1 Corinthians 12 · Passage · Unity and Fellowship
One Body, Many Members
Paul set the church at Corinth beside a human body to teach its members their need of one another.
Paul asks his readers where the hearing of the body would be if the whole of it were an eye.
Now you are the body of Christ, and each of you is a member of it.
- The passage
- 1 Corinthians 12:12 to 27, 1 Corinthians 12:4 to 7
- Book
- 1 Corinthians
- Hold in memory
- 1 Corinthians 12:27
Summary
Paul turns from the different gifts of the one Spirit to a picture of the human body. The body is one though its parts are many, and the parts differ because God arranged them so. A part that thinks itself lesser has no right to leave, and a part that thinks itself greater has no right to send another away. Paul ends by telling the Corinthians that the picture is of them.
- The one Spirit baptized Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, into the one body (1 Corinthians 12:13).
- Paul calls the parts that seem weaker indispensable, and he says God honored the parts that lacked honor (1 Corinthians 12:22 to 24).
- When one member suffers, the whole body suffers with it (1 Corinthians 12:26).
- Paul uses the same picture in Romans 12:4 to 5 and names Christ the head of the body in Ephesians 4:15 to 16.
The Ground of the One Body
Paul sets the picture of the body on the one Spirit who gives every gift.
One Body, Many Members studies 1 Corinthians 12:12 to 27, the passage between Paul's list of the gifts of the Spirit and his chapter on love. It belongs to the value of unity, because Paul roots the oneness of the church in the one Spirit and asks every member to care for the rest.
The question the study answers is how a church of unlike people with unlike gifts can be one body without all becoming alike. It sets the passage against the quarrels at Corinth and follows the picture through its five turns. It places the picture beside Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and a fable from Roman history, and it gives two readings of the baptism in one Spirit.
There are different gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different ministries, but the same Lord. There are different ways of working, but the same God works all things in all people.The three lines name the same Spirit, the same Lord and the same God behind every difference, and the picture of the body rests on that ground.
Paul adds that “to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7), and he names the gifts themselves in 1 Corinthians 12:8 to 11.
The body is a unit, though it is composed of many parts. And although its parts are many, they all form one body. So it is with Christ.Paul states the whole picture in one verse before he unfolds it, and he ends it with Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given one Spirit to drink.The verse stands here as the ground of the picture that Paul draws from 1 Corinthians 12:14 on.
The Picture in Five Turns
Paul builds the picture verse by verse from 1 Corinthians 12:14 to 1 Corinthians 12:27.
Paul's picture moves from one body of many parts, through two members who speak wrongly, to God's purpose for the body and to the Corinthians themselves.
The five turns of 1 Corinthians 12:14 to 27 in order, each with its verses, its Berean words and the point Paul makes there.
God's Arrangement of the Members
Paul's answer rests on God's arrangement and on the honor given to the weaker parts.
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), observed that “among men each is apt to compare himself with those whose gifts some way resemble his own”.
But in fact, God has arranged the members of the body, every one of them, according to His design.The verse stands here because no member chose its place in the body.
On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts we consider less honorable, we treat with greater honor. And our unpresentable parts are treated with special modesty, whereas our presentable parts have no such need. But God has composed the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its members should have mutual concern for one another.The four verses give the care the body takes of its weaker parts, and the purpose God had in giving them honor.
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), drew the lesson for the church. Instead of despising a fellow member for his infirmities, Christians “should endeavour to cover and conceal them”.
Divided Corinth and a Roman Fable
The body picture answers a church that had already split into parties.
The letter opens on the same fault. Chloe's household had told Paul of quarrels, and the Corinthians were saying, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:11 to 12).
I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree together, so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be united in mind and conviction.Paul's first appeal of the letter asks for the very thing the picture of the body describes.
The Greek noun rendered divisions in that appeal is schisma. It returns in 1 Corinthians 11:18, where Paul hears that “when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you”. It stands a third time in 1 Corinthians 12:25, where God arranges the body so that it has no division. Albert Barnes, in his Notes on the New Testament, sends the reader of 1 Corinthians 12:25 back to his note on 1 Corinthians 11:18.
Roman history told a fable of the body. Livy, in his History of Rome (Book 2, chapter 32), tells how the senate sent Menenius Agrippa to the commons, who had withdrawn to the Sacred Mount. Agrippa told them of a time when the members of the body plotted “that the hands should not convey food to the mouth”. In the end “the members themselves and the entire body were reduced to the last degree of emaciation.”
