), here it is � hope someone among us finds it worth the bother.
Chapter 7
Razed, Raised; Three Days
Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. (John 3:19�22)
AS JESUS HUNG from those terrible nails, the hecklers jeered at Him, �Hey, you � who said you could destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days � save yourself!� And almost immediately, He �destroyed� the temple and replaced it. He razed it and raised it in three days. But not in the way that they'd thought that He had meant. What He did was more exciting than anything that they could have imagined. The full impact of it lies waiting to be �discovered� by anyone who shakes-off certain old pagan deceptions that blind far too many Christian eyes to this day.
Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom � (Matthew 27:50�51a � emphasis added)
The Jews' temple had already had a rocky history before Jesus's death on the cross made it finally and completely obsolete, replaced by Jesus's body. It had been looted, torn down, and rebuilt time after time. The old temple had long since ceased to be the glorious edifice that Solomon had built to God's design. Certain basic but secondary features of the old physical temple remained for Jesus to do away with forever � and then there was the central feature that He made permanent.
There's a great difference between God's will (what He prefers) and God's allowance or His permissiveness (what He allows). For example, in Matthew 19:8 and Mark 10:5, the Lord indicates the difference between (a) God's will that men not put away their wives, and (b) God's permissiveness in accommodating their hard-heartedness.
God's will was that Israel worship Him and follow Him. But they wanted a human king, so He gave them their way � with disastrous results as the sin nature of man proved to be no substitute for God's perfection. God has put up with the willfulness and hard-heartedness of His people, from Adam to us. Hard-heartedness led men to make sacrifices in forbidden places, in heathen ways, to pagan �gods,� when it was God's will that they worship Him in their hearts, giving Him not bulls and goats but themselves.
Through David and Solomon, God gave them the great temple in Jerusalem. If they must have a place for worship, let it be the place that God chose, and let the manner of their worship be of His choosing too. But they chose to follow the world around them. They worshiped in other places (though there was only one ordained temple), and they brought into the temple shrines and observances that didn't belong there.
The idea that anything as fixed, as material, and as temporal as a building can be a suitable abode or meeting place for God is an insult to His nature and to His infinity. God let them have an outstandingly magnificent temple, but He let it be subject to all the abuse and normal vicissitudes that material and temporal things were subject to.
Solomon had been dead less than five years before the temple was plundered, and the Babylonians destroyed it in 586 BC. When Persia ruled Jerusalem, King Cyrus ordered the temple rebuilt (537�516 BC), but this temple also perished.
It was as big as Solomon's, but it had far less glory. It lacked six notable and important features that God had specified for the temple that He designed �
� the ark
� the Holy Spirit
� the sacred fire
� Urim and Thummim
� the Shekinah
One might wonder whether God willed or merely permitted this rebuilding or the one that came later. In 20�19 BC, Herod tore down the Second Temple and built his own version, which wasn't complete until AD 64. By then, Jesus had already made the temple obsolete for Christians. This temple also fell before conquerors when the Romans destroyed it in AD 70 and triumphantly carried the golden candelabrum, the table of showbread, and other sacred objects to Rome.
God's will and man's willfulness met in the concept of the temple, and the temple was not God's idea, plan, or will � it was man's. We must seek God's will, not ways to get away with perpetuating our own plans. His are always better than ours.
The entire temple included areas where anyone could enter, and the Holy Place with its Holy of Holies, where only the priests could enter. Jesus's death tore the veil that was supposed to have protected the Holy of Holies from unlawful entry. In fact, as the New Testament reveals, His death even destroyed the demarcation that Gentiles couldn't pass. Today, even the Holy of Holies (Jesus) is equally open to Gentiles and Jews.
The New Testament texts use two words for �the temple� � hieron for the over-all enclosure and everything in it, and naos for the Holy Place. During the era of the old covenant, Jesus Himself couldn't enter the naos, the Holy Place. But now, under the new covenant in His blood, anyone can enter this holiest of places. (Still, this is just a part of the wonder of what His temple is today! Those who enter it also become parts of it!) The temple today consists of only the naos, with no hieron or outer enclosure.
