How to Function in the Body

When you were saved, you came alive. Now part of that new life includes you being incorporated in the body of Christ. So your salvation, then, was a great transformation. You belonged to the world. You were insensitive to God. All of a sudden, by the transformation of salvation, you've been placed in the body of Christ. You've been saved from deadness unto life. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. You know that Jesus is building his church with a variety of people, from different backgrounds, with all sorts of personalities and gifts.

But is that simply for diversity's sake, or is there more to it, a more profound reason? John MacArthur works through those questions on Grace to You as he continues his series covering foundational aspects of the Christian life, series titled Spiritual Boot Camp. Today's lesson focuses on things you ought to do and how God made it possible for you to be an effective member of your local church.

So follow along now as John begins the lesson. How to function in the body of Christ. Now, there's a very important verse in the Bible that would be the place to start, and that would be 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 13. For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body. The moment you received Jesus Christ as Savior, you were placed into the body of Christ, whether we be Jews or Greeks, bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. When you became a Christian, you were placed, and that's what the baptizing of the Holy Spirit means, you were baptized or placed into the body of Christ.

It's like baptism means dipping somebody under or putting somebody into. You were put into the body of Christ. You became a member of the body of Christ. That's synonymous with the concept of the church. You became a member of the church of Christ.

You may not join a local church yet. You may not have an official membership in a local church, but the moment you were saved, you became a member of the church, of Christ's body, and that's one of the terms used for the church. The Bible uses several terms for the church. It calls us a flock.

Christ is the Shepherd. It calls us branches, and He is the Vine. It calls us subjects of a kingdom, and He is the King. It calls us children in a family, and He is the Father. There are many metaphors for the church, but one of them, and the very unique one, is the concept of the body, that we are members of the body of Christ. Now, when we came into the family, we came into that body. And 1 Corinthians 12, 14 says, the body is not one member, but many. So we're all part of the body of Christ.

Now, this occurs at your salvation. So point number one is to understand your salvation. It's very important that we understand what took place when we were saved. Maybe a simple way to approach this would be to have you turn to Ephesians and look with me at chapter 2. Chapter 2, verse 11 says, wherefore remember that you in time past were heathen in the flesh. Now, that's specifically directed to the Christians who were Gentile Christians. Verse 12 says that at that time you were without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Now, that is a picture of an unbeliever. Without Christ, without God, without hope, without promise, empty. But, verse 13, now in Christ Jesus ye who once were far off are made near by the blood of Christ. You once were far off from God, without God, without Christ, without hope, without promise, but in Christ you have been made near. For He is our peace who has made both one and broken down the middle wall of partition between us. It's as if you and God were rebels and Christ took the hand of God and your hand and brought them together. And often, you know, someone who is mutually loved by two people can succeed in doing that.

Sometimes you have a mother and a father who become estranged and a child who is loved by both of them can be the catalyst to bring them back together. There was a great story that came out of World War II. The French and the Germans were fighting. The Germans occupied a farmhouse and the French were trying to take the farmhouse and they were shooting across a field at each other. And all of a sudden one of the soldiers screamed out, hold your fire, because there was a little baby crawling across the field, somehow had gotten out of the farmhouse. And of course the Germans saw the little baby and had the same response.

And the interesting result of the story was that all the firing ceased and some newspaper reporter, when he wrote down the interesting article in relation to that incident, said that a babe had brought peace. In a real sense, that's precisely what happened with Jesus Christ. He came into the world to bring peace between those who were enemies, God and man. And the reason we are enemies with God is because He is holy and we are sinful.

And that estranges us. And Christ comes and takes the two parties and brings them together. He is our peace. And the metaphor here is it's like breaking down a wall that was between us. And it's not just talking about between us and God, but between Jew and Gentile. Now further on, it says in verse 16, He desires to reconcile both Jew and Gentile unto God in one body by the cross.

So Jew and Gentile are brought together and then both of them in the church are brought together with God. And the cross accomplishes this. The cross is the thing, the act which took away sin and sin was the wall. Sin was the barrier between us and God.

And so when the cross is accomplished and we put our faith in Christ, the barrier is removed. We are brought to God in one body. And so the church is all one. If you love the Lord Jesus Christ and you've been born again, you're one in the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 6 17 it says, He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit. So all those who are joined to Christ are one in Christ. Now over in chapter 4 of Ephesians, verse 17 tells a little bit about our life before we were Christians. This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk.

How do other Gentiles walk? How do unsaved people act? In the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart. They are past feeling. In other words, their consciences no longer really control them. They have seared their conscience.

