Pastor Gordon Cook

Lightly edited sermon transcript:

Well, brethren turn, please, in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, I’m just going to read one verse and then we’ll go back to the text and deal with some of the other verses. 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 12, “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.” Well, let’s look to The Lord and ask for His help.

Father in Heaven, we bow before You, and we acknowledge that we are in desperate need of Your Spirit, the Spirit that illumines minds, that helps us to see. We often feel like blind men, and so we plead afresh for the Spirit to come and help us to see who we are as a church. We thank You for the blessed institution of the church, and help us, as pastors, to appreciate the wonderful privilege that we have to pastor the flock of God, to be part of the bride of Christ, but also to be part of the body of Christ. We, again, ask You to come, be our Teacher, be our Instructor, and we pray this in Christ’s name, amen.

We all know people, I’m sure, who have struggled with Alzheimer’s or dementia, it steals away your memory month after month, year after year. It’s an awful thing to lose your memory and forget who you are! My mother passed away last year because of that disease. The last ten years of her life she couldn’t recognize any of her four sons, and she didn’t know who she was. When people forget who they are, they really can’t function, or function all that well, but there’s also a problem, a spiritual problem, a moral problem: we can also forget who we are. The unregenerate man does not know who he is. The unregenerate man doesn’t know that he is an image bearer, fearfully, wonderfully made by a Creator-God. Most of the unregenerate don’t know that they are sinners who need a Savior, and we can’t forget that the devil works hard at identity theft. Even Christians can forget who they are, and we need to constantly remind ourselves and even the body—or the church, the people of God—who they are in Christ Jesus.

Jesus understood the importance of knowing who we are. He begins that famous sermon “The Sermon on the Mount” with eight identity markers: “We are the poor in spirit, we are those that mourn, we are the pure in heart, we are the meek, we are the persecuted”…and then He goes on, you might recall, to describe the Christian in a corporate or collective, using collective metaphors. “You are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth.” He wants us to understand not only who we are individually, but who we are corporately or collectively. And when we seek to understand who we are collectively or corporately we enter a huge study called “ecclesiology” or “the doctrine of the church.”

The Greek word for church is ecclesia, it is sprinkled throughout the New Testament some 100 times, but what, exactly, is the church? Who is the church? That’s not always an easy question to answer, as easy as we might think, and the reason being is that the perception that is firmly rooted—at least in American culture—is that the church is a building. When people talk about going to church they are thinking about brick and mortar, a location, generally, not identification. When someone was asked, “Where do you go to church?” The reply came back, “I am the church.” It’s an identity issue, but let me ask you: what comes to your mind? What comes to the to the minds of the people of God that you pastor? What comes to their minds when they hear the word “church”? And thankfully, when we open our Bibles, we don’t have to walk into a dense fog, we don’t have to go hunting for answers to that question in obscure places.

This is one of the things that God wants every Christian to know, He wants every pastor to know: who we are, who is the church. In fact, someone has even said that the New Testament could be called “a church book.” “A church book,” because it has so much to say about the church! But probably the easiest or the simplest way—at least in my limited study to identify the church and understand—is to go looking for pictures of the church. You know that God Himself puts Himself under metaphors or paints pictures of Himself. God is The Rock, God is The High Tower, He likens Himself to a Lion, an Eagle, and those pictures help us to understand who God is. Likewise, the church is painted by God. Very different pictures are painted by God to help us understand who or what is the church, and there at least—some think—at least 100 different pictures of the church. So the sheer number tells us that the church is wonderfully complex. One picture doesn’t capture the church, that’s so important. So important for us as pastors, as well, because we all probably have a favorite picture. If you had only one picture, what would you chose? Again, we need to be careful of having favorite pictures and excluding other pictures of the church, because, I think, if we do that we become vulnerable to imbalance and perhaps a distorted view of the church.

