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THE CHURCH AS AN INTERDEPENDENT BODY For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness (Rom. 12:4-8).
The theocentric focus of this passage is Christ. Christ is head of His church. Elsewhere, Paul writes of Christ: "And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence" (Col. 1:17-18). The church is Christ's body.
The Metaphor of Members Membership today means "belongs to." People are members of clubs, associations, teams, and churches. The original meaning of "member" is closer to Paul's metaphor: an appendage of a body. This usage is not common today. Because of this, the metaphor has lost much of its power. It is still a useful metaphor. Paul describes the church as a living organism, a body. He does not say it is like a living organism. He does not offer an analogy. He says that we are members of a living organism. The church's members participate in a society called the church, but Paul describes it as a body. Members in a judicial sense he describes as members in a biological sense. Paul does not describe church members as cogs in a great machine. He describes them as appendages -- members -- of a body.
Sociologist Robert Nisbet observed that "The organism serves not only as a model of growth for contemplating the world, but also as a model of structure, of the articulation of separate entities, such as the heart and lungs. To emphasize the harmonious interaction of parts in an organization, it is customary to use `organic' as highest praise."(1) Metaphors of organic change are more commonly used than metaphors of mechanical change. This may be because mechanical change is cyclical. A machine does not grow. It performs a limited task over and over. A machine has no sensations. A person does not normally look at a broken machine and then make a comparison with himself. He does not see a broken machine rusting in a junk yard, and think to himself, "How terrifying!" A machine has a maker, an owner, or a user, but it has no head. A body has a head. A body develops through time. This is why the organic analogy is far more powerful than mechanism for describing social processes or organizations.
As surely as a body dies without a head, so does an institution die without leadership. It may merely flounder at first. The phrase, "running around like a chicken with its head cut off," is used to describe an organization that has no leadership. It runs around aimlessly before it dies. But, of course, organizations do not literally run around. They have no feet. Either they stay in operation or they close. The question is: Does an organization operate in terms of a shared vision? A leader must articulate this vision and impose sanctions in terms of it. For a hierarchy to function, there must be a representative figure who speaks with authority, and who the makes decisions to delegate part of this authority. There must be a hierarchy in order to gain the advantages of the division of labor. Institutional cooperation is structured by a hierarchy with a representative figure who possesses the authority to impose sanctions.
Paul describes Christ as the head of the church. This head cannot die, nor can the body, which extends into eternity (Rev. 21; 22). But this body can lose appendages. A body that is missing an appendage does not function as well as a body with all of its appendages. If an appendage does not work properly, the body suffers. Paul calls on members of the church at Rome to do their work well. This will benefit the church even as a body benefits from healthy appendages. Paul expects his readers to understand what he is getting at: strife is bad for a church. He calls them to righteous behavior. "Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another; Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality" (Rom. 12:9-13).
There are conceptual weaknesses with organic metaphors that describe institutions. Unless organic metaphors are carefully qualified, they are not perceived as judicial; they become merely functional. The covenantal issues of life are judicial. It is not simply that an institution has a leader. The leader serves representatively: between the organization and the individuals who lawfully own it.
Paul could have limited his language to strictly judicial categories. He could also have invoked the image of a family. He did neither. What is it about a body that is so powerful an image? I suggest that the economic principle of the division of labor is best understood in terms of an organic metaphor. We can easily understand the operation of a social organization when it is described as a body. A body that experiences conflict among its members may become helpless. A person whose body suffers epileptic seizures is unreliable. A person who suffers from spastic discoordination is limited in what he can do. People see such afflictions in others and shudder. "What if I were so afflicted?" It frightens them. The affliction is of a specific kind: discoordination.
Paul takes this common fear and makes use of it. How terrible when a church suffers from conflicts. This discoordination threatens to paralyze the church. He is making a comparison: if you fear becoming physically afflicted in such a way, you should fear that the church of Christ should become similarly afflicted. Paul wants Christians to regard strife in the church as they would regard epileptic seizures. Christians should not take lightly such disruptions inside the church.
Joint Productivity, Joint Service Paul says that we possess different gifts, "gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us." This diversity of gifts is a benefit to the church. The church has within its membership people with many kinds of abilities. They can offer their gifts to the church in faithful service. The church is then in a position to offer to its members and to the world a wide range of assistance. The church becomes a clearing house for a diversity of services. The larger the church grows, the greater its range of services.
The same principle of organization operates in the world outside the institutional church. An increasing division of labor is a major benefit to a society. Men have been given many different skills and insights. A social order that encourages people to offer their services for sale to others is able to increase the wealth of its participants, meaning an increasing range of choices. Adam Smith, in Chapter 1 of The Wealth of Nations (1776), relied on the principle of the division of labor to explain how people can increase their personal wealth through voluntary exchange and production for a market.
The institutional church is not a profit-seeking entity. It is funded by the tithes and donations of its members, not by profit. It offers healing of all kinds to its members, beginning with physical healing. "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord" (James 5:14). Service begins with love. "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:34-35). "Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits" (Rom. 12:16). As the church grows, more people are brought into the community of saints. Some of them have needs that they cannot satisfy outside the covenant community. Others possess abilities that can meet the needs of others. The church enables those with needs to gain the help required to restore them. As they become restored to health in the widest sense, they can become sources of aid to those who are not yet healthy.