They've disobeyed it so long it has a little effect. So that's a picture of an unsaved person. He walks like the heathen in the vanity of his mind. He's guided by his own thoughts. His understanding is darkened. He can't really know the truth. He is alienated from the life of God, spiritually dead.

His heart is blind. He has no feeling toward God, etc. He gives himself over to evil things, to wild kind of living, uncleanness, greediness and all that. But you have not so learned Christ. When you receive Christ, a whole new life begins. And all of that ceases to exist in the newness of life in Christ.

So there's a tremendous transformation. One other passage in Ephesians 2 to look at it, chapter 2 verse 1. Ephesians 2, 1 says, And you hath he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sin. Before you were a Christian you were dead, not physically dead, but spiritually dead.

And when we talk about spiritual death, we mean an inability to respond to God. I remember one day when I was sitting over at my office, a little boy came running in and said, Please come down the street. My mother needs help. Our baby sister just died. And down here on Roscoe Boulevard, about half a dozen houses or so, I hurried down the street and went in, and there was a little baby, beautiful little baby, I guess maybe about four months old, lying on the bed, just as blue as it could be, stone cold dead. And the mother was just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. And there was no explanation as far as she knew as to how the baby died. And she would kiss the baby and hold the baby, and nothing she could do would make that baby live. Because physical death is an inability to respond. And it served to me as a good illustration, because probably the strongest of all affections in human terms would be the affection of a mother for a child. That's the most basic kind of affection, the strongest kind of tie, that mother tied to that very life that came out of her own womb. But all the love she had and all of that energy that she was giving to that little child was totally unreceived, because death is an inability to respond.

It doesn't matter what the stimulus is, it can't respond. Spiritual death is the same thing. It is to be unable to respond to God. It is to have God doing things and God moving and totally be indifferent, unresponsive to what God is doing. That's spiritual death, the inability to respond to God.

And that's precisely what Paul is saying. Before you were a Christian, you were dead in trespasses and sins. Your life was characterized by the flesh, by the desires of the flesh, the desires of the mind. Verse 3 says, you walked according to the course of the world. Whatever the world said, you did. You followed the prince of the power of the air, Satan, and you were totally tuned out to God, as if you were physically dead and couldn't feel the stimulus of a physical factor, so spiritually dead you can't feel the stimulus of a spiritual reality.

That all changed. Ephesians chapter 2 says in verse 4, but God who is rich in mercy for His great love with which He loved us, and of course the whole change was begun with God. It was His love and His mercy. Even when we were dead in sins has what? Made us alive. What's the one thing a dead man needs most? Life.

And that's precisely what God gives. And what does He mean by life? It simply means that He turned on your spiritual sensitivities. And you became aware of God. You were able to sense God. You now walk in the presence of God. The Scripture starts to mean something to you.

Prayer means something to you. A whole new dimension opens up of existence, and that's because you became alive spiritually. That is, you opened up to be able to sense God. So your salvation then is an awakening into the realm of the presence of God. When you were saved, you came alive. Now part of that new life includes you being incorporated in the body of Christ, a very important concept. So your salvation then was a great transformation.

You belong to the world. You were insensitive to God. All of a sudden, by the transformation of salvation, you've been placed in the body of Christ. You've been saved from deadness unto life, and you can sense God. You can feel God.

You know God. You walk in eternal life, and incidentally, eternal life isn't the length of time. Eternal life is a kind of living, and that is the new life that comes in Christ. So you understand your salvation and what it did. Now secondly, I want you to look a little bit at this idea of understanding your position. Now that you are in the body of Christ, now that you are Christian, what does that mean?

Now listen to me. What it means is that you are in Christ in the truest sense of the word. Your position to begin with, A, is you are in Christ.

Now I mean that in the most realistic sense. When God looks at you, He sees you as it were incorporated in Christ. Everything about you is in Christ, and that's why God can impute righteousness to you because He sees you in Christ. That's why God can forgive your sin because He sees you in Christ. That's why Romans 8 says you are a joint heir because everything that comes to Christ comes to you because you are in Christ. So when you became a Christian, you were made to be identified uniquely in the person of Jesus Christ.

That's a tremendous concept. In 2 Timothy 1, 9, it says, God who has saved us called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ. God even had you in Christ before the world began. He saw you that way even then, now manifest since Christ has come. In Ephesians chapter 1, I think it's verse 6, it says this, God has predestinated us, verse 5, to the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, listen, through which He has made us accepted.

How? How has God made us accepted? In the Beloved One. The only way God can accept you is in Christ. And when you become a Christian and you receive Christ, you literally become in Christ.

