Jesus
Christ the Creator God
This
is one of the basic doctrines of the LORD, and the teachings of the
Apostle Paul, that every believer becomes a member of the One Body of
Christ where He is the Head. And from the Head, then, everything
flows to keep the body functioning, as a family unite. And that is
why the Body of Christ is not just another religion or religious
organization. You don’t just draw up a constitution, doctrines and
a bunch of By-laws and say you’re going to establish the Body of
Christ. We can establish a church as an organization, but you can not
establish it as the Body of Christ, because the Body is spiritually
driven and a divine thing. It has its livelihood, it has everything
that makes it a living organism, in a spiritual relationship by being
connected to the One Head, who is in heaven. In fact the Body though
physically here is spiritually where, in the Heavenliest.
This
is what makes it so uniquely different. Everything that pertains to
our spiritual life is, by virtue of the Headship of Christ, Who is in
heaven. I’ve also made the statement, and so far nobody has made a
big deal about it, and I said that Christ, in Paul’s teaching, is
never called King. He is not the king of the Church. He will one day
be King of kings and LORD of Lords, but He is not the king of His
Body. I am always making the definition as such. If He was the king,
then we could not have that functionality between the head and a
member of the Body. Because we would be under His kingship, we would
be a subject. And oh, what a difference. But see, as members of
the One Body of Christ, we are not subjects to some higher authority,
we are part of Him and He is part of our makeup as well. Do you
see the difference? We are part of the headship, which is in
Heavenliest.
That
is what makes us totally different from anything that even Israel
had, has, or ever hoped for in the past or can hope for in the
future. Yes, they’re looking for the King. They were looking for
the King. He came and they rejected Him. But they are still looking
toward the coming King. I have always, more than once, put out the
little analogy and said this with tongue in cheek, because I know
where our Jewish friends are coming from. They still can not
recognize that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah and as the
Messiah was inline with king David, both in prophecy and family
heritage. They just say, "Yes, He’s coming, but He has not
been here before." My question to them is, what does Revelation
say that His 144,000 sealed Jewish witnesses will be testifing about
Him? Not many have any ideal, do you?
I
like to use the anecdote of a Christian clergyman, who was arguing
with his Rabbi as to whether He’d been here before. The Rabbi said,
"No, He’s never been here before, but He’s coming."
They kept arguing and finally the Rabbi came to a good conclusion. He
said, "I’ll tell you what. Let’s just wait until He gets
here and then we’ll ask Him, "Have you been here before."
Well, that is a good view of the Jewish mentality and the standpoint
from which they argue. Because, they’re looking for His kingship,
and rightly so. He is going to be the king. But for us, as the Body
of Christ, NO, He is not our king. He is the Head of the
Body/Family/Home/House/Church. And that makes us, as Romans chapter 8
makes it so plain that "therefore
we are joint-heirs with Christ."What
is His is ours. Naturally, because we are hooked up, conjoined to, we
are uniquely fit together.
Colossians
1:18a
"And
he is the head of the body, the church;…"
What’s
the Greek word always translated ‘church’? Ecclesia! I was
reading again in a little Greek New Testament, and every time the New
Testament word ‘church’ came up, it is always ‘ecclesia’
in the Greek. And the word ‘ecclesia’ meant a called out
assembly. Separated from the mass and set apart (as Noah and his
family were). So we always have to determine, then, what called out
assembly are we dealing with? We’re not dealing with that same
called out assembly that made up the nation of Israel in the
wilderness, a church, according to Acts chapter 7. We are not part of
that called out assembly, I do not think, on the day of Pentecost.
Now, whenever someone disagrees with me on that, I say that is fine.
That is not going to determine your eternal destiny. When it comes to
that, yes, then I have to get my hackles up and say, "Now wait a
minute." Because eternal destiny is in view. But some of these
other things, I can live with people who disagree and that is one of
them. If they want to think that the Church, which is the Body as in
Acts chapter 2 and they can find it there, well so be it. I can not
find it because I just cannot find any church language in Acts
chapter 2. That is not that big a deal. But that word "ecclesia"
is, and simply translated "church" in Acts chapter 2.
Whereas I feel it should be translated "assembly"
because it was a separated group of Hebrews from the main body of
Israel and they were an ecclesia, or a called out assembly.
These people were among the rest of Israel that were in unbelief.
Paul relates with them as being in the "Jewish religion" in Acts 26:5 as religious worship of the purely external nature in ceremonies, and in
Galatians 1:13-14 as the Jewish or in Judaism as a religion, where as James relates it as being "worship" in James
1:26-27 and "unspotted (free from malaise caused by malice, to be sullied) by the world". But they are never called the Body of Christ. Paul
reserves that for his converts and I think Scripture is clear on
that. So here is another instance where the assembly that Paul is
talking about is that which he refers to as the body of Christ.
Colossians
1:18a
"And
he is the head of the body, the church: (He is again, a
reference to His eternalness, to His creator-ship) who is the
beginning, (He comes from eternity past) the firstborn
from the dead:…"
Here
is where we have to qualify everything. I maintain that resurrection
never happened until Jesus Christ arose from the dead, among (within
those separated from the world of dead men) the living. There were
people who were raised from the dead back in the Old Testament, but
they weren’t resurrected. They were simply brought back to life and
they did indeed die again. Lazarus, the Lord Himself called him forth
from the tomb, but that was not a resurrection. Lazarus died later
on. So this is why the Scripture makes a point that no one had
ever been resurrected from the dead until Jesus Christ. He is the
first to have ever been resurrected, never to die again. This
is a type of Hebraism on Paul's part. Because who was the first to
die spiritually speaking? Adam, he died to (being separated from) God
in his rebellion but it took his body over 900 years to die, the
physical death. Through Jesus' death spiritual Life is restored to
those who receive His revelation, illumination of understanding, a
secret. And here the verse makes it so plain, that He is the
beginning, He is the firstborn from the dead. Of those who have the stain of spiritual death removed and have there by be healed, made whole or complete again. That is why I said way
back when we were in Acts that the term, "the only begotten Son
of God" does not mean His birth in Bethlehem, but it means that
He is the only one that was resurrected from the dead. The Scripture
makes it so plain that that is what the term refers to. And here
again, He is the firstborn from the dead, He is the first to have
experienced resurrection power and here again is the reason, in the
last part of this verse.
Colossians 1:18-19
"He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;"
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