Colossians Part 2 – The Corporate Body of Christ in Colossians 1

Those of you in Michigan, are y’all listening to me? Are you, sister? Are you listening to me? What is your name? You got a Japanese name? No? Well, you should have a Japanese name anyway. What’s your background? What are you, Chinese? Korea. So, you’re Korean? You don’t have a Korean name? Let’s stay with the other one now, and what was it? And the American version of English. Nadin? Okay, it’s Nadin then. Nadin, your growth in Christ is boxed in as an individual; your growth in Christ corporately is not. It doesn’t have any walls around. The process may be slow, but it’s infinite. We don’t hear that, and that’s why the Christian life doesn’t work, and that’s why those sermons didn’t do you one bit of good.

Okay, it was also Epaphras who informed me of a body of believers’ love and the corporate spirit that existed among them. It is not you—it is plural. On the day I heard, I haven’t been able to stop praying for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of the Lord’s will. My prayer is that you may be filled with that spiritual knowledge coming in all wisdom and understanding, resulting in your being able to walk in a manner worthy and pleasing to the Lord.

Now, Paul had a prayer for a corporate group of people, and it gets really complicated. Let’s make it really simple. There is human knowledge and human understanding. There are a lot of human things you can know about the Christian life, but he is asking that you might have and lay hold of spiritual knowledge. Brothers and sisters, spiritual knowledge does not have words. You can turn them into words. They will fall short; there’s nothing wrong with doing it, but spiritual knowledge doesn’t have words, you know that. You remember the time the Lord really showed you something? For a second there, it didn’t have a word in this world, then later you tried to explain it. And do you know something else? Every one of you is thinking individually right now.

I tell you the truth, open your eyes. Did it ever occur to you that as a people, you have a spiritual understanding? I want you to just go home and consider that. The brothers and sisters in Chicago have a spiritual understanding. What is it? I have no idea, and you don’t either. But as a body of believers, there are things you know and you know them exclusively, all of you here. Hey, can you cut that thing off for just a minute? Those of you who are watching this on video, it kind of clicked; we had a moment or two in which you were not. I know that you, as a people, have an understanding of spiritual things that you don’t have as individuals, and I also know it’s beyond words; may it grow in you as a person.

I want you to consider that there’s one person in this room. I don’t particularly want to use the word “she” right now because later we’ll find out who this person is, but she really does have things about her that are her own, that do not belong to the individual.