You literally move into Him, as it were, and His personality shelters you so that God sees you in Christ. Ephesians 1, 17 is really a prayer that you would understand this. He says, I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, that the eyes of your understanding would be enlightened, that you would know what is the hope of His calling and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him on His own right hand in the heavenly places. Now, what He's saying there is, I pray that you will understand what it means to be in Christ. It is to inherit all that is His of the riches and the glory. It is to inherit all of His, verse 19, of the power, the mighty power which raised Him from the dead. Every possession of Christ and every empowering of Christ becomes ours because we're in Christ. It's a tremendous concept. And of course, this is why we say a believer for one reason cannot lose his salvation. There is security there. You see?

Your identification is in Him. In Ecclesiastes, there is an interesting verse. There's a lot of interesting ones, but one for our thoughts. Ecclesiastes 3.14. I just point this out because I want you to understand how complete you are in Christ. I know that whatsoever God does, it shall be forever.

That's a good principle. If God does anything, it's a forever thing. Nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it. And God doeth it that men should fear before Him. Now, when God does something, there is nothing that can be added to it and there is nothing that can be taken away from it.

That's true of anything. And it's even true of your salvation. If God saved you, that settles it. It's total.

It's complete. You're not half saved, three-quarters saved, or saved to a point. You've got to add a few little items along the way. If you're saved, God did it. You can't add anything to it. You can't take anything away from it.

You became a total Christian the moment you believed. You know, when a baby is born into the world, it isn't born like a pollywog. It doesn't come in and all of a sudden at three months, it sprouts a right arm and then all of a sudden at six months a leg pops out and pretty soon you've got a little toad type thing.

No. Babies come into the world from the time they're the teeniest little thing, they have all the parts, right? They have all the parts. The parts just get bigger.

That's all. When you become a Christian, you're not a spiritual pollywog with just a squiggly little tail and as you mature, you pop out the new parts. You're a total Christian.

The only question is the process of growing. Do you see what I mean? It's only a process of developing what you already are because you are complete in Him. Colossians 2 says, for you are complete in Him. 2 Peter 1-3 says, you have all things pertaining to life and godliness. You lack absolutely nothing. There are no ingredients you don't have. There is nothing missing. You are a totally perfectly formed baby in Christ. Now you need to grow and you need to mature those parts to bring them to a place where they can really operate for maximum effect but no parts are missing. You are totally complete.

That's a very, very important concept. Now because we are in Christ, God sees us then in fulfillment of all of His requirements. Christ came and fulfilled the whole law. Since you're in Christ in the eyes of God, you also fulfill the whole law.

You are spiritually alive to God. You're dead to sin. You're forgiven. How much forgiven are you?

He's forgiven you all your trespasses. You're righteous. You're a child of God. You're God's possession, heirs of God, blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies. You're heavenly citizens. You're servants of God.

You have new life. You're free from the law, crucified to the world. You're a light to the world, victorious over Satan. You're cleansed. You're holy without blame.

You're free. You're in Christ. You're secure in Christ. You're possessors of peace.

You're one. You're in grace. You're in fellowship.

You're joyful. You're spirit indwelt and led. You're spirit gifted. You're empowered for service and you have love.

Now that's pretty exciting, isn't it? That's who you are. In the eyes of God, that is your position. Since you're spiritually alive to God, live the life. Since you're dead to sin, don't give sin any place.

You see, what you are positionally before God, how God sees you, may be different than how you behave. I remember when I was a little kid, some neighborhood kid, he got me in some bad influence, you know. He got me to think it was kind of a neat deal to smoke a cigar, see. So I smoked a cigar and I thought, boy, this is really living, you know.

Big time deal. So then he decided he'd show me how I could steal things from the dime store. I was really a great kid.

I just got in bad company. But anyway, so we wound up stealing some stuff from Sears. As we were leaving the store, we got caught by the store detective and they put us in jail, the city jail while they called my father who was playing golf with some deacons. And poor guy, he didn't know what was going on. Anyway, he came to the jail.

He thought it was a mistake. And he had the deacons with him. They were coming back.

Couldn't be my son. So anyway, he comes and I'm in the cell there sitting there. So my dad arrives and he bails me out of there. And you know, I remember going to church and my dad was a preacher so, you know, everybody knew who I was. The word got around about me being in jail and didn't do a whole lot for my family's image.

But anyway, people used to say to me, oh, how could you do that? Don't you know who your father is? My mother would say, don't you realize? Don't you realize how you've dishonored our family? How could you, a pastor's son, do that?

People would say. Well, you see, the point was I wasn't living up to my position. You understand?

Because of who I was, there was a certain level demanded of me and I wasn't living up to it. Now the Scriptures give us both sides. There are many Scriptures on our position and there are many on our experience or our practice. And we need to have both.

