Assimilation

… walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Ephesians 4:1-7

Everything depends on cultural assimilation. 

Every day we decide how we are going to integrate our life to the world around us. We decide what habits we are going to keep in our life, what we are going to add to our life and what we are going to take out of our life. The world continually says to us, If you add this to your life, you will be happy. But what the world offers us seldom brings satisfaction. We assimilate the world, the Bible and our own desires into a cohesive mess we call our identity. We have to decide what is going to be our primary identity and what things we are going to consider to be “add-ons” to our life. Society wants us to view culture as our primary identity with religion, family and even self as add-ons to the service we owe society. But God says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33). God says that we should view our identity in Christ and the Kingdom of God as our primary focus and let Him add everything else on to that. The Bible and God needs to be our primary identity that we assimilate church culture into, and then we bring our assimilated church culture into the world as we explain what parts of society we can add to our life and what parts we need to eliminate from our life.

We will all be assimilated into one church. 

There is only one Church that will become the Bride of the Lamb (Hos. 2:16-23, 2 Cor. 11:2, Eph. 4:25-27, Rev. 19:7-9, 21:2-9, 22:17). Every believers’ social and church culture will be assimilated into the Church that becomes the one bride of Christ—God is monogamous. No doubt, you and I will have to give up parts of our culture to assimilate into the one Church culture of the Spirit. There will be no Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Orthodox, Yahuahs, or Zionists in heaven. There will only be one Church and we will assimilate into that Church, with complete unity in the Body.

Let God sort out the Penticostal-Presbyterian divide.

We have to live our life as best as we can according to God’s plan, but, at the same time, we have to let God be God and let Him sort out the theological differences that divide us. “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.” (1 Corinthians 12:12). We can focus on doing our role in the body and let God be in charge of assimilating us into on body. As we focus on keeping union with Christ as our primary identity, we are able to do our unique bodily function well. As we do our function well and let God assimilate that function into the body, we work towards having a healthy body of Christ.