"Body Parts? Or A Living Body?"

Scripture Passage

1 Corinthians 11:2-13:13

(Kinda weird and pointless, huh?)

Scripture Focus

How strange a body would be if it had only one part!
                                        (1 Corinthians 12:19 NLT)

Observation

What a great analogy “the body” is for the essential interconnectedness of the church—especially when challenging a church so marked by division as the church at Corinth was.

Think about it: With hardly a thought, I enter musings into a computer using touch-typing skills accrued in the late 1970s (I know—practically the dark ages). For fifty years, now, my body has continually and repeatedly performed all sorts of tasks—many of those significantly complex—with hardly a conscious thought given to most of them. What an amazing work the human body is, with so many parts all working in unity under one head! I’m often amazed at what a laptop computer can accomplish, or how fast a car can go, or the way machinery facilitates manufacturing, but none of that holds a candle to my own God-given abilities—ones I take for granted every day.

The Apostle Paul, under inspiration of Scripture, says that’s how the church works. (Somewhere along the way here, I’ve got to say “not just mechanically, but organically—as a living organism!”) And Paul emphasizes especially how necessary each part is. “How strange a body would be,” he says, “if it had only one part!” (1 Corinthians 12:19 NLT)

He’s absolutely right. This verse of Scripture alone undoes the hellish notion that I can be a full-orbed Christian apart from healthy, life-giving connection with others who know and serve Christ. What kind of human cell survives apart from the body that nourishes it? What kind of spiritual gift can I offer in isolation from others? None!

People—and relationships with them—can be frustrating, to be sure (and that’s putting it mildly). But Paul reminds me that apart from the rest of the body, I have no genuine place, no genuine source, and no genuine service to offer God’s advancing kingdom. My only hope for genuine significance in God’s kingdom is found when I’m relationally integrated into a functioning local body—that’s right, a church.

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