Exalting Christ

In my previous bogs, I shared to you that the apostle Paul used the extended metaphor of Jesus as the Head of His body, that is the church (Ephesians 1:22ff; 4:15; 5:23; Colossians 1:18-19; 2:19). And expanding further our thinking on the said metaphor and making a sort of taking that body apart a little bit by dissecting it into parts that I called in this series of blogs as the "Spiritual Physiology of the Church," that made up of the (a) skeleton; (b) internal system; (c) muscles; and (d) flesh or the skin.

Then I shared to you about the skeleton, or the "Framework of the Church," which is made up of five things that the people in the church must experience. This things includes (a) worship of God; (b) exalting Christ; (c) presence of purity; (d) the Divine Truth; and (e) spiritual authority. And we learned that the primary occupation of Christians is to worship God and that the Father seeks true worshipers, those who do it with their hearts and not merely in form.

The only way that we can come to worship God is through Jesus Christ. We could never begin to worship God unless we came to Him through Jesus Christ as 1 Peter 2:5 says, “you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (NASB) and in a very familiar statement found in John 14:6 where Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

We will find in Revelation 5:6 that John is looking at the throne of God and says, “And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth.” Obviously the Lamb standing is Jesus Christ and verses 7 to 12 clearly told us that heaven is engaged in the worship and exaltation of Jesus Christ.

If we are going to heaven down on earth, we not only praise, worship, and exalt God, but we must do the same for the One who is God incarnate, the second member of the Trinity, who is our Lord Jesus Christ for He is equally worthy of our praise.

The Need to Exalt Christ

In Colossians, Paul reminds us to give thanks to God the Father for what He has done for the believers through Jesus Christ (1:12-14), the very Creator Himself and the pre-existent Deity (1:15-17), the head of the church that is His body (1:18a), the firstborn in resurrection (1:18b) that is a sign that all believers will be resurrected, and He was made the supreme and preeminent in all things (1:18c). In other words, Jesus is the supreme one, worthy of all our praise, and worthy of all our worship.

If we want to bring heaven down, then we must be concerned in exalting Jesus Christ. When the church meets together, Christ should be exalted and echoing what the Father said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

Exalting Christ in our Lives

Look what Paul says in Philippians 3:8, “More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.”

The phrase “I count” is a business term for “forfeit,” meaning all Paul had previously trusted in for righteousness (could refer to his family, his inheritance, his religious merit and/or his rabbinical training) or what he had previously considered valuable suddenly “loss” all its value for the sake of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus. The word “know” in Hebrew means intimate personal relationship. This implies that we must have intimate personal relationship with Jesus until we become like Him.

Galatians 4:19 says, “My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you –“ The word “formed” in Greek was used in a medical sense for fetal development and interpreted as the believers’ development into the likeness of Christ. As Christians, this must be the focus of our lives so that we could also confidently say what Paul had said in Philippians 1:21: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” because “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Paul met Christ on the Damascus road but it was already 30 to 35 years after when he wrote his epistles to the Philippians but still Christ is his passion.

Framework of the Church

Updated November 9, 2014

In my previous blog, I shared to you that the apostle Paul used the extended metaphor of Jesus as the Head of His body, that is the church (Ephesians 1:22ff; 4:15; 5:23; Colossians 1:18-19; 2:19). And expanding further our thinking on the said metaphor and making a sort of taking that body apart a little bit by dissecting it into parts that I called in this series of blogs as the "Spiritual Physiology of the Church," that made up of the (a) skeleton; (b) internal system; (c) muscles; and (d) flesh or the skin. Today I will be sharing to you the first one that is the skeleton.

Without the skeleton, all you will have is a heap of tissue lying somewhere with an inability to operate. It is absolutely essential and crucial to any kind of functioning body. It is the skeleton that is the framework to which everything is attached and upon which everything finds its proper place. The internal organs are all attached to that framework. The muscles are all attached to that framework and the skin is wrapped around that. It gives the form and provides the foundation for the body and for the life of the church.

At the very heart and soul of the body of Christ, there are five things that constitute the framework and set the structure of the church in its place. These things are the basic foundational truths that are non-negotiable and fundamental to the church to be able to function. Its concept is found in a very familiar section of the Scripture which most of us have memorized and even sung of it and, maybe, have gone across our lips a hundreds or even thousand times through the years since we became a Christian. It is part of the Sermon at the Mount by our Lord Jesus and part of His teaching on how we should pray. It is found in Matthew 6:9 and 10 that reads, “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed by Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’” (NASB).

The statement “on earth as it is in heaven” supports those three prior statements: “Hallowed be Your name,” “Your kingdom come,” and “Your will be done.” This implies that Jesus wants us to pray that whatever is going on in heaven will be done on earth.

Where on earth God’s Name, kingdom and will be done?

It will happen only in one place and that is in the church. No other human institution can fulfil that prayer. It is an essential part of our duty as a church to be the answer to that very plea for we are citizens of heaven and not of this world. We have been translated into the kingdom of God’s Son. We are a kingdom of priests and we belong as subjects of the living Christ in a very unique identity. We are heavenly people living on earth and when we gather together, we bring what goes on in heaven down on earth.

