First Corinthians 12:21-31 The Body of Christ pt. 2

But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all of the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are Christ's body and individually members of it, and God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.

All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they? All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?

But earnestly desire the greater gifts, and I show you a still more excellent way. So what we talked about last week, Paul is showing with these verses and the ones previous to this, by comparing the human body with the body of Christ, that there is unity and diversity, and we talked about that last week. Unity and diversity just means that the body's made up of lots and lots and lots of parts, but they're all unified into one in order to function. So, diversity is one of those verses, or one of those words that you hear a lot of today, but we're talking about the body of Christ, that the unity of the body would be greatly jeopardized if a higher number of people in the body disregarded the lower members.

So, I don't know how you determine who's a higher and who's a lower member, unless you have a clergy. We don't have that. And we've seen that envy of one another can break up the diversity. And so now we're gonna learn that contempt can break up the unity. In other words, if the eye treats the hand with contempt, or the head sneers at the feet, the unity of the body would be gone. So how do you remedy this kind of disorder? It's by the recognition that in the middle of the body is the power of the presence of God. God has formed the body together in such a fashion that no member can dispense with any other member.

And I think that that's just terrific principle because I know Roger and I have learned that principle over the last couple of years. We can't do without any of you. So the first truth is to recognize that there is diversity and unity, that's the first one. It's evident that in the one body, no one member can claim preeminence, each member having his own function. The Holy Spirit forms the body and equips members for service. The recognition would entirely shut out the worldly principle of a highly educated or learned person class of intellectuals.

Now, what I've just said is that the Spirit of God is in charge of a church. He populates it. He raises people up to serve in it. He equips them. He gets them ready. Do you think the Spirit of God needs a seminary? Do you think he needs really smart people to make it work well? No, he doesn't. He's the one that does it all.

And I think that the church in general has gotten away from reliance on the Holy Spirit to not only bring the members of the local body, but equip them over time for whatever he would have them do in the body. Reliance upon the Spirit of God is to form and enable the members for service. So, you know, Roger and I talk a lot about this, that we look around and we see the Spirit at work. We see Him doing things as an example. I just happened to mention to Jim this morning, Jim mentioned to me, he said, ah, I really miss reading scripture. I said, there's a guy who's equipped. You're up. So you see it everywhere.

You see the spirit of God working in every one of us. The recognition of the second truth is though that there is unity and diversity. That totally excludes the idea of being independent. We are really dependent on each other for our whole existence and not just on Sunday. It's all the time.

So verse 22, Paul says, on the contrary, it is much truer that members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. The idea of on the contrary means to a much greater degree. If you take a look at it, there are certain members of the body which seem or appear to be weaker. There may be more feeble. Or maybe they're sick, or they don't seem to have strength. That's what that word means. The weaker refers to the material body with a spiritual application.

Having this thing with my hand, I've learned over six months that it's the weaker member, even though it's my dominant hand. And it still isn't right, it's still numb. Does the rest of the body need my hand? Yeah, it does. and I need it to function like it's supposed to. The body, this body order would be seen and it would shut out all working of the flesh and mind of man and it would prepare the way for what Roger's going to talk about next week is the 13th chapter, the better way. While we know that there are parts of the body which seem weaker and yet are necessary to the body's well-being. or even necessary for life and having a good place, seems like they're not so essential, but they are. You know as well as I do, you get up in the morning, you have a headache. Doesn't seem like it's much, but it is slowing down the function of the whole body. So, Do you discount the member because they seem to be weaker? He may be more necessary than the stronger member. You know, around here, that's really true. In your physical body, that's really true.

In Philippians 2, Paul says, make my joy complete by being of the same mind. Maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose, doing nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, here's the key phrase, regard one another as more important than yourself. Do not merely look out for your own personal interest, but also the interest of others. Verse 23 says, and as those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable.

