Dear friends,
Body image today often refers to our perception of our own physical bodies. But Paul used the image of the body 2000 years ago when he spoke of the Body of Christ, and that’s what we need to explore when looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 12. It is particularly important in today’s controversies that we understand the image of the body.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: 1 Corinthians 12:12–14
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 baptised into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
For the body does not consist of one member but of many.
What are some of the conclusions that you theologically want to draw from this metaphor of the body of Christ?
Peter Jensen: This metaphor occurs in a number of places in the New Testament, notably Ephesians 5. Thinking of this broader context, I notice these 3 things:
The headship of the body belongs exclusively to one whose body it is, namely Jesus Christ, as in Ephesians 5:22. I take it to include authority, not just the source, as it used to be said. I’m not sure if that’s still a position people adopt. It reminds us that just as we are individually to obey Christ as Lord, so we are to obey him corporately as his body. In other words, church is not just a gathering of people to sing and to listen to someone meander on; we gather in order to meet the Lord Jesus Christ, the head of the church and the power of the Spirit. We must listen to his teaching, obey him and speak the truth to each other together, especially when we meet. So meeting as the body of Christ is not an optional thing.
He explicitly calls the Corinthian church, in 12:27, “The body of Christ.” That’s at odds with the modern way of referring to a denomination or the worldwide church as the body—as though one church is the leg of Jesus, and another is the arm of Jesus, and so forth. No, the local church carries this great honour of being the body of Christ. When we come into church, we are in the presence of the body of Christ.
The image of the body is a special way of talking about the unity that we experience. It’s preeminently in these texts, and Ephesians 4 also: the unity of the local church means the responsibility of every member to be godly and to guard the gift of unity. The New Testament takes the unity of the church very seriously, hence the remarks on the Lord’s Supper in chapter 11 that their disunity and their despising of each other profanes the body of Christ, the church. It also reminds us that the body of Christ is one. It is, if you like, the eschatological body of Christ; it’s the body of Christ in the heavenly places, which we all belong to, and the local church is a manifestation of it. Whatever it was that obsessed the Corinthians—I presume the claim to supernatural gifting was part of it—was in danger of destroying the unity of the church, as people perhaps gloried in their particular gifting.
How do you read the problems in Corinth after all this?
Phillip: Before I go there, I would like to address your second point, that the different churches are not different members of the body. The different parts of the body are the different members within the church, the local assembly. I remember people saying to me that they liked to go to our church because we had the gift of teaching, but they also liked another church because they had other gifts. So the body of Christ was, to them, this interdenominational gifting. It fascinated me that they were so keen to come to our church for our teaching, but they manifestly paid no attention to it, because they thought the other denominational church down the road was another part of the body of Christ.
There is also this question of whether we, as the body of Christ, are his agents in the world. He hasn’t got hands anymore, so we’ve become the hands. He hasn’t got a mouth anymore, so we’ve become the mouth. It’s pushing that metaphor way beyond what it was meant to be used for. It’s close to blasphemy.
Peter: It’s not what the New Testament is saying here. I suppose your friends who came to you because yours was ‘a teaching church’ should have thought, “It’s not what comes from the pulpit alone that matters, but the people who gather. They are the body of Christ, and I need to serve within the body as everyone else does, bringing whatever gifts I have to the service of the church.”
Phillip: I’d like to pick up what this passage is saying, though, because it has some direct implications for us. 1 Corinthians 12:14–20
For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 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? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
So Paul uses the image of a body in terms of its various parts, which are all different, yet they’re all needed. Just because you may not feel as important as one of the others, to say, “I do not belong to the body,” is wrong. Within a congregational life, there’s the person who’s involved in cleaning the building; another in opening the building; there’s the treasurer; the maintenance person; the music leader; and there’s the preacher. God arranges, as he chooses, the many parts into one body, and all the different members, gifts and ministries are for the one purpose. You mustn’t think, “I’m only the cleaner.” If you want to bring a church to a standstill, have no cleaning. In fact, if you want to destroy a city, get the garbage men to go on strike. To say, “I don’t belong to the body because my ministry is unimportant,” is a complete failure to understand the image of the body.
