1 Cor

1 Cor. 12:12-27

1/27/2008

“You Are the Body of Christ”

Imagine someone visiting our country for the first time. He goes to Washington D.C. and sees the Lincoln Memorial. And he writes in his diary, “I visited this place called the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t know what the big deal is about that place with that big statue. All I remember is how huge his forehead and cheek bones were.” You would gasp as Americans. But imagine you visiting a foreign country and thinking nothing of the places you visit. Then later you find out how those places are saturated with so much historical significance for that nation.

I think it is possible for us do the same with regard to what it means to be in the church of Jesus Christ. We may come to church for the Lord’s Day service week after week and participate in its various programs and events and yet not realize the true, awesome significance of all that we are and what we do as a church. What is really going on when we gather together and worship God at the call of God? What is really going on when we study together the word of God--the word of God!--in our Sunday School; when we pray together in our prayer meetings in the mighty name of Christ; when we eat and commune with one another as fellow members? Do we see only with our physical eyes or do we see the spiritual realities behind the appearance of things--namely, how God sees them and what significance God gives them? When we fail to see the spiritual realities, we may be like the one who got out of the Lincoln Memorial no more than the big forehead and cheek bones. Then we fail to appreciate and enjoy the wonder and glory of our life in Christ and in the church, the body of Christ. So today we want to remind ourselves of the glorious truths and realities that lie behind our membership in the church of Jesus Christ. Today’s passage is especially appropriate for this purpose because it shows the symptoms that show up when we lose sight of what is behind what we do as a church.

In this passage Paul addresses a problem that is common in all the churches. It does not matter how strong a church is. No church is free from this problem, I believe, and you will readily agree. But Paul did not just accept it as something we are stuck with; rather he aggressively addressed it and we must have the same attitude. What is the problem? It is a problem with two faces: the problem of self-centered pride.

One manifestation of this problem is expressed in the words, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body” (v. 15); “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body” (v. 16). What would prompt a member to say such a thing? I would like to suggest some scenarios. As I do so, I hope we would all see how relevant they are to us, how none of us are above these sentiments, how certain situations can make us quite vulnerable to these feelings. Why? So that we would humble ourselves before God and embrace not only the correction but also the comfort and encouragement and assurance, which the Word of God gives to us.

Why would anyone feel like he doesn’t belong to the body? Maybe you can imagine someone feeling a genuine sense of uselessness. He does not see how he is in any way contributing to the church. And since he is not making any positive contribution to the church, he doesn’t feel like he is needed. No one would miss him, he thinks, even if he were gone since he is a nobody. And this feeling is reinforced when he misses the church and no one even bothers to call him.

But there is another, even more likely, scenario. Imagine an election being held in the church to decide who will take the positions of hands and eyes, which are positions of service, for sure, but, which are given importance and prominence as well. And you are not elected. Can’t you just imagine yourself saying, “Because I am not an eye or a hand, I do not belong to the body”? We all know that this is not just an imaginary, hypothetical situation. We have heard of people leaving the church after the election of elders and deacons. As we have been praying and preparing, our church will have such an election coming soon, Lord willing, and many of those elections will come our way. Each and every one of them will test the maturity of our church and all of us members. So it is all the more crucial to address this issue. Add to this the fact that this problem can happen in so many different variations. For the hand or the eye doesn’t have to be some prominent positions in the church. It can be whatever that makes you feel different from other members, isolated and alone. It may be the fact that people are not reaching out to you. It can be whatever you really would like to do or be in the church but unable to or not allowed to. It can be what you think you need to be and do as an active member, for which you don’t have the time or the energy. I hope we all see how close, how dangerously near, this problem is to our hearts.

There is another, seemingly opposite, manifestation of the problem: the eye saying to the hand, “I have no need of you,” and the head saying to the feet, “I have no need of you (v. 21). What would prompt someone to say such a thing and have such an attitude?

The most obvious answer would be arrogance and most likely so. For arrogance / pride is the root and essence of sin. But our arrogant attitude can be engendered by many things. Arrogance usually comes from a sense of superiority. The eye may feel superior to the ear because it sees itself as more comely and attractive, because it is more prominently and conspicuously positioned. The head may feel the same way over the foot for the same reasons. The assessment might be accurate and legitimate. Some may indeed be not as smart and knowledgeable as others, or as strong and firm, as committed and dedicated, as efficient and effective, as wise and loving, as thoughtful and considerate, as courteous and winsome, as others are. So we get impatient and intolerant with those who are not as capable and efficient as we are. We get bitter and resentful towards those who are not as dedicated and giving. We get enraged and even hateful towards those who are not as considerate and cooperative. So we say, “I have no need of you! I’ll do it myself! Just move out of the way!”