Theology based on English words has many Christians believing an attractive but erroneous idea of what the temple is today, because of a simple weakness of our language � the word you. Although we use I and me for the singular �first person� and use we and us for the plural, we use only the one word you indiscriminately for both singular and plural �second person.� For �third person,� we use he, him, she, her, and it for singulars, and we use they and them for plurals. We distinguish easily between singular and plural in first-person and third-person pronouns but not in our one little double-duty second-person pronoun, you (except in the southern and eastern plurals you all or y'all) and youse).
Greek is in this respect worlds clearer than English, with separate sets of unmistakably dissimilar words for singular and plural. Each of these basic forms has several minor variations, but the two basic forms never overlap or even look vaguely like one another. The singular forms are basically two-letter and three-letter words. The plural forms are longer and don't use the same or even similar roots. Su, se, sou, and soi are singular, and umeis, umas, uman, and umin are the plural forms for you �
� Singular � su, se, sou, soi
� Plural � umeis, umas, uman, umin
Little distinctions often make big differences. The distinction between the singular and plural second-person pronouns is usually bound into the Greek verbs, or in discrete pronouns where there's no verb. Whether the you intended is shown by a verb ending or one of the discrete pronouns above, the distinction between singular and plural is often significant. For example, where �
� Both singular and plural occur in the same passage.
� The plural occurs in a passage addressed to one person.
� The singular occurs in a passage addressed to more than one person.
� The plural somehow refers to a singular concept.
� The English you or long-established teaching applies the passage to the individual person, but the Greek shows that it actually applies collectively to the group.
The distinction between the singular and plural Greek words for you is crucial to understanding what Jesus said to Peter, for example, in Luke 22:31�32 �
And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you [plural, meaning Peter and the others, though He was speaking to Peter], that he may sift you [plural] as wheat: but I have prayed for thee [singular], that thy [singular] faith fail not: and when thou [singular] art converted, strengthen thy [singular] brethren.
This distinction is vital to understanding exactly what it is that's the temple today. In modern English with its terribly inadequate word you, 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 seems to say something that's significantly different from what it really says. Middle English marked the singular with thee, thou, thine, and thy and the plural with ye, you, and your � but few of us sense the distinction when we read it in the King James Version �
Know ye [plural] not that ye [plural] are the temple [singular] of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in [literally, among] you [plural]? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye [plural] are.
The distinction between singular and plural is also crucial to understanding 1 Corinthians 6:19 �
What! know ye not that your [ plural] body [singular] is the temple [naos] of the Holy Spirit which is [among] you, [ plural] which ye have from God, and ye are not your own?
This is a world away from saying, �Your bodies [plural] are temples [plural] of the Holy Spirit.� The singular body that's the temple is the Body of Christ. Not the steepled white building on the main corner in town, Brother, but us! (all of us � you, me, us, and them). Also notice which temple the Body of Christ now is � the naos, the Holy Place with its Holy of Holies!
God created man for His own pleasure, to fellowship with Him regularly, with Him as man�s lovingly benevolent Ruler. But man's way has always been to prefer a different way altogether. When God created the Jewish people, His intent was the same as it was when He put Adam and Eve in Eden � but the Jews wanted a king to rule them, as in other nations. So God gave them a king and a set of laws, because of �the hardness of their hearts.� If they must have a king, then their king would have to be the man whom God gave them. If they must have laws, then their laws must be the laws that God gave them. So it was also with the temple. If they must build one for Him, then they would have to build it exactly to His design and specifications.
When God had given David victory over all his enemies, David figured that it was time that he built God a house better than his own. But God said that He had never been confined to a house but had always been mobile enough to go along with His people wherever they went. And He asked, �In all the places where I've been with my people, did I ever ask, `Why don't you build me a house'?� (1 Samuel 7:1�7; 1 Chronicles 17:1�6). Then � as He had done with the king and the law � God let His people build Him a temple, but specified that Solomon, not David, would build His temple, and He specified every detail of what it must be like.
