Wednesday, July 29, 2009

One For All, All For One

The past couple of weeks I was following the bicycle race know as the Tour de France. This is probably the worlds most famous bicycle race and it involves over 100 riders racing in stages over 2000 miles for about three weeks. This race is something I have been interested in for several years so every year I follow it a bit. This year as I was watching some of the race coverage I got thinking about a comparison between the teams in the race and Christians.

In the Tour de France the riders are all part of various teams. Each team has nine riders and some have different strengths than others. There are some riders who are better on the mountains and some who are better in short distances. What I thought was interesting was to see was how on the different stages of the race the team would all work together to help one of the riders to win. This all reminded me of the motto of the Three Musketeers of "One For All, All For One" meaning that they would stay loyal to one another and help one another no matter what.

All of this got me thinking about how Christians make up what the Bible calls "The Body of Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:27). All Christians are a part of this Body but we all have different strengths and gifts. Many Christians know this as a fact from the Bible but I am not too sure if they really grasp the concept and the comparison with the human body. Every part of our natural body works together for the good of the whole body. Each individual part does its job and the result is success for all of the parts. What if every Christian realized the same thing was true for the Body of Christ?

Jesus said that people would know we were His disciples if we had love for one another (John 13:35) and the Bible also tells us that love does not insist on its own rights or its own way because it is not self seeking (1 Corinthians 13:5). We are further encouraged by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:24 (Amplified) "Let no one then seek his own good and advantage and profit, but [rather] each one of the other [let him seek the welfare of his neighbor". If we just took these few verses to heart and started living that way, think of what we could do as the Body of Christ. If each Christian was more interested in the good of the whole than their own individual part we would be able to have greater success as a group and also as individuals. It works pretty well in the Tour de France and it would work even better for Christians since team work was originally God's idea anyway!