What makes the Church the Body of Christ is not merely that people gather in His name — it is that the Kingdom of God truly dwells in her midst.
Christ dwells in us because He dwells in His Church, and we become His members by being in that Church, united to Him through the mysteries (sacraments) He gave.
The Requirement of New Birth
The Lord Himself declared:
“Unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God… Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.”
(John 3:3, 5)
This birth is not simply an inward thought or feeling — not only the fruit of human reasoning, however sincere.
In much of Protestant thought, “born again” can be reduced to an individual decision of faith. But the Church teaches that new birth is the sacramental reality of baptism in water and the Spirit, lived and nourished in the Church, where the Kingdom is already present.
Reason may lead you to the threshold of faith — as it did the catechumens in the early Church — but only the grace of God communicated through the sacraments brings you into the Kingdom.
The First Sign of the Kingdom
When the two disciples asked Jesus, “Rabbi, where do You dwell?” (John 1:38), He took them — not to a lecture hall or a private retreat — but to a wedding feast in Cana.
There, they saw:
His Mother, who is “more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim” (from the Divine Liturgy),
The first sign of His divinity and the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God — water transformed into wine, hinting at the Eucharistic joy of the New Covenant,
The beginning of the revelation that His Mother would become the Mother of all in the Church — the Body of Christ — for those who keep His word.
In this single event, Christ showed them both where He dwells and what the Kingdom is — a union of heaven and earth, revealed in joy, abundance, and sacramental mystery.
An Invitation in the Orthodox Way
The Orthodox call into the Kingdom is personal yet liturgical:
Come and see.
Stay and hear.
Hear and believe.
Believe and receive.
Receive and believe.
First you come, then you listen, then by hearing you believe; then you receive Christ in the fullness of His Body and Blood; and by that reception, your faith is deepened and confirmed by the Holy Spirit.
Like the blind man in John 9, we can say:
“Before, I heard; but now I see.”
And by seeing, we receive the Incarnate Word not only in mind, but in our whole person — soul and body.
Key Points:
The Church is the Body of Christ because the Kingdom of God is in her midst.
Being “born again” is not a private spiritual moment but the entry into the Kingdom through water and Spirit in the Church.
The Theotokos is central to this Kingdom, honored above the angels, and given to us as Mother by Christ Himself.
The first sign at Cana reveals not only His divinity but the eschatological joy and abundance of the Kingdom present now in the Eucharist.
The true invitation is to enter, remain, hear, believe, receive, and be transformed.
– By C.L. John Dunn