If I had one picture, one picture, not because it’s my favorite one necessarily, but because I think it’s probably the most important one: it’s the picture of the body of Christ. The body of Christ. In our Confession, this is the picture that is put there in that first paragraph of chapter 26. In fact, it’s played side by side that other picture that we looked at: the spouse or the bride of Christ, but this is the second picture that the Baptist forefathers set before us in that chapter of the 1689 Confession of Faith. That’s what we want to consider on this hour, and we’re going to look at it much like we looked at the previous picture: two basic heads, two basic perspectives. First of all: the prominent place of the body, the church, the prominent place given to the body, this metaphor for the church; and then secondly: the practical significance, why does the Apostle Paul make such use of this body metaphor? The practical significance of the body.

So, first of all then: the prominent place of the body concept or image for the church. You could argue, could you not, that God ordained the marriage institution, and when He did, He was thinking about the church? He was thinking about the church, because every Christian marriage is to mirror Christ’s relationship to the church, right? Ephesians 5, and couldn’t we argue this: God, when He made the body on the sixth day of Creation, He was thinking about the church? He was thinking about the church. Has there ever been a time when God wasn’t thinking about His church? It’s one of the favorite images, graphic pictures in the New Testament. Let me just give a few texts of Scripture where you find this body metaphor. Romans 12, where Paul, you might recall, begins that chapter talking about the body as a living sacrifice. He’s focusing upon the physical body, but then he quickly transitions and begins to focus upon the corporate body, the church, “For we have many members in one body,” verse 4. Verse 5, “So, we being many, are one body in Christ,” and then Paul uses this body metaphor in the letters to the Corinthians, that body analogy is used 17 times. Here he draws out several implications, we read, certainly, one here in 1 Corinthians 12. In addition, you have seven references to the body in the book of Ephesians, 5 references in the book of Colossians.

Now, God could have used any figure or metaphor for the church. He could’ve used a block of wood, He could’ve used a tree stump, He could’ve used a credit card, a diamond ring, something very simple in its structure or design, but God uses the body. Is there anything more amazingly complex than the body? Anything more complex? Think of the human ear, the human eye, think of the human hand, or the human arm, the human foot. I don’t think we think a lot of times—at least I don’t—of how incredible the body is. As we get older we tend to complain about our bodies, we become somewhat dissatisfied because they don’t quite function the way they used to. Plus, we live in a culture that can easily breed discontentment about our bodies due to the ubiquitous, sheer volume of images that get paraded before our eyes almost every day. Someone has commented that the young men today see more images of beautiful women in a single day than the average man did 200 years ago in a lifetime, and seeing all those strong, beautiful bodies can make people envious, discontent with their own bodies. But thinking biblically, thinking biblically, we should be very thankful for our bodies, regardless of shape and size, regardless of how strong, how weak, even if we have a sick body, far better than no body at all! You wouldn’t want to be a ghost, would you? You wouldn’t want to be someone who couldn’t actually hug someone or feel a kiss on your cheek.

The church is not given a body type or size, but it’s very clear that there is an identification of body, a particular body, in the Bible. It’s the body of Christ! It’s His body! Now, that’s pretty significant. Paul can’t think of the church without thinking of Christ’s body, and we should remember this: when Jesus was on earth He had a real human body, didn’t He? He had a full, real humanity. He had feet, He had hands, He had ears, eyes, all the body parts that you have He had! He made good use of His body, but when Jesus ascended into Heaven He went up, His body went with Him. Somewhere in Heaven there is a real body glorified, but tangible, it can be seen, it can be touched, but can’t we say this: that the body of Christ is still active on earth? Can’t we say it still walks? Can’t we say it still reaches out with its hands, it still listens with its ears and speaks with its tongue and it’s not limited to one place or even one tongue, but it’s found almost everywhere? The church is the body of Christ! You use the language of that little poem: “He has no hands but our hands to do His work today; He has no feet but our feet to lead men in the way; He has no voice but our voice to tell men He died.”

