The Church: A Living Body of Christ

Well that idea of the church’s being the body of Christ is a concept that, on one hand, is very simple in the New Testament; but yet, when we begin to probe its significance and turn over the layers of meaning that the apostle invests in it, we see that, indeed, it becomes a profound and profoundly important idea for us. [00:01:26]

Augustine has a famous quote that goes like this: “He who does not have the church as his mother does not have God as his Father. Let me say it again: that “He who does not have the church as his mother does not have God as his Father. Now for shorthand sake, let me just skip lightly over this dimension in a moment, that there have been a host of difficult theological controversies down through church history in an effort to interpret precisely and completely what St. Augustine meant by that phrase. [00:02:16]

But another crucial function of a mother in this world is the function of nurture. The mother not only bears the child, but the mother nourishes and nurtures the child. In our culture, traditionally, the mother cares for and nurtures; the father disciplines. Well when we see this image of the church as the body of Christ, we see in that image one of the most important elements of it being the nurturing ministry of the church to its members. [00:04:06]

Though redemption is not a group activity – Karl Barth once said that we’re members of many different groups – we’re members of a family, we’re members of a school, we’re members of a community; we may be members of a club or members of a state or members of a nation. In the final analysis, when you stand before Almighty God, you stand alone; your brother, your sister, your mother, your father, your friends, your club, your nation’s, your church’s faith will not avail you when you stand before God. [00:08:37]

Now how in the world can a person love Christ and hate His own body? How can a person embrace Christ for any period of time and continuously absent himself from fellowship and involvement with the company of God’s people, the family of God? That’s another image in the Bible, the family of God. We know that when babies are born, if once they are delivered, they are simply set on the table in the delivery room, and if they’re given no nourishment – no water, no food – they will quickly die; and yet, modern studies have indicated that if they are given food and water, but no human companionship, no fellowship, even though they have all of the physical nutrients necessary to maintain life, they will perish. [00:09:29]

Well again, let’s look now then at this image, the body of Christ. For those who find it unpleasant to think of the church as an organization, you think of a body not so much as an organization as an organism. An organism is something that is alive. It’s vital, it can move, it’s exciting, it’s not inert or lifeless or inanimate, and when we talk about that body, we’re not talking about a corpse but a living, vital thing; and people usually respond to that idea of the body of Christ. [00:13:26]

Let me just direct your attention for a moment to Paul’s discussion of this concept of the body of Christ that he gives in his first letter to the Corinthians. He says in chapter twelve, verse twelve, “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,” and so on, “For, in fact, the body is not one member, but many. [00:14:22]

The body’s not whole without eyes; it’s not whole without ears or without hands, but God composed the body, He said, “having given greater honor to that part which lacks it that there be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another, so that if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, or if one member is honored, all members rejoice with it.” Oh, what a magnificent model. [00:18:35]

Every person has a supernatural endowment from God as a part of the body of Christ, and the body, to be healthy, needs your gift, whatever it is. For the body to be complete, it needs you. Martin Luther spoke in the sixteenth century about the “priesthood of all believers,” and many of us are familiar with the concept or at least the words, but there’s great misunderstanding that associates with that. [00:22:00]

The concept of the “priesthood of all believers” is that the ministry of Christ, the priestly ministry of Christ, is not given exclusively to the clergy – that the mission and the ministry is given to every person in the church to play their part. We are all responsible for the ministry of the body of Christ – not that I am resp--you may do evangelism, you may do administration, and you may not be called to be an evangelist and he may not be called to be an administrator; but you, in your evangelism, are to support his administration and he, in his administration, is to support him in his evangelism. [00:25:31]

Now there is a concept that has been linked with this idea of the body of Christ and that is the church has been called in some circles as the continuing incarnation. That is, since the body of Jesus refers to His physical nature, to His human nature, the human manifestation of the second person of the Trinity, and now the human body of Jesus has been removed from the world by ascending into heaven and being seated at the right hand of God, now the incarnation continues through the church. [00:25:31]

I have ambivalent feelings about that concept. On the one hand, I can say for – with – Luther that, yes, the church, the people of God are to be Christ to their neighbor. You are to put flesh and blood on Jesus to your neighbor, Luther says, not in the sense that you actually become Christ – of course not – but as His ambassador. You may be the only thing that person sees to learn anything of Jesus. You are His presence as His ambassador to your neighbor. [00:25:31]