I preached on the Church as the body of Christ last Sunday, using 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 as my text. It’s a familiar text and familiar metaphor to many Christians and it typically leads to one of a few quick interpretations. One being how Christians play different roles in the local church, some being good at one thing and others being good at another. Others will say the text is referring to Global Church where every type of local church represents different body parts.
In looking at the background of the text, I realized that this first interpretation is extremely incomplete and the second one is simply incorrect. There is no way Paul is referring to the Global Church when he pens 1 Corinthians and he’s not simply telling any old church to play nice with one another. The entire premise of this famous passage is based on racial and socioeconomic inequalities and conflict and to ignore these primary points is to ignore the purpose of the text. Paul’s introductory verses to his metaphor clearly show us this:
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
When Paul called the Corinthian church to be unified under Christ, he specifically contrasts this with the disunity and division that existed among them along racial, cultural, and economic lines. He is very clearly telling them do not make an all Jew church, an all Gentile church, an all poor church, an all rich church, etc…instead, learn to love each other and get along in community, allowing the power of Jesus and your unity in Jesus to overcome these superficial differences.
In contemporary culture, we seldom ever apply these verses with the purpose in which Paul wrote them. If we did, we wouldn’t have so many all white churches, all black churches, all rich churches, all poor churches, all young churches, and all old churches.
We try to get off the hook by saying Paul was writing about the “Global Church” (all churches), but how could he have been? The Christians at Corinth (the actual recipients of 1 Corinthians) had likely hardly even heard of other churches, and had zero access to them. There were no cars to drive to another church, or Internet to download someone else’s sermons. There was only one church in town: the Corinthian Church. If you weren’t getting along with someone (which happened all the time, especially along racial lines), you would have had to saddle up your donkey and travel for days to get the next church. This simply didn’t happen. So why would Paul have told them, “Be unified with the churches in Ephesus and Philippi as one body”? The fact is, he didn’t. He told them to be unified amongst one another, whether Jewish or Greek, rich or poor. In Christ, they were to be unified and equal.
Imagine if Paul had said, “Jews, you can start an all-Jewish church on the west side of town and Gentiles, you can start an all-Gentile church on the east end. You should do combined potlucks twice a year, don’t say nasty things about each other, and this will qualify you as being united as one body of Christ.”
No, Paul very clearly instructed a local church to be diverse and to be unified in their diversity. He said if they didn’t do this, if they instead were completely homogenous, they would be mutating (and crippling) the body of Christ, as well as nullifying Jesus’ glory:
17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
A homogenous church is a church full of eyes. Everyone looks the same, has the same background, the same culture and the same viewpoints. A homogenous communicates that their Jesus is not for those who are different than them. If you’re an ear and you walk into a room of 200 eyes, what’s the first thing you’re going to think? This place isn’t for me! (And this God must not be for me either!)
A church full of eyes is missing out on so many of the spiritual gifts, yet typically doesn’t realize it.
In a church full of eyes, Jesus, “the body,” doesn’t get the glory:
19 If they were all one part, where would the body be?
A.k.a. Where would the visibility and power of Jesus be?
But on the other hand, when a church does become diverse, the body is greatly glorified! Jesus gets great glory!
Imagine the testimony the Corinthian church would have had to the Roman non-believers. Would non-believers be impressed in a rich Jewish church and a poor Gentile church? Of course not, this would have only been more par for the cultural course. But would non-believing eyes have taken notice of a diverse group of people, able to overcome their racial and cultural hostility, loving one another and living in community together? Of course they would have. We see even more power in this testimony when we add Jesus’ command in John 13:34-35 on top of this:
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
The non-believing world sees Jesus when we love one another the way Jesus loves us.
They miss Jesus when we avoid one another altogether, uniting under our preferences and differences, rather than our unity in Jesus’ love.
There’s a lot to this text, a lot to the topic of diversity and this is only one short blog post. Rather than be defensive and give rebuttles, I ask you to consider what Paul was actually writing toward when he penned 1 Corinthians 12, how we have missed the boat on this purpose in the American Church and how we can take practical steps toward glorifying Jesus’ body in our diversity.
I’m not calling your church “mutated” as an insult, I’m simply pointing out what Paul is pointing out: a bunch of eyes in one room is unnatural and ineffective. My church is a mutant too and I hope and pray we are able to grow and mature away from this and into the healthy body God wills for us to be.
1.19.14 The Church: The Body of Christ from Lansing Crossroads Church on Vimeo.
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