All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1995 Ed. (NASB95)

We live in a world that is founded on selfishness. If there is one word to describe the way in which most westerners live, it’s selfishly. Most unbelievers’ basic motivations are founded on the notion that the most important goal in their lives is their personal happiness. This should not be the way among those who have been loved and rescued by the most selfless Person who has ever walked the earth. And yet most western believers are often conformed to the selfish patterns of thinking and living that characterize the majority of their neighbors.

Just begin to think about your interactions with your brothers and sisters at your weekly meeting. How much helpful conversation do you really engage in? And how much of your conversation is aimed at addressing pressing areas of spiritual, moral, or material concern, with the end of meeting each other’s needs? How much of our talk with our brethren is so unhelpful, so selfish, so frivolous and of no spiritual importance!

If you carefully study your New Testament, you’ll see that the godly examples and rules for living outlined by the apostles are almost completely foreign to the ways in which we interact with our brethren on a weekly basis. The people of the New Testament, though suffering from many problems, were largely a different kind of people from western Christians in their attitudes toward, and treatment of, their brethren in Jesus. They were mostly a united, loving, brotherly, affectionate, and sacrificial family group. They stood out so much in the pagan Roman Empire, that they were accused of being given to secret sexual parties, and of engaging in adultery with each other. On the other hand, some of the Roman authorities had to remark that the early Christians were the most loving, kind, and devoted group of people they had ever witnessed.

The first Christians were mostly fine practitioners of our Lord’s promise that all people would know they “are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn. 13:35). And why did they love one another? Because the Lord loved all of them first, of course. The apostle John emphatically details the utter inevitability and need for believers to follow the loving example of their Lord in his first epistle. And John makes sure to warn them not to “love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (1 Jn. 3:18). Rather, they are to “lay down [their] lives for one another” (3:16). Can you sincerely describe your love for your brethren as giving up your life for their good? I think most of us would mostly fail at meeting this standard. However, in the 1st century, this standard was the expected and common practice of Christians. The fact that we live in a different sort of environment gives us not the slightest excuse for failing to live up to our great and high calling of imitating the Lord Jesus.

So, if the early Christians were so different from us (though still people of flesh and blood, and annoyed by sin), then what motivated and enabled them to treat each other as actual brothers and sisters in an eternal family, and not just so-called brothers and sisters? In this study, I want to show you the essential truths and instructions taught by the apostles that ought to persuade and compel us to seek deep, affectionate, helpful, encouraging, progressing, and witnessing relationships with our brethren in the Lord.

The Oneness of Believers in Jesus

The most important reality that serves as the foundation for all our beliefs about, and treatment of, our brethren in Jesus, is that we all share in the most fundamental qualities as children of God. Although we once were united in our depravity and hostility toward God, we’re now united in our salvation and unity with God through Jesus. This truth is based on the marvelous reality that all those with trust in the Lord Jesus are made a part of Him in His humanity and status. When someone changes their mind about God, and relies on Jesus to save and rule them, God then treats that formerly alienated person as possessing the same status as His own dear Son. As such, one who was once represented by Adam before God now has the Mediator of Jesus sitting in the Father’s presence on His behalf. Therefore, because Jesus has died, the believer has died to the rule of sin. Because Jesus has risen from the dead, so too His disciple has spiritually risen to “newness of life” (Ro. 6). Because the Lord has been seated at God’s right hand as the Ruler of the new creation, and heir to it, so also God’s child has been given all the status, rights, and privileges of Jesus’s humanity. Thus, because Jesus suffered God’s punishment for all His chosen ones’ sins, the believer’s eternal penalty due to him has already been paid, and so God treats him as innocent and faultless, as Jesus is, who represents him. This also applies to the believer’s radical and essential relationship to the Father. Because you’re one with Jesus, you’re not only treated as, but also truly are, a child of God in your new, renewed, and righteous nature. This final blessing is most evidently accomplished by the gracious work of the Holy Spirit in transforming a believer’s heart from one controlled by sin, as the devil, to one that’s inclined toward goodness and all the affections and desires that please God. This is what the apostle Peter means when he says that believers have been made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pe. 1:4).

Because all believers are vitally connected to Jesus, therefore they must be vitally connected to one another. Paul’s sums up this paradigm in his several teachings on the unity of believers as the Lord’s body. One of the most concise descriptions of the body is found in his letter to the Romans, and verses 4-5, where he says,

“For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”

Notice both the difference and the sameness here. Every Christian is like a part, or member, of Jesus’s body. This follows from the fact that Jesus represents all believers before God, and has given His life and status to them. Hence, on earth, all Christians serve as His representatives to the creation, particularly to unbelievers. Since Jesus ascended into heaven, the way that He’s been accomplishing the redemption of humanity is through His people, with His Spirit living inside them. In other words, believers now continue the work of the Lord on His behalf, through His Spirit and Word. But obviously, not every believer plays the same role in carrying on this work. That’s because, like a human body needing all its parts to perform its proper functions, so also Jesus’s body needs all the different parts to accomplish His purposes. However, each of the members has the same end goal. As believers, our two primary goals on earth are to work for the maturity of all believers, and also for the multiplication of members in Messiah’s body. To that end, we are to use our differing gifts, stations, and resources in cooperation and harmony with each other. And since we’re part of this one body, which belongs to Jesus, each one of us belongs to one another.