Although the pagan temples of other peoples were the origin of David's idea that God must have a temple, God wouldn't let His people build Him a temple that would be full of pagan symbols or used for pagan sacrifices and other rituals. God's temple must symbolize Him and His purpose in all its details.
And like the king and the law, the temple given to His hard-hearted people must pass away. Since Old Testament times, God has allowed that physical temple and its replicas to be ravaged by the world that gave His people reason to want it in the first place. Not only was the temple vulnerable to Gentile conquest and ruin but also was the Holy Place vulnerable to rape and pillage. Like the human king and the law, the temple and the altar were human vanities that God in His patient and loving mercy let His people have as pacifiers that they must someday outgrow and abandon.
To the heathen, the temple was the hieron, the sacred place for offering the hiera (this was a pagan term that�s never used in the New Testament) or sacrifice. To the heathen, the sacrifice was to appease or to bribe the gods, for propitiation, which might include but wasn't limited to atonement. To the heathen, the sacrifice was to make things better (propitious) between him and his gods � to induce them to favor him instead of or more than they favored someone else.
The idea of the heathen's sin or the gods' wrath wasn't necessarily a part of the idea. Sin and wrath would make the necessity of the heathen's lobbying a good bit more critical, of course, but the basic idea was to woo the gods and to win their favor and preference.
The heathens' ideas of their gods were vastly different from what we know of the one true God, as He has revealed Himself and His will. Man had created his gods out of (and in) his imagination with Satan's help. The heathen's idea was that his gods were many, humanistic in form and temperament, and as fickle as drunken butterflies. Their wrath and their favor as a result were equally fickle and whimsical. So, like contractors trying to do business with a corrupt governor, the heathens �worshiped� their gods through a system of competitive lobbying.
The sacrifice was an offering, a bribe, an inducement to win or to increase the gods' favor. The heathen's sin and the gods' wrath intensified the need for the heathen to woo the gods, but this idea wasn't basic to the idea of wooing their favor.
The gods of the heathen, having arisen from his imagination and existing only there, were like his worst and best self � as evil, as fickle, and as good as he could imagine. Since he couldn't imagine a god who could be as just or as merciful as the one true God really is, his concepts of the gods were as unlike the infinite real God as they could possibly be.
The heathen idea of the sacrifice likewise grew out of his understanding of himself and his fellows, perverted and extrapolated to form hypotheses of what would sway the gods toward him and against his enemies and rivals.
The heathen had to compete with other heathens for the gods' favor � but the gods were rivals or even enemies, too, so he also had to woo more favor from his gods than his enemies could win from theirs. This bloody-toothed competition was nothing less than supernatural lobbying raised to the level of out-and-out warfare. To outdo the enemy's lobbying of other gods, the heathen had to outdo himself in his temples and sacrifices. The temple that one city-state built to its god or goddess had to be bigger and more ornate, with altars higher and sacrifices more and more extravagant, than an enemy city-state's temple, altar, and sacrifices.
God's specifications for His temple were supposed to make it obvious to even his hard-hearted, spiritually myopic and cross-eyed people that no other god's temple could come close to matching it. Then, when it had won them nothing of infinite value and couldn't even perpetuate itself, they'd see the vanity or uselessness of even the most extravagant temple possible.
Jesus's atoning death on the cross made sacrifices � therefore also the altar � obsolete forever. His ascension into Heaven and His gift of the Holy Spirit removed the constriction of site or place for all time. As He implicitly told the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, God isn't a physical lump to be parked in one place, where then men must come to know and to worship Him. God is spirit � and not just a spirit among many but The Spirit, Whom men can meet and know and worship without respect for site and with no need for a specific, special site (John 4:21�24).
His death tore asunder the veil that closed off the Holy Place and Holy of Holies to all but the priests. The special courts and porches for this group and that group of people also became obsolete when the new covenant established that in His sacrifice of Jesus as the Christ, there's no distinction or discrimination between Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, freeman and slave. His one Sacrifice covers all equally and totally, since all have sinned equally with identical sinfulness.
