SERIES: Christ is the Answer When the Church Is in Crisis
A Body Has No Spare Parts
SCRIPTURE: 1 Corinthians 12:12-27
Introduction: On a cold November day it is sometimes therapeutic to sit by a fire and assemble a jigsaw puzzle. This morning I would like to ask you to imagine a large puzzle, say, one with 3,000 pieces, that we are going to attempt to put together. As with every challenging jigsaw puzzle, each piece is different in size, shape and often in color. Furthermore, every piece is needed in order to finish the puzzle, and there are no extra pieces. If we weren’t certain of that, we wouldn’t even start the puzzle. Who needs that level of frustration? Each piece, of course, fits in only one place. If we try to force it into a place where it doesn’t fit, the corners get bent, and then another piece is prevented from taking its rightful spot.
Now let’s imagine that someone dumps all 3,000 pieces on a table and asks us to put it together, but then he takes the box away so we can’t see the picture! How frustrating would that be?!? I can’t imagine trying to put a puzzle together with no picture! We might be able to assemble the edge pieces, because at least one side is obvious, but a frame does not a picture make.
Friends, as I think about it, I realize that our church is very much like this jigsaw puzzle. There are about 3,000 individuals who call First Free their church home. Each one has unique talents, abilities, and spiritual gifts. Furthermore, every one of them is vital to the big picture, to the proper functioning of this church—there are neither spares nor extras. If one person tries to do something that someone else is better suited to do, we end up with two people out of place. But as with the puzzle, fitting all the parts together would be next to impossible if we didn’t have the big picture. The Elders and Pastors and other church leaders might be analogous to the edge pieces (they’re kind of square, you know), but like I said, a frame does not a picture make.
I submit to you that the big picture has been provided, first through the Scriptures, and then secondarily through the new vision the Elders have laid out over the past two months: We are becoming a community of contagious Christians who pray fervently, celebrate Jesus, and passionately spread the flame to Metro St. Louis and beyond. That’s what we believe the Lord wants our church to look like. Just think about a church where there is true authentic community, where the people are infectious Christians, where fervent prayer is the norm, where Jesus is celebrated every Sunday and in our everyday lives, and where the flame is spread passionately to the people of our city, our state, our nation, and our world … friends, I love that picture!!!
Now that we have that picture in mind, it should be easier (not easy, but easier) to discover where each of us fits. That is why I believe it is providential that our return to 1 Corinthians brought us immediately to the subject of spiritual gifts. We didn’t plan it this way when we interrupted our study back in June to examine the Letters to the Churches of Revelation, but I think God planned it that way. He knew that nothing could be more critical to convert the big picture into reality than a grasp of spiritual gifts.
One of the greatest problems facing the evangelical church today is confusion about the proper role of professional clergy. I have commented several times recently that some seem to have the notion that pastors and church staff are hired guns who are supposed to do the ministry for us (or to us), instead of the biblical concept that their duty is to equip us to do the work of the ministry. As a result there are at least four negative results:
1. First, many have come to believe that some Christians, especially pastors, and to a certain extent elders and deacons, are more important than other Christians to God and to the Church.
2. Secondly, those who deem themselves “less important” become bench warmers, sitting and watching things happen instead of getting on the playing field and making them happen.
3. Thirdly, those who see themselves as “more important” have a tendency to either become proud or develop a martyr’s complex because they are doing so much of the work in the church.
4. Fourthly, the unity of the Spirit is lost in the face of jealousy and divisiveness.
The proper treatment of these symptoms is the subject of our passage this morning. Just as a jigsaw puzzle has no spare pieces, so also “a body has no spare parts.” More importantly, the church, which in the Bible is called “the Body of Christ,” doesn’t have any spare parts either–every person is important.[i] I want to read 1 Cor. 12:12-27 from Eugene Peterson’s version called The Message. I will preach this morning from the NIV, so keep your Bible open, but this paraphrase is too good to miss. So follow along from the screens as I read:
Your body has many parts–limbs, organs, cells–but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said goodbye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain–his Spirit–where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves–labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free–are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way–the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
You are Christ’s body–that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your “part” mean anything.