The highest cannot do without the least. God has made nothing, and he gives nothing in futility. This truth demands more than just, oh, maybe they're less honorable. Then there are parts of the body that are less honorable, in whose estimation? Mine, yours. Then other parts. There are members that seem to be lacking honor, that is, The thought here is that what he's going to go into right here is really interesting. I would say it's clothing. How do you clothe a body? It's like probably one of the most unpresentable parts of your body are your feet. I notice you all wear shoes. You cover your feet.

I think nature teaches us to cover and adorn that which is not pleasant or proper to see. Well, what is fair, we can just have open, appear freely. So when you're dealing with human bodies, you give more honor to the less honorable parts by covering them up. This makes our less stylish members more acceptable. The thoughts is suggestive of beautifying a member that may be deficient in attractive qualities. I don't know if you're all fans of J. Vernon McGee, but he does a really funny thing on women makeup. Rather than go at it from the standpoint that women's makeup probably is carnal, he said there are just some women that need makeup. And I think it fits with what we're talking about here.

We need to learn to clothe such saints with what is delightful. Clothing throughout Scripture carries with it the thought of adornment. God's thought was that man as a creature should not only have a body, but he should have clothing to put on it. That is adornment. And you know what else, with most of us, our clothes are probably gonna last longer than we do.

So, suppose that I have a less honorable gift in the body than many of the gifts the Spirit has bestowed. And notice this word bestowed is something that the Spirit does, and it kinda means that you put a hedge around it, you protect it, You give them something special. So to bestow on the body, I'd admit that, but that's no reason why I should not be clothed with something more excellent than the gifts of the Spirit. And again, I'm referring to what you're gonna hear next week. There is something better than the gifts of the Spirit in terms of the church.

There is the, the gifts are temporary. The gifts are gonna pass away, but love won't ever. And that's what's better. No one's spiritual gift goes to heaven. If I can, let's say I have the gift of healing. Well, going to heaven wouldn't be any good there. Nobody ever gets sick.

So I'm face to face with the Lord Jesus and the person standing next to me is not a prophet because as I see the Lord Jesus, I'm just exactly like him. I know him fully. So spiritual gifts stay here. They're for the body here. So many of us need to accept the fact that if we have a less honorable position than others, We shall never prosper until we recognize it doesn't matter what I have, but I have something. And I'm there with that gift to glorify God, to manifest the Lord Jesus Christ. And I don't think God leaves anybody out. I really don't. I think God brings in what is eternal and belongs to perfection and he clothes members with it. and I think it's available to every saint.

But with that being said, how does the apostle Paul think about himself? In Ephesians 3, Paul says, to me, less than the least of all saints. That's how he thought of himself. I am less than the least of all saints. I would think Paul would have some difficulty getting smaller than that. How do you become less than the least? There's another thing in this verse that has to do with less presentable or less distinguished.

In the body may have a part in that, I'm to give myself more to the things which abide. Consideration for less distinguished where love abides, the gifts are passing. We love to think there is a way of more surpassing excellence than there is. It is delightful to be in a circle where you are made the occasion where the spirit is operating, where the members have consideration for one another, where there is no selfish consideration in the body, where each member is having the same concern, one for another, and it must be like that, because that's the way that God designed his body to be. And you know what that tells you? That's where the Spirit of God is operating. When you see that, you know the Spirit is in the middle of the operation. Verse 24, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it, but God has composed a body giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked.

We've got this instinctive sense, I think, implanted in us. We feel that the most attractive features can do without the care, which are freely bestowed on less, which aren't feebly bestowed on less attractive people. The more honorable parts, such as our face, do not require special covering. The point is that we take special pains to honor our less esteemed physical members. And we should do the same in the church rather than neglecting and despising them.

You know what's a good example of that in our church? I'll just say the name and you'll know and I'm not gonna say anything else, Tom Mallinson. He's a special, special man. When is the last time your church gave a public recognition to the nursery workers or the cleanup crew? We don't do that very often. You're always hauling Roger and I up here. This year we're gonna do it different.

