Jesus said that the world would know we are His disciples by seeing that we love one another. Love is the incarnation of grace and truth. Therefore one of the essential marks of the Body of Christ is that it is a community that cultivates truth.
The first reason it is essential is that living the truth was essential to the life of Jesus. Jesus conducted Himself in truth. He lived according to the truth. He was righteous and just in all that He did. He kept all the commandments flawlessly. He outright asked people to name any sin He had committed and no one could charge Him with a single one! He not only lived the truth, He taught the truth. He did not hide behind the truth, nor did He hide the truth from view when people opposed Him. He did not apologize for the truth. When standing for the truth was dangerous, He was a rock. When people tried to trip Him up, He used the truth to reveal the motives of His opposers. His stance on the truth was not moved by accepted customs or influenced by the fads of the day. The truth defined who He was, what He said, how He said it, and what He did from the time He could speak to His last words on the cross. Jesus even said of Himself, “I am the truth.” Jesus, who is the Head of the Church, walked in the light of truth and He expects His Body to do the same.
The second reason this is an essential mark of the Body of Christ is that fellowship together depends on our walking in the truth with one another. In 1 John 2:5-6 (NIV) The Apostle writes,
This is how we know we are in him: whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. To understand the truth, one must understand that it is relational. To know the truth means both correctly interpreting it, and correctly living it out in our relationships. As John says a little further on in 3:18 (NIV) of this letter, Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. To be full of truth in the Apostle’s mind means that it shows in our relationships with one another.
If we fail to be a people who incarnate truth: being good, righteous, truthful, wise, and living in the fear of the Lord, we cannot have genuine community. This makes sense doesn’t it? It is hard to be in loving community with people who are bad, unrighteous, untruthful, foolish, and who could care less about the wishes and desires of God Almighty.
And we need to be concerned about how we are perceived by people outside the church as well. For instance Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:11-12 (NIV)
Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
Being people who are full of truth is essential to healthy community, as well as to the witness of the community into the world.
The third reason this is an essential mark of the Body of Christ is because how we conduct ourselves towards others not only is important for our own personal holiness, but is important for the holiness of the whole community. In my last few posts, I talked about the importance of being aware of the kind of environment is created by our relationships together. What is true for grace is also true for walking in the truth.
One of the ways Jesus illustrated this was comparing the effects of our relationships on the community to the effect of yeast in bread. He used it positively in explaining what the kingdom of God was like in Matthew 13:33 (NIV), The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough; and negatively as in Matthew 16:5-6 (NIV), “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
What did Jesus mean by the yeast of the Pharisees? Down in verse Matthew 16:12 (NIV) Matthew writes that they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Again, it is important to remember that “teaching” to the Jewish mind meant more than the conveying of knowledge, it included the practice of it.
The effect of yeast is transformative. It only takes a little yeast to make a whole batch of dough rise. Jesus was saying that the pride and hypocrisy of the Pharisees was highly contagious to the community around them. Paul used the same imagery 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 (NIV) to convey a similar message to the Corinthians:
Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.
Paul was letting the Corinthians know that how they conducted themselves towards one another would have a profound and powerful effect on the rest of the Body of Christ, for good or for bad. It was essential for the Corinthians that they get rid of the yeast of sin or the community would suffer. Why? Because the yeast of malice and wickedness could poison the relational environment so that love was not able to grow in that community.
One of the essential marks of the Body of Christ is that it is a community that cultivates truth. It is essential because living the truth was essential to the life of Jesus. Jesus, who is the Head of the Church, walked in the light of truth and He expects His Body to do the same.
It is essential because fellowship together depends on our walking in the truth with one another. John wrote in 1 John 2:5-6 (NIV) This is how we know we are in him: whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. To understand the truth, one must understand that it is relational. To be living by the truth as John instructs, means both correctly interpreting it, and correctly living it out in our relationships.
How we conduct ourselves towards others is not only important for our own personal holiness, but is important for the holiness of the whole community. How we conduct ourselves towards one another has profound and powerful effects on the rest of the Body of Christ, for good or for bad. How we act effects the relational environment so that living a life of love together is going to be encouraged or discouraged in the community.
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 