Now the first truth I want to press home to our hearts and minds is that …
The Church is supposed to work like the human body: unity in diversity. (12-13)
Just as there are no spare parts in the human body, so also there are no spare Christians in the Body of Christ. Every individual believer has been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the Body of Christ; every individual Christian has been gifted and empowered by the Holy Spirit; and therefore every individual Christian has a useful function in the Body. Though the Body of Christ, like the human body, can survive without some of its parts, it can’t be as healthy as it would be if all of them were functioning.
Now, having been introduced to this important analogy between the human body and the Body of Christ, I would say there are two key problems that constantly plague the church and prevent us from enjoying unity in diversity. Those two tendencies are what we might simply call an inferiority complex and a superiority complex, or self-pity and pride. When certain Christians think they just don’t have anything to offer and therefore fail to participate in the life of the Church, the Body cannot be complete. On the other hand, when some think of themselves as God’s gift to the Church and don’t allow others to contribute their gifts, again the Body cannot function well. If this passage teaches anything, it teaches us that both inferiority feelings and superiority feelings are out of bounds in Christ’s Church.
Inferiority feelings are out of bounds in the Church. (14-20)
There is a diversity of parts in the Body. Verse 14 says, “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.” The physical body is a remarkable partnership of many diverse elements, and so is the Body of Christ. No two parts perform the same identical function, and no part is without function or importance. Diversity is of the very essence of the Body.
Next the Apostle takes pains to explain why diversity is necessary:
Diversity is vital to the health and proper function of the Body. (15‑17,19) To demonstrate why no one member of the Church can perform the functions of the others, Paul pursues his analogy to a point of absurdity, but the very absurdity makes it profound. He personifies parts of the human body, with the foot moping, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.” And the ear complains, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body.” How ridiculous! Even if the foot and the ear were able to say such foolish things, it wouldn’t make it so. Disclaiming responsibility doesn’t remove it.
What if the whole Body were an eye? Well, there would be no way to hear. Or what if the whole body were an ear? There would be no way to smell. Several years ago someone handed me an artist’s rendering of verse 17. I’ll show it to you on the screen. Standing in the pulpit is this great big beautiful eye. Sitting on the organ bench is another eye. The choir is full of eyes, and the pews are, too. Futility is written all over it. But how did the eye even get into the pulpit? Or how would the eyes in the choir hold the songbooks? (The one good thing in this church is that when the Elders called for a vote in a congregational meeting, the ayes should have it).
Now think with me! What is the reason the Apostle offers this argument? Well, apparently there were some in the Corinthian church who did not have one of the spectacular gifts of the Spirit mentioned in verses 8-10 (by the way, we’ll be coming back to those gifts in two weeks, Lord willing). Maybe these individuals weren’t gifted for public ministry and got very little attention. This produced feelings of inferiority, jealousy, insignificance, perhaps even spiritual depression. Paul is trying to press home to these people the fact that the spectacular gifts and the public gifts are not the only important ones.
What if the whole church was made up of pastors? The Bible knowledge might be overwhelming, and the preaching would hopefully be magnificent, but who would listen? And who would take the Gospel into the work place? And who would give so that the pastors could be paid? And who would prepare communion? And who would teach children’s church? Oh, I almost forgot, there wouldn’t be a children’s church because there’s only pastors, remember?
Think about how much it would hurt the church if even one function were missing. We take it for granted when we come on Sunday morning that the bathrooms will be clean, the worship folders from last Sunday will be picked up from the pews, and, most importantly, the coffee pots will be clean and ready to go. But what if Ron and Tim and the rest of their crew decided their job wasn’t important since they aren’t up here on the platform during the service, and so they just bailed and took the week off?
We take it for granted that our children will be taken care of in the nursery and the toys will be disinfected. But what if Sheilagh and Mary decided their job wasn’t as important as S.S. teaching, so they went camping this weekend without arranging for nursery workers? The fact is the church is hurt when even one gifted person fails to use his gift. C. S. Lewis observed profoundly,
“The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman (a cleaning lady), become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly “as to the Lord.” This does not, of course, mean that it is for anyone a mere toss-up whether he should sweep rooms or compose symphonies. A mole must dig to the glory of God and a cock must crow.” [ii]
This week I came across an article that describes the various parts of the Body in a unique and profound way. I want to read a portion of it:
“In the church, the foot member is basic. If you know what foot soldiers in the army used to be, you know how important foot members are…. They plod along step after step, day after day, week after week, year after year, one after the other. They carry all the weight and movement of the church….
