T O END the distress and strain between the sexes, God calls us to separateness from the world so that we might be exclusively His. In the Bible the word know in both Hebrew and Greek is an intensive word. It is used for sexual intercourse: “Adam knew his wife Eve and she bore a son . . .” , but also refers to deep under standing and spiritual communication between per sons. Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that men might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Because of our family relationship in a fallen race headed by Adam One, our lives are character ized by self-centeredness, spiritual blindness, and imprisonment by the unconscious until we come to know God by faith. God’s will for our lives, in fact, according to I Thessalonians is “ our sanctification” or wholeness To “know” God requires the full de votion and dedication of our lives on a long-term basis according to the First Commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your might.” In our new relationship with Jesus Christ, who is Adam Two, we become part o f a new and cosmic family of persons whose lives are marked by love, self-sacrifice, honesty and transparency. The church of God in the New Testament is not an organization nor a gray stone building down on main street. It is an organic arrangement o f per sons who love each other and depend on God to gether in community. Local churches, which are microcosms in the macrocosm o f the two-thousand- year-old universal church, are intended by God to reflect on a small scale the corporate life o f the entire body. In the New Testament, the church is described by seven different figures which emphasize her organic nature and the interdependence o f the members. Jesus Christ is the great Shepherd; we are the sheep. He is the Vine; we are the branches on that vine. Peter the Apostle describes Christians as building blocks in a spiritual house with Christ as Corner Stone. The Lord is pictured as a mer chant who buys the pearl of great price. He is the great high Priest and every believer a worker priest in His service. And finally the church is described as the Body of Christ on earth, and inversely as the heavenly bride who is preparing to meet her Bridegroom. The Body of Christ, with the Lord Jesus as Head, is a masculine figure of the church, but the figure of the Bride of Christ is feminine. Both figures describe the same group of persons, that is those who have been spiritually reborn and bap tized into the household of faith by the Spirit of God. The Body of Christ, which is the male figure of the church, pictures the church in relationship to the world and to the creation. On the other hand, the figure of the Bride describes the church
10). The complaining or discontented life is the powerless life. “I never had, in all my life, so great an insight into the Word of God as now,” said John Bunyan, writing of 12 years’ imprisonment. “ I have often said were it law ful I could pray for greater trouble for the greater comfort’s sake.” (3) A ppropriate the P ower : “My strength is made perfect in weakness . . . that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (v. 9). Paul knew above all else the enabling power of Christ resting upon him. This, too, can be our experience as we hear afresh from heaven: “My grace is sufficient for thee.” When at last I recognize, and even am pre pared to rejoice in my weakness, He will at last be able to manifest His mighty power in this life of mine. q ^|
The BODY and the BRIDE of JESUS CHRIST
by Lambert Dolphin , Jr.
The persons who inhabit our planet come in many shapes and sizes, several different colors, a wide spectrum of cul tural characteristics, but only two sexes. Racial and ideologi cal differences are enough to stir riots and excitement, but the major long-term war is between the sexes. The divorce rate in many California cities now exceeds the marriage rate, for example, and disintegrating family life is the ■major cause of sociological disorders. Each of us has exactly two parents, biologically at least, and from each we receive an equal genetic inheritance. In growing up with our par ents, we also model ourselves consciously and unconsciously after mom and dad, thus receiving psychological and emo tional imprints from both sides of the family. Each of this is both male and female in a sense in spite of the pre dominant outward polarization of our lives. Integration of the personality, that is, becoming married inside through a relationship with Jesus Christ, is of central importance in our lives.* To some extent the sexes mirror one another: what is buried in a man tends to be on the surface of a woman and vice versa. Marriage ought to be the coupling together of a complementary pair in an open-ended adven ture of faith together like the beautiful marriage described in Song of Solomon in the Old Testament.
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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