A Different Way To Look At A Handshake?
While watching an YouTube video of an old Keith Green concert, I liked Keith’s comment, “What is neat about finger prints is far away they all look alike; you get up close they are all different.”
That is what I like about the five fold in believers of Jesus: From a distance, each believer looks the same, but when you get up close and personal you find out that they have different passions, different points of view, a creative uniqueness only the Creator himself could have created in them. Individually there is a difference, a uniqueness, but if broken, if hungry, if willing to listen to the Holy Spirit then be obedient to his revelation, if willing to die to self, and if willing to lay down his life for his brethren through service, there can be a drawing together of the saints in unity to appear to be the same. All one sees is Jesus! Wow, to look at a distant, then to look under a microscope all one sees is Jesus: that is the goal of Ephesians 4 for both the individual believer in Jesus Christ as well corporately as the Body of Jesus Christ, the Church!
The Holy Spirit is allowing itself in this age to be fingerprinted. Every believer has the Holy Spirit with in themselves for the Bible says, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” But each believers fingerprint, although they have the same Holy Spirit, is an unique print by the Creator, Jesus. Each believer houses “the fullness of Christ”, yet displays only parts of Him at a time: different points of view, different passions, differing gifting, different fruit, different manifestations, etc. If each different finger print allows itself to serve other fingerprints that look different than their own, reach out to them, and accept them reaching out to yourself through a handshake, you can have unity in the spirit. Throughout history, a hand shake signified the man’s word: his word was his bond, sealed through a handshake. Spiritually, the same it is true for the Word, the Logos Word and the Rhema living Word is still a man of God’s bond, sealed together in a corporate sense through the unity of the Body of Christ. The Church’s fingerprint is the unity of all the individual fingerprints, all being the fingerprint of Jesus Christ.
New technology also allows identification by putting one's eye up to a scanner which reads the individual pattern that makes up the back of one's eye. Isn't it amazing that the print of what we see also defines us. Do we see the light of Jesus or just darkness. Is that light implanted on the back of our spiritual eyes defining who we are in Jesus. How we "see" Jesus (spiritual sight) and how we feel spiritually (touch) gives us our identity in Him. As an English teacher I learned point of view is how we see or perceive something. As believers we see Jesus differently, yet we see him the same. Our diversity lies in our point of view, our sameness lies in the unity in Christ where he appears the same. We see Jesus differently, our different points of view, yet we see Him the same way, as a Church.
Diversity is the Church’s strength for every believer’s prints either in their point of view, perception, or feeling in Jesus Christ is unique, yet corporately are the same! Another mystery of the gospel! Lets allow that diversity, reaching out for a handshake through service, one to another, and sealing that handshake as the bond of our word, the Word of God, bringing unity to the Body of Christ.
Yes, the finger print of Ephesians 4 is upon us, embedded in each of us who are believers in Jesus Christ, and also the Church as a whole. If they fingerprint your life, would those fingerprints reveal Jesus?