In the fable the belly, which the other members resented as idle, “did not so much receive nourishment as supply it”. Livy compares the revolt of the members to the resentment of the people against the senators. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown judged that the fable “was probably before Paul's mind”. Paul's use differs at one point, since in his account God gives honor where honor was lacking (1 Corinthians 12:24), while Livy's fable speaks for the senators who already held it.
The Same Body in Paul's Other Letters
The picture of the body reaches beyond Corinth into Paul's other letters.
Just as each of us has one body with many members, and not all members have the same function, so in Christ we who are many are one body, and each member belongs to one another.Romans stands here because Paul draws the same picture for a second church.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ Himself, who is the head. From Him the whole body, fitted and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love through the work of each individual part.Ephesians stands here because it gives the purpose of the picture as the maturing of the whole church.
Colossians 1:18 says of Christ that “He is the head of the body, the church”. In 1 Corinthians 10:17 Paul joins the one body to the one loaf of the Lord's table: “we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one loaf.”
Voices on the One Body
Two early writers apply the picture to the common life of the church.
died 99 · Clement of Rome
Clement, writing to the same church at Corinth, stands here for the body as a picture of order among believers of every rank.
Read the page on Clement of Rome
“The great cannot subsist without the small, nor the small without the great. There is a kind of mixture in all things, and thence arises mutual advantage. Let us take our body for an example. The head is nothing without the feet, and the feet are nothing without the head; yea, the very smallest members of our body are necessary and useful to the whole body. But all work harmoniously together, and are under one common rule for the preservation of the whole body.”
Clement of Rome · Letter to the Corinthians (Clement) · on 1 Corinthians 12:12Patristic
died 220 · Tertullian
Tertullian stands here for the shared grief of the body as a reason to bring one's faults to fellow believers instead of hiding them.
“But among brethren and fellow-servants, where there is common hope, fear, joy, grief, suffering, because there is a common Spirit from a common Lord and Father, why do you think these brothers to be anything other than yourself? Why flee from the partners of your own mischances, as from such as will derisively cheer them? The body cannot feel gladness at the trouble of any one member, it must necessarily join with one consent in the grief, and in labouring for the remedy. In a company of two is the church; but the church is Christ.”
Tertullian · On Repentance · on 1 Corinthians 12:26Patristic
What Is the Baptism in One Spirit?
Commentators have read the baptism of 1 Corinthians 12:13 as water baptism and as the work of the Spirit.
The question is what Paul means by the baptism “in one Spirit” in 1 Corinthians 12:13.
The verse alludes to water baptismJamieson, Fausset and Brown
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, in their Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), found “a direct allusion to baptism in the beginning of the verse”. They found “an indirect allusion to the Lord's Supper” in its last words.
The objection: the verse names the Spirit as the one in whom believers are baptized and says nothing of water.
The Spirit's own work of joining believersJohn Gill; Albert Barnes
John Gill, in his Exposition of the New Testament (1746 to 1748), held that the verse “is to be understood not of water baptism”. The apostle, he wrote, “says not in one, and the same water”. Albert Barnes read it of “the agency or operation of the same Spirit, the Holy Spirit”, by which “we have been united into one body.”
The objection: Paul ties baptism to union with Christ in Galatians 3:27, where he writes that “all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”
Whether the baptism in the Spirit comes with conversion or after it is a further question, and 1 Corinthians 12:13 is one of its texts.
Many Parts, One Body
A church of unlike members stays one by the Spirit who made it one.
Each member keeps the place God gave it, honors the parts that seem weak and shares the pain and the joy of the rest.
As it is, there are many parts, but one body.The verse stands here because it holds the many and the one of the passage in a single line.
Paul's next words point the Corinthians to “the most excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12:31), the love he describes in the chapter that follows.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged Greek text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- Livy, The History of Rome, Books 1 to 8, translated by D. Spillan (London, 1853)
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on 1 Corinthians 12:13 and 12:14.
- John Gill, Exposition of the New Testament (1746 to 1748), on 1 Corinthians 12:13.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the New Testament (1832 to 1869), on 1 Corinthians 12:13 and 12:25.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on 1 Corinthians 12:15.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 1 Corinthians 12:24.
- Clement of Rome (died 99), First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 37.
- Tertullian (died 220), On Repentance, chapter 10.
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