How can we minister to Christ?
When we minister the One Anothers to other people, we are ministering to Christ.
“God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them” (Hebrews 6:10).
Tony Campolo tells the true story of a Jewish boy who suffered under the Nazis in World War II. He was living in a small Polish village when he and all the other Jews of the vicinity were rounded up by Nazi SS troops and sentenced to death. This boy joined his neighbors in digging a shallow ditch for their graves and then faced the firing squad with his parents. Sprayed with machine-gun fire, bodies fell into the ditch, and the Nazis covered the crumpled bodies with dirt. But none of the bullets hit the little boy. He was splattered with the blood of his parents, and when they fell into the ditch, he pretended to be dead and fell on top of them. The grave was so shallow that the thin covering of dirt did not prevent air from getting through to him so that he could breathe.
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| Photo Credit: www.bbc.co.uk - Children in World War 2 |
Several hours later, when darkness fell, he clawed his way out of the grave. With blood and dirt caked to his little body, he made his way to the nearest house and begged for help. Recognizing him as one of the Jewish boys marked for death, he was turned away at house after house as people feared trouble from the SS troops. Then something inside seemed to guide him to say something that was very strange for a Jewish boy to say. When the next family responded to his timid knocking in the still of the night, they heard him cry, “Don’t you recognize me? I am the Jesus you say you love.” After a pause, the woman who stood in the doorway swept him into her arms and kissed him. From that day on, the members of that family cared for that boy as though he was one of their own.
When we love others, in a sense, we are loving Christ. And when we minister to others, we are somehow actually ministering to Christ (Matthew 25:31–40). This mystery is based on the fact that we are the body of Christ. To love one another is to love Christ, and to neglect or harm one another is to neglect or harm Christ (Acts 9:4).
