Honoring the Body

Consider your hand. With your hand still in sight, consider my hand. When the new dog bites my hand, you don’t experience the pain. You can care about my pain, you can show me real compassion if you have been bitten before, but you can’t feel it if the injury is in my hand.

You feel the pain when your hand is injured, though. If Paul is right in his understanding of the sense Jesus has of being one with His body, Jesus feels every pain we experience. If Paul is right in his application of that concept to the way we should sense being one with each other, we should feel each others’ pains.

When we begin to enter into that level of unity, we will empower each other to do the same works Jesus did, and even greater things. We will see Him manifest in the meetings that we welcome Him to lead. We will be so in love with Him and each other that people will be struck with fear and awe, as in the days Luke wrote of in Acts chapters 4 & 5.

One of the steps that could lead to that place of awe is going beyond loving Jesus to loving what & whom He loves. Hating what He hates. Having the mind that He had: that even though He didn’t deserve to suffer or be dishonored, He became a bloodied victim of our sin. He took that mind because it won whom He loved.

His love paid a price and won a prize. Now, we need to value that prize the way He does. When we do, we will pay whatever price we are given the privilege of investing in the future of His bride. And we will be co-recipients with Him of receiving her blessing.