Thursday, November 1, 2018
Body ministry
1 Corinthians 12:18
God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. (NIV 1984)
The apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, pushes the idea of the human body being a structure for understanding the body of Christ, the church. This letter is not the only place he uses the analogy of the body but here is it most detailed.
What’s interesting is that Paul was really addressing the matter of spiritual gifts but was emphasising that structure and relationships in the church had to be understood and corrected as a necessary context for the proper operation of spiritual gifts and their accompanying ministries.
Paul had just addressed the matter of relationships in his dealing with the Lord’s Supper, but as he changes subject to the matter of spiritual gifts felt in necessary to once more address the nature of the relationships in the body. His major body discourse is sandwiched between the outline of spiritual gifts and a description of the functions and ministries where those gifts find expression.
As we started to see yesterday, Paul belaboured the point about how each body part is important, and no matter how we think of or view each part they are indispensable to our bodily functions. “If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?” 1 Corinthians 12:15-17.
Now, this is such an obvious thing that when I have to read it sometimes I am thinking to myself, not again. But it is amazing to see that this is something we continue to get wrong in church two thousand years after Paul explained this in writing.
A lady on my team at the office was talking casually in the group during a break from a recent hectic assignment we were on. She pointed out that at her church she just keeps to herself, she added that she doesn’t get involved in other things with the important ones, she just does what she has to do and leaves. She wasn’t speaking to me, but I challenged her. From our conversation, it was obvious that there are problems in the body structure at her church and some parts are not treated as important.
“But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.” 1 Corinthians 12:18,19. An experience with an elderly lady at our church made that very clear to me.
Some years ago, I was praying for someone who had a combination of a physical sickness and some demonic activity taking place. The first time I was praying for them was a morning on a regular weekday and I was accompanied by a friend who is also a minister. The person was desperate, their family members present were distressed, but I and my friend were determined. We prayed with fervour.
At the end of that first session, there was little evidence that anything had changed, there were no signs that God was healing the sickness, nor that the demons had fled. An elderly lady from our church, who was only there to open and close the building, told me afterwards what she had “seen in the spirit.” At the next session, my colleague wasn’t there, but I was armed with the information from the lady. We saw a mighty great deliverance that day.
There is today a tendency to focus on spiritual gifts, especially in Pentecostal churches and there is a tendency to focus on offices and ministries based on those gifts, but little to no work is being placed on relationship building across the church in many places.
But here is Paul, “The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable … God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honour to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. 1 Corinthians 12:21-22, 24-26.
Paul advocates here for body ministry, that we minister and give attention to each body part and not have anyone neglected. Implicit here too is that the body is not ready to provide ministry externally until everyone internally is receiving ministry. There is a lot of evidence of us promoting and providing ministry externally when people are hurting and in need internally. This neglect drives division and dysfunction.
It happened before. In the early church, complaints arose about preferential treatment and the response to the complaints formed the basis for the building out of a structure for the body with persons assigned to body ministry. Read Acts 6:1-7.
Think on these things:
- Do you feel that you receive adequate ministry as a member of your church?
- If you are a church leader, do you believe that the needs of all members are being met adequately?
- What could your church do to ensure that ministry is properly provided internally while supporting ministry externally?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that every person in our church would be adequately ministered to and that our external ministry would benefit from this.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex