In Christ there is no East or West, In Christ no South or North; But one great family of love Throughout the whole wide earth. In Christ shall true hearts everywhere Their high communion find; H...
The Power—the Spirit—is thus a social power, working to bring all minds into its own unity, sometimes by similarity and at other times by contrast. There is a diversity of gifts, but the same spirit.
So if we want to get the church right, we have to learn to see it as a salad in a bowl, made the Right Way of course. For a good salad is a fellowship of different tastes, all mixed together with the ...
1 John 4:16, John 15:12-13, Romans 8:38-39, Ephesians 2:19-22, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, John 17:21
The vision that Jesus gives us is this: That I am unconditionally loved, that I belong to God, and that I am a person who can really trust that. When I meet another person who also is rooted in the he...
Lord God, You have called us to yourself and made us into a people. We belong to you, and we belong to one another. But in our self-focused lives, we have forgotten that. We have lived for ourselves. ...
Preaching Commentary Background to the Letter and Passage Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was probably intended for wider distribution and use among the various churches around Ephesus. As such, the...
Cultural diversity was built into the Christian faith…in Acts 15, which declared that the new gentile Christians didn’t have to enter Jewish culture…. The converts had to work out…a Hellenistic way of...
From its very beginning the Bible sees human life in terms of relationships...The Bible does not speak about "humanity" but about "all the families of the earth" or "all the n...
We were created to communicate, to speak truth fully to one another, so that we might be members of one another. To be members of one another means we must learn to trust one another. Trust, like trut...
Background to the Letter and Passage Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was probably intended for wider distribution and use among the various churches around Ephesus. As such, there is no particular cri...
The Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a The Body as Metaphor The text from 1 Corinthians is one of several in which the apostle Paul uses the imagery of the body to describe both the unity and diversity o...
Holy One, Giver of every good and perfect gift It is your great grace that offers us salvation It is grace upon grace that gives us the chance to join you in your saving work You trust us that much Yo...
Holy Trinity, Community of Love, Draw your children together Across human boundaries Across denominations Draw us together in your creative light Awaken us to collaboration and mutual callings Quick t...
The Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a The Body as Metaphor The text from 1 Corinthians is one of several in which the apostle Paul uses the imagery of the body to describe both the unity and diversity o...
Isaiah 60:1, Matthew 5:14-16, 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 2:19-22, Galatians 6:2, 1 Peter 2:9
Leader: Arise! Shine! Christ’s Church has assembled. People: We are one body, with Christ as our head. Leader: What kind of body is this? People: The Body of Christ, brought together not by huma...
Peter Storey, the former Methodist bishop and president of the South African Council of Churches, a white man who opposed apartheid, tells a story about a party at which he and Archbishop Desmond Tutu...
God put the body together in such a way that those who experience honor in this life and those who do not are to astound the world by their unity and their concern for one another.
It is a promise which eminently deserves our observation that all who are united to Christ and acknowledge Him to be Christ and Mediator will remain to the end safe from all danger, for what is said o...
Leader: “Now there are various kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are various kinds of service, and the same Lord.” People: “ For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members...
Philippians 2:3-4, Galatians 6:2, Matthew 20:26-28, 1 John 3:18, 1 Corinthians 12:25-26
There was a story going around about the Special Olympics. For the hundred-yard dash, there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at ...
One of my favorite Bible illustrations of someone willing to go against the norms of society to befriend another based on love and forgiveness is found in the New Testament book of Philemon. It is a m...
I remember playing a game as a child in which we would bend one knee and grab our foot behind us and then try to race—limping, stumbling and falling over as we struggled across the grass toward a fini...
I remember playing a game as a child in which we would bend one knee and grab our foot behind us and then try to race—limping, stumbling and falling over as we struggled across the grass toward a fini...
Leader: "Now concerning spiritual gifts," brothers and sisters, "there are varieties of gifts," People: "But the same Spirit;" Leader: "And there are varieties o...
1 Peter 2:12, Galatians 3:26-28, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, John 13:34-35, Acts 2:42-47, Matthew 28:19-20, James 2:17-18
In Silence, Shusaku Endo writes of the journey of Portuguese Jesuits journeying to Japan. It is a conversation about those who intend to take the path of Jesus, only to find they are on the path of Ju...
Introduction to First Corinthians and Chapter 12 G. K. Chesterton wrote that original sin is the “only only part of Christian theology which can really be proved,” because we simply “see it in the ...
1 John 4:1, 1 Corinthians 12:10, 1 Kings 19:11-13 , Genesis 41:15-40 , Isaiah 30:20-21, Matthew 4:1-11, 1 John 4:1-3, Psalm 42:5-11
Scripture also speaks of “discernment of spirits” and encourages us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” This aspect of discernment helps us to distinguish the real from the phony, ...