Did you know that Jesus is actually present in the
Church? St. Paul calls it a mystery
revealed but he says that Christ is in you
– meaning the church.
While each church denomination claims this to be "the true church" in
some sort of fashion (be it physically or spiritually) I am initially taken by
Paul’s apparent lack of clarification on this point. The Romanist will have filled in the thought
by thinking to themselves ‘of course Jesus is present in the church, every time
we take the Eucharist’, and the Protestant would think to themselves the same thing
about the individual believers ‘who are filled with the Holy Spirit’. Yes, my thoughts here are gross
generalizations but I hope to make the point.
However, I actually do think Paul clarified his
thought. I believe that it was clarified
by the context when he stated in 1:24 “Now I rejoice in what I
am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard
to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.”
In Paul’s church-view he recognizes the necessity of the individual
and the church being visibly sacrificial to the world – Just as visible as
Jesus hanging bodily on the Cross. For
in the forgiveness of sin there was nothing lacking in Christ’s body (For it is
finished) but Jesus said that if we would be his disciples then we would pick
up our own crosses daily and sacrificially follow him (Matthew 16, Luke 9,
& Mark 8). The reality is that we
(individually as well as corporately) fill up what Jesus was unable to do in
his flesh – and that is to exist in his individual flesh in the world after his
ascension. For this is why the Church is
called “His Body”.
I guess the point that I am trying to make is that we, Christians,
are never alone, we are never free from the resurrected Jesus through the
Spirit of God. Just as Jesus is present
in our churches he is also present in our lives- Always. I am troubled by the myriads of us Christians
who believe that just because the Eucharist has been put away or that we have
left the church building that Jesus too is no longer present. However, if Jesus in our minds and in our
churches is not a constant light but rather blinks on and off like a faulty neon
sign then we really need to consider if Jesus is really present in our lives in the first
place.
Go ahead and read the passage at the link below. I’m hoping it will cause us all to think.
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