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You are the Body of Christ

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Cor 12:27)

We are the body of Christ.

Wait...what?  We are the body of Christ?!  

Process this with me for a second.  This is not simply a metaphor.  We who are united to Jesus Christ by faith are mystically united to Him and are His body!  I fear we've heard these words too many times and meditated on them far too rarely! 

We are the body of Christ!  What a privilege!  What a blessing!  What a call to holiness, to walk in a manner worthy of our Lord (Col 1:10)!

You, Paul says, are the body.  The KJV retains the plural with it's Shakespearean "ye."  You--the church in Corinth; the Church universal--are collectively one body (I believe the letter to my forefathers in West Virginia renders it "all y'all").

In a real sense, we lose ourselves in our identity with Christ.  "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me," Paul says elsewhere (Gal 2:20).  Christ is all and in all (Col 3:11).  Our mystical unity to Christ unites us to the Triune God (John 17:20-22) and also to one another.  Being bound to Christ, we are inescapably bound to other Christians, as well.  We are one body with one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism--one God (Eph 4:4-6).  

Yet, in case we are tempted to think that our individuality succumbs to this corporality, Paul tells us that we are "individually members of" this body.  Christ and His body give me a new identity and purpose, but my individuality is not lost.  My position as an accountable, relational individual before God is redeemed and maximized through my being joined to the Body.  My faith must be personal.  My relationship to my Creator is unique--He knows my pain, my joy.  He knows the hairs on my head.

This is the distinctive beauty of the Christian faith.  Faith in the Triune God alone does justice to the one and the many, the individual and the collective.  We are one body, but we are individually members of it.  We are the body of Christ, yet your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19).

So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. (Rom 12:5) 


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