Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART II: T HEOLOGICAL AND M ISSIOLOGICAL P RINCIPLES AND I NSIGHTS • 189

3. The privilege of oikos : members of the household of God, 1 John 3.1-3 – See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we will be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

B. The Church is figured and typified as the body and bride of Christ.

1 Cor. 12.27 – Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

2 Cor. 11.2 – I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

1. Our organic unity with Jesus by faith: we died, buried, raised, ascended, seated, suffering, glorified, returning, reigning in him, e.g., Rom. 6.1-10.

2. Interdependence and interconnection through the Holy Spirit

a. 1 Cor. 12.12-13 – For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body Jews or Greeks, slaves or free and all were made to drink of one Spirit. b. Eph. 4.4-7 – There is one body and one Spirit just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. c. 1 Pet. 4.10-11 – As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.