If we could only understand and act on the huge number of implications from this truth, our lives would look a lot different. In fact, this unity as part of Jesus’s body, and God’s family, is the basis for almost every instruction given to believers in relation to their brethren in the New Testament. First of all, if we all have the same ultimate goal, then I can’t say that any permissible activity my brother is engaging in for the benefit of the brotherhood is unimportant, or unnecessary. As long as your brother is using a legitimate gift to achieve righteous goals for the improvement of the brethren, they need to be encouraged and supported.

On the flip side, if all believers share the same end goals, then I am responsible to make sure that they’re living consistently with those goals. We must remember that, just as our bodies occasionally suffer from ailments and illnesses, so also are Jesus’s members susceptible to the enemies of health in this world. The chief of these hindrances is sin, which is like an infectious disease that is able to spread to other parts of the body. But in all our treatment of our brethren, our foremost motivation must be to please Jesus, since all of our brethren belong to Him, and are loved by Him. And if their sins displease and grieve the Lord, then they ought to grieve and pain us. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul similarly describes this mutual concern among the parts of Jesus’s body by saying that all the members need to empathize with the suffering of the other members. Why? Because what benefits each part benefits the whole, and what hurts one part hurts the whole in its proper functioning.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll confine my discussion of the oneness of believers to this symbol of the whole of Christians on earth as a body. And we’ve already seen that many Christian responsibilities and duties are implied by this reality. But let’s work these implications out in concrete, everyday applications.

The Others-ness of Jesus’s Members

To conclude this study, I want to give several practical applications for the truths that all Christians share the same life, status, and end goals in Jesus’s body and family. First, such truths should supremely shape and direct our view of our fellow believers. Rather than identifying them according to their differences from us, we must always keep in our minds the fact that he — even he — shares in the most fundamental and profound experiences of human existence. Therefore, no matter how they differ from us, they are basically just like us. All that I’ve experienced from my salvation initially, and at least shortly after, they have experienced, and God treats them the same way that He treats me.

Second, because my brother is another member of God’s family, and of Jesus’s body, I must treat his spiritual well-being and growth as essential for the accomplishment of the Lord’s earthly work. It’s only insofar as he’s motivated and enabled to fulfill his specific role as a part of Messiah’s body that all the members who are affected by him will be able to fully fulfill their roles. As much as possible, we should remember the mutual interconnectedness of each part of the Lord’s body.

Third, in all our interactions with our brethren, we must aim at promoting their understanding, appreciation of, and alignment with, the truths and instructions of the apostles’ teaching. As Paul many times enjoins, this will require us to speak appropriate and necessary truth to our brother or sister, no matter what their negative response may be. We must love them enough to tell them what they need to hear, not necessarily what they want to hear.

Fourth, and perhaps most poignantly, knowing what and how to speak to your brother or sister requires that you actually know them. We see this in Hebrews 10:24-25, where the author urges his audience to consider each other for the purpose of spurring on or provoking each other to love and good deeds. This word, “consider,” could be literally translated “study,” so he’s calling for intense, diligent, and intimate knowledge of each other. If you have any siblings that you’ve lived with for a significant amount of time, you have an idea of the understanding of each other that the author calls believers to. This understanding should usually include their personality, main occupations, their giftedness among the body of Jesus, and their specific challenges and obstacles that oppose their growth in Christlikeness. Merely knowing believers on a surface level won’t suffice for the truth-speaking, and devotion in brotherly love that our relationships as fellow children of God demands.

So, how united in living, serving, and praying are you with your brethren in Jesus that you meet with on a regular basis? How many of them can you truly call your dear friends? How much time and effort to you give throughout the week to find out how they’re doing, and to seek ways to encourage them and/or meet their needs? And how earnest are you in your talks with them to talk about the areas of their lives that have most to do with their Christlikeness and effective service of others through the use of their gifts and resources? How serious are you about helping your brothers and sisters walk in a way that’s worthy of the holy calling with which we’ve been called — as beloved children of God, and servants of the Lord of lords?

I urge you to take a diligent and solemn evaluation of your relationships with your closest brethren in Jesus, and compare the way you treat them to the ways we see the believers in the New Testament treated their brethren, and were instructed to do so. Are you truly devoted to them in brotherly love (Ro. 12:10a), and are you really laying down your life for them, leading you to treat them as more important than yourself, and looking out for their good interests (Phil. 2:3-4)? We can always improve in our unity, love, and service, but most of us barely carry out the command of our Lord when He ordered,

“A new commandment I give you; that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” (Jn. 13:34)

In the near future, I plan to further address this subject of the unity of Christians in the body of Jesus, and how we are to function as productive components of that body, meeting the needs of others, and helping to promote the holiness and unity of the body, as well as the influence of the gospel in the lives of the onlooking world.