Jesus Christ: The Riches Of The Glory Of This MysterySample

The Ecclesiological Christ 

  As a signpost and sacrament (i.e., a visible sign of an invisible reality) of God’s work of reconciliation, both individual and universal, God creates a new, reconciled community – the church (Gk. Ecclesia). The church, as a community of people reconciled amongst themselves, is meant to demonstrate – by its proclamation and its praxis, by its being and its doing – before a broken and fragmented world, God’s saving and reconciling work. 

And Paul says that God has designated Christ as “the head of the body, the church” (v. 18). By using the metaphor of the head and the body for Christ and the church, Paul is suggesting at least two things. The first is direction. The church, the body, is meant to find its leadership and direction from Christ, the head. Christ Himself said elsewhere, “As the father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (Jn. 20.21). As the body of Christ in the world, the church is meant to be and to do in the world what Christ was and what Christ did in the world. And in His life on earth, Christ was close to the heart of the Father and close to the hurt of the world. When the church loses sight of the fact that Christ is the head of the church, it quite literally loses sight, and wanders around aimlessly. 

The second implication of Christ’s being the head of the church is cohesion. The community of believers through the ages and throughout the world find their unity and harmony in Christ alone. Whether universally, inter-denominationally, intra-denominationally, or individually, if the church is not connected to Christ, the head, its different members lose their cohesion and become shamelessly embroiled in habits and exercises of comparing, contrasting, competing, and conflicting (cf. 1 Cor. 11). In so becoming, the church betrays its message and loses its raison d’être.