On the other side of this is the person who says, “I don’t need you, you are unimportant.” Paul then attacks this viewpoint in 12:21–26
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.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honourable we bestow the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honour to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together.
God is composing our bodies in such a way as to be united, so that we will care for one another in the body, which is one. When my stomach hurts, I hurt; when my head aches, I ache. It’s not as if I could dispense with my head because that’s the only bit that’s aching today. When I’m sick, I’m sick, regardless of whichever particular part of my anatomy is sick at the moment. So no one within the church can look down on another as being unimportant. In fact, we are all needed, and we must care for one another and honour every member, so that we will be united properly. There is the grave danger of turning our giftedness and our ministries into prestige and significance. This exists at 2 levels:
People who think they’re unimportant because their ministry is not ‘significant’.
People who think they are important because they have a ministry of great prestige.
When I was at St Matthias, people would talk in a way that made me cringe. They didn’t mean to, but they spoke about it as “my church” because I was the person on the platform dominating the proceedings by my preaching—when in fact, I could point to the people who crawled underneath to find the white ants and get rid of them. My pulpit wouldn’t have stood if they had not gone down there and fixed the white ant problem. There were so many members of our church all pulling together to make the body work. To not recognise that is an insult to the body, and it’s a failure to care. It’s a failure to live in accordance with the way God has organised and laid out the church. That’s the point of this caring for the oneness of the church.
Peter: Yes, which is the duty of us all. The unity of the spirit of Ephesians 4, the necessity for us to see the single body and to care for one another. You’ve mentioned a couple of things, like cleaning the building and finding the white ants. Indeed, there are the obligations set out in Ephesians 4 of building up the body. So even if you’re meeting in the open air or a tent, you’d still all have a responsibility for the whole church, in praying for each other, caring for each other, and listening to each other.
Phillip: I saw something lovely the other day in church. A woman was crying during the first hymn, and then one of the other members from the other side of the aisle came across and sat with her for the rest of the service. What care! What concern! That’s a real ministry that took place right there, which was not done for show.
Peter: That’s the opposite of an experience I had way back when I spoke on this passage at a conference. I blame myself, because I obviously didn’t teach it adequately. A young man came up to me full of enthusiasm, and asked me, “What’s my gift? I want to use my gift.” I’ve always thought that self-identification was what he wanted, because if you want to know what your gift is, the best thing to do is to look for a need and see if you can fulfil it. That will produce the gift, so to speak. If you have it, use it; if you don’t, move on. If I saw the need for a guitar player in church and tried to meet it, I know that would fail. I may or may not be the right person, but seeing the need is the first step. Do you agree?
Phillip: Yes and no. I say, don’t ask the question, “Am I the person that should?” Just go and fill needs. Because you’re right; that young man was asking about his gift, which is an identity issue. There was a time a few years ago—I presume there are still churches that do it—where they would have an inventory of gifts, and you’d have to work out where you fit.
Peter: I’ve noticed that we haven’t discussed the meaning of the gifts, though we are drifting into it now. People want to make a great deal, for example, about speaking in tongues, about prophecy and so forth. 1 Corinthians 12:27–31
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts.
And I will show you a still more excellent way.
What do you think?
Phillip: There are fundamental issues which get passed over if you enter into discussions about what each individual gift is. There are many books which focus on analysing each gift and what it could mean. Any knowledge is a good thing in itself—I’m not saying that we should never do such a thing—but they frequently miss the point that Paul is making. He is in some ways scattering the list of gifts out there as illustrations of a main point. To spend time looking at the individual trees is to miss the whole forest. Here are 5 points I have about this:
In the book that I wrote a few years ago, The Coming of the Holy Spirit1 (which you can get through Matthias Media) there are 34 appendices. which astonishes people. A third of the book is appendices. That’s because they’re not central to what the book is about, but they are questions that people ask: What is speaking in tongues? What are miracles? Do I believe in Cessationism, that all the gifts have now ceased? By and large they’re not important questions, but I knew there was no point producing a book on the Holy Spirit in the 21st century without writing a page or two on each of these. If you want to know about those things, buy the book, look up the appendices. Keep in mind that the main subject of the book is more important than the appendices.
