If you accepted Jesus Christ inside of your heart, as your Lord and Savior, you became a Christian. However, much more than this, you have received the Fatherhood of God in your life and, therefore, became part of His family. As family, we are also the Body of Christ, as it is written in 1 Corinthians 12:27.
The Body of Christ is a living organism, with the mission of representing Him here, on Earth. We are an extension of the work that Christ began while here. He died and resurrected to bring us a new life, a life full of grace. GRACE! That is the word – His undeserving love towards us. That is the character of God: Because of His love, He sent Jesus Christ to save us from our own disobedience.
In John 17:20-23, Jesus says: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”. The key word here is UNITY. We are united with Christ; all of those who have accepted the message of salvation are ONE. We are one family, connected by the love of God in us.
For the world to see who God is and to know that Christ was sent by God to Earth as an expression of His love to mankind, it is necessary that His body to walk as one. In other words, there is a great power in our unity. And this unity will only be made strong by loving each member of this Family as a sister or a brother in Christ; we must look to each other through the lenses of compassion.
In Romans 12:3-5, the apostle Paul admonishes us: “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others“. There is great potential in each member of the Body of Christ, and we should recognize that. It does not matter how long each one of us is a Christian, if we belong to the same family with the same Father, we must see each other through the lenses of grace.
Don’t see yourself as better or more Christian than the others; instead, “The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him” (Romans 12:3, the Message Bible). God sent Jesus to save all of us! That is His pure grace! And, after accepting His sacrifice with our open hearts, we were inserted in a Family in which each one of us has different functions. That is the beauty of our Family in Christ – God did not call us to be exactly the same to each other; He called us to walk under the same sense of purpose and motivation.
All of us have our own personalities, and we were called to perform specific callings under His guidance. Same as with our natural bodies, in which different parts and members work together as a whole, in the Body of Christ, different people with different spiritual gifts have the same ultimate goal of spreading the Gospel. And we must learn to get along and to work in harmony with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Proverbs 27:17 says: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another”. To be honest, at first, learning to work with someone with a personality so different from yours is not a pleasurable experience sometimes; however, it helps us to grow in maturity, and it prepares us for our future steps into ministry.
As iron sharpens iron, those experiences develop the love of God and His patience inside of us. If we are here as representatives of God, to reveal His love to humanity, we need to overflow in His love, right? If we want to love the ones who do not know about Christ yet, we should start by loving the members of our Family first. If we cannot exercise patience and comprehension among the members of our Family, there are less chances of us being able to do it outside, simply because, at least within our Family, we know we have the same Fatherhood and the same Holy Spirit. We must exercise compassion among ourselves if we want to be a glorious Church of Christ.
I will repeat this one more time: You belong to a Body, to a collective, to a Family. You are not alone. There is something powerful in the sense of belonging. When you let yourself be pastored and treated, you open doors for your growth, spiritually, mentally and psychologically. It may not be comfortable, but it is necessary. Iron sharpening iron. Members helping each other. We may be different in qualities and personalities, but we are running towards the same goals. We are together! Do not be afraid of letting yourself being treated and shaped. Do not be afraid of growth. And do not be afraid of loving and being compassionate. In order to be the Church God wants us to be, we need to be strong and courageous. Therefore, we also need to be strong in loving others.