A specialized branch of the foot corps are the toe members. Praise God for the members who keep the church on its toes, alert to new opportunities and new directions! Unfortunately, because they are the leading members, they are often the ones who get stubbed when the church in its forward march encounters some unforeseen obstacle….
The shin members are very sensitive persons who seem to get bumped every time we turn around. But if the shin members will only stay closely connected to the knee people, they’ll come out OK, because the knee people are our members who specialize in kneeling, the members who keep the body in prayer and devotion. As we know from sports medicine, the knee is a vulnerable part of the body, easily knocked out of commission. Without healthy knees, the body is crippled and lame. Therefore, in some ways these are the most needed members of the body….
We have tendon and ligament members–the ones who hold the body together; we have muscle members–the ones who make the body move; and we have skin members–temperature regulators who keep the body alternately warm when it’s chilly out and cool when things get hot. And we have shoulder members who always carry the burdens. Backbone members keep us upright and furnish the resolve that nerves us to take a strong but flexible stand when the whirlwinds of injustice rage.” [iii]
The article goes on, but you get the point.
Diversity is God’s call, not ours. (18) Verse 18 says, “But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” When I was a kid we were bombarded with commercials proclaiming the profound truth that Wonder Bread builds strong bodies twelve ways. But Wonder Bread doesn’t hold a candle to God as a Body Builder. When God builds human bodies, He does it with exquisite workmanship. We don’t have three eyes and one foot and we don’t have eyes where our elbows should be.
As a matter of fact, when once in a million births a child is born with six toes or three arms, we always consider the extra parts a birth defect or deformity. Why? Because we are convinced that the arrangement God has chosen for the parts of the body is the best possible arrangement. Even with all the talk about genetic engineering, no one is suggesting additional limbs or new organs–only ways to ensure that the present arrangement of the body will be as healthy and disease‑resistant as possible.
But not only has God arranged our physical bodies perfectly. He has also arranged the Body of Christ just as He wanted it to be. That is, He has distributed to the church just the right proportion of gifted people. Paul wrote to this same church in 1 Cor. 1:7: “Therefore, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.” He’s not talking to individual believers there, because the pronoun “you” is plural, not singular. He’s saying the local church doesn’t lack any spiritual gift. The necessary conclusion is that if a church is seriously lacking in any particular function, it is not because God has failed to place members in the church with the necessary gifts to fulfill that function, but because some of us are refusing to recognize our own gifts, or perhaps some aren’t being given the opportunity to use their gifts.
And notice that God’s sovereign choice in this matter is not extended only to those with the more spectacular and visible gifts, but to “every one of the parts.” A person who serves faithfully on the prayer chain of a little rural church is in no way inferior in God’s economy to the pastor of a 3,000 member church in a large metropolitan community. The issue is faithfulness with the gifts God has given us. We are fighting against God when we spurn the position and task which He has assigned to us in the Church.
By the way, I have talked mostly about the diversity of gifts and abilities, because that’s the focus of this passage, but I believe the value of diversity extends to other factors as well. We are actually better off as a church because we here at First Free have widely differing tastes in music, we have different viewpoints on political issues, we choose to educate our children differently, and we come from different social and educational backgrounds. Unity does not require uniformity, and group‑think is not Christian. God is not in the business of producing Christian clones.
There are, of course, some churches which don’t give people as much latitude as we do. There are some where no member in good standing could question that the church will be raptured before the Tribulation, others where lifestyle issues are not open to the individual conscience before God, still others where none would dare admit that they speak in tongues or vote Democrat. And some people are far more comfortable with tight boundaries. Life is simpler, you know, when everything is black and white and you don’t have to make tough choices.
But I contend that such churches are not (and cannot be) as healthy as those where tolerance within biblical parameters is allowed and where people with diverse views rub shoulders and are forced to learn to accept one another in spite of their differences. How will we ever grow if don’t allow ourselves to even be exposed to ideas different?
Are you celebrating your own uniqueness today? Are you content in the place the Lord has placed you? Are you using your gifts, no matter how public or private, to fill in your part of the puzzle? Are you encouraging the people around you to use their gifts and remembering to thank them when they do? Do you have self-esteem or God-esteem?
Now I believe there is a second factor that can keep the Body of Christ from functioning well, and that is when pride motivates some to exclude others, or maybe just ignore them.
