Body Envy: 1st Corinthians 12:12-20

1 Corinthians 12:12–20 (CSB) — 12 For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body—so also is Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and we were all given one Spirit to drink. 14 Indeed, the body is not one part but many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,” it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,” it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted. 19 And if they were all the same part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

Read this passage very slowly. Then take out your personal Bible, and read it again, slowly.

There are two areas of the body for which that I think this passage is particularly relevant: “the heart” and “the mind”. In particular, the heart of the body has developed a terrible “anti-academia” bias that says to the mind, “I have no need of you”, resulting in widespread indiscipline, irreverence, and error. Likewise, the mind of the body has developed a terrible “anti-spiritualism” bias that says to the heart, “I have no need of you”, resulting in spiritual dryness, blindness, and insensitivity to the glory of God.

We need one another to “build each other up in love” so that we can “proclaim the glory of God to all nations” with “one mind and one voice”. There can be no anti-academia, nor any anti-spiritualism in the body of Christ, for we are one body!

I believe the heart often needs the mind to pull it back from the excesses that the heart is so prone towards, while the mind needs the heart to quicken it towards the life the mind is so reluctant to engage in!

Do you participate in mindless Christianity? Do you participate in heartless Christianity? No longer say one to another, “I have no need of you”, but build one another up in love so that we may “grow in the unity of the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son” until we all reach “maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness” (Eph. 4:13).