But now, the question has been asked, “Where did this image or illustration of the church come from?” It’s not found in the Old Testament, to my knowledge. The body metaphor is absolutely unique to the New Testament, whereas those other metaphors are found, at least trace elements of them, are found in the Old Testament. For instance: the agricultural metaphor of vines and branches that’s found in the Psalms; the shepherd/sheep analogy that’s found in the Psalms, Psalm 23; Isaiah 40, the family metaphor, father/mother; Psalm 103; Malachi 3; all of those images, or those metaphors, have their roots in the Old Testament. But the body metaphor is unique, unique to the New Testament, and the question has been asked, “Where did Paul get that from?” Well, some suggest he got it from Luke, Luke the doctor, the physician. I can imagine in a most missionary journey they didn’t have time to share and talk about a lot of different things, and maybe Luke talked to Paul a lot about the body. He’s a doctor, right? Luke, Doctor Luke, he’s called “The Beloved Physician” in Colossians 4:14. I tend to think this: he got it from Jesus Himself. When? Where? Well, Acts chapter 9 is where I would turn your attention, again, I wouldn’t dogmatize this necessarily, but it does seem to be the place where Paul got His first introduction to Ecclesiology 101.

Acts chapter 9, what happens here? Well, it’s the conversion, the most significant conversion in the history of the church. This man Saul of Tarsus, a pharisee, meets The Lord Jesus Christ, but notice how the chapter starts, verse 1 of Acts 9, “Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus.” He’s expanding his liquidation program: getting rid of Christians. Here Saul of Tarsus is like a rabid wolf frothing at the mouth, and he’s going to devour the church. He really thinks he’s going to destroy this young, fledgling church. He’s a man on a mission, but he never accomplishes what he intended to accomplish, did he? It’s because he meets the glorified, resurrected Lord, and you have a series of sledgehammer events or actions here sort of to pound this proud, arrogant, self-righteous man into submission.

God knows how to get people’s attention with the bright, brilliant flash of light, verse 3. A force of power that sends the man Saul sprawling on the ground, and then he hears a voice, verse 4, the man who thought he was calling the shots was brought face to face with a real person: Jesus. “Saul, Saul,” Jesus would often repeat names, wouldn’t He? Remember? “Martha, Martha,” “Mary, Mary,” “Saul, Saul.” He lets Saul know that when you persecute the church, you persecute Him. “The church is My body, My eyes, My feet, My hands, My ears.” This is where Paul got his first theological lesson, he learned Christology 101 and Ecclesiology 101, and he never forgot it. I think this is where he learned, this is why this concept became his favorite metaphor for the church, and we really cannot appreciate, I don’t think we really, fully can appreciate what the church is and how it functions unless we grasp the significance of this body metaphor. So, that’s what I want us to consider in the second place.

We’ve looked at something of its prominent place given in Scripture: body physically but body spiritually, but secondly: the practical significance of the body metaphor. Why the body metaphor? What’s the significance or the meaning of this graphic? Well, one picture is worth a thousand words, but in the case of the Bible, these pictures are worth a thousand plus a thousand sermons, and we can take advantage of these pictures. When you look into a mirror of a body and see a body, and you learn what the church is, what are we learning about the church from this body metaphor or graphic? Well, let me say there are at least five things, and they’re all positive. There’s a lot of negative press, isn’t there, about the church today? The church in the eyes of many is hypocritical, anti-women, anti-gay, judgmental. The church has lost its mission, its a dying institution. People are encouraged to stay away from the church, the church is irrelevant, outmoded, outdated. I don’t think anybody would say that about their body, would they? Has your body ever lost its relevance? Can you ever just do away with your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet? I don’t think Paul uses the body metaphor to get us to think negatively about the church. No, he’s using this metaphor to help us appreciate how wonderful the church is, to help us to understand how unique and special the church is, and, as I said, five wonderful truths. Maybe there are many more that can be derived from this body metaphor or concept about the church.

