Acts 2:47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

proselytize

verb

• convert or attempt to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another.

Are you a member of the body of Christ?

If the answer is yes, I do not care about your label.

If no, then let us reason together.

Let me be as perfectly clear as I can on this issue. The Lord and the Lord alone determines who is added to His body. We can do nothing more than speak the truth in love which comes from being in the body of Christ.

If we speak for ourselves, then let it be about what we were that was unacceptable. I will admit that my words were “I found Christ.” That is not true. He found me. He has a loving way of correcting wrong thinking. He just keeps speaking the truth and sooner or later it sinks into my thick skull. Yes, I was hard headed. In some way I still am, a little bit.

What a member of the body of Christ is not, is hard hearted. I am not ashamed to say that I am now tender hearted. The heart controls behavior, the mind controls the tongue. James 3 has a lot to say about taming the tongue. Many years ago I thought James was a lawyer because his language sounded so legalistic. The Lord showed me otherwise.

I read the Word in order to discover this Lord who has taken up residence in my heart, or to be more accurate my heart is His heart. What I have discovered is that in many ways we are like Paul who was once Saul of Tarsus, a Roman citizen. Saul did not know Jesus when Jesus had an earthly ministry. Saul met Jesus when he was on his way to Damascus to persecute this new cult called The Way.

Paul’s epistles changed in texture over time. He was at the beginning better than the rest but over time the least of these. The Lord changed his heart and then changed his mind.

That pretty much speaks to being in the body of Christ. A change of heart, a change of mind and a change in behavior. 

Some of “those religions” teach that the change in behavior comes first to prove yourself worthy of salvation. You can change a behavior to “belong” to a label, but a label does not mean you are in the body of Christ. His abiding presence does.

“People get ready

There’s a train a-coming

You don’t need no baggage

You just get on board

All you need is faith

To hear the diesels humming

Don’t need no ticket

You just thank the Lord”

People Get Ready by Glenn Beck and Rod Steward

It is just a song, just a symbol of a deeper truth, Jesus came to save sinners.

There are those who do not believe they are sinners and they will not get ready, nor be ready when the Mercy Train pulls in. That is because in order to hear the train coming, one has to have ears to hear. Yes it is symbolic but a greater truth is hidden within.

1 Thessalonians 4:16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

1 Thessalonians 4:17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

We await the command. In the meantime, we have work to do.

Matthew 22:9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.

Matthew 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

Until we hear that last command, do as we are bid, the will of the Father.