By doing away with sacrifices and the altar, God abolished even His own temporary toleration for the site-focused ideas that led to rivalry and competition in worship. With only one God to worship, there's no rival god to make a pair that man can play against one another.
Since the one and only God is incorruptible, perfect, and unchanging, there's no possibility of bribing Him or wooing or lobbying Him in any way. One either has His favor or doesn't have it, and He has given us simple, fair, noncompetitive criteria for how we can please Him. Just as God Himself is, His favor is infinite and doesn't have to be diluted to �go around� or taken from one to be given to another.
Man wrests the way of God and twists it in opposite directions to substitute his own judgement for God's �
� To simplify something that to man seems too complex. This twist usually includes omitting something that to God is essential but to man is objectionable, distasteful, or inconvenient.
� To complicate something that to man seems too simple. This twist usually includes adding something that man likes and thinks that God shouldn't have left out.
Man's notions of the temple, the altar, and sacrifices miss the simple fact that the physical temple, altar, and sacrifices are obsolete. Man's affinity for these pagan institutions reveals his inherently rebellious nature and its pronounced tendency toward idolatry. The Christian who persists in his physically oriented thinking blinds himself to the spiritual reality of the Body of Christ. The Messiah has occupied two bodies �
� Jesus of Nazareth, born to the virgin Mary
� The Body of Christ, all born-again disciples
Likewise, He has occupied two temples �
� The oft-destroyed temple in Jerusalem
� The temple of the Holy Spirit, which is also the Body of Christ, the ekklesia, etc (The church is something else.)
The temple of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Place with its Holy of Holies, the naos, is now us and only us who belong to Him � always and only people, never a building. For a time, it still suffers the competitive distraction of the hieron fallacy � the idea that a temple has to be a physical place � a building, a site. The empty hieron is therefore still with us, even though it's obsolete as far as God is concerned.
Once the Body of Christ sees that the Body is the only temple, the naos, and that the church as a �temple� is an expression of the hieron fallacy, we'll see that the hieron today is of the world � which we're in but not to be of. It and we are of opposite kinds of spirit as well as opposites in manner and purpose.
The harm in the hieron fallacy is that it blinds us to the real temple, the naos of the Holy Spirit. The naos is inside the hieron but is by direct specification of God not to be of it or part of it. When we consider the church to be a temple, we're blind to the fact that the Body of Christ, the ekklesia, is the real and only temple. And that's us, not any place, building, or site. As long as we feel that we have to be in a certain place � or kind of place � to be in the temple, we seek a heathen temple instead of accepting and honoring the temple of God that we're already in and parts of.
We therefore deafen ourselves to the mild, quiet voice of the Holy Spirit whenever He speaks to lead us together in the name of Jesus. If we don't discern and acknowledge the temple that we're parts of, but insist instead that only in the hieron can we be inside a temple, we stifle His voice and deprive not only ourselves but others in the Body of the spiritual edification and blessing and strength that are His will for us all.
�But we must have a place where we can all meet at one time � and a schedule of times, so we can all know when to meet,� man argues. This is man setting the criteria that he demands that the Holy Spirit must follow, the limits that He must operate within. This is man insisting that he, not the Holy Spirit, must write the tune and call the dance. (But He is God, after all � which we forget so easily, so often.)
But Jesus says that wherever two or more are properly led together in His name, that's where He is.
For where two or three are [led together] in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20)
Carnal Christians don't readily grasp or acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is marvelously capable of �
� Knowing exactly what God's plan calls for at any time
� Knowing exactly how many disciples to lead together in Jesus's name at any one time for any reason or purpose of His own (irrespective of man's reasons and his purposes, even those meant to please God)
� Knowing exactly which disciples to lead together at any time for any reason or purpose of His own
� Knowing exactly when and where to lead them together
� Knowing whether they must be together physically in one place or spiritually in several
� Doing what He knows is to be done � with whom, where, when, why, and how
We accept the idea that God could walk with Adam and Eve and talk with them without forgetting anything or getting anything all balled up. But for some reason, we assume that with more than two of us modern people facing him, we have to take over the orchestration, the staging, and the choreography. Adam and Eve didn't need to meet God only at scheduled times in a white, steepled building at the corner of Holy Wood and Divine, but we think that we do � and that we must set the schedule.