Number one: the body metaphor teaches us the vitality of the church of Christ. The vitality of the church of Christ. Now, the body metaphor is used in two different ways in Scripture, sometimes it’s used for the whole body, including the head, the eyes, the ears, 1 Corinthians 12; but other times, the body is used for everything but the head, the head is excluded. The reason being is that Jesus is the head. He wants us to focus upon Jesus distinct from the rest of the body. Ephesians 1:22, “And He puts all things under His feet and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body.” The figure of body, when used that way, emphasizes the preeminence of Christ, the sovereignty of Christ over the church. The head of the church, but the head reminds us of this, as well: He is the source and the life of the church. You can cut off certain parts of your body and still live, right? Cut off your head, you’re dead. No head, no life. The church needs to be constantly nourished and fed and given light from the head. Isn’t that what Paul is thinking when he writes in Ephesians 4, “Who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint supplies…” He’s thinking of the Head sustaining, giving life to the body. His life runs through our veins, everything we do as a body, whether it’s our hands, our feet, depends upon the head!

Think of that other metaphor that Christ used Himself: He is the vine, we are the branches, again, underscoring the dependence upon Jesus for life, for nourishment, for health, for strength, for everything we do. And here’s what makes the church such a force to reckon with, why it has so much power and strength, why it will never be destroyed, why it will never perish, why it will live forever: because Christ is the head! He is the life, the bread of life that feeds, sustains, nourishes the church. So, the metaphor of the body certainly points us in this direction: the source of life, vitality, Christ Himself.

Secondly, the metaphor teaches us the need for unity in the church. Unity in the church. All the major metaphors, it could be argued, teach something about unity of the church: one bride; one Husband; one flock, the flock of God; one Shepherd: Jesus Christ; one family: the family of God; one Father; one elder brother; one building; one foundation; one body with one head. The Apostle Paul, you note in Ephesians 4, uses this figure for that very reason: to underscore the whole matter of unity. Ephesians 4, when you get to Ephesians 4 there’s a shift of the emphasis. In the first three chapters we have one command, one command in the first three chapters of Ephesians. You get into chapter 4 and it’s like Paul gets behind the machine gun and starts to fire, fire exhortation after exhortation, command after command, but notice what he says, verse 1 of Ephesians 4, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling for which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Notice now how he angers this exhortation in a sevenfold, we could say, sevenfold, concrete foundation, using that one number one. One, seven times he uses the one, seven times: one, one, one… “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body.”

Now, I don’t have to tell you men, I don’t think, how precious unity is. If you’ve ever lost it, you really appreciate it, don’t you? One of the most frightening things I have ever felt, as a pastor, is when a church is threatened by disunity. It can be gut-wrenching, can’t it? Sleepless nights, and when a church splinters like Humpty Dumpty who sat on a wall and had a great fall, none of the king’s men could put Humpty Dumpty back together again, we can’t create unity. We can’t create unity, we’re helpless. We, by God’s grace can maintain it, and that’s what he’s telling the Ephesians to do here. He knows that unity is so vitally important for the strength and health of a church, and it’s tied to good theology, and so he anchors it in this one concept of the church. We constantly need to tell God’s people that there’s one God, Father, one Lord, one baptism, one body, the church! And to diligently keep unity, Paul lets us know it’s going to take work. He uses a strong word here: “endeavoring.” “Endeavoring,” it’s not going to be easy! When you think of the churches in the Bible, a lot of them were marred, weren’t they, with disunity? The Galatian churches, you’re devouring one another.

