The Church as Christ's Body: Presence, Mind, and Instrument

Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. True Christians manifest Christ's personal presence among men. Just as God was incarnate in flesh during Christ's earthly ministry, so truly is Christ manifest in His Church today. The body reveals the mind of Christ with striking clarity. Essential characteristics—thoughts and feelings—are written upon gesture, gait, and countenance. These living epistles are known and read of all men, inscribed with Christ's thoughts as once they were written upon His own face. We are Christians only insofar as we embody and reveal Christ to the world.

These members of Christ's body function as instruments for the execution of His will. The body serves the soul; Christ's earthly body served His divine purpose. Now the Church—members of His flesh and bones—executes His will in every place. We are not independent agents pursuing our own purposes, but vessels through whom God worketh to will and to do of His good pleasure. Though we retain identity and individuality, we are assimilated to Christ in harmonious action, like a perfectly adjusted mechanism.

Christ is no longer confined to one location but dwells in every Christian heart. Were the Church wholly sanctified—no member paralyzed, dormant, or reluctant—clear as the sun and terrible as an army with banners, how swiftly would the world be redeemed! Dormant power awaits activation; the conditions require only our complete surrender.