But this arrogant attitude can also stem from a contentious spirit, which cannot tolerate those who are not worse, but just different. Of course, there are some differences that we must not tolerate: what God has severed, let no man bind! Monotheism and polytheism or pantheism cannot mix. Trinitarianism and Unitarianism cannot be joined. Evangelicalism and liberalism cannot be yoked together. Biblical Calvinism and Pelagianism or even semi-Pelagianism cannot be merged together. There is this question of truth and falsehood: the two cannot be joined together. But it is so easy for us to be divisive and draw new lines between us where God did not. So we say (and, if we manage not to say it, at least think in our hearts), “I have no need of you because you are not like me, because you don’t think like me, talk like me and act like me, because you don’t agree with me. My life would be so much easier if you weren’t here!”

We should also note that this arrogant attitude does not just belong to this group. It is the deeply rooted cause also of the first group, who say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.” Remember that it is the foot, which is saying this. So then, it is not that the foot does not belong to the body; it is rather that the foot wants to be the hand. To put it more bluntly, the foot thinks that it should be the hand rather than the foot, that it deserves to be the more visible, privileged hand, not the lowly, invisible, dirty, smelly foot! You can see how both attitudes are destructive to the wellbeing and life of the church. One may be likened to paralysis, not moving with the body; another, to cancer cells, which grows and grows without any regard for other cells.

We may not think of ourselves as arrogant people. But I hope that we all see how dangerously close we are to this kind of thinking we read about in God’s Word! After all, who is free from pride. I am not trying to make you feel bad and depressed. Rather, I want to show you how relevant God’s word is to us, how deeply insightful it is to the true condition of our heart. Why? Because this word of God, which exposes us so completely, is the only thing that can heal us as well! If you feel like the diagnosis of your problem has nothing to do with you, then you have nothing to do with the solution that God’s word offers. But the good news is that the Word of God does not just provide our problems but also the solution.

So then, what is the solution Paul offers? Again and again Paul emphasizes that “the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body” (v. 12). Here, surprisingly enough, we find Paul appealing to the common sense. The foot or the ear cannot say that it is not a part of the body just because it is not a hand or an eye. Why? Because the body is made up of many different parts and organs! The body is supposed to have different parts to carry out different functions to survive, to grow and to heal. Not everyone can be a pastor, or an elder, or a deacon or a teacher. And it is precisely because the ear is the ear and the foot is the foot and not the third eye or the third foot that it is a member of the body. If you were the third eye or foot, you would need to be taken out or amputated! In the same way, the eye needs the hand and the head needs the foot. How limited our life would be without one another? So Paul says, “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell” (v. 17)?

But, of course, the common sense is not Paul’s final appeal. But do you see what he is doing? He is saying that even the common sense shows how foolish and destructive pride and arrogance and jealousy and envy are to the wellbeing of the church we belong to. But Paul goes further, of course. Remember how he began this section: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (vv. 12-13). The ultimate appeal Paul makes is theological in nature! It has everything to do with God and His glory and honor and purpose and design!

The first theological appeal Paul makes is to the divine initiative with regard to our membership in the body of Jesus Christ: “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.” Notice the passive voice? We were all baptized into one body. That means grace. Just like children born of their mothers, we, who were baptized into one body by the Holy Spirit, have no merit or credit to claim for ourselves. We are all here by God’s grace, each and every one of us. Even the smartest person, even the most charismatic, winsome, attractive, influential person among us is here by God’s grace.

Think about the significance of baptism in this regard! Baptism means being united with Christ, both in His death and resurrection. It means, first of all, dying to sin, dying to the world, dying to our old self--whether we were Jews or Greeks or slaves or free does not matter at all! Our former status? Dead! Our accomplishments? Dead! Our credentials? Also dead in Christ! In baptism we died to all that we once used to take pride in! For they are but filthy rags in the sight of God! Rubbish! A pile of excrements! Totally useless and worthless to get us the membership in the church of Jesus Christ!