Think of the Corinthian church, would you want to pastor that church? When I start to feel sorry for myself I remember the Corinthian church. Divisions, splintered groups, “I am of Cephas, I am of Paul, I am of Apollos.” They were fighting at the love feast, and so Paul jackhammers this matter of unity when he writes to the Corinthians in several different ways. He picks up this body concept, nowhere does he use the body concept more than when he writes to the Corinthians. He uses it to deal with sexual immorality, “Don’t you know that your body was bought with a price?” He uses it to deal with divisions, he uses it to deal with the use of gifts. 1 Corinthians 12:12, notice that text, again, that we read earlier, “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.” Notice how he drives it home with the hammer of repetition three times: “One body, one body, one body.” He’s telling the Corinthians, “You have one body, stop your squabbling!” The church is not a boxing ring, it’s not a chicken coop! The church is militant, but it doesn’t attack itself! It attacks the devil, it attacks the world, but not herself. When a body begins to attack itself, it’s sick! Why the body metaphor? The body metaphor teaches us about the source or the vitality of church life: Christ as the head. The body metaphor teaches us about the importance of unity, one body.

Third lesson that we can draw from this body metaphor, and why Paul made good use of this graphic: the body metaphor teaches us that the church is a place of diversity. One of the reasons that Paul, I think, loved to use this metaphor was that he could make several applications, draw out several spiritual lessons, and we’ve noted that vitality, unity, but also diversity. That’s the whole point that he drives here in 1 Corinthians 12 as he seeks to give guidance to the Corinthians in use of their gifts. He stresses in chapter 13, the importance of love, the impermanence of love and the use of their gifts, and here in chapter 12 stresses the fact that each member has a unique function and contribution to the body. In all likelihood the Corinthians were resending, not enjoying the differences. Some, perhaps, were bragging about their gifts, and well, they said, “My gift is more important than your gift.” Some were probably emphasizing the speaking gifts or the charismata, the spectacular gifts, the tongue-speaking, the prophesying, and that probably created some real tension in the church in those who had a more low-level kind of gift and felt like they were being shunned, treated as though they were less holy or less useful. It may have been those who had those “inferior gifts” who were becoming envious, discontent with their gifts. Some may even have been talking about leaving the church, going somewhere else where they might have a higher profile or a greater usefulness.

So, Paul reminds them the church is the body, and, like the human body, it possesses a dazzling kind of diversity, that means, as he says in 1 Corinthians 12:15, “The foot shouldn’t be saying, ‘Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body,”; verse 16, “And the ear shouldn’t be saying “Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body.” Now, to drive the point home even further, the Apostle says something here about the body, again, in a more grotesque sort of way, verse 17, “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were hearing, where would be the smelling?” Do you see what he’s saying? Imagine just this big nose or this big eye! It’s rather grotesque, isn’t it? It’d be pretty useless. Think about a pepperoni pizza in front of you, and all you had was a nose. You could smell it, but you couldn’t eat it. What about hearing a piano playing, and you had just one, big eye? When you’d walk into church, you could see the piano, but you couldn’t hear the piano. The body has many members, it possesses a wonderful, dazzling diversity. It can serve Jesus Christ in all kinds of different ways.

One of the things you find with a cult is that it flattens or squelches diversity. Everybody’s the same, everybody looks the same, talks the same. A cult tends to force people into a rigid, straight jacket kind of lifestyle, a crass uniformity, a robotic kind of behavior is mandated, the group of people are more like a machine, not a body. A cult attacks our humanity, a cult attacks our creativity, our God-given uniqueness and distinctness; whereas a church highlights, it broadcasts diversity. When people walk into a church they should see diversity, a diversity of skin, a diversity of age, a diversity of economic backgrounds, rich, poor, a diversity of personality, a Peter-like personality: very outgoing, a more silent type like John, or a Thomas who easily gets depressed, but he’s a sensitive guy, an Elijah and an Obadiah; pretty different kinds of men, but I wonder if Elijah could’ve done what Obadiah did, and I wonder if Obadiah could’ve done what Elijah did. Different men, different gifts, different strengths, a dazzling diversity, but at one and the same time a deep, profound unity.

