[Drake]

ZNP)"Then you can also see that this building up of the Body will result in the church as the family of God, Temple of God, Kingdom of God, Bride of Christ, one New Man, and the Warrior.

No individual Christian could ever represent or express any of these entities on their own.

Likewise you could never express any of these entities unless you are meeting in the name of Jesus and He is in your midst. He will only be in your midst if you are meeting in spirit and truth. What does that mean? You have one God and Father who is over all, one Lord, one faith, one Spirit, one baptism.

If you claim you have one Lord yet do not obey his command then you are not meeting in spirit or truth of Jesus being the one Lord. If you claim you have one God and Father who is over all, and then allow something else to act as a trump card to over rule our God and Father then you are not meeting in spirit and truth. If you claim you have one faith and then add something to that one faith or remove something from that one faith, then you are not meeting in spirit and truth. If you claim you have one baptism as an entrance into this kingdom and then you require something else for Christians to "enter" or else do not recognize their legitimacy based solely on this one baptism, then that is not meeting in spirit and in truth.

This is not an inferred teaching of the NT, it is the black and white teaching that is reiterated in many different ways by every apostle and writer of the NT."

ZNP,

The part above I mostly agree with. I say "mostly" because it is one side of the truth but not the whole truth. There is the practice also. On the one hand we are, according to Ephesians, seated with Christ in the heavenlies. However, we also live on the earth in space and time and in Corinth or some other physical locale. Both are equally relevant. Yet, in your argument you conflate the two in the wrong way. You argue that the physical interferes with the spiritual when actually there is a symbiotic relationship between them. For instance, to experience the reality of the ones in Ephesians you cannot do this in a closet. You must have a practical way to experience the ones because though you have the position in Christ in Ephesians you need the experience while living in Corinth. On the other side, if you do not have the spiritual reality then the physical will be vanity. The building of the Body of Christ requires both the spiritual reality and the physical practice.

It is not as you, Igzy, and Ohio similarly argue that the physical is not needed or that the Body of Christ can be built without the assembling of ourselves together, or that just any old way of meeting will suffice.

Drake