Superiority feelings are out of bounds in the Church. (21-26)
The next paragraph opens with this truth:
There is a unity of parts in the Body. (21) Once again this truth is driven home to us by means of analogy to the physical body. An eye can’t say to a hand, “Get outta here! I don’t need you.” Nor can a head say to a foot, “I don’t need you.” Whereas the earlier analogy was dealing with the humbler part who allowed his lack of spectacular gifts to produce feelings of inferiority and envy, this time Paul is obviously dealing with the person who is full of pride and feels contempt for those he views as “less important” members.
The sad mistake such a person is making is failing to recognize, as verse 22 points out, that the seemingly weaker or less visible members of the Body are in many ways the most necessary. What good would a beautiful voice be without lungs, though one’s lungs are neither seen nor heard? What good would nicely tanned skin be without a skeleton? A skeleton is considered frightful and gross and no one tries to show off his skeleton, but imagine what shape you’d be in without one. So also in the church the gift of preaching may be highly esteemed, but without many exercising the essential function of prayer, the sermons may go for naught. Unity of the parts is every bit as important as diversity.
Charles Swindoll wrote an article for his church’s weekly newsletter that I think is worth reading, at least in part.
“Nobody is a whole chain. Each one is a link. But take away one link and the chain is broken. Nobody is a whole team. Each one is a player. But take away one player and the game is forfeited. Nobody is a whole orchestra. Each one is a musician. But take away one musician and the symphony is incomplete. Nobody is a whole play. Each one is an actor. But take away one actor and the performance suffers.
You guessed it. We need each other. You need someone and someone needs you. Isolated islands, we’re not. To make this thing called life work, we gotta lean and support. And relate and respond. And give and take. And confess and forgive. And reach out and embrace. And release and rely. Especially in the God family … where working together is Plan A for survival. And since we’re so different (thanks to the way God built us), love and acceptance are not optional luxuries. Neither is tolerance. Or understanding. Or patience. You know, all those things you need from others when your humanity crowds out your divinity.”
His conclusion? Since none of us is a whole, independent, self-sufficient, super-capable, all-powerful hotshot, let’s quit acting like we are. Life’s lonely enough without our playing that silly role. [iv]
But Paul has a further thought about the futility of pride when he focuses in verses 22-26 on the fact that …
Unity is vital to the health and proper function of the Body. (22-26) If anything, those parts that are least by human standards actually receive greater honor. Listen again to verse 23: “And the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment.” Now I think Paul’s point is fairly clear. There are certain parts of our bodies which we deem unpresentable (or “gross,” as kids today would express it), like armpits, if I must be specific.
But just because we don’t show off our armpits doesn’t mean they’re unimportant. Think about how you would function without one! In fact, if you stop to think about it, we spend more money on our armpits than we do on our foreheads, though the forehead is seen by everyone and the armpit by almost no one. Why? Because the forehead doesn’t need it, while the armpit does. That’s exactly what the passage says.
Now just as it is an instinct of nature to adorn with clothes and cosmetics those portions of the body that are private, so, says the Apostle, it should be an instinct of grace to honor most those members of the church who least attract attention and public admiration. A mother cherishes with special affection the child that is least appreciated by his or her peers. By the same token, the believer should cherish with special affection those members that are least recognized and get the least attention, because what they do in an unheralded fashion allows the rest of the Body to function well.
How can this be done? Well, it’s not easy, because by the very nature of the case, the less visible people are less noticed. Out of sight, out of mind. One has to consciously look for ways to affirm the less visible, but it’s worth it to do so. Here’s a suggestion: instead of thanking your pastor for his message, why not tell some Christian who toils behind the scenes how much you appreciate what he or she does for the sake of the Kingdom.
Now, just as diversity is God’s call, so also with unity.
Unity is God’s call, not ours. (24b) It says in verse 24, “God has combined the members of the Body.” He did it in such a way as to prevent schism and to further compassion. There is no rivalry in our physical bodies, you know. No one ever got upset at his hand because of a writing mistake and decided to chop it off. No one ever poked his eye out because it blinked too often. So also, in the Body of Christ there should be no division, no vying for power, no jockeying for position.
Not only does God want to prevent schism; He also wants the members to care for one another according to verse 25. You know, the hand instinctively guards the eye. Smash your finger and your stomach gets sick. Your eyes laugh when your mouth tells a joke. When the head is crowned the whole body feels good. Likewise, God desires that if one member of the church suffers, all the members suffer with it, and if one is honored all the others should rejoice with it.