We accept the idea that the Holy Spirit could do marvelous things with His disciples in the first century, but we assume that now a man or a �hierarchy�(which etymologically means an order of sacred rulers) of men must appoint, arrange, and orchestrate things for Him. I'm amazed that He still bothers with us at all, seeing how we insist on ostracizing and diminishing Him.
We stifle, quench, and strait-jacket the Holy Spirit whenever we clamp tight limits and restrictions on how, when, where, and whether we're all together in �the right place� at �the right time� to hear Him and to do whatever He tells us to do. Worse yet, we sometimes just don't let Him into where we've gathered ourselves together to do what we think we ought to be doing for God.
Carefully notice that being led together and being gathered together are two very different things. The single Greek word that King James's translators rendered gathered together, ([i]sunago), means literally to lead together and was used loosely to mean simply to gather together. Both the phrase in my name (that is, under His authority and by His direction) in Jesus's promise (Matthew 18:20) and its broad context show exactly Who is to lead His disciples together for Him to be there among them � the Holy Spirit.
A bunch of people simply gathered together by saints or scalawags isn't the same as a group led together (with saints and scalawags, perhaps, but in His name) by the Holy Spirit. The distinction surely ought to be obvious to anybody once somebody points it out.
Another specious argument used by defenders of the church as a temple is that since the Holy Spirit does come into churches and does move among people there, the church is therefore the temple. But the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit among people certify only the Holy Spirit and His functions, not the places where He leads or visits Christians. He can come and go as He pleases. He has come to and worked with saints who were alone and with others in numbers, in all kinds of places and situations (in bars and brothels, for example) that not even the most ardent defender of the church as His temple would consider to be equally certified as holy by His presence and activity.
He has come to sinners in the most sin-filled places � not to certify the places where He has found them but to visit those sinners where they are at the time. He has come likewise to saints in all kinds of places other than the church, to lead them as He wills � not to certify the places as holy or to establish them as temples.
In the naos, no more sacrifice is necessary � not even for those who are yet to become stones in its walls � because Jesus's one sacrifice of His life atoned for all our sins, and coming to Him for His forgiveness by virtue of that sacrifice makes us each a stone in its walls. Since no more sacrifice will ever be necessary for Christians, the only system that still demands sacrifices is the heathen system of idolatry. Since no sacrifice will ever again be Christian, the naos has no place for a physical altar. And of course the Body of Christ has no place, role, or function for the pagan hieron, with or without a steeple or stained-glass windows.
Perpetuating the hieron fallacy � the idea that the temple must be a physical edifice � perpetuates idolatry even though the idolatry symbol is a cross on the top of its steeple and on its altar. Collecting tribute to build and maintain physical hieron edifices is pagan taxation, not the Christian sharing in the Body, as we read about in Acts. The purpose of Christian tithes and offerings is sharing to edify and to maintain the Body and its members in its Great Commission work, not to build or maintain paganistic physical temples and their trappings.
If the hieron concept of the temple were spiritually neutral, with no pagan attachment or significance, it may have been less harmful to the health and the mission of the Body of Christ. Even so, simply as a functional diversion, it's a terrible nuisance. The true temple of the Holy Spirit, the Body of Christ, is richer, simpler, more practical, more flexible, more consistent, more varied, and much more personal.
It's where each of us is to know the Holy Spirit. It's where we're all, one by one or in groups large or small, to do the wonders, greater than His, that Jesus said that we'd do in His name. So the nuisance of the hieron concept is spiritual, and its pagan significance gives it an element of evil that has no place in the Body and certainly no legitimate function in its operation.
