“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.” 1 CORINTHIANS 12:12
Not only is Christ the Christian life, but He is also the reality of the church life. Apart from Him there is no church. We must understand that the practice of the church issues from the centrality of Christ. Christ is our relationship with one another (Col. 3:11). Because He is in all of us, we are related to each other in Him. We do not need to “join” the church. We do not sign up to become members of the church. The church comes into our spirit when we receive Christ. The church is in all of us because the church is Christ. We recognize Christ! When we recognize Christ, we recognize the church! The reality of the church is a Person. It is not a doctrine. It is not a way. It is not a man. It is Christ Himself. So wherever Christ is, there is the church. The best we can do is simply to see it, acknowledge it, receive one another, and say “Amen.”
We receive one another because we have all been received by God (Rom. 14:3). We have been redeemed by the same blood. We have the same one Father (Eph. 4:6). There is only one “Abba,” one Father, and He is in all of us (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). So what do we do? We say, “We are in the same family!” This is the church. It is so simple.
There is something already existing between us. God put it into us. It is called the oneness of the Spirit (Eph. 4:3). We learn to recognize this oneness of the Spirit between us and to keep it in our relationships. This oneness is so precious because it is made up of the oneness of the Father and the Son. The oneness between the Father and the Son is now embodied in the Spirit. Thus, through Christ as the life-giving Spirit entering into us, we have been admitted into Their oneness! Because of Christ, Their oneness has now become our oneness. This is the church.