One Body of Christ

Churches (and believers within churches) want to be or feel like they are one-of-a-kind or special, or perhaps more important than others. Our human nature requires it. But we can’t lose sight of the fact that we are One Body of Christ, not fragments, portions, multiple bodies, or body parts strewn all over creation.

Paul wrote about this in his first letter to the Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 12:12-21 (NKJV) 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. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free–and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”

God puts us in our place. He had enough sense to not call me to childrens’ ministry or trustee office in my church, for example. He set me in a church in Cortland, Ohio. He has other people to preach in other cities, and has called or is calling other people to do the ministries that I’m incapable of doing well. He has also raised up people that can do ministries that I AM capable of doing, but should not be if they detract from my primary callings.

We are all special, wonderful and unique – just like the right pinky differs from the left hear, the left pinky or the right index finger. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are one body in Christ, and that we need each other in order to fully function.

Doug