The Body
There was a day when Jesus ascended into heaven, and many witnesses are said to have seen it.
Yes, the account is thousands of years old now — but it set the stage for the world to be transformed.
Forty days later, it is written that the disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit from on high, with all the gifts that accompany His arrival.
These twelve men went out to the corners of the known world and preached what they had witnessed and experienced with the one and only begotten Christ Jesus.
Among the diaspora, people heard the gospel in their own native languages, even when the disciples had never known them. Miracles and signs followed by the grace of the hand of God — the Holy Spirit — to confirm the truth of their witness, all to the glory of Christ Jesus and the blessed Father of Lights, in whom there is no shadow of turning nor flickering of character.
And this happened in a pagan world, a world with many gods and many pantheons.
It’s ironic that Christians were put to death under the charge of atheism.
Imagine — they believed in God, yet they were called godless.
But to the people of that time, since many had never heard of this God, and since honoring the gods of the empire was the norm, to not believe in the pantheon was seen as believing in nothing at all.
I could sit here and say, “Oh, how wrong they were.”
And yet.
To those who believed in the name and character of the Lord, these people became known as the ekklesia.
It’s a fitting name. The ekklesia — Greek for “assembly” — was originally a political term, used in ancient Athens to describe the collective voice of the people — not the aristocrats, but the common man.
Jesus is the God of the common man.
He bears the prospon — the face — of the Divine and hidden Father.
It is written that Christ was hidden in God, the mystery revealed in the fullness of time when it pleased the Father to do so.
And now, since He has ascended into heaven, the prospon of God on earth is the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.
It is the desire of God as One to work through the body.
Yes — sadly, I believe the Western church is largely anemic, lacking resolve and power from on high. It honors God in word, but often not in Spirit.
Words without the fruit of the Divine Gardener are deader than dead.
Even when read from the sacred and inspired texts of faithful men.
And yet — throughout the whole history of God revealing Himself to man, culminating in the birth of Jesus Christ Almighty, there has always been a remnant.
A remnant bound in love and holy blood.
A remnant kept by peace and holy power.
A remnant sustained by a will and life no created being can resist or overcome.
The love of God revealed through Christ Jesus, the Son of the only living God.
This living body, this breathing ekklesia, with Christ as the Groom and we as the Bride — still exists today.
It is still His will that needs to be done. It is still His dream of connection and family that becomes real through this true body.
It is so that His word will never return to Him void, and the desires of the One who travailed on our behalf shall be fulfilled.
For He is the power that will make it so.
He is the very invitation from heaven to earth, to the ones called His Bride —
He is the One who says: Come.