You need to be consistent. I have a friend who, well, he just got traded to the Washington Redskins. Before that he played football for the Miami Dolphins.

He used to be a high school athlete here in LA at Centennial High School. And he played for about five or six years under Vince Lombardi at the Green Bay Packers. And he used to say what was amazing about the years that Lombardi was coaching, and those were the years they won all kinds of championships, was that people played beyond their abilities. There was something about putting on a Packer uniform that drew out of you more than you even had. There was something so dignified about being a Green Bay Packer that you just lived up to the name and the reputation.

There used to be in the great years of the New York Yankees the same feeling, where they said just to put a Yankee uniform on made you a whole different ball player. Well, I think in a sense that's the idea of being a Christian. There is a certain position that we have as Christians that we are to live up to. And the tragic thing that occurs in a Christian's life is often your practice doesn't match your position. You know, and what the Holy Spirit is saying to you is, what are you doing acting like that? Don't you know who you are?

Don't you know who your Father is? So your practice needs to match your position, but your position is perfect. You are in Christ and your position secures you forever. Spiritual growth has nothing to do with your position. Your position is already perfect. Spiritual growth occurs in the area of your practice to match your position. So that's a very important thing.

All right then, understanding your position. Your position, first of all, is in Christ. Secondly, since you are in Christ, you are also in the body of Christ, the church.

You have a very important position there. At the center of the church is Christ, the Spirit of Christ. Christ rules in the church through evangelists and pastor-teachers.

This is giving you the organization of the church in a circle fashion. The Spirit of Christ rules through evangelists and pastor-teachers. Their ministry is to equip the saints. The saints then are equipped by the leaders of the church to minister. When the saints minister, the body of Christ is edified or built up, and the result of that is that the elect are added, people are saved. Now this is basically a simple look at the structure of the church.

The heart or the head of the church, Christ, the Spirit of Christ. Through the evangelists and pastor-teachers or the elders of the church, the saints are equipped. Once the saints are equipped, they begin to minister. Once they begin to minister, the body gets built up, and when the body is built up, the elect are added, people are saved. Now that's the structure of the church. Your task is to be equipped so that you can minister. For when you minister, the body will be built up and other people will be saved. Now that's a simple look at the organization of the church.

Our part then is to submit to teaching and leadership. That's John MacArthur with a reminder about how God desires you to function in your local church. Along with being the Bible teacher on this broadcast, John is chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary. Today's lesson is part of his current series on Grace to You titled Spiritual Boot Camp. Well, John, still thinking about functioning in the local church body, one of our listeners recorded a question for you on a specific aspect of life in the church. And so I want to play that question now from our Q&A line, and then you can respond.

Hi John, my name is Ron from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I give all my money to missions rather than giving to the church. My pastor says you should give to the church first, and giving to missions should be over and above, tied into the church. I give all my money to the missions because I believe they really need it a lot more than the church does, because the church I'm going to seems to have a lot of waste. Is it okay in God's eyes? Am I doing the right thing by giving all my money to missions rather than to the church?

Thank you so much. Well, Ron, I appreciate that question, and I know it's a heartfelt question that you have. Obviously, you have some issues with what the church is doing with money, and you've made the decision that you can trust certain missions, certain parachurch organizations to be more directly using what you give in the cause of Christ than in your own church.

That's a decision you have to make, and I don't think it's wrong to give all your money to missions. I think the bigger issue is that you need to ask yourself, why am I a part of a church that I can't trust with my resources? How can I trust the church with the souls of people if I can't trust them with money?

I mean, Jesus basically said that. If you're faithful over little things, you can be given the trust to be granted bigger things. So I think the question is about your church. You feel free to give it where your heart desires, but know this. You need to be a part of a church that you can wholeheartedly support. Ideally, your church would then take the money that you give there and invest it wisely in the kingdom, whether it's in the church life itself or in missions.

But that's your decision. I would encourage you to find a church you can trust. Dr. Darrell Bock Right, and thank you, Jon. Now, friend, if you have a question about Scripture, the church's role in the world, or really any theological topic, let me encourage you to call our Q&A line. You can leave a message with your question, and you could hear Jon answer it on a future broadcast. Contact us today. The number for our Q&A line is 661-295-6288. Again, phone that number, leave a message with your question, and you may hear Jon answer it on a future broadcast.

The number one more time, 661-295-6288. And before we sign off, a quick reminder that this broadcast is available in your area and around the world because of the faithful giving of listeners like you. Your support allows us to air verse-by-verse Bible teaching on radio stations in almost every English and Spanish-speaking part of the globe. To make a tax-deductible donation, call 800-55-GRACE or click on the Donate tab at the top of our website, gty.org.

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