Now, how do you explain that? Well, you really can: it’s a spirit-wrought work. It’s a supernatural work when people so diverse, so different sit under the same roof, worship the same God, love each other, serve one another, differ to one another, it’s marvelous to see! It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of that! Where do you find anything like that in the world? It’s one of the marvels of the Gospel, it underscores the power of the Gospel. It’s a great way to let the world know Christianity is different from every other religion in the world. We’re not threatened, we’re not afraid of diversity, no, it revels, it’s railed, it rejoices in diversity. The church is the body, and you’ll not find that anywhere else on earth. In every other venue diversity usually causes tensions and conflict, prejudices and intolerances, but not on the church, or at least it shouldn’t. Why? What’s the significance of the body concept? Well, this picture captures a lot of different truths, doesn’t it? It speaks of vitality, unity, diversity, but there’s something else, another reason, I believe, why Paul used this metaphor and why it could be argued it was his favorite metaphor.

The body metaphor teaches us the need for accountability and dependability upon the church! The body reminds us that we need the church! We need one another! Look at your body, every part is depended upon the other part. 1 Corinthians 12:21, “And the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’; nor again can the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” The hands need the feet, the eyes need the ears, the ears need the eyes, and vice versa. Think of this: when you’re driving a car, what body part would you want to eliminate? You eyes? Don’t think so. You ears? I don’t think so. Your hands? Your feet? You need all your body parts, don’t you, a good part of your body to function, to drive a car? You need your eyes, you need your ears, you need your hands on the wheel, you need your feet on the brake or on the gas pedal. Take your feet off the gas pedal or don’t use your feet, guess what’s going to happen? You’ll be in a collision or in a ditch! The Apostle Paul is saying we need one another when it comes to the Christian life. I, personally, believe that there are no two things that have probably caused more problems in the church today than these two: the consumer mentality, and the crass individualism of Western civilization, the crass individualism which says, “I can do it on my own.”

The body metaphor doesn’t allow us to climb on horses and ride off into the sunset like the Lone Ranger. The body metaphor says, “You can’t go it alone! You can’t do it!” Now, maybe there are situations where people have to go it alone, right? There’s providential circumstances. Think of Joseph in Egypt, I mean, that wasn’t something he chose, but God kept him alive and it’s like that figure that Owen uses, talking about the preserving grace of God, it’s “like a spark in the midst of an ocean of water.” God’s grace can keep that spark alive, that’s God, He’s able. He kept Joseph alive, He kept Daniel and his three friends alive there in Babylon, and Christians, sometimes do to persecution or whatever, can be isolated. John Bunyan sat on a bed in prison for, what, 12 years? God kept him alive, God preserved him, but those were not choices! They didn’t make those choices, and when people make choices they shrivel, they shrivel and they become stunted.

God never meant for any Christian to go it alone, never. Even Jesus couldn’t go it alone. Why do you think He had 12 men? Why did He have three men in such close, intimate relationship? Why did He have one that was even closer than all three: John? Jesus needed friends, He needed fellowship, He was a man. He asked His friends—remember in the garden—to pray for Him. He knew He needed help, and when you think of all those one-another commandments that are sprinkled throughout the New Testament, what are they saying? What are they saying? They’re saying this much: we need one another. We need one another, we need to exhort one another, we need to encourage one another, we need pray for one another, we need to serve one another. The body needs you, you need the body! So, we come to the question, “Why did Paul make this his favorite metaphor?” You can understand why, can’t you? Several reasons: it teaches us the vitality of the church, the unity, the diversity, the dependability, the accountability; but in the fifth and final place: the body metaphor teaches us the need for growth and maturity in the body of Christ.