In the Body, there's life. The temple building usurps the place of the true temple of the Holy Spirit, the naos that is the Body of Christ. In taking a place that isn't its own, this dead, material thing sits where a live Body should be growing � like a slab laid over grass seedlings, it etiolates and kills them.
God is a spirit � the Spirit � and in His aphysical image, so also is man a spirit. But finite man can be housed in a specialized mammal body. No single physical body can accommodate God. Trying to limit Him to anything physical or material would be like trying to scoop up a sea of molten platinum (at 3,225 degrees Fahrenheit!) in a paper or styrofoam cup. His glory would melt it before its inadequate capacity could become a problem.
The hieron concept of the temple is finite, physical, material � so every view of it or from it is also finite, physical, and material. Its life is the world's life; the corporation, franchise, or small business. God established Hisnaos, the Body of Christ, as the �place� where He and His people meet, that His people may hear and obey and serve Him and that He may lovingly care for His people according to their needs.
But the world view of the physical hieron as the temple interferes. Instead, the church building becomes central, and its programs and members become means to achieve one end above all others: to support and maintain the building and the business that it houses. In some ways, of course, this business is unique: the building is especially distinctive, and so are its programs and products � they are as distinct from the ordinary down-town business as a car wash or a grain elevator, but they are exactly like it in all other respects.
Influenced almost entirely by the world that gave it birth and sustains it, the hieron is also the center of the same class divisions that layer all other business and industry. Its corporate executives and business owners form and maintain a class that's separate and different from the class of their workers and customers. Their interests are separate and as immiscible as oil and water.
The new naos, the temple of the Holy Spirit that's us, has only two sets of interests. God's interests and those of His people commingle and blend compatibly, with no conflict of interest, competitiveness, or exploitation.
More and more, the hieron concept has the church seeing the flock as a resource for the support of the church, not as a responsibility that the church must support. Periodic shearing during the life of a sheep and peeling off its fleece after death are more important than finding new water and graze (the hieron holds its sheep in one place), wrestling marauding bears, caring for bum lambs, etc.
The Body is one. It doesn't compete with any other, because there is no other. Its parts don't compete with each other for supremacy or attention. They coordinate and harmonize like the eyes, ears, mind, and muscles of a master musician or a champion athlete. The temple building competes with its counterparts erected by other groups, compounding its other negative effects on the Body. Each has to be better than others, to forestall emigration to the others.
The Body solves its own its members' problems, as it is guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit according to the Father's master plan and purpose. All its programs and priorities are His. The temple building creates its own problems, needs, programs, and priorities, further compounding its negative impact on the Body.
The Body uses all its resources to edify itself over-all and its members personally, to carry out the Lord's great commission. The temple building absorbs resources that the Body is supposed to apply in other directions and in other ways. This dilutes or siphons away the time, energy, money, attention, care, and commitment of the Body. It sucks and soaks-up the Body's resources and pours them into physical edifices and their support programs at the expense of the spiritual edifice.
The Body is persons, so the temple is personal. Our loving personal attention to each other and to the Holy Spirit, and His personal attention to us and all our concerns, make the new naos the epitome of warmth, welcome, hospitality, care, and spiritual efficiency and effectiveness. Led by the Holy Spirit, one or a few members can confide in one or a few others, sharing intimate and delicate concerns to be resolved, without laying themselves open to ruinous gossip and meddling.
The temple building preserves the clinical, institutional, bureaucratic base of its origin as an official arm of the Roman Empire. It's �the place� to pay one's religious taxes and to go through one's religious motions � not a place to share spirit, soul, body (in labor and service, for example � certainly not sex), means, cares, needs, etc, with the rest of the Body.
Its clinical air and institutional view of �solutions� discourage candor. Its basic premise that many, most, or all members must meet every time there's a program or a problem interferes with the personal focus of the Holy Spirit and His choice of participants in each project.
The Body, neither focused on nor filtered through any specific site but at all times and in all its places receptive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, works in His name wherever its members are where they can respond as the Holy Spirit directs them. The temple building restricts the range and scope of the Body's activity.
