In which I pluralize like a maverick.
Without the regularly scheduled vacations of my former school-bound life, I feel like time passing has a surreal, Dali-esque quality. I had no summer last year, because I transplanted myself to get two extra months of winter in Madagascar and South Africa. Then I spent autumn studying indoors, I wintered in sunny California or indoors New York, and I’ve been experiencing a spring of interminable incandescent lighting in the windowless medical ICU of a new hospital. And now someone has the gall to tell me June is around the corner? My newsfeed is spattered with graduation gowns and the beginnings of exotic student-loan-funded vacations. I remain, as ever, indoors. At least I have my commutes to enjoy the disorientingly verdant streets.
The common usage of “peace” in the church life is an inward feeling of comfort or rest, especially the absence of doubt, worry, or confusion concerning choices. We often give fellowship to each other to seek the peace of Christ in our decision-making. “Do you have the peace to do this?” We would often ask. This use and experience of peace is absolutely correct, but the peace presented in Colossians 3 is not an individual peace. Colossians 3:15 says, “Let the peace of Christ arbitrate in your hearts, to which you were also called in one Body; and be thankful.” The peace of Christ is presented to us in the context of the one new man. A message I read this week says this: “For the Body life, we should let the peace of Christ decide all things in our heart in our relationship with the members of His Body.” Peace is not merely personal, a matter of peace between us and God. It is a matter of peace among men, a phrase that heralded the Lord’s birth (Luke 2:14).
The record of Christ is thoroughly intertwined with peace. Luke 2:14 shows us that Christ’s coming was peace coming to earth. Then in His last message to His disciples, Christ tells the disciples, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” Then on the evening of His resurrection, Jesus’ first words to the gathered believers is “Peace to you” (John 20:19, 21, 26). Then in Acts 9:31, “the whole church… had peace, being built up.” Paul’s ministry urges the believers to be at peace with all men, and to pursue the things of peace and the things for building up (Rom 12:28; 14:19). The result of all this peace in the church is that “Now the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly” (Rom 16:20). Christ, the heavenly Melchizedek, the king of Salem (meaning peace), the Prince of Peace, is here to make us also a nation of peace, at peace with one another and with God, in order to carry out the final victory of the God of peace!
What does it mean to be at peace? An example in the Bible is Paul’s word in 2 Cor 13:11, in which he says says, “rejoice, be perfected, be comforted, think the same thing, be at peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.” To be at peace in the church life practically is to rejoice, to be perfected, to be comforted, and to think the same thing. Not easy, but the God of love and peace is with us to carry this out.
I experienced this kind of Body-peace in my small group meeting. I love my small group meeting, but the members are more than a little wacky. So there are times when I bring gospel friends to these meetings that I enjoy so much, and suddenly when they’re there, I feel so uncomfortable because I notice all the oddities in the saints. Like one brother always says “brothersisters” instead of “brothers and sisters”; one sister always sings very loudly in a warbly off-key way; another brother only likes to share about PSRP, but says PRSP instead. Once I brought a new student to the Lord’s table meeting, her first ever meeting, and a sister came by and started ardently pitching the ground of the church to her and why she should meet with us in the local church. AHH! I was terrified for my new ones. But in that situation I turned to the Lord; I really turned. I said, “Lord, why are You doing this to my sheep? Lord, don’t let her be stumbled. I really want her to see the Christ in these people.” Then I found my prayers turning. “Lord, I want the blessing of oneness. Give me Your peace so that this new one can see how one we are.” I tuned back into the conversation, and instead of trying to steer the conversation away from being about the local ground, I began to supply verses to what the sister was saying, and explain the verses a bit. I began to get pretty excited about talking about the local ground. We thought the same thing. It was such a powerful peace. That new one never came back to meet with us again… but she continued to have lunch appointments with me. The Lord though gained more of me, more love in me for the members of the Body, and more willingness to be in our God of peace.
Proverbs 14:10 tells us how we were before we became members: “the heart knows its own bitterness, / and a stranger does not share in its joy.” But after we have been given a new heart, we have this command: “rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” The “feeling of the Body” presented in Colossians 2:9–10, 16–17, 19 is not the fellowship we get from older and more experienced saints that matches our personal fellowship with God; it is instead a consciousness and care for the Body rather than ourselves. 1 Cor 12:25–26 says, “That there would be no division in the Body, but that the members would have the same care for one another. And whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it.” Colossians 2 tells us the Body is of Christ. And Christ our Head is full of feelings concerning His Body.
How do we feel these feelings for the Body? Romans 12:3 tells us that we should not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. Colossians 2:18 and 3:2 also tell us to seek the things above, where Christ is, rather than setting our minds and our frame of reference on ourselves only. When the Lord strengthens us not to live for ourselves, we will then be able to care for the Body. 1 Cor 12:12–27 is a picture of the church life in this way, with members clothing those that lack with more abundant honor.
I see this clothing with more abundant honor all the time in medicine. It’s inescapable — the human body is a beautiful picture of the Body of Christ. For example, the lungs of an emphysema patient are so damaged that they can’t effectively blow breaths out. It’s as if one’s lungs, instead of being a balloon that easily pushes out air when allowed to deflate, became a plastic bag that just continues to hang open when released. Because of these defective lungs, the body can’t get the same amount of oxygen as a healthy person. But to compensate for this member that lacks, the other members seamlessly pick up the slack. The muscles for breathing, and even some that aren’t usually used for breathing, get stronger: the diaphragms, sure, but also the scalenes and trapezoid and serrati. The kidneys secrete hormones that increase the amount of red blood cell production from the bones. The bones, accordingly, pump out more blood. The body tissues acidify the blood so the blood cells give up more oxygen. The kidney filters out excess acid and produces basic buffers to keep the blood at the right pH. And so for many decades, as the lungs get weaker and weaker, the patient still is able to do many of the same things he or she has always done, without noticing the effects of the disease. Sure, it’s more work for each of the other members, but when one member suffers, they all suffer. And as the lungs under treatment recover, all the members rejoice.
So also in the Body of Christ, by taking care of our relationship with God, we will get a growing feeling that we should care for our relationship with the saints. Growing up, I would often hear things from my mom about other brothers and sisters. Usually they were good, but sometimes they were just gossip, whether true or not. But in recent years, my inner feeling at hearing such things was a restless, uncomfortable feeling. I no longer wanted any part in words that would expose rather than covering my brothers and sisters. I pray this feeling would grow to its fullest extent! May the Lord gain a Body that so seamlessly is one, even in our feelings, to match the picture He gave us in our own bodies.
