Last week we began to re-publish a booklet drawing out lessons from the early Church for believers today. This week, Monica Hill looks at how the early ‘ekklesia’ saw themselves as one body, in Christ.

Paul’s definitive statement on Christian community is found in Romans 12:4-5: “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others.”

Paul uses the same analogy in other letters (e.g. 1 Cor 12; Eph 4), where he describes the various functions of different members of the human body. He sees the body as a single unit with many members (1 Cor 12:12), each with a specific function which is necessary for the health, wellbeing and correct functioning of the whole. The foot and the hand each carry out very different functions, but are equally essential for the performance of the body. Neither can say to the other that it is unnecessary nor can they say that they themselves have no role - each needs the other. Even the weaker parts are indispensable. Paul also notes that if one part of the body is hurt, the whole body feels pain. The interdependence of the members creates a shared experience within the body.

Paul declares that the body is analogous to the community of believers where each of the members is “baptised by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free.” As it is with the body, “so it is with Christ” (1 Cor 12:12-13). He emphasises the close relationship between each of the believers and their relationship to the head, who is Christ. He says “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Cor 12:27).

Unity

Jesus had a deep concern for the unity of his disciples and for all those who would become believers through them. He prayed earnestly to the Father, “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23).

Jesus therefore saw the unity between himself and his disciples as an expression of the unity that existed between himself and the Father. Jesus himself only said and did what he received from the Father (John 5:19, 30). In the same way there had to be unity between the believers and Christ as their head.

In his prayer Jesus asked the Father to protect the believers. He knew that they would encounter bitter opposition from the world and that their unity would be important in enabling them to stand firm when under attack.

Paul saw unity as essential for the health of the Body. He stood firmly against the quarrelling and resultant divisions among the believers in Corinth: “I appeal to you, brothers”, he wrote, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought” (1 Cor 1:10).

He also appealed to the Ephesians to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3). The prerequisites of this unity he saw as being humility, gentleness, patience and love (Eph 4:2; Col 3:12-14). The objective of unity in the Body was to be a demonstration to the world that “There is one body and one Spirit…one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all” (Eph 4:4-6). It was only through unity that the Body could act as a co-ordinated whole to achieve its purpose.

Paul saw unity as essential for the health of the Body.

Love in the Body

A major concern of Paul was to build up the Body of Christ. He saw the various ministries as all working towards that end: “to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:12-13).

Just as the human body needs nourishment and exercise for healthy growth, so the Body of Christ needed all the ministries, as well as the spiritual gifts distributed among the members, to be working in perfect harmony to reach the kind of spiritual maturity that Paul saw as “the whole measure of the fullness of Christ”.

For this to happen, each member had to think more highly of others than of themselves, to build each other up in faith, love and esteem; to speak the truth in love, so that all the members would grow up into Christ, the head of the Body, and do the work of Christ in love and unity (Eph 4:16). Paul saw that it was love and unity that are the essential characteristics for building up the Body of Christ.

It was because Paul saw how essential love is for health in the Body of Christ and for the fulfilment of the mission of Christ in the world, that he placed such an emphasis upon the centrality of love in all his teaching. Most notable is the fact that after listing the manifestations of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12 and before detailing the way the gifts should be used in practice (particularly prophecy and tongues), in chapter 14, he breaks off the flow of teaching to insert the beautiful love poem of chapter 13. Here he emphasises that without love, all the gifts are useless and cannot achieve the purpose for which God gives them.

In all three passages dealing with specific gifts (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4) Paul stresses the importance of love. In his practical passage on the use of gifts in the early Church under persecution (1 Pet 4:7-11), Peter emphasised the need to love deeply and to use whatever gift each Christian had received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace and love.

Both Paul and Peter knew that it was of supreme importance that all the gifts which were given for building up the Body should be exercised in love. Paul also emphasised that the expression of love among the members of “the body was a practical demonstration of the love of God”, and Jesus himself had said that it was by their love that all men would know that the disciples belonged to him (John 13:35).

It was because Paul saw how essential love is for health in the Body and fulfilment of the Great Commission that he placed such an emphasis upon it in all his teaching.

The New Community

The teaching of the New Testament is that all the believers are one in Christ, part of a single Body - that of the Lord Jesus Christ. For the New Testament writers, the greatest miracle of all was that the believers themselves were drawn from vastly different backgrounds. They were not simply Galilean Jews or Judean Jews, they were not even Jews and Samaritans: they were Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, rich and poor, young and old, men and women, Romans and Greeks, soldiers and civilians. In worldly terms they had nothing in common, but once they became believers and accepted the Lordship of Jesus, all their differences disappeared and they became one in Christ.

Peter expresses this perfectly when he says “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God” (1 Pet 2:10). At one time they had nothing in common but now, in Christ, they shared a common identity, they were a genuine community and they belonged to each other - because they each belonged to Christ.

Next week: We will look at how the community of faith first came about.

Questions:

1. Jesus prayed for unity among his followers and Paul stressed the need for unity in the Body. How does this apply today?

2. The teaching of Jesus and the apostles throughout the New Testament stressed the need for believers to love one another, to bear each other’s burdens, to share, to care for one another and for each believer to think more highly of each other than of themselves. Is this a characteristic of your fellowship?

This article is part of a series. Click here to read previous instalments.