1st Corinthians 12 speaks on our spiritual gifts and how they are to be used to build up the church. It points out that we are One body, intimately connected and graced to serve God.
God has graced us to build up the world. He has given us everything that we need in order to make this world a better place in which to live. He has endowed the believers with spiritual gifts. What captures my attention more so in this scripture is how intimately connected we are. The scripture is relating to our spiritual body, the body of Christ, to that of our human body.
When connecting this scripture to everyday life, I can truly understand how what effects one, affects another or many. I believe so often we lose sight of this close connection. We lose sight that we are in this thing call life together. The old cliché, together we stand divided we fall is an old adage that is rich in truth. The benefit of understanding that we are indeed one and are in this walk of life together, alone should be empowering. It should give us great strength to know that we are brothers and sisters and that we have each other’s backs. It should give us freedom to be authentic. It should free us of our fear of making mistakes and fears of not being good enough and allow us room to grow and nurture one another without envy, jealousy, judgment and strife.
I’m led to believe that if we truly felt and understood the depth of this truth, the truth of our Oneness, we would be more inclined to treat one another with greater respect, more patience, kindness and tolerance.
Sadly however, we have a tendency to adapt to our environment and because of the pressures of it, we sometimes fall short of these attributes and instead drift off into a whirlpool of self-centeredness and corruption. And we begin to see the spread of dysfunction in our society. We begin to see it in our political world and in our schools. We begin to see it in our church and we see it in our homes. We begin to live in an untruth that it is all about me and we run over anybody who gets in our way of feeling good. This self-righteous attitude and behavior can be found as not only unhealthy and unwholesome but downright destructive to humankind and un-checked as with the physical diseased body, not given proper attention, and arrested, can go on to spread negatively to destroy and even kill.
To steal from a father, to rape a sister, to abuse a mother or to kill a brother should have a great impact on us all. We should feel it with great empathy and sympathy because they are a part of us.
We are indeed in this thing together. We are indeed One.
We can all at some point and time attempt to justify our reasons for not following the greatest commandment of God and that is to love him first and then to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The latter part of that scripture, ‘as we love ourselves’ may at times be more difficult to do then it sounds. I often feel like it is that, that is at the core of our sinful nature. Because of guilt, shame, anger, resentment, and self-disdain, starting from the Garden of Eden, the world
reaps the raft of our pain. I believe that if at some point we can become more transparent
concerning our insecurities, fears, and discontent, if some kind of a way we can process our hurts, we can heal and move on to help heal others……SOMEBODY SAY JESUS!
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can a man keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him–a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
This scripture helps to emphasize that old familiar adage of division: Division is the action of separating into parts, the process of separating…. disagreement between parties, typically causing tension or hostility, disunity, conflict, dissension, estrangement, alienation, and isolation. I’d like to add BROKENNESS and WEAKNESS.
The 1st Corinthian 12 scripture also speaks that; When one is lifted and honored, we should all rejoice together. Be happy for one another. Celebrate each other’s accomplishments and struggles overcome. There are good things going on in the world where people come together, glimpses of hope. To say that the whole world is unprincipled, unscrupulous and hopeless is a lie. We do have our moments of coming together. We do share in common concerns and support in labors of love.
We come together in times of catastrophes. We march hand in hand for peace and justice and we advocate for our children and elders, just to name a few. But it is too often with a glimpse that we see these things. So often it is shut out or placed behind the scenes of negativity or darkness only because it is what appeals to our senses. Darkness is what sales. We need to be the light, to illuminate the good. For the good is not always honored enough. Know that we are in this thing called life together and that we all can reap the benefits of God’s goodness.
The Bible teaches that we must lean towards solidarity, to develop a heart for unity, cooperation and concurrence, to come together as One in order to grow. WE ARE IN THIS THING TOGETHER
Through prayer and devotion, fellowship, teaching and sharing. the beleivers grew. Acts 2:42-47