Why I Need You And You Need Me

I will be their God and they will be my people.

This piercing phrase has always gripped my attention since the day I heard it in Old Testament 1 class. God, who is outside of time, comes to a people whom He has selected out of the masses to be his special people. He takes it upon himself that say they are mine and I am theirs.

As we see revelation progressively revealed and made clear migrating from Abraham to the apostles in the upper room, we find this phrase being made clearer and clearer in a much louder sense. This event in Pentecost has been talked about by a few prophets, and now it’s coming to fruition. God has killed his Son, raised his Son, and set his Son at his right hand. Then God through his Son’s death and his Spirit’s work selects a special people out of the entire world to be his people. Nothing like this has ever happened nor will it be repeated.

The church is born. The special people are all collectively seen as ‘my people’ to the creator God. We are family. Identities have changed. Natures have changed. Relationships have changed, and changed forever.

So God picks you out, Jesus pays your debts on the cross, the Spirit opens your heart and mind to realize these truths and grants you faith in which you repent of your sins and believe in Jesus. Now you’re part of the special people. You are a part of God’s people. You’ve been added to the group. You have been given everything the rest of the group has been given in a very simplistic sort of way. But now, there’s a twist.

You’re part of a body of like-minded believers. You’ve been given a particular spiritual gift that’s needed in order to help the particular body you belong to locally function properly and grow up into a mature man who looks like Jesus. That’s why you need me and I need you – because on our own, we’re not in the people of God, the local body of believers, and our spiritual gift can’t be properly used thereby rendering it useless and unnecessary. Worst of all, we’re completely incapable on our own of looking like Jesus.

If it’s our desire to look like Jesus, we must understand how much of that is riding on our acceptance of being a committed insider of the people of God.

I pray that this encourages and frees you to trust the Gospel to empower you to live for Jesus with your local body of believers to help one another look like Jesus.

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Tags: community, local church, sanctification, Trinity