Covenant-keepers serve Christ by serving each other. This is true inside the institutional church and outside. Then what is unique or different about the institutional church? Answer: it alone offers the sacraments. God's special judicial presence in the sacraments is unique. Participation in sacramental rites brings God's people under God's judgment. Sanctions are dispensed to its members by God as a direct result of their participation in the sacraments. These sanctions can be positive(2) or negative.(3) A sense of community is one result of participation in the sacraments. Church members participate in a community that has been called by God to leave a world that is ultimately perishing, yet they must return to this perishing world when the worship service ends. Their worship inside is designed to make them better citizens outside. "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men" (Rom. 12:18). Formal worship strengthens them in their status as residents of two worlds: eternity and time. Jesus prayed publicly to His Father: "I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world" (John 17:14-18).
Paul in this chapter calls his readers to faithful service inside the institutional church. His goal is to persuade his readers to present their bodies as a living sacrifice to Christ. The starting point for their sacrificial service is the institutional church. The proper motivational impulse is charity, not earthly profit.
The division of labor aids church members in their ability to serve each other. Each member knows that there are other members who possess skills that may benefit him sometime. He can put his mind at greater rest because the church includes people who are willing to serve each other. The church in this respect seems more like a family than a body, yet Paul describes the church in terms of a body. It is almost if he is reluctant to encourage his readers to associate the church with the family. A family is the more obvious mental association, yet Paul uses a metaphor instead: body. Otherwise, many people would be tempted to proclaim the structure of a family to serve as a model for the church. The church is not a family.(4) It has sacraments. A family does not. The church extends into heaven. Men there have access to the ultimate sacrament, the tree of life. "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city" (Rev. 22:14). A family does not continue in heaven. "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven" (Matt. 22:30).
A church member knows that whatever he lacks, others in the church may possess. The larger the church or association of churches, the more likely that there will be providers of every kind of service. A member does not have to master every area of service, which is beyond his abilities. He need only concentrate on the limited range of services that he performs best. The same message appears in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12.
The Institutional Church Paul is not speaking here of the church in the sense of believers in general, i.e., the invisible church. He is speaking of the body of Christ as an identifiable organization that uniquely represents Christ in history and eternity. Paul's audience was a group of Christians who were assembled together to hear the reading of his letter. This organization had members. It had a structure: hierarchy. This hierarchy had sanctions. The focus of his concern in this section is the smooth functioning of an institution. The same is true of Romans 6 on church courts.
The body of Christ represents Christ visibly in a way that the family and the civil government do not. This is why the church extends into eternity. The family and civil government do not. This means that the central institution in God's kingdom is the church. Sociological analysis often begins with the family. The idea of the centrality of the family is not a biblical principle. It is far more pagan than Christian. It places biological relationships above sacramental relationships. It places loyalty to death-bound people above loyalty to the resurrected Christ, who is represented in history by His body. Jesus severely condemned the idea of family loyalty's being superior to loyalty to Him. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:34-37). The idea of the centrality of the State is socialist. This ideal, too, is in conflict with the biblical principle of the centrality of the church. It is the church alone that lawfully offers the dual covenantal oath-signs of baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are eternal sanctions, not just temporal.
The State can represent Christ judicially. So can the family. But both institutions can also represent other worldviews, other gods. The church is uniquely Christ's. The sacraments are judicial oath signs that point uniquely to God's final judgment. The sanctions that are imposed by family and State do not uniquely point to God's final judgment. Excommunication -- separation from the sacraments -- judicially represents hell. Paul never uses the following language with respect to family or State. "For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" (I Cor. 5:3-5).
Family and State sanctions do not covenantally deliver a man's body to Satan, nor do they involve a man's spirit. Family and State are common grace institutions. Their covenantal blessings are available to all people irrespective of their personal confessions. The church is a special grace institution that is lawfully open only to those who confess Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. "For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (I Cor. 2:2). The church is uniquely Christ's body.
Conclusion The church is the body of Christ. It has many members, Paul said. It possesses unity. "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." It also possesses diversity: "Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us." Each member is to serve God by serving others. This fulfills Paul's initial command: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Rom. 12:1).
The division of labor strengthens the church. It creates a broad range of talents and services. Individuality is affirmed by this broad range of talents, yet institutional unity is also established: a more self-sufficient entity.
Paul places no restrictions on either this diversity or this unity. He does not suggest that members should not cooperate with each other. The range of services is limited only by the size of the church. There is no indication that the church is to be broken into non-cooperating subdivisions. On the contrary, the church is Christ's body. It cannot be broken up into noncooperating subdivisions without injuring it. The range of the division of labor is limited only by the size of the church. The church is international. The division of labor within the church is international. In the midst of international violence, there should be a beacon of peace. In the midst of noncooperation among peoples and nations, there should be an example of cooperation. The church is designed by God to be the premier example. When it is not the premier example, then either it is at fault or the observers are.
Footnotes:
1. Robert Nisbet, Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 219.
2. "And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord" (Acts 22:16).
3. "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep" (I Cor. 11:30).
4. Gary North, Baptized Patriarchalism: The Cult of the Family (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1995).
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