The Body's great variety of members and their great varieties of location and situation within the world give its activities immense flexibility and variety, both within the Body and between the Body and the world. The Body is as varied, and therefore as flexible, as its members and as the Holy Spirit. The temple building restricts the flexibility and variety of the Body's activities.
The new naos has the Holy Spirit as its guide � all-knowing, infallible, all-powerful, always completely dependable. The Body comprises many members, in great variety, but all clearly coordinated under its one guide, the Holy Spirit. So it shows Christ to the world as the one great spiritual force that He is. It also shows to the world that invincible unity of the Trinity reflected in the same loving unity of God and His people.
The many competitive temple buildings show the world a �Christ� that�s divided into competitive, hostile camps.
Routine operation of the new naos comprises just a few basic levels of Body activities. Each level varies according to the relationships, types of activity and need, purposes, immediacy, and specific personal focus �
� Person to person, solo or group, requiring no special inspiration or stimulus from the Holy Spirit
� Person to leader, solo or group
� Holy Spirit to person, pair, or group, on His initiative and for His purposes
Certain things in Christian life don't need special or spiritual stimulus for action, belief, correction, etc � we already know that we're supposed to do or believe them, because the Bible tells us so (we know that we�re to study the Bible, obey, repent, believe, love, forgive, go and teach all nations, pray, etc). Our imperfections in these activities make the help of the Holy Spirit and brethren in the Body necessary � to know what we should know but don't know, for the spiritual guidance and power to do them, etc.
Also, normal, ordinary situations arise that we know we're supposed to respond to in certain ways � a Brother needs help, so we help, for example � one person if possible or necessary. Simply knowing the need is enough � we're not to wait for the Holy Spirit to tell us when or whether or how to help if it's within our ability to help him. Nor do most such needs require that all members meet to deliberate them.
Other situations require that the Holy Spirit alert us and guide us. He knows how many and exactly which ones to alert, guide, and to empower � and when. He knows when and how to draw two disciples together � physically or spiritually � to help a third with their means (their money, muscle, tools, facilities, etc), prayer, expressed love, deliverance, etc. He knows when He and certain members of the Body have to attend to a matter immediately, when it's out of the question to wait until a scheduled time for all the Body to hear of it and to work on it together.
A small Christian group in the Northwest sent their leader to a conference in Miami Beach � paid for his train fare one way, his travel expenses, hotel, meals, and enrollment, and promised to send money for his return while he was there. But no more money came, and he had no funds of his own. He was stranded. On his last day, as he sat in the lobby of that high-priced hotel, a stranger came up to him and said, �The Lord says I'm to give you this.� He took three hundred dollars in bills from his wallet � enough to cover the man's return to his home and family in the Northwest.
The man had told no one in Miami Beach or anywhere else of his problem or his need. But he had prayed, and the Holy Spirit and a responsive Brother had taken care of it. That's the way that the Body of Christ would work in all our lives if we'd let it.
�Let it? How?�
� by discerning the temple of the Holy Spirit for what it is, and turning from all alien and heathen notions of it. The coming changes in Christian life and belief will include a shift in basic emphasis � from individual, personal Christian life to collective, corporate Christian life in the Body. As the Body lives and moves, its health and energy will pervade all its parts. But the occasional fading flickers of life in amputated, separated parts of the Body will vanish and leave them dead. Only in Him will we live, move, or even exist.
�But the [hieron concept of the] church is all I know!� a Brother says, to excuse his hanging on to it with a white-knuckled grip instead of reaching forth in faith to grasp the arm of his seat in the naos. His conflict is between faith and knowledge. This Brother insists that he must know all and approve before he will move. He trusts what he knows and what he has seen; he doesn't trust anything that he doesn't know and hasn't seen.
God has for many years been calling men out of the church to take their places in the naos, but many scurry back for their beloved onions, leeks, and garlics. �
Copyright � 1986 Dr Kenneth E Howell
All rights reserved.
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