But that is only a half of the story. Through baptism we were made alive together with Christ--alive to the forgiveness and righteousness in Christ, alive to the life and power of Christ’s resurrection, alive to our new self in Christ Jesus. We are no longer who we said we were, who we thought we were or what others thought we were. We are no longer who we used to be--enemies of God, minions of Satan, children of wrath, criminals under the condemnation of the law. We have died to all that is shameful and despicable and we have been raised to all that is noble and excellent and holy and righteous in Jesus Christ by grace! We are who God says we are, what God calls us to be in union with Christ--heirs of God, coheirs with Christ, members of the church, which is Christ’s body, the fullness of Him, who fills all in all! That is grace! We received what we did not earn! In fact, we received the opposite of what we deserved--forgiveness instead of punishment, life instead of death, honor instead of shame! Can we still have the same purpose in life, same goals and ambitions to magnify ourselves and make a name for ourselves? We have a new purpose in life. We have new goals and ambitions for which we must live. Even if they were to remain the same, we now pursue them with different reasons and for different goals--now with gratitude for God’s wonderful salvation to the praise of His glorious grace! Therefore, as those who have been born anew through baptism as members of the body of Jesus Christ, we have as our greatest ambition the exaltation of Christ in His church as our all in all--whether we are the hands or the feet or the nose or the mouth or the joints or the ligaments, etc., Christ is to be exalted!

We cannot fully appreciate this fact without the second theological appeal Paul makes: God’s sovereign design for the church of Jesus Christ. This is implied when Paul says how in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Paul makes this point unmistakably clear when he says in v. 18, “But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.” Behind our voluntary association with, and our deliberate and prayerful choice of, this church as our church, there lies God’s sovereign design. Our God is the divine Master-Mosaicist, who picks and places each of us carefully and deliberately into a local church as its members (and officers). We may not see His design and the divine wisdom behind His design right away. Why? Because what God has in view is not just our present but ultimately our future. Oh, how important this point is! If God sees us perfectly fitting together as a body, it is not because we fit perfectly together now! If we are a perfect fit with one another, it is not for our present comfort and ease (although there is definitely that dimension), but it is rather for our growth and perfection in the future! So we dare not say, “I do not need you”, or, “Since I am not this and that in the church, I don’t belong to this church!” Instead we say, “I need you for all the gifts that the Spirit bestowed on you. But I also need you with all your problems and weaknesses because God wants me to grow in love and patience and wisdom to live with you and grow together with you and to assure you that you belong with me here in this church. You need me for the same reasons--you need me not just for my spiritual gifts but also for all my problems and weaknesses so that you too may grow in love and patience and forbearance. And you need me with all my idiosyncrasies and differences so you can be stretched in your love and broadened in your perspectives according to the richness and variety of God’s design for His church.” The very people we have the hardest time getting along with may be the best people to chisel away our rough edges.

But we must also point out the third theological appeal Paul makes: the universal privilege given to each and every one of the members of the body of Christ. This universal privilege is that we all drink of the same Spirit (v. 13). Earlier Paul spoke of the Israelites in the wilderness, all eating the same spiritual food and all drinking the same spiritual drink (10:3-4). He is obviously referring to the manna and the water from the rock, which he claims was Christ (10:4). What were the few occasions when God made the water come out of the rock? They were when the people of Israel could not find water anywhere, when they were extremely thirsty, when they feared that they would die of thirst. Let us not be so quick to look down on their danger and complaints. It is one thing to be thirsty yourself. But can you imagine your little children crying, “Mommy, I’m thirsty!” And imagine them watching that amazing and glorious sight of fresh water gushing out of the rock! And imagine them cupping their hands and scooping up that water and dipping their parched lips in it and starting to gulp it down! What relief! What pleasant sensation! What satisfaction! Can’t you just imagine? They were at the brink of death. But as they drank of the water, they must have felt their life returning with renewed vigor and joy! And the crying of the children was turned into cackling and expressions of sheer happiness just because the water gushing out of the rock.

