Today's Scripture Reading (April 27, 2024): Romans 12
We are being transformed, and the
endpoint of our transformation is to regain what we lost in the garden. So, we
begin to reflect the image of Jesus Christ. It is not a transformation that is
completed in this life, but it is a transformation and a commitment that we
make for the duration of our lives. I want to learn to do better, keep short
lists with God, be genuinely transformed, and begin to look like Jesus. But just
because we are all starting to look like Jesus does not mean we are all
becoming the same. It is essential to realize that as Christians, we act in
unity following the same goal, but not in unison doing the same thing.
Biblical
experts have speculated on where Paul got the idea for this imagery of the
Body. It is present in several of Paul's letters. One of the ideas was that
maybe Paul had visited the various shrines of the God Asclepius. Asclepius was
the son of Apollo, and he was known as the healer God. Asclepius's staff is the
traditional healthcare symbol, with a single snake wrapping around the staff.
Even the original Hippocratic Oath started with the words, "I swear to
Apollo, the healer, and to Asclepius."
So,
these shrines would be places of healing. The sick would come and offer their
sacrifices to the priest. Then, they would be invited to sleep overnight in the
most holy place in the Temple. Non-venomous snakes would roam throughout the
sleeping sick. And if you received a vision, you told the priest, and he would
make his prescriptions. If you were healed, then you made a mold of the part of
you that was afflicted, which would be hung on the walls by the bathing pool.
The
suggestion is that maybe Paul had wandered through these shrines and gazed at
all the unconnected body parts hanging on the wall – arms, legs, shoulders,
breasts, various genitalia – all hanging on the walls. And the Apostle might
have wondered, what life do any of these things have unless they are connected
to the whole?
As
we read Paul's writings, we see that the Body of Christ dominates his words. In
Paul's critique regarding the Lord's Supper, he says,
For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ
eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many
among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep (1
Corinthians 11:29-30).
I had a conversation with a gentleman a few years ago who was
frustrated with me because I did not warn the people that they needed to get
their lives right before receiving communion and recognize Christ's crucified
body. It was an overreaction but also a misunderstanding of the scripture. This
is not a "make sure you recognize Jesus as your personal Savior" passage.
It is about recognizing that the people worshiping with us are the Body of
Christ. The encouragement for the Corinthians was that they should heal their
divisions and, in the process, recognize the Body of Christ in all the people
gathered around them.
In 1 Corinthians 3, we have what I call the anti-smoking verse
because that is how I heard it used throughout my youth.
Don't
you know that you are God's Temple and God's Spirit dwells in your midst? If
anyone destroys God's Temple, God will destroy that person; for God's Temple is
sacred, and you together are that Temple. (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
But
watch the plural of the verse because it is crucial; "you yourselves are
God's Temple." You together are that Temple. All of you are the Temple of
God. The passage is not about your personal body; it is about the Body of
Christ, all of us taken together. Do nothing that destroys that Temple. Let
nothing destroy this Temple which the Holy Spirit has built in you and those
around you.
Paul
understood this is the way that the human body worked, and it was also the way
God intended his church to work.
Tomorrow's Scripture
Reading: Romans 13
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