Searching for Treasures in the Body of Christ
By Bunni Pounds
Are you stuck in “ordinary church life” participating in a church service-based existence? Does the modern way of doing church leave you wanting something more?
Do you say to yourself, “Where is the love? Where is the community?”
Or maybe you are someone who knows in their heart they are supposed to be interacting more with the Body of Christ, but you don’t have any motivation to really get to know people or serve them the way Jesus talked about?
There is something more.
There are treasures in the body of Christ, but we have to pursue them…and when we find them in each other, we will find the fullness of Christ!
Since my teenage years when I discovered that God was really alive, I was ruined.
I found out there was LIFE to be lived and an ADVENTURE to experience, so I became ruined for what I would call “ordinary church life”, just attending platform focused services and going from one church program to another.
It was really not so much about our formats in the Body of Christ and how we did “church”, but about our vision.
As our vision grows, the way we spend time with each other changes. I knew even back then as a youth there was something more than what the modern American church was walking in, and it has been a cry of my heart to find it, to discover it, and have God implant it in me.
There is a big vision for the Body of Christ that the Early Church walked in and experienced. I have seen it in small groups in different settings through the years. I have experienced believers who pursue people and love people, not out of a feeling of obligation or a ministry job, but Jesus has put it in them by His Spirit. It has become part of their DNA.
They really want to see the Body of Christ be all that God has created them to be, so they serve wholeheartedly. They serve people in whatever way they can to pull out of them the gifts that God has placed there. They encourage, they counsel, and they exhort. They fight back their own selfish tendencies for a greater gift to find the treasure in someone else. They give up their lives! Sometimes they win a soul and sometimes they try and fail, but they give it their all. They strive to love as Jesus loves and the God of the Universe sees their hearts and He is so pleased.
It seems like the people with this love and fortitude are few and far between right now in modern America, but as we get back to the basics of what it means to be a real Christian, our eyes can and will start turning off of ourselves and onto our brothers and sisters in Christ around us.
I want to be one of those people. Don’t you?
Let’s start out by reading Paul’s prayer for wisdom in the first chapter of Ephesians. Read it slowly. Every word is rich.
Ephesians 1:15-23, “Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.
And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”
Love for ALL the Saints
Paul had heard of the church of Ephesians’ faith in the Lord Jesus and their love for all the saints, and he was thankful for that faith and love. In the born again experience faith is birthed in our hearts to believe in Jesus, and a new love for His people goes hand in hand with this God given faith.
What is a saint? In this passage, it means, “A most holy thing”. (Resource: Strong’s concordance) A saint is not a perfect person or a memorialized person who is now on a different sphere than us. It is not someone we pray to or a statue - the Bible doesn’t teach that.
Once we are born again, we are a saint, and our brothers and sisters in Christ are saints.
We are most holy things walking around. Crazy, huh?
God looks at us completely different than he once did. He sees us through the blood of his Son, Jesus, and we are clean, pure, and holy before him. We are “most holy things” hanging out with each other and He has called us to see each other in that vein, to look at our brothers and sisters in that new light and see that they are different than just flesh and blood. They have the life of God inside of them.
Does that mean we are supposed to love ALL the saints, even the ones we don’t like?
What about the people who are not as “together” as we are?
What about believers who are backslidden or the ones who are just plain mean sometimes?
It’s as if all of a sudden we believe in this unseen God and know He is real, and then we discover that He has all of these people that we might or might not hang out with in “normal life”, but we suddenly start having a heart for them. For some reason we are now drawn to them and we are getting life from people who, in the natural, we would never really hang out with before. Either they are not our age, our style, or they are just not part of our social-economic group, but God has changed us and we have a love in our hearts for ALL the saints.
Yes, He has called us through His love to love them all! It is something He does in us from the inside out. He teaches us to walk in it on a daily basis. Just as our faith grows through time, our love for the saints is something He grows in us through time and experiences.
The Riches of His Inheritance in the Saints
Let’s read verse 18 of Ephesians again, “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,”
We see here in Scripture that there is an inheritance laid up inside of EVERY saint.
There is a treasure for us to find and for God to uncover. Within each of us there is an inheritance that God has implanted in us and imparted to us.
We all have learned different things during our walk on this planet. We have different giftings and different motivations, and we all have walked through different trials and experiences either in our time before we met Christ or after. We have an inheritance that God has placed in each one of us.
So wouldn’t it be awesome to discover the inheritance in each other?