But we have a thirst that is even more intense, even more essential to our being. Even the Psalmist in the Old Testament spoke of this thirst: “O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly; My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee, In a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps. 63:1, NASB). Did you catch it? In a dry land where there is no water, David thirsts for God, not for water! And it is of this that Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:38). John adds, “Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive” (John 7:39). And it is of this drink that Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “Everyone who drinks of this water [from the well] will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). And now Paul tells us that we have that drink as we were all made to drink of the Holy Spirit! And through our spiritual baptism, we were all made to drink of this drink, the Holy Spirit. Can the water of any fountain, however pristine it may be, compare to the refreshing taste of the Holy Spirit? Can the oceans of this planet compare, as vast as they are, to the infinite reservoir that the Spirit is? And to think that we have this marvelous blessing to drink deep from the ocean-depth of God’s all-satisfying joy because Jesus cried out on the cross, “I thirst! I thirst in the fire of God’s judgment, in the fire of hell, because I am bearing the punishment of your sins!” Because of Jesus’ thirst, we have the privilege of drinking deep from God’s infinite riches to our full satisfaction.

This satisfaction we have in the Spirit is the basis of our interaction with one another as members of the body of Christ and that without any sense of competition and rivalry and jealousy and envy. When you have drunk to your full, when you have eaten all you could, what attraction can a feast hold for you, however abundant it may be! Moreover, think about the surpassing value of belonging to the kingdom of God, to be able to drink from the infinite reservoir of God’s riches! “They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life” (Ps. 36:8-9). We cannot do this if we approach Christ as middle class American men and women, pretty satisfied with the things that the world has to offer and seeing not much need for a Savior except this tiny, little nagging sense of being not completely fulfilled. We must approach Christ as we really are, as those who were dying of thirst in the wilderness of spiritual drought and famine. So then, whatever your position may be in the church of Jesus Christ, however lowly and disreputable may be your role, isn’t the very fact that you are in the household of God enough to make declare, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the palaces of kings”?

So then, how shall we live as members of the body of Christ? But I realize that this question does not matter if we don’t see the importance of engaging in the body life of the church, each and every one of us as members. And if we don’t see the importance, it is a sure sign of babyish ignorance or sickness. At the common sense level--if we have been called and saved indispensable members of the body of Christ, how can we survive and live and grow and thrive without taking active part in the body? Also at the theological level--how can we ignore the supreme importance of the body of Christ, which is the fullness of Him, who fills all in all? Don’t you know that, if the world is preserved by God’s common grace, it is because the church must be made full by God’s saving grace? Yes, our God cares for the world because it is His world! “This is our Father’s world!” But does He care for the world as much as He cares for His church? Did He sacrifice His life for the world or for the church? Did He shed His blood for the world or for the church? Did He promise to build the world or His church? Does He intercede for the world or for the church? This doesn’t mean that we can trash the world. Nor does it mean that we have to build a commune and live in the Christian ghetto. But it must make the disconnectedness and the distance between us unbearable to us as a church!

Brothers and sisters, fellow members of New Life Mission Church! We cannot afford anyone saying and acting, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body! Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body.” Do not be discouraged or ashamed that you are the foot! If the Lord chose you to be the foot, your greatest fulfillment and joy can be found only in being the best foot you can ever be by the power of the Holy Spirit. If you try to be the hand, you will be frustrated to no end! Stand firm, therefore, however strong the resistance may be from the world! And take the body where it needs to go, however rough and dangerous the road--steady and unwavering. If you are the nose, be the best nose you can be! Sniff out the heresies and wrong teaching. And bring to our attention the sweet fragrance of Jesus Christ!

In the same way, we cannot afford anyone saying, “I have no need of you!” Can we say anything more damaging than that to someone else? But even worse, can we say anything more offensive and insulting to Christ, who laid down His life for that person and brought him into His church to be an indispensable part of His body?

What does all this mean? There is so much to be done! Our church is called to glory as the fullness of Christ, to be strong and healthy to do the work of God. The church needs to be healthy and strong to give the gospel and hope to the dying world, to lead the people to that water, which gushes out of Christ, the Rock.

Let us start with just being where we need to be. We can affirm the glorious truths and realities of being a church and thereby encourage one another tremendously simply by coming together for our worship, for our Bible studies, for our prayer meetings and for our fellowship, especially as we remember the significance God Himself attaches to them, the great sacrifice Christ underwent for them! And let us prayerfully think about what each of us is, what part we are called to be and perform for the body of Christ. And may the Lord be pleased to grow us and build us up to the fullness of the stature of Christ. And let us be faithful and diligent in our labor, knowing that God will perfect us and the body of Christ!