The Body Is One
“The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you” (1 Cor. 12:21).
Of course they cannot! Either would be absurd: the eye alone cannot handle what it sees, nor can the head go without the feet. Yet Paul writes the sentence because he is afraid of such an absurdity occurring in the church. He has just finished rebuking the Corinthians for their behavior about the Lord’s supper, but the sinful attitude might appear in any number of ways.
The immediate context is a discussion of the gifts of the Spirit. Each follower of Christ has a different function, but each has received his responsibility from one Spirit. All are to work together like so many members of one body, each integrally part of the whole, each with a distinct purpose.
For the eye to make a statement as shocking as that which Paul suggests indicates the origin of the body’s malfunctioning. The eye’s unstated reasoning in such a case must be something like this: “As far as I am concerned, I am in the body for my own benefit. My relationship with other members of the body ought to do something good for me — to help me fulfill my mission, keep me from going wrong, make me more useful, or whatever. The members I cannot directly benefit from surely have some purpose, but it is not related to me, so I needn’t concern myself with them.”
In other words, each member is to decide for himself which other members he needs; each member is responsible for creating the body most suited to himself.
It hardly needs saying that such an eye lacks vision. The eye is making a judgment about the hand which he is clearly unqualified to make. The obvious lesson for the Christian is: I do not get to choose my fellow church members. God placed us together for a reason, and regardless of whether I see the reason, I must accept them as necessary to my life as a Christian.
Unfortunately, too often church members do just what Paul says they cannot do. They evaluate the Christian people around them and determine that they do not need them.
Of course, they rarely say it in so many words. But it shows up in a hundred different ways. In any given congregation one might find the eyes effectively (even if insensibly) treating the hands as if they do not need them. There are excuses: “every invitation I get from her, I am busy; we can’t seem to get together”; “somehow our paths never cross at church.” Or they may sound less innocent: “we don’t share any interests”; “they don’t see things the way we do”; “we get along better when we don’t talk.” All of these, of course, are only euphemisms for, “I have no need of you.”
If this sort of nonsense goes on unchecked, it is easy for the eyes (or whoever is the superior party) to justify removing themselves from the congregation, a kind of self-excommunication. “We just felt that it was time to move on from that church.” “The Lord clearly showed me that I needed to make a change.” Or, most insidious of the devil’s lies, “That church wasn’t right for our family.”
In each case, one member asked the question, “Do I need this other member?” or, “Is this the church I need?” and answered negatively. What Paul is saying is that such an answer is always wrong. You do need the other members, every one of them — odd, annoying, wrong-headed, selfish, sinful, just like you — and you cannot decide otherwise. To do so — to judge your fellow members that way — is to fail to discern the Lord’s body.
Yet Christians still make such judgments. The eye does reject the hand, or the head the feet; and they go on, eating and drinking damnation to themselves, while the Lord’s body is broken again and again and again.
The solution, as with so much else in Christianity, is love. The eye (or finger or knee or whatever it was) starts off by asking the wrong question: “Do I need … ?” And, of course, his answer is “no,” nine times out of ten. It is the wrong answer, but one who asks the question at all is almost sure to get the answer wrong. He has missed the first principle of the Christian religion.
Just a couple of sentences beyond the statement we have been considering, Paul informs us that God has joined the members of the body together in order “that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another” (v. 25).
My participation in the church is not about deciding whether I need the other members or not. I do, but the question is irrelevant to my relationship with them. The Christian does not ask it; instead, he loves without reserve all the other members of the body. He shares life with them and gives himself to serve them.
The body does not work when the members evaluate one another’s relative usefulness. It works beautifully when every member in its place fulfills its duty to the others. The member who loves like that despite difficulty and division trusts in his Lord’s unfailing promise:
The Church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against or foe or traitor
She ever shall prevail.
Brendon Johnson is the administrative assistant to the associate dean of the School of Religion at Bob Jones University.