Week 2: Connect With Others

Day 1: What We Are To Each Other – The Church As Christ’s Body

^{1 Corinthians 12:12-27
12} Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.¹³ For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. ¹⁴ Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

¹⁵ Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. ¹⁹ If they were all one part, where would the body be? ²⁰ As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” ²² On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,²³ and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, ²⁴ while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵ so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

²⁷ Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

A lot of people say they don’t like “organized religion,” but I doubt they like disorganized religion either. What I think they really mean is that they don’t like public religion. They like their faith good and individualistic. They see faith as more like golf than basketball: it’s not a team sport. They think that faith is supposed to be both individual and individualistic.

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Week 1: Connect With God

Day 4: The Effects of Christian Conversion

In the last reading, we looked at how Jesus connects us with God through Christian conversion in John 3. We saw that this event has two contributions: We come to repentance and faith, and God does the supernatural, miraculous work of regeneration. This is what Christians are talking about when they say that they have “been saved,” “accepted Christ,” “been converted,” “been born again,” “become a Christ follower,” “prayed the sinner’s prayer” and so on. It means they’ve turned away from the demands of their depravity, apologized to God for having lived in that depravity, and pledged to trust in Christ’s death and resurrection for them, living under his leadership.

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