The need for growth and maturity. Notice how the Apostle Paul uses that metaphor to talk about growth in Christ. Every time he picks up his pen—it seems that every time, except, I think, with the churches there in Galatia, but every time he picks it up he’s commenting upon the growth: the growth in Christ, the growth in faith, the growth in love. To the Ephesians he could say, “Therefore, after I heard of you faith in the Lord Jesus and you love for all the saints I did not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. I’m thankful that you’re growing!” A body grows! He could write to the Thessalonians, “And we are bound to give thanks always for you, brethren, as is fitting, because your faith grows and the love of every one of you abound towards each other.” Isn’t that why God puts us into a body, so we can grow? Ephesians 4:11, “He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some pastors, teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of a ministry, for the edifying of the body.” Ephesians 4:15, “But, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who was the head from whom the whole body, joined and knit together…” together, “…by which each joint supplies.” Every part gives strength, gives nourishment, gives help to the body!

Every Christian, I would think, wants to grow, but you have to be integrated into the life of the church. Take a knife, if you don’t believe me, cut off your finger, put it over there, and see what happens. It dies. It dies, unless there’s a quick, surgical operation to reattach the finger, it dies. You can be sitting on a pew, you could be listening to sermons, quite regularly, in fact, and still be disengaged, disconnected. Not everybody who sits on a pew is part of the dynamic of growth. I’m sure some people in your church you’ve seen them for years sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, and you think, “Why, why don’t they grow? What’s wrong?” Well, probably—there might be a number of things wrong—but they’re probably not connected, they’re not serving, they’re not fulfilling the one-another commandments. They might like your sermons, they might like you personally, but they’re not engaged, they’re not vitally connected.

It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it, as pastors, to see people grow? Paul seemed to be always looking for signs of growth, that’s something we should do, as pastors. We started to do that five years ago. I’ve been at Grace for 25 years, not saying we’ve never did it, but we begin our elder’s meeting—and no, you don’t have to follow our example—but this is what we start with: three families through our church directory, and we don’t discuss any negatives, and, you know, sometimes it’s pretty hard. Where do you see them using their gifts? Where do you see them growing? Is there something that we can commend them for? We can rejoice and say, “God, thank you, I see evidence of grace in their lives!” Now, that helps us, because, you know, let’s be honest, we, as pastors, can get pretty negative, and negative about God’s people, but it’s a wonderful thing to see Christians growing in faith and love! It’s a wonderful thing to see them using more of their time, using more of their gifts to serve one another. It’s a wonderful thing to see the church growing!

Now, sometimes it’s hard to see growth, I realize that, because most of it takes place on the inside, but that’s one of the blessings of a long-term ministry, ten, fifteen, twenty years, you can see growth! Sort of like your children when they were growing, you couldn’t tell from one day to the next, could you? But if you had a little marker—we did that, my parents, they’d mark us so high, and then we’d come back at two or three months and you could see we were growing, but took time. As pastors, if you’ve been there for five, six, ten years, twelve years, twenty years, thirty, you can stand back and say, “Yeah, they’re growing, they’ve grown.” Paul makes good use of the body analogy. I believe, again, it’s his favorite because it says so much about the church, but let me just close, brethren, with three very short, brief applications. What can this say to us, and what can we do to reinforce this very vital picture of the church for us pastors?

Number one: I have the word “privilege.” The body metaphor says it’s a privilege to be part of the church. A privilege, doesn’t matter how small you are, it doesn’t matter how insignificant someone might feel. You might be a toe, you might be a finger, but if you’re part of the body of Christ, what a wonderful thing! What a privilege, and when people begin to understand the body metaphor they’re less likely to be complaining about the church and more likely to rejoice and be overwhelmed that they are part of the body of Christ. It’s the most beautiful body in the world, it’s the body of Christ! What a privilege to be that close, that intimately related to Jesus Christ. Is there a greater privilege? Is there a greater honor? Is there any social club that you’d rather belong to? A sports team? Political party? I don’t think so. Here’s where people grow, here’s where people serve, here’s where people learn to love and to give and to pray. How tragic, isn’t it, to see Christians living detached, isolated lives? Look what they’re missing. The body concept tells them what they’re missing. So, there’s a privilege, brethren, that needs to be underscored when we think of this body metaphor.

