Dear Church Family,
Have you ever thought of the church as being like a pizza? I had not either until I read this by Robert Letham, “We are not individuals in isolation. We are part of a collective whole, rather like slices of a gigantic pizza. In the Old Testament, people were seen in connection with their ancestors from the past and their tribal connections in the present; you were A the son of B the son of C of the tribe N.”
Dr. Letham, from whom I learned much about the Holy Spirit in his seminary class, uses a great analogy to teach us about the heterogeneous nature of God’s people. [FYI that big word means “to consist of people that seem to have little in common.”] Revelation 5:9 tells us that Jesus shed His sacrificial blood for those “from every tribe and language and people and nation.” Ephesians 3:28 declares, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Despite the variety shown in church family across the world and over time, there exists a unity unique to God’s people. In Ephesians 5:30 Paul simply states, “We are members of His (Christ’s) body.” Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 details those various gifts with the point in v14 that “the body is not made up of one part but of many.” He goes on to remind us that the body has parts like feet, eyes, etc. This leads us to marvel at the unity we enjoy as the body of Christ. Because we are united to Him we are united to all other followers of Christ.
Going back to the pizza analogy, you can get pies from Dominos, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns or Blue Mountain. A look at the Dominos menu, shows the choices (variety) border on the infinite. There are five types of crust, three sizes, ten sauces (including ketchup-mustard), eight meat toppings (anchovies not listed) and 18 non-meat toppings. Or you can pop a frozen pizza into your oven at home.
So while we each are created uniquely by God, we function best and to the glory of God as we live in community as the body of Christ. Again, it is a blessing to be part of the universal church as well as part of a local church.
Living by grace to His glory,
Pastor Gillikin