We're gonna have somebody else come up here. so that there may be no divisions in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And this is what is known in Greek as a purpose clause. Here's the purpose of why all of this is going on. We have seen then that God has so constituted the body of Christ, just like the natural one, that there should be no divisions of interest, but the good of each and the good of all and the care of each for every other member. I think that's the aim of the working of the spirit in our body.

A lot that appears is not of the utmost importance. Those that labor like Epaphras, remember Epaphras, are far more necessary than some who glowed at Corinth with the miracles and with tongues. Epaphras was a really critical cog in that wheel, and the Corinthians that had the gift of tongues weren't.

As we cover the feet and not the face, So it is that God uses and honors what is apt to be despised, and so should we. If we have the mind of Christ, and this is the instruction of God, to guard against the tendency of divisions in the body. Had the Corinthians been listening to this, how much sorrow and shame would have been spared them. Despite the disorder, however, grace, has turned to our benefit who have been awakened to see and judge and be done with anything which is so dishonoring to the Lord. One of the great things about the book of Corinthians is that it exposes problems in a church for us to look at them so that we can see, oh, if this happens, then this happens. If this happens, that happens. We want to avoid that. We want to understand that what happened in Corinth was really done for our sake, so we could see it to avoid the problem.

The members, though each having special function, are dependent upon one another. The truth then of the body of Christ is that no believer has a quality of being more important or better than others and all are dependent on one another. Do you think that's the right attitude?

I think it is. When you look around at a local small church like ours, there is a lot of dependence on each other for just the basic things. Who unlocked the doors this morning? Who turned on the lights and who's gonna lock the doors and shut them off when we leave? Simple as that, we're interdependent. We're dependent on each other.

So the result, the result is if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. The truth is that the members do affect one another as they are united to one another by the Holy Spirit and that which depends upon the Spirit stands. however much our failure may hinder his expression. When we grow spiritually, the more spiritual we are, the more we're gonna realize the truth that we all affect one another.

The malfunctioning condition of a church has weakened our spiritual sensibilities. We consciously suffer or rejoice, in the measure of our spiritual power. I think that's true. But the effect is real throughout the church. It is a body, the body of Christ. As a whole, it feels in joy or sorrow, otherwise it's not a real organic unit.

Notice how Paul brings home the truth about the abstract to the concrete, applying this precious truth to the case that's before him with the Corinthians. It's true that the state of the Corinthians is such that he wasn't gonna go there right away. They had to write him a letter and ask him questions. If he had gone, he would have taken a rod with him. And that was far from his heart. He would rather write and wait.

And you know, God blessed that. He blessed his written reprimand to their restoration and measure. He could rejoice as we see when we get to the second epistle. But even here, Before Paul was refreshed with the fruit of grace while censuring severely their faults, he doesn't hesitate to say so. And I, for one, appreciate the fact that he does. Next verse is really a cool verse.

He said, now, right now, you are Christ's body. and individual members of it. Notice that it doesn't say you are the body of Christ. It says you are Christ's body. The Church of Corinth was not the body of Christ, but was a local expression of the body as forming part of it. Holly Hills is Christ's body, each one of us, in a small church like this. The church at Corinth, maybe look at it this way.

A general might say to some soldiers in a given locality, remember, you guys are peacekeepers. He doesn't say you are the peacekeepers, you're just peacekeepers. For they do not include the whole regiment or the whole army, and nevertheless, they locally represent. the regiment. So today it's still a privilege and a responsibility of all Christians in any given locality to gather together simply as members of the body of Christ upon earth.

We're thankful for Zoom, but it's not the same thing. It is not the same thing. And now that we're coming back together, I think there's a realization that face-to-face fellowshipping with one another is really more important than we would have thought a year and a half ago. It's really cool to talk one-on-one, to be with believers, to just be around them, to fist bump them, hug them, just be there.

We're to gather together simply as members of the body of Christ on earth as a local representative of that body. Every believer by the spirit of God is a member of that body. And being such is answerable to walk in consistency with this great truth. I am, I am. in Christ's body, I'm a member.