Secondly: a challenge, and we need to challenge our people to grow, to mature in light of the body image, not waste their lives, not be sluggish, out of shape, but become strong and well-muscled and well-coordinated in running the race and getting bigger and doing more service. They should be like the guy who comes to the local gym and he’s a scrawny, 99-pound weakling, but he wants to put on some muscle and he wants to be more useful. He works at the local factory but he can’t lift 100-pound bags, and so he goes and works out. He gets stronger and he can go back now to this factory and he’s more productive! We want to see our members get stronger, more useful to the service for Christ and in kingdom work. We want to see healthy bodies, strong churches! The privilege; the challenge; I’m going to end this sermon on a negative note, sort of: the danger.

The danger. Why does God give us so many images of the church? The shepherd, the flock, the bride, the temple, the family, the body; well, again, as I said earlier: they tell us about the multifaceted function of the church, the complexity of the church. It’s amazing what the church can do, but here’s the danger: if we focus on one picture, one picture, and lose sight of the bewildering array of pictures we will, I’m afraid, become imbalanced and lopsided in our thinking and in our living. As pastors, I might ask you: what’s your favorite image? You know what probably most of us would say? The shepherd/sheep analogy, right? Because it really helps us understand our vocation. What are you to do, as a pastor? Well, shepherd. That helps you understand your vocation, and men tend to get pretty focused upon their vocation, don’t we? “This is what I do, so yeah, that’s the one I think about the most, that’s the one I appreciate the most, that’s my favorite one!” I am to be an under shepherd with the flock, but what about the body?

In an article by Pastor Paul Tripp titled “Why Pastors Need the Body,” he says, “Pastors are never to live outside the body, or think themselves as not in need of the body.” Why do pastors sometimes fall into sin, grotesque sin? I mean, there might be a lot of reasons, but I’ve wondered at times is it because they became isolated? They thought they were above the body, they thought they didn’t need the body. They thought they could sort of live above the body. They didn’t need the fingers, they didn’t need the toes, they didn’t need the eyes, they didn’t need the ears. They really thought they could grow and mature without the body! Pastoral separation and isolation is dangerous. Don’t you have a heart like everybody else just as deceitful, just as wicked, just as prone to wander? You need the body, I need the body, we need the life of the body. Whoever said we were exempt, somehow detached from the body? Does he say, “Everybody’s a part of the body except pastors”?

You need the body! I need the body, and we need to let the body know we need them! It’s not wrong to seek counsel from the body, to get counsel from people in your church, maybe when you’re wrestling with how to raise your seventeen-year-old or eighteen-year-old son or daughter. Well, why can’t you, as a pastor, go to someone who’s raised their children and say, “I need some perspective”? Why wouldn’t you do that? Don’t you need help? We need other people to minister to us, we can lose perspective. We have hearts that can get hard, we have consciences that can get seared. It’s unhealthy for any Christian, pastor included, to live as though they are outside or above the body of Christ. The longer I live the more I realize how much I need the church. I need the church! I need the hands, I need the eyes, I need the ears to come along and help me. It’s a wonderful thing to pastor a church, but it’s more wonderful to be a part of the church. Thank God for the body of Jesus Christ and His glorious church. Let’s pray.

Father in Heaven, we thank You, we bless You, again, for the church of Christ. We thank You that we can all rejoice in the church, and help us, Lord, to learn from these images, so that we, ourselves, might be found members growing vitally, organically related to other members. Help us to be wise in how we instruct our people. Let us give them the full range of these Biblical graphics and metaphors to help them to live the Christian life and to rejoice in being the church. We pray this in Christ’s name, amen.

This is a lightly edited transcript of a sermon. All rights reserved.