7.1 Saved into Church
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Salvation is NOT “to heaven.” Salvation is “to Church.” Everything of salvation wrongly ascribed to a “place” wrongly called “heaven” is rightly found inside of Church, a Church that lives in and by heaven, the realms of spirit. And when I say Church, I mean the real Body of Christ, Body made alive every moment by Spirit.
And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22-23). The Church is the fullness of Christ, who is all that Salvation is and means; the Church is the fullness, also, of God, the One who fills all in all, the Father.
A Many-Membered Body
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many (1 Corinthians 12:12-14). Christ is a many-membered body.
Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:20b-22).
Put these three passages together as one word.
No Greater Enemy
There is no greater enemy of God in the church than the belief that salvation occurs after death and consists of living in heaven, a place of all bliss, instead of hell, a place of all horror. Inside this anti-Christ belief is the conviction that everything we read about in the Bible, other than going to church and paying our tithes, will be known only in this future place of all bliss. And by this wicked means, the spirit of anti-Christ prevents God’s people from even looking at, let alone considering, God’s real Salvation; thus they wait in a stupor for death.
Everything of salvation, of the life of the age to come, of the Kingdom, of all the fullness of God, is found ONLY inside the reality found in these three passages, right here and right now.
Today
Tomorrow, every single tomorrow, forever and ever, billions of tomorrows, when we find ourselves there, we will discover to our astonishment that we are entirely inside of Today. Today if you will hear His voice – now is the day of salvation. We will never ever leave Today, this moment, and Today is the only day of believing that what God says is actually true.
The relationship inside a Christian between them and every word God speaks will NOT change just because they lose their physical body. I swing my sword again against this sad unbelief in the Church because I want to take us “to” heaven Today. I want to walk with you Today in all that God speaks in all fullness.
Salvation Only Inside the Church
Very quickly into the fall into Roman darkness, the church took on the belief, particularly among the Roman theologians, that there was no salvation outside the church. The horror of that belief, of course, is that their definition of “salvation” was the ticket to escape hell and go to heaven only after death and their definition of the “church” was the hierarchy of order under the Bishop of Rome.
Now, the statement “Salvation is found only inside the Church” is 100% what God speaks in the Bible, but only as all that Salvation is and means is known by us inside the three passages I included from Ephesians and 1 Corinthians. In Christ, in Spirit – all the fullness of God IN Body/Temple.
Let’s Go to Church
You see, modern evangelism sells people on the chance to “go to” salvation someday. The gospel is living IN all salvation Today, which is the Church, His Body, the fullness of God all in all. God has taken us to Church – so, let’s go to Church!
Church is salvation, not heaven. Real heaven is only one element found in Church. If we don’t like church, we certainly will not be happy with heaven. Of course, when we say, “Church,” we do not mean sitting in a pew with other Christians listening to a short sermon, but rather the Community of Christ, walking together in love.
Immersed into One Body
Let’s list the elements of these verses – in the order in which Paul wrote them.
1. “One” means many together as one. 2. Many members make up one body.
3. Christ IS a many-membered body, of which each one of us are the members. 4. The same One Spirit immersed each of us into that one body.
5. Each of us drinks into ourselves the same One Spirit. And we envision this Spirit as a bath of electrical and energetic Power filled with Word in which we are immersed. We are immersed IN and filled with Living Spirit WORD.
The Body of Christ
6. God has transferred all authority from Adam to Jesus, placing all things under His feet. 7. Yet to His Church, God has made Jesus to be the Head.
8. The Church IS Jesus’ body, His only body. 9. As the Body of Christ, the Church IS the fullness of Christ, in whom dwells all the fullness of a Personal Father. 10. This Body IS the fullness of God all in all.
11. This Body can also be described as a Temple. 12. In this temple, Jesus is the chief cornerstone governing the placement of every stone in the temple – a Personal Christ.
13. Inside all the sphere of Christ, the whole building, meaning every member, is being “fitted together.”
A Holy Temple
14. The whole building is increasing to a holy Temple existing entirely inside all the sphere of the One who holds all absolute ownership right over all things. 15. Inside all the sphere of Christ, we are all being built together.
