How do we truly become a part of the church body as described in the Bible?

Jeffrey D. Johnson reminds us that the church is not just about attendance or entertainment. As believers, we are interwoven like threads in a basket, making us interdependent on one another. This interconnectedness is crucial for our spiritual maturity. Just as an eye cannot function without a hand, we need the diverse gifts within the church to grow in Christlikeness. Alienating ourselves from the community hinders our growth and goes against God's design for His people.

Johnson emphasizes that the Christian life is not about individual strengths but leveraging those strengths to serve others. Our gifts are intended to benefit the entire body of Christ. The concept of koinonia, or fellowship, involves sharing what God has given us, whether spiritual gifts or resources, for the good of others. By actively participating and investing in the church community, we fulfill our responsibility to one another, ensuring the body of Christ is complete and cared for.

Romans 12:5 (NKJV): "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another."

The Bible speaks of the body of Christ as members of one another, even to the point that Paul says in Ephesians that we're intertwined or interwoven. It's almost like a basket that's weaved together. And it's when you start pulling one thread out, the whole thing's gonna fall apart. It's like God's made us to be interdependent and that means we're needing one another. We need each other to be complete ourselves and We're not designed to be self-sufficient.

So if I want to grow to maturity, which I do, who doesn't want to be more like Christ, to the complete man? Then God says, if you're going to be mature, because You're just an eye and not a hand. And eyes can't do everything. You're going to need to be reliant upon those other gifts that you don't have. And to alienate yourself or your family from the other gifts is to deter, is to retard, if you would, your own spiritual growth.

It's to hinder your growth. Not only is it sinful and prideful, it's detrimental. And church life and the body is not just attendance-based or entertainment-based. Sunday morning, I show up, I set in a pew, I listen to a sermon, I sing along a little bit, and then I leave and I have no accountability, I have no association, no friendships, no interaction, no spiritual fellowship with the body of Christ. I just go and take in and leave.

No, that's not fulfilling the actual command of not forsaking the local assembling of yourself. Between that phrase in Hebrews, it says that we're to go and to encourage one another. We have a responsibility to take the gifts that we have, whatever gift, if it's for an eye, we need to go help people see. If we're a hand, we need to go help people work. And we're not to judge other people based upon our gifts, which often happens.

If you have the gift of hospitality, it's like, well, no one's doing this. Well, that's your job. They're doing something you're not doing. And so don't evaluate their spirituality by your strength. You realize you have that strength to make the body complete and so you're there for that.

So don't make the Christian life all about exactly what you're good at. Realize that you need the others, you need the other strengths. And so your job, our job as Christians, and we're to teach our kids this, is to take the spiritual gifts that God has given us, the knowledge that God has given us, the encouragement that God has given us, and share that. That's the very meaning of the word koinia, which is the Greek word for fellowship, which could be translated and often is in the King James Version as communication, which is a word that we don't use in that sense anymore. In the King James, the word communication was also meant to share your financial wealth.

No one communicated to me, Paul said, except you only. That means no one financially contributed to my ministry except for you. And so communication, or cornea, is to take what God has given you, the spiritual gifts that God has given you, maybe even your financial resources, what God has given you and sharing it, sharing your life, sharing your heart, sharing your love, sharing everything that God is giving you and it's not for yourself. Your spiritual fruit is not for self-consumption. Love and gentleness and kindness and long-suffering, these things that God has worked in you is not for your own enjoyment, but it's for the betterment of the whole.

And so we have responsibility not just to take and benefit from others, we have responsibility to invest in the life of the church, in the people of the church, and in the needs of the church. And if your church is larger, You may not invest in everybody, but you can say, here's a need, here's a person, here's someone I can call, here's someone I can love, here's someone I can serve. If everybody does their part and take care of the needs that they see with the gifts that God has given them, then the body will be complete and taken care of.