The Body of ChristSample

Paul’s teaching about the body of Christ is based upon the unity of the church, and it is important to understand this unity as a spiritual reality based upon Christ’s work of salvation. The church, according to Paul, is more than the sum of its parts; it has been united through the shared experiences of dying to the law (Romans 7:4), dying to self (Romans 6:6), and being raised into a new life in Christ (Colossians 3:1).

Members of the church have been baptized, says Paul, “by one Spirit into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Baptism is therefore the means of becoming part of this united body, as well as being a symbol of the body’s unity. The unity of the church, which includes the unity between members and the unity between the Church and Christ, is created by the Holy Spirit, who brings the members into the body and dwells within them (Romans 8:9). To be a member of the body of Christ is to be one Spirit with Christ, to belong to and identify with Christ and with one another.

To accept this unity as a spiritual reality is not to deny that the church often fails to fully live out its unity in its daily life—particularly with regard to relationships between individual Christians or between different local churches. The challenge for the church is, and always has been, to find ways to live in unity, despite the differences in culture, background, and personality that are invariably found among church members. Having fully established the reality of the church’s spiritual unity in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, Paul uses the body of Christ metaphor to issue this challenge to live in unity to the churches of his time and to our churches today.