about who we are. We are not autonomous figures who are entitled to think of no one but ourselves and what we want. That is the toddler level of maturity! Instead, we are even more focused on how we relate to the temple of God under the new covenant since the temple of God is us! Yes, the people of God are the temple of God. And who is in or out of God’s temple is not up to us.
When Paul was addressing how the Gentile Christians are to see themselves alongside the Jewish Christians, he made it abundantly clear that we are part of the “one body” of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.[2]
This means that the Gentiles are not added to the Jewish Christians, and the Jews are not added to the Gentile Christians, but are now made into “one new man in place of the two”. Both Jews and Gentiles had to leave their earthly cultures behind and enter the new culture of the kingdom of God. There is no longer any ground for hostility between different ethnic groups of Christians since we no longer belong to those groups because we are now the one people of God.
Paul continues:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.[3]
Here we see that all believers are “joined together” in Christ so that we grow “into a holy temple in the Lord.” And as much as the Tabernacle and the first and second temples all had requirements and restrictions that could not be violated by favoritism and partiality, the people who make up God’s holy temple are now the place where God lives by his Spirit, and he alone decides who is in and who is out.
The letters the apostles wrote to the churches explain in detail what it means to be part of this body of Christ, this one new man, this holy temple in the Lord. Anyone who has their daily time with God in his word and prayer and participates in a church where there is regular teaching and instruction in these letters will know what it means to live under the new covenant.
Paul gives a summary of this in writing to Timothy:
I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.[4]
All believers are “the church (assembly) of the living God”, and we are all that way through the “bond of peace,” which is the saving work of Jesus through the cross. Our identity includes the fact that the church Jesus is building is the only “pillar and buttress of the truth”, and none of us can behave in the church with prejudice, favoritism, or partiality. We must live according to the details of the new covenant. Who we honor and who we discipline is according to how anyone relates to the new covenant not how they are related to us as family or attached to us as friends.
The application of this is simple (but not necessarily easy). We must examine ourselves to see if we are relating to everyone in our church fellowships without favoritism or partiality. Each of us must question whether we favor some and ignore others based on friendships or family relationships instead of our “household of God” relationship as God’s children. We must examine whether people who are not honoring Jesus Christ are given leadership or influence just because of who they know (you know, the way the world does things). Any kind of autonomy, favoritism or partiality has no place among God’s people under the new covenant just as it had no place under the old.
My journey through Nehemiah has shown me so many things about how our mentors of old handled situations according to the old covenant. What is clear is that we can’t do less in our adherence to the new covenant. The letters to the churches in the New Testament continue to address the positives of our life of faith and the negatives of sinful unbelief as clearly as has always been done by God and his shepherds.
In relation to how we “love the brotherhood” in the faith,[5] we must always be devoted to making sure that no family or friend relationships pull us from “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”[6] into the horrible sins of favoritism and partiality. Nehemiah wouldn’t tolerate it in his day and the apostles didn’t tolerate it in theirs. We must not tolerate it in our generation because Jesus is our head and “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”[7]
Let us live as God's holy temple no matter what house-cleaning is
required. Because, after all, the body of Christ is not our body, and when we
are made alive in Jesus Christ, we no longer have the right to do what our
sinful and sarky old hearts please. We are “in Christ” and must
live accordingly.
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
No comments:
Post a Comment