Reeves: the common life of the Body

Sunday, January 22, 2012
Meditation:
    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 who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
    —Romans 12:4-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Whatever gifts we possess belong to the Body, and are useful only as they are used in the common life of the Church. All this is made very plain in the New Testament Epistles, for in them we are taught that in each local Christian community is a fellowship in which every member is to live in humility and in love to the brethren. Yet no local church is to live to itself. Again and again, local churches are reminded of their close relationship to one another, in life, work, worship, pain, and death. Not that such a relationship is to be regarded either as a matter of convenience or as a question of organization. On the contrary, this intimate relationship is seen as the direct outcome of the saving work of Christ. This unity with one another, and of local churches with each other, is the unity which belongs to the Body of Christ, arising from the unity of God Himself, uttered in the dying and rising again of Jesus, and now expressed in the order and! structure of the Church.
    ... Ambrose Reeves (1899-1980), Bishop of Johannesburg [1956], Church and Race in South Africa, David M. Paton, London: SCM Press, 1958, p. 31 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Your Spirit, Lord, animates the whole church. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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