The Body of Christ

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

What a wonderful creation of God is the human body, made up of countless parts, from the invisible to the visible! Yet God has placed and given each of the parts a role to play in being the body and in the working of the body. Regardless of how insignificant we believe them to be, God exalts even the weakest part. They are all unique, all given their special gifts and abilities, yet all part of the unit. Paul tells us that as the one body has many parts, so it is with Christ. The church is not an organisation of many bodies or denominations, but is a single living organism. All the many members of the body fulfil their proper function with no single part existing or functioning by itself. The church is not like a body, but is the body of Christ. This is an amazing statement here, that we are part of Christ. That is what Paul is saying. We constitute the means by which Christ functions within the world, that is how the church works. As with the human body, what affects one part, will affect the whole body. We donʼt come to church as individual people and then leave, but we are always unified in Christ. When Jesus quoted Isaiah “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” he didnʼt so much preach good news as be or become the good news that day. Jesus acts out that same prophesy of Isaiahʼs, being the good news In our world, only now he does it using our flesh and blood, joined as we are now in the waters of baptism, with us now raised as his body, the body of Christ, which is the church.

Pastor Darryl