I think we could learn something. Maybe we would discover something that we don’t have and God could use that person to share a portion of what they have with us. Maybe we could be the person God uses to pull that gift out of that other person, something they didn’t even know they have.
Part of the glory of God is found in these riches in each other.
Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” It’s as if God sends us on this giant treasure hunt and He says, “Ok guys, I want you to look high and low for all the treasures that I have put there and when you find the pieces, you will find part of my glory. You might not find the whole inheritance quickly or right there in front of your eyes, but if you keep looking, you will find more of Me! You will find these awesome treasures, and they will really bless you. They are part of my inheritance to you.”
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That is what we are to each other. If we raise our vision to what God says in His Word, then our friends, our families, our co-workers, and our fellow church members become this incredible treasure hunting ground where we get to discover all the gifts in them. We often get to discover why God has placed them in our lives. Every time we get together with other people, it becomes an adventure.
Matthew 13:44-46 shows us a little vision of how God sees us.
The Parable of the Hidden Treasure
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”(Verse 44)
The Parable of the Pearl of Great Price
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (Verse 45-46)
These stories are two examples that show the depths of the love of God for us. They are in the context of the parable of the sower, God sorting through the wheat and the tares. After these verses Jesus talks about sorting through the good fish and the bad fish. I have heard it preached that these verses talk about our response to God (i.e. we sell all we have), but in this context, I believe Jesus was talking about God’s love for us. We are the treasure. We are the pearl of great price.
Jesus sold all that He had. He emptied himself of all his divinity to come to earth as a lowly man – to redeem or “buy” us. He was after us! He sought us out and found us in the midst of the big field and He had “joy” over us. He still does, even if we at times don’t find joy in Him. He loves us so much.
In the light of Jesus’ love for His Body, our love for each other should be deep and real as we look at each other as the treasures and pearls that we are.
His Body, the Fullness of Him
Verse 23 says, “And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”
The Body of Jesus Christ is His prize creation. Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are His workmanship, created by Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
When we look over the majestic mountains in Colorado, or when we sit on the beach in Virginia Beach and gaze over the roaring oceans, and when we see the detail in design on a butterfly, these things are nothing to compare with what God has put into his human creation, man and woman. We are His prize creation.
Man and woman was the last thing that he created before he rested from his creative work. We are the apple of His eye. His love for us goes deep. And now since we have become born again, we are now a part of His special people, His Body. We are his hands and feet on the earth, “the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”
The Body in all its diversity is the fullness of Christ. Our challenge as members of that Body is to learn to appreciate the different expressions, different giftings, and different ways of doing things, because they can all be expressions of Him. Even when we are not operating as the fullness of Christ in complete submission to His Will, we need to have mercy on each other and appreciate the differences as well as the similarities in people.
God wants us to call forth the fullness of Christ to be manifested in each other. If we see something that we feel needs to be changed in a brother or sister’s life, it is probably because we are supposed to call out the fullness in them through prayer and exhortation. We need to be open to receive from one another in the form of exhortations or rebukes without getting offended so easily. Do we really want the fullness of Christ displayed in us? Then we need other people. We can’t be little islands. We need others and others need us. We are dependent on each other to be who God has called us to be.
This vision of seeing the fullness of Christ come out in each believer is part of what drives real ministry. It drives passion in worship and prayer. Our cry is for the Body of Christ to reach maturity and for that unified Body to be manifest on the earth in its FULLNESS. We cry out to that end.
One Last Word
God’s desire is for us to see each other after the Spirit, to pursue each other in love and to pursue the treasure in each other. To not just see what we look like when we fail, but to see each other through the eyes of faith into the days that we will succeed. Not to not just see our present conditions, but to see God’s end plan, what He has created us to be. To see the fullness of Christ in each other – the hope of glory!
We are created to lift each other up – to carry each other at times. To encourage, to rebuke, to prophecy to each other, and to love unconditionally; this is the ministry of Christ to his Body.
True ministers, who we are all called to be, see people as growing and changing. They see the glass half full instead of half empty.
They know there are tares among the wheat, but they choose not to focus on the tares and trust God to take care of the results. True ministers to the Body of Christ serve willingly and happily without regard for the future, living in the present moment. They believe for the best in people to be revealed. They believe ultimately that God will perfect his Bride and that He has a people in every generation on the earth that is created to give Him glory. These are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints!
Don’t you want to pursue that vision? Don’t you want to be a treasure hunter for precious pearls?
I do.
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