Jesus founded the Church as a perfect,
living organism, not a man made organization. He said He would build
it Himself. (Matthew 16:18). So, as they say, “God don't build no junk.” Most of us
acknowledge that the Church would be perfect, if it weren't for the
people. Since I am part of the Church, I am part of the problem.
The same can be said about the human
family dynamic—God established the family for our welfare, except
it too is made up of imperfect people. Because of my presence
in a family it becomes dysfunctional. The Church is also a family,
the household of God and to all appearances the Church lacks the
harmony and holiness that should characterize it. Nevertheless,
God's calls His regenerate children, His new creations in Christ, to
universal holiness. “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect"
(Matthew 5:48).
Perfect not in the sense of
sinless, faultless, totally pure, virtuous and morally impeccable but
in the sense of mature, grownup adults in the faith, weaned off of
milk and able to digest spiritual meat. God's grownups who should
already be teaching others need to go back on milk again, to
“elementary, foundational principles” like getting along with
each other in the same Family of God. (Hebrews 5:11-6:1-9) With our
God-given free will we should be able to control ourselves through
God's enabling. Surrendered completely to God and endowed by His Holy
Spirit and His gifts, we should be able to get along with our
brothers and sisters in Christ.
Through God's chosen and inspired
spokesmen who wrote the New Testament, He has given us ample
instruction how to live in harmony together on Planet Earth and
especially in God's House, the Church, His Body. To be precise and
without all the trouble of chasing through a concordance or online
sources to find each of the 100 “one another” instructions
occurring in 94 locations in the New Testament, simply follow this
link:
One another
Here you will find an entire “how-to” course
on Getting Along in God's Family. We are without excuse. These
admonitions are not merely suggestions but commandments. Keeping
these commandments is therefore a measure and standard to determine
how much we love Jesus Christ, our Lord. “If you love Me, keep my
commandments” (John 14:15) and “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34) are
our rocket thrusts for success.
What a faith challenge to pursue for
the forty days of Lent which lie before us! Supposedly it takes only
21 days to establish or change a habit. If we pray and work on two of
the one another instructions each day, by Easter we might be
well underway for better horizontal harmony in the Body of Christ. We
will be learning how to stop judging one another and letting the Oil
of the Holy Spirit anoint our squeaky complaints about our Brothers
and Sisters in God's big Family.
Could we begin by Oiling the hinges
in our relationships with those who live under our Church roof and
our family roof?
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