16. This being built together is FOR a dwelling place for God. 17. This being built together, this dwelling place of God, is IN Spirit.
And there you have the place. YES, there is a place in the meaning of Salvation. But it is a place for God first; our place is only as a part of God’s place. And IN Spirit includes all God means by “heaven.”
Gathering Together
As I have shared, up until now most of my concern has been establishing you and me in all the reality and confidence of Christ as our only life, each one of us as individuals. As important as that foundation is, if we remain only as individual members, we cannot be IN Salvation.
Salvation is Church, the gathering together of believers in Jesus. And Church is the Body of God. The gathering together of believers IS the Body of God, the PLACE where God dwells, His only appearance in creation, God-Revealed. This is the meaning of the First Day of Tabernacles, now upon us.
Built Together
On October 15, 972 BC, the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, God filled His fully prepared temple, the event all Israel had awaited for 490 years. That event, recorded in 2 Chronicles 6-7 and 1 Kings 8-9, is identical to what Paul wrote about in Ephesians 2:20-22.
And in Paul’s description of the fulfillment of the First Day of Tabernacles in the life of the church, he used three big words.
Synarmologoumenē (being fitted together): to fit together; I fit together, I compact.
Synoikodomeisthe (are being built together): to build together, figuratively: to build up together; I build together with.
Katoikētērion (a dwelling place): a habitation, a place to live.
Our Present Tension
You might have noticed a seeming tension in what I am sharing. First, I say that this Church as the fullness of God is Today, but then I suggest that we are waiting with all expectation for something we have never known coming now upon us. Both are 100% true. Believing with all confidence that what God says is our only reality AND the fulfillment of all that is God in our lives are the same thing.
HOWEVER, we are not talking about any static isolation. We are speaking of BEING BUILT TOGETHER!
The Proof of Christ
My confidence in God is not the proof of Christ. Our being built together is the proof of Christ.
One more passage, then, must be added to the other three. But, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love (Ephesians 4:15-16). This verse is simply packed with power reality along with big Greek words.
Let’s continue our layout of points.
Becoming Christ
18. We speak the truth, that is, Christ our only life, inside the sphere of loving one another with a pure heart fervently. 19. As we speak Christ into one another, we are growing up into Christ, penetrating into Christ with all purpose.
20. This growing up into Christ as the head of the Body is in all things. 21. Out from Christ as the head, the whole body builds itself up inside all the sphere of Love.
22. This building up comes as we are being joined together. 23. And this joining, the cement holding us together, is by what each one of us provides.
Being Held Together
24. Each one of us as individual members has a measure of the whole, and as we give our measure to one another, the body increases into all the fullness of Christ, God all in all.
Now here are two more big words.
Synarmologoumenon (being joined together): (This is the same word as before, just a different inflection.) To fit together; I fit together, I compact.
Symbibazomenon (being held together): to join together, hence to consider, by extension: to teach. I unite or knit together, I put together in reasoning, that is, I PROVE, I teach or instruct.
Wow. That last word means to board a ship together. To prove, together.
The Pro-Thesis of God
Church is the pro-thesis of God, His proof that Jesus speaks the truth. Church is what everything is all about.
The Kingdom of God, as it appears in creation, has three parts or phases of appearing. The first is this relationship of Church, being built and fitted together as the dwelling place of Father, God seen and known by all through our relationships of walking together in love. The second is as the whole world becomes convinced that God in fact sent Jesus because of the love among us fully visible to them, the very proof that God IS.
Saved into Real
And the third unfolding of the Kingdom is you and I setting all creation free, bringing all things into the order that is Love. I will not develop the wondrous specifics found in these four passages anymore in this session; rather, there are four sessions coming up on the Kingdom of God as the Church.
One more note, however. There is no such thing as “all bliss.” “All bliss” is stupefyingly boring; God is not boring. God is love, and the first quality of Love, the source from which all that is love flows is this: Love suffers long and is kind.
Some might think that when I speak of gathering together as the community of Christ, I am imagining some sort of utopia. No! I am speaking of REAL, something we still hardly know.