And if we are going to do on earth what is being done in heaven, then the following should be experienced in the church:

1. Worship of God. We find in Revelation 4:8 how the four living creatures set the tone for heaven wherein they praise and worship God day and night because worship is the primary occupation of heaven.
2. Exalting Christ. Revelation 5:6-12 clearly tells us that heaven is engaged in the worship and exaltation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
3. Presence of purity. Revelation 21:27 describes that no unclean person, and no one who is practicing anything that abominates God, or dishonors Him, will ever enter in heaven for heaven is a holy place.
4. The Divine Truth
5. Spiritual Authority

I will discuss each of the above in my next blogs.

Spiritual Physiology of the Church

The word "church" represents in the New Testament the Greek word ἐκκλησία, ekklesia (Latin, ecclesia). The term is probably derived from the Greek kuriakon (i.e., "the Lord's house") that was used by ancient authors for the place of worship.

Pre-Christian History of the Term Church
Although ekklesia soon became a distinctively Christian word, it has its own pre-Christian history. Throughout the Greek world and right down to New Testament times (see Acts 19:39), ekklesia was the designation of the regular assembly of the whole body of citizens in a free city-state who are "called out" by the herald for the discussion and decision of public business.

The Septuagint translators had used the word to render the Hebrew kahal, which is the Old Testament that denotes the "congregation" or community of Israel, especially in its religious aspect of the people of God. In this Old Testament sense we find ekklesia employed by Stephen in the book of Acts where he describes Moses as "the one who has in the congregation in the wilderness..." (v. 7:38).

The word thus came into Christian history with associations alike for the Greek and the Jew. To the Greek it would suggest a self-governing democratic society; while to the Jew, a theocratic society whose members were the subjects of the heavenly King. The pre-Christian history of the word "church" had a direct bearing upon its Christian meaning for the ekklesia of the New Testament is a "theocratic democracy," that is a society of those who are free but are always conscious that their freedom springs from obedience to the King.

The Term Church was Adopted by Jesus Himself
The name ekklesia was first applied to the Christian society by Jesus Himself when He said to Peter "... upon this rock I will build My church..." (Matthew 16:18). The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia said that Jesus employ a new name for the society that He came to found as the "kingdom of God" or the "kingdom of heaven" - a designation which had its roots in Old Testament teaching and which the Messianic expectations of Israel had already made familiar - into church when it was clear that Jesus was to be rejected by the Jewish people (see Matthew 16:21).

The adoption of the term "church" did not imply any abandonment of the ideas suggested by the conception of the kingdom for in Matthew 19:19, "the kingdom of heaven" is employed in a manner which at least compels us to regard them as closely correlative and as capable of translation into each other's terms.

The comparative disuse by the apostolic writers of the name "kingdom" together with their emphasis on the church only shows that they had followed their Master's guidance in substituting for a name and a conception that were peculiarly Jewish.

The Use of the Term Church in the New Testament
The word ekklesia occurs in the Gospels only twice and that is in Matthew 16:18 and 18:17 of the same Gospel where the questions of discipline were to be decided by the collective judgment of the members of the church, which shows that the church possess the powers of self-government.

In the book of Acts, ekklesia has come to be the regular designation for the society of Christian believers and is employed in two distinct senses. First in local sense to denote the body of Christians in a particular place or district, e.g., in Jerusalem (5:11; 8:1), in Antioch (13:1; 15:22), and in Caesarea (18:22), a usage which reappears in the book of Revelation in the letters to the Seven Churches. Then in a wider and what was be called a universal sense to denote the sum total of existing local churches (9:31) that are regarded as forming one body.

In the epistles of apostle Paul, both usages are frequent and even been applied to a single Christian household or to little groups of believers who were accustomed to assemble in private houses for worship and fellowship (see Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 1:2).

The Ideal Use of the Term Church
In Paul's epistles to Ephesians and Colossians, he has another use of ekklesia peculiar to himself, which may be described as the ideal use, where he used the extended metaphor of Jesus as the Head of His body, the church (Ephesians 1:22ff; 4:15; 5:23; Colossians 1;18-19; 2:19).

Spiritual Physiology of the Church
As we look at Christ as the head of the church, His body, we see a number of details that can come out of that metaphor in which we are going to expand our thinking and make a sort of taking that body apart a little bit by dissecting it into parts that I called in this blog as the "Spiritual Physiology of the Church." This includes the following:

1. The Skeleton. It is those things that give the body its shape and form. It is absolutely essential and crucial to any kind of functioning body. It is where the internal organs are hung, the muscles are attached, and the skin wraps around it. It is the obvious framework upon which the other parts or systems of the body depends;
2. The Internal System that is the organic life of the church has;
3. The Muscles that is the activities the church engages in; and
4. The Flesh or the skin that is the outward form that it takes.

People in churches everywhere all across the world struggle with temptation, sin, old habits, confusion, trust, circumstances and suffering. The objecting of this series of blogs is to help and guide believers to be victorious over the things where they struggles and to present the church to Christ as a pure virgin (2 Corinthians 11:2), that is to be everything that God wants it to be.