Rochester Conference Part 2: What Is the Body of Christ? (One New Humanity Explained)

I’ll even go a little further and tell you in the body of Christ experientially that when I go to an interdenominational group that is talking about their part of the body of Christ, and I have to sit in their miserable meetings. I can’t wait till I get out of that place, and I’m going to ask you another question. How many of you have ever said that I get physically ill when I go to church? No, don’t put your hands up, I want you to think about it. I don’t want anyone raising their hands who has not uttered that out loud. “I get physically sick when I go to church on Sunday. If you have actually said that, will you raise your hands, please? I know you thought that, I’m going to get to that in a minute, but I’m going to count. Hold them up. I want to see. I’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. How many of you have literally thought that term? You haven’t thought you something like it or similar to it, but you thought, ‘I’m getting sick’ or ‘this makes me sick, this makes me ill.’ You people who have already raised your hands, keep your hands down. I want to see how many of you have thought about it. Would you put your hands up? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. Point: church life will spoil you for everything else on this earth. Now, how many of you who have not raised your hand will tell me that you don’t like to go to church? Forget the words. You just don’t like to go to church.

Brothers and sisters, I think that’s the great majority of us. I think the majority of us have said it, fought it, or we know we have, and here’s my point, brothers and sisters, may the Lord show you that this is where you belong. And I’m not trying to sell you as individuals on this, in this room. I’m going to just be really honest with you. I don’t really, deep down in the inmost parts of my heart, I don’t really care. You walk out of here; I’ll forget your name. Five years from now, we’ll meet on an airplane, and he’ll say, “Gene, you remember I was sitting back in the third row?” “No, I don’t remember. And I don’t care.” I have got enough to do, taking care of God’s people, I know. I don’t care. I care; I have a universal burden.

And every once in a while, I meet a brother, and it just breaks my heart to see the struggle and the pain, but you’re going to go back home; you’re going to forget you ever came to this conference. But I’m going to go back home, and I am going to forget you. But I carry another burden. I would to God that His redeemed saints, His holy ones, all saw these things, and all were exposed to and all heard so that all could make a choice because in our day receiving the church is not, I’m going to be misquoted here, but it’s not too dissimilar from receiving Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, in our day, it is a decision.

In the first century, there was no such thought of being a Christian and separated from the body. That’s why sometimes men who read the New Testament think you have to be a church member to be saved. Being part of the fellowship of the body of Christ and being saved were so intermingled with one another that you just can’t separate the inner meaning. Now, I would say to God, if it didn’t look ridiculous at the end of this conference, I’d give an invitation. I’d even do what we Baptists do. I’d hold up my hand like this, “Just as I am without one plea.” But that blood was shed for the church. For He died for: He loved her and died for her.

This building has been built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ as the chief cornerstone. And in Christ, this whole building, and if I could put a parenthesis on the rest of it, this whole building is a temple in the Lord. By the way, I’ve got a little doohickey out here on the side. It’s not a temple, but a sanctuary. Is that okay? A holy sanctuary in the Lord. How many of you have ever heard it said that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Well, you go back sometimes and read the context of that, and he is not referring to an individual. It’s incredible, I believe you may disagree, but in my personal judgment, he is referring to the church in Corinth. As a people, you are a sanctuary. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Now, let’s go ahead and find the other parts of this because they are rich. …being fitted together and growing into one holy temple in the Lord. In Christ, this plural building, this corporate building, is being fitted together and is growing into a holy temple. This building is alive and growing. Just try to see the church growing, and I’m not speaking of numbers, but she grows, and the stones fit, being fitted together and growing. In fact, you can tell there’s growing when there’s fitting together.

The church in Atlanta is full of oldest sons. Every one of them thinks he’s smarter than the other oldest sons, and they all think that each one of them alone should lead. Sometimes I can see light through the cracks of the stones. They shift and they shudder, and they tremble, and that whole temple down there just looks like sometimes it’s going to fall apart, but boy, it’s not like it used to be. The fitting gets better every year. By the way, sometimes it gets better by going in full reverse. And then after the crisis is over, there’s again that closeness. Atlanta’s an interesting place; a very intense bunch of people around there. That fitting is their growing.

There are people, as I said to you last night, brothers and sisters. I see more transformation in the lives of God’s people in the first 24 months they come into a body experience, more than all that has ever happened to them previously, and probably all that’s going to happen to them after. Is it not true that a baby does most of their growing in the first two years than all the rest of their life? Well, that’s true in the body of Christ, too.

Now, let me just a minute if you will. Just how many sermons were preached to you, and you wished you were transformed? How many references in the New Testament to being changed, transformed, and you want to be part of that, and you want to be transformed, and I see more spiritual transformation in the lives of brothers and sisters in the first two years in the body of Christ. You ought to see what comes dragging up. A big-chested guy bragging, precocious, some little sister’s quiet, never said a word. People come in with their doctrines and stuff, and about two years later, they look around with total embarrassment at what they were. And Donna, may I quote you from what you said to me earlier today? You don’t even remember. Was it you, Donna? Or wasn’t it, Donna? Who was it? Maybe one of you. Well, somebody said that “When we were there at the beginning, there was such a terrible price to pay.” And quite frankly, and I’m not quoting, “You make fools out of yourselves the first couple of years, and then someone else comes in and they’re new, and they’ve got to go through that same process, and you look over at them, and they look even more stupid than you were, but they are not.

And I would say to you, God was patient with you, brother, sister, be patient with them, right? And in two or three years, they’ll kind of calm down. And somewhere along the line, that part fits. It begins to organically function. You may not understand what I mean. Let me give you an antithesis on this. Isn’t someone going around the country teaching seminars on how to discover what your gift is? You fill out a list of things that…Oh, that is once more a mind that does not understand the church of Jesus Christ. Oh, brother, my gift is singing. The Lord gave me the gift of insight. My brothers and sisters, my gift is whatever…well, brother, expect that gift to be crushed under the teasing of your fellow brothers. That would be true. Brothers, my gift…forget it, brother. One of two things. One, that gift will go, or two, that gift will be so crushed that you don’t care if you’ve got it or not.

I wouldn’t want to get around somebody who has a gift, and they filled out the little form, figured out what it was, and they’re going out chasing their gift, woe to that poor soul. Boy, has he got a rude awakening awaiting him. Two years, so much change in a human being. Very painful, some of it, but I haven’t seen anybody saying they wish they hadn’t come. I’ve seen people wish they weren’t going.

The fitting is the growing, and the growing is the fitting, and she grows. She’s a house, she’s a household, I’m going backwards now, she’s a citizenship of a nation, she is a body, and she is a race. Is that all of them? And I guess now she has started out as a household, becoming a building, and then turns into a temple, and that temple is a corporate temple.