Do not reject that which the Lord has embraced, do not diminish that which the Lord has glorified. Do not treat as enemy that which the Lord regards as His. Do not treat as insignificant that which the Lord highly esteems. Do not punish that which the Lord has forgiven. Do not frown at that which the Lord has made to operate differently from you. And do not love that which violates the Nature and by extension the Body of Christ. You are in the Body, not on your own terms but on the terms of the Lord. It is the Lord who went to the Cross and not you. To be part of the Body is to reject your earthly narrative and the narrative of the people from which you came; it is to embrace (not the narrative of another race or people but) the narrative of Christ and His Cross (the narrative of forgiveness, redemption, reconciliation, righteousness, equity, and shared life) – it is to live in direct contradiction to the culture and worldview of your people, to bring to bear the culture and worldview of Christ. Our identification with the Body must be greater than our identification with our churches, networks & movements. If our churches & movements feel bigger than the Body in our hearts, then we are already walking in a subtle bondage and blindness. But in fact if we truly love the Body, then we must allow the Lord to add us to the community of saints in our localities. To claim to love the Body but disconnect ourselves from communities of faith is to live in contradiction to our conviction. Through our churches, we must give practical expression of the extent to which we esteem the bigger Body. For the love of the Body, we must be functional in our churches. We must serve our churches, movements and networks, not for their sake but because we are deeply in love with the Body. Since the Body is made up of redeemed humans (the saints), it is in our shared humanity in Christ that we identify with & embrace one another as brothers & sisters. We therefore must not relate on the basis of movements, networks, gifts and operations, but on the basis of the truth of our shared humanity in Christ – the beauty of #Kingdom_Humanity, which is in contradiction to the order of the humanity of the world. If we relate on the basis of the humanity we share in Christ, and not on the basis of gifts, movements, networks and operations, we soon realise that there are more soldiers of Christ in the battlefield of the world then we may have thought. Every saint and disciple of Christ holding the purity of the Lord in the midst of the hostility of the world is a functional soldier, worthy to be honored. The Body is so global, so trans-generational, so visible and yet invisible, formed but yet unformed (the Body is already brewing in the hearts of babies being born today) that no one sees the full picture of her current state, except the Lord Himself, who is the apostle and chief shepherd of the Body. The Body transcends time, nationalism, gifts and our mortality – people get born and die, gifts come and go but the Body lives, because the eternal God lives in the Body by His Spirit. Our gifts are as big as the spheres of kingdom purpose to which we have been called, but the Lord alone is responsible for the full sphere of the Body of Christ, and He has called an army of leaders – apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, to fulfill what no one man can achieve. Just as the human body is bigger than its cells, so is the Body of Christ bigger than us (our gifts, churches, movements and networks). But just as cancer cells refuse to exist for the body but for themselves, and refuse to die so that the body may live, we have become cancerous to the Body of Christ when all we see is ourselves, our passions and operations, and not the bigger Body. To truly enjoy the Body, we must discover #the_theology_of_love, which transcends all revelation-knowledge, movements and ministry gifts. To truly be apostolic is to see Christ in the context of His Body not in the limited context of our churches and operations. The #Body of Christ is such a beautiful thing! The Body of Christ is transcendent and triumphant!