The Church

Reading through Ephesians 2 and 3, I have been struck by the descriptions of what the church is.

Ephesians 2:21 states, 'the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple to the Lord'.

The church is a living, breathing, developing entity. It comprises of different sections, us. 

We are 'joined together'. We are meant to fit, so we should make efforts to align ourselves with one another, otherwise the building isn't going to be pretty!

 It'll just be a heap, a pile of stones. 

There is something unique and special about christians standing in unity. We are all individual, moulded from the same image, but created different, yet we are called to join together with each other. 

Why?

To, 'grow into a holy temple to the Lord'.

So, uniting together causes us to grow. 

We develop when we align ourselves with others of the same faith. It won't always be easy and will, in fact, be quite challenging, but if you recall growing up as a kid, that was quite challenging at times! 

But, if we don't grow and develop, we don't mature, and we cannot do as many things. 

The goal here, is to become a 'holy temple to the Lord'. 

Working together to achieve a dwelling place for the Lord God Almighty sounds like a pretty cool thing to want to achieve! 

Verse 22 goes on to say that we are, 'being built together'. It's a continual process, organic, moving and increasing. This takes work, some from our side, but also from God's, He works alongside us to build us together in unity. 

Reading through the next chapter, Ephesians 3 and verse 10, Paul relays that, 'through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places'.

You what?!?!

Yes, the Bible tells us that through the church, we are revealing something of God's marvellous wisdom to those in heaven! That's pretty spectacular! 

We, us; mere, mortal, mammals have responsibility to work together and display the wisdom of God! and not just to one another or those who do not yet know Christ, but to heavenly beings! 

That sounds crazy..........It also sounds kinda scary........

Our actions, inactions and words have far reaching consequences, further than we can comprehend. How we decide to use what we have as a part of the temple of God can have repercussions in the heavenly realms as well as here on Earth.

We have great responsibility, no matter our different viewpoints as; people, churches or denominations, we should all be Christ-centric, and this is where our unity can build from. 

There are undoubtably people in each fellowship that you would prefer not to be around, but God has called the 'WHOLE structure' to be joined together, to grow, to build and develop in order to demonstrate His wisdom.

So, let us be wise, let us choose to love one another, align ourselves with each other and demonstrate not only God's great love and mercy to the world, but also His great, magnificent wisdom to those heavenly realms.