Many gifts are overlooked, or more difficult than you imagine. Helping, for instance, is a gift, as is administering. But what is “utterance of wisdom”? What is the gift of faith? Haven’t we all got faith? I’m afraid most people are fairly generous in their imaginitis when they try to explain what the gift of faith is, or the ability to distinguish between gifts. Furthermore, have you noticed there are multiple “gifts” of healing? What does that mean? Is it as though one person is good with healing legs, the other is good with arms? You can see how PhDs can be written on the gifts, which still miss the point of what the passage is about.
There are other lists of gifts, in Ephesians 4 and in Romans 12. None of these are decisive lists. In fact, in 12:5–10 we hear about the gifts of the Spirit, whilst 12:27–30 talks of the gifts of God the Father. They’re different gifts, because Paul is not giving a definitive list of all the gifts that there are. God can gift us in any way he wishes. This is just a demonstration of the diversities of gifts that there are, for the common purpose of the Holy Spirit, for the common planning of God in his church.
Gifts like these are not limited to the Spirit, because the same gifts spoken of about the Spirit in 12:5 following are listed now as the gifts of the Father. Prophecy, for example, is listed again in Ephesians 4 as one of the gifts of the Son. So to see the ministry of the Spirit as the giving of gifts fails to do it justice, for his ministry is fundamentally to point to the Lord Jesus Christ. His gift to this world is the preaching of the gospel, so that people would come to faith through regeneration. That is the great work of the Holy Spirit, as the great work of the Son was to die and rise. But the gifts, the workings, and the application of ministries in the world today, are the gifts of God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The spiritual point here, and throughout this chapter, is that though there are different parts to the united body, it is a united body by the one Spirit. For we do not have many spirits, but one Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
Peter: So the passage is not about all the gifts of the spirit; it’s about the gifts as we have them listed here. It’s fundamentally about the body of Christ, the church, and how the church ought to act, which will become even clearer in chapters 13–14. In the meantime, no matter how insignificant you may think you are, you are still equally part of the body and are called upon to serve others in whatever way you can. God has appointed the church. He has given us the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit, and we see all at work in our experience of church.
Phillip: We are different in many ways, but we are the same in our care for one another. We are the same in that we have been gifted and able to do this work of ministry by the one and the same God.
Peter: So you don’t come to a church and say, “Here’s the list of gifts which you ought to have in this church.”
Phillip: That’s a terrible way of thinking about church.
Peter: So what is the point? What do you expect when you come to a church?
Phillip: You should ask, “How can you use me to serve others today?”
Peter: You expect, therefore, to see the preaching of the word, and the loving relationships of the congregation.
Phillip: We gather to meet in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we must ask, “What can I do to fulfil the plans and purposes of God in caring for other people?”
There was a lovely lady who attended the cathedral who used to come in by train, and during each trip, she prayed, “God, lead me to the person you want me to talk to today.” She always found someone to talk to every day about the Lord Jesus, because at a cathedral church in the middle of the city, there are always visitors. I noticed that she was the one who always talked to them. It was the kind of ministry that was really important, and yet insignificant in this world’s terms.
Peter: That leads us to possibly the most significant point in 1 Corinthians 12:31, “But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.”
Phillip: That raises a problem for us, because we’ve just said that all gifts are important; so what are the higher gifts?
Phillip D. Jensen, The Coming of the Holy Spirit, 2022 (Matthias Media)
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, check out this talk on 1 Corinthians 12 entitled Diversity and Unity.
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