Today I began a study on who I am in Christ. I started by reading from 1 Corinthians:
"For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, you are God's building...Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple are you." ~1 Corinthians 3:9,16-17
What does it mean to be God's fellow worker? His field? His building? Filled with curiosity, I used Google to help me find an answer. At first, the search seemed hopeless. I found many commentaries on the topic; it wasn't that. Everything I found though was so complex and confusing- breaking apart, comparing, contrasting, refuting, and vying for every tiny syllable in Greek. It seemed as though everything was written for intense seminary students and theologians.
Just as I was about to give up, I found something! A Christian, Chinese pastor wrote an intriguing piece on being a "co-worker of God." He describes God's fellow workers, or co-workers of God, as "bound together with God." He compares it to being in a 3-legged race, where each person has one leg bound to the other so that the two bound legs move and function as one. He says, "You have to lose something of yourself into Him." It is not easy.
"A co-worker of God is one who is bound together with God. When God works, he works. When God walks, he walks. When God stops, he stops. You may be a diligent person who wants to do more work for God, but God may say, “I do not want you to do more work for Me right now; I want you to rest with Me. I am resting, so you have to rest with Me.” So many so-called servants of the Lord simply cannot suffer resting together with the Lord. What the church needs is not a group of able workers but a group of people who are bound together with God, who are co-workers with God. When God works, you work. When God rests, you have to rest. When God withdraws, you withdraw. When God goes on, you go on. You do this because you are bound with Him as one."
Now, what about being God's field? Well, when I think of a field, I tend to think of a farm, a farmer, crops, and a harvest. What if we are the field, purchased by our Farmer (aka God), prepared by our Farmer (plowed and planted with specific seeds to bring forth a specific crop), nurtured by our Farmer (irrigated and perhaps weeded), and finally harvested (in due season) by our Farmer??? Pastor Rodney Mason says, "To be a fruitful and productive field for God, we must continually go through the stages [Preparation, Planting, Producing (Growth/Harvest)] in our spiritual life. Just as a physical field must repeat the process every season, we must repeat it for every season of our life."
That brings us to being God's building...what does that mean? My initial thoughts are that a building is owned by someone. In this case, that owner is God. God bought the lot, built the building to His perfect specifications, and owns the building. Just because we are God's building does not mean that we are completed yet. As I imagine it, I see an incomplete building-one that is being carefully constructed over time to serve the exact and very specific purpose that it was designed for.
Stefan Miseras explains it this way:
"The divine building is a matter of IN - Christ in us and we in Him. God wants to be a God in man and He wants man to be in God. We need to abide in Him and He abides in us (John 15). Without this mutual abiding there is no building. Just because you meet with the saints, are well coordinated together, and each one does his part doesn't mean that God has a building.
The degree to which God has a building is the degree to which God was able to get into you and saturate you, and the degree to which you have been brought into God. In all our activities in our family life and church life we need to allow the Lord to enter in and be involved, saturating us and mingling Himself more with us."
This study has left me with much to ponder. I am excited to continue on this journey of rediscovering who I am in Christ. :)