Look at the last verse, 27: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Friends, do you get the point? God has stressed it four times in this one passage.
12: “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body.”
14: “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.”
20: “There are many parts, but one body.”
27: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
How could He make the point any clearer?
So, let me ask, “What are you doing to promote unity in this portion of the Body of Christ called “First Free”? Where has pride crept into your giftedness? When someone compliments you for your service, do you give credit where it is due? Are you quick to give glory to God when He works in and through you?
Friends, let me summarize my message with three propositions:
1. No believer should underestimate his or her importance to the Body of Christ. Have you found your place, your niche here at First Free? The puzzle cannot be complete if your piece is missing. We are looking for missing pieces! Are you looking for where you fit?
You are highly esteemed by God, even if you are doing the least glamorous role in the church, and you’re highly esteemed by us in leadership, I might add. Maybe you haven’t discovered the indescribable joy of using your gift in the Body. A couple of Sundays ago there was a new person on one of the worship teams up here. He was having a great time, obviously filled with joy. He told me later that he doesn’t have a great voice, but he was leading us into the throne room! That’s what I love to see. Remember, a Christian without a ministry is a contradiction in terms.
2. No believer should overestimate his importance to the Body of Christ. If pride and contempt have slipped into your heart, will you confess that to the Lord this morning? William Barclay said, “Whenever we begin to think about our own importance in the Christian Church, the possibility of really Christian work is gone.” [v]
3. Every believer should view himself/herself, and all other believers, as unique pieces of the puzzle, chosen by God and vital to the health of the Church. Consider the following quotation on the screen:
“No child in thx world could substitute for onx of our own childrxn. No mattxr how many childrxn wx might havx, nonx could xvxr bx rxplacxablx. Nxithxr arx God’s childrxn rxplacxablx or thx ministrixs Hx has givxn thxm rxplacxablx. No othxr bxlixvxr can takx our placx in God’s hxart, and no othxr bxlixvxr can takx our placx in God’s work. Hx has givxn no onx thx xxact gift Hx has givxn us and Hx has givxn no onx thx xxact ministry Hx has givxn us. If wx do not usx our gift no onx xlsx will; if wx do not fulfill our ministry it will not bx fulfillxd.” [vi]
By the way, my computer keyboard has scores of letters and symbols. Only one of them failed to work on that last quotation. But it is somewhat noticeable, isn’t it? You may be only one of 3,000 people in the Body of Christ that meets here at First Evangelical Free Church. But if you fail to function, it will make a difference.
By the way, I can actually summarize my sermon in just one sentence: “None of us has it all together, but together we have it all.”
Let’s pray. Father, will you help us today to commit ourselves to find and fulfill our ministry in the Body wholeheartedly, learn to celebrate diversity in the Body joyfully, and strive to maintain unity in the Body at all costs? Amen.
DATE: November 11, 2001
Tags:
Spiritual gifts
Inferiority complexes
Superiority complexes
Unity
Diversity
[i]. In the medical field this has actually been a somewhat debatable view. For centuries biologists talked about vestigial organs in the human body, which were supposed to be organs that fulfilled a function in the bodies of our alleged prehuman ancestors in the evolutionary chain, but apparently serve no useful purpose now. The appendix was long thought to be just such an organ, and even today the appendix is sometimes removed prophylactically, that is, to prevent it from causing trouble rather than because it is currently causing trouble. I know a doctor who was going to Ethiopia on a two-week medical mission, and in preparation for the trip they removed his healthy appendix as a precaution, simply because they knew he would die if he developed appendicitis while in Ethiopia.
The most recent medical research that I have read, however, indicates that there are no truly vestigial organs in the human body. While not every organ is essential for life, every organ does serve a useful function, and the person who undergoes surgical removal of any organ is not as well off as if he still had that part, unless, of course, disease has damaged it.
[ii] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory.
[iii] Robert J. Versteeg, “The Book of Members,” Ministry, May, 1992, 20-21.
[iv] Charles Swindoll, Newsbreak, undated.
[v] William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians, 114.
[vi] John MacArthur, 1 Corinthians. Of course, MacArthur didn’t replace the “e’s” with “x’s.” I did this in order to make a point.