The Body of Christ

Why does the New Testament describe the church as the body of Christ? Today, Sinclair Ferguson conveys the significance of seeing Jesus as our Head and Christians as members of one another.

Welcome to another week on Things Unseen. Perhaps like me, you have a fairly eclectic taste in music. Often that’s related to our upbringing, and I know it can be a very generational thing. I was actually slow to appreciate what everyone calls classical music, but I remember one of the first pieces I enjoyed was Pictures at an Exhibition by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. It’s a suite of ten piano pieces with a recurring melody that conveys the sense of walking from one picture to another. Maybe you’ve heard Ravel’s adaptation of it for a full orchestra. It’s a clever idea, actually, to try to convey the theme of the picture through music because it makes an appeal to the imagination. The reason all this comes to mind this week is not to encourage you to listen to Mussorgsky, but as a lead in to a different set of pictures—pictures the Bible uses that appeal to our imagination and help us to see what God intends the church to be.

I have a book at home entitled Images of the Church, by an American scholar. And if I remember correctly, he suggests there are actually over ninety images or pictures of the church to be found in the New Testament. I think, actually, that’s squeezing out every last drop of juice a bit, but certainly, there are several pictures in the New Testament that help us to admire and meditate on the wonder of the church.

What picture first comes to your mind? I suspect that if you were to ask that question of every Christian in the past two thousand years, the central answer would probably be “the church is the body of Christ.” We’re all familiar with the way Paul uses it and perhaps especially his statement in 1 Corinthians 12:27, “You are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” I suspect more essays and books have been written on this picture of the church than on any other, and scholars today still discuss where Paul got the idea.

I remember as a schoolboy in our Latin class having to read an account by the Roman historian Livy, of how the Roman consul, Agrippa Menenius tried to quell a revolt of the plebs by telling them that society worked like a body and some just happened to be important parts and others were minor parts. Actually, in some ways, he was pulling the wool over their eyes, as though to say: “So if you are complaining about not getting enough food, quit your moaning, you plebs, because you are not the stomach. Get back to where you belong and get on with it.”

So maybe that wasn’t what Paul had in mind when he spoke about the church as the body. Maybe the idea arose, as some people think, from his conversations with Dr. Luke, the way in which the church is like a human body. Or maybe the picture had something to do in his mind with the Lord’s Supper and sharing in the one bread that Jesus spoke about as His body. Or maybe it was because Paul had heard Jesus say that when he persecuted Christians, he was actually persecuting Jesus Himself, as though they were one body. Whichever the origin of the picture Paul uses, it helps us to learn some very important lessons about the church. Here are one or two of them, and their implications.

First of all, the Lord Jesus is the head of the body; that is to say, He directs it. He owns it. He is the Lord of the body. It’s Jesus’ church, not my church or the minister’s church. It’s not even our church; it’s His church. We need to remember that because often when things go wrong in churches, it’s because we’ve forgotten this. So in all we do—and those who are elders or have spiritual oversight in any way, need to put this at the top of the agenda sheet—Jesus is head. It’s His church, not ours.

Another thing that’s important in this picture is it reminds us that the members of the body are all different, but each member has a part to play, and they’re all needed if the body is to function properly. Remember how Paul puts it in Ephesians 4:15–16? He says we grow up into Christ, the head, joined and held together by every joint with which He equips the body. When each part is working properly, then—only when each part is working properly—the body builds itself up in love. What a marvelous picture that is for us to understand how much we all need each other and how much we need to love each other.

But then thirdly, I think it’s interesting that Paul uses the picture of the body to make a completely different point from the one Menenius Agrippa made by using the picture. Paul says that in the body of Christ, we treat the parts that seem less honorable with greatest honor. We give special attention to those who are weakest and have the greatest need. The people who seem to lack honor, we especially honor. And you see, his point is exactly the counter-cultural and counter-sinful lifestyle that characterizes a real church family. Unlike the plebs being put in their place to serve those of a more noble family, the truth of the life of the church is that the church of Jesus Christ is the place where the apparently least honorable are given the greatest honor.

That’s a great picture, isn’t it? It makes us rejoice in the privilege, and maybe it challenges us too. But here’s something interesting: it’s not the most important New Testament picture of the church. But we’ll have to wait for the rest of the week to discover the one that is. I hope you’ll join us and be with us tomorrow on the podcast.