The apostate church has greatly ignored by the Corinthians around some devoted servant. In other words, what the apostate church does is they lift somebody up, and then they gather around him, and he becomes the reason they get together. And they forget about the fact that they're the body of Christ, while others, will form a church or a union to maintain some special truth that seems to be more important to them than any other truth. Paul presents the truth in order to walk in the light of the only unity formed by the Spirit, and to act under the guidance of the Spirit, and yet the Lord doesn't ask for anything more.

What does he say? You're members of Christ's body, you're individually members of it, and we get to live under that, under grace, and we get to be guided by that. The Lord doesn't impose upon our conscience an endless variety of meetings or unions to join which has been pointed out would be utterly impractical for most Christians. Nor does the Lord propose that we should leave the different sects and travel to some distant spot to meet together for one week a year in order to express our oneness in Christ. We get to do it all the time, right here. Were it so, we should be asked to do something utterly impossible for the vast majority of God's people.

The only unity formed by the Spirit is the body of Christ. And the only membership that scripture recognizes is membership in that body. What the Lord looks for is that as people should, in their own locality, leave everything that is a denial of the truth and meet together in the truth of the one body of which they are believers and already members. One has truly said, what the Lord requires is possible for all who realize noiselessly and without pomp, true in its character at all seasons. Such a path is open to the simplest and poorest of God's people. It's true that if a few have God-given faith to gather together In any locality, in the light of the truth of one's body, it could be hardly said that as the assembly at Corinth, you are Christ's body, as being representative of the body of Christ in this day of brokenness.

I'll tell you where this has come home. There's a fellow from Canada that Zooms into our Sunday school. And I don't know if you know what's going on in Canada, but they are absolutely trying to prevent churches from gathering to the point that he told us this morning, it's a $100,000 fine if you go to church.

So he said, pray for us, for me today. We're going somewhere in secret so 50 of us can gather together. And here we sit. Of course, Courtney tells them how free we are. And that maybe you ought to immigrate to Denver. But think about that. Imagine that not only could you not come to church, but they were watching to see if you went out your front door and you were going somewhere so they could follow you and issue you a summons. or they could stop you on the freeway like they did this one pastor and they arrested him in the middle of the freeway. They made him kneel down and they handcuffed him and they drug him to the police car. What's his crime? He had a church service. That was his crime.

So we're fortunate in the sense that we can gather together. We are prepared at all costs to walk in the service of the word, to walk together in the light of the one body. So is this guy and his friends in Canada. They're gonna do it. I hope he shows up next Sunday.

So it's very evident too, that it's not ideal or a future picture. It is a living reality on earth which every Christian is bound to walk and express, abandoning at all costs whatever is inconsistent with or destructive of it. It is a state now on earth, not about to be by and by in the heavens. There will be no such thing as suffering of one and the sympathy of the rest on high. Unbelief shrinks responsibility and would like to conceive it another state, not yet feasible because it does not like the trial. In heaven, no doubt, there will be perfect love and all selfishness will be gone forever. But it is quite a different state of things and not once contemplated in these verses.

So verse 28, watch what God does. God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helps administration, and various kinds of tongues. What do we see here? We see here how complete the truth is taught that God, not man, arranges the church.

He's the one that does it. He's the one that puts it together. And in that sense, he puts every single believer in that local body and empowers them to do the service he's called them to do. Do you think it's an accident or you just sort of stumbled on Holly Hills some time ago in your life? No, it's God who puts this together.

And the Corinthians then, as others of late, had to hear, whether they observed it or not, that these striking displays of power, which is the spirit, in which they found their childish surprise and delight, they were into healings and tongues, like the world without were not the highest, not the most important gifts, that there were gifts relatively first, second, and third, the very last name being the very ones who they abused and were really small. And it caused disorder, hindrance of edification in the assembly.

One of the problems you find, I think, contemporarily is that And you've probably, if you've ever been in a class in another environment, said, well, do you know what your spiritual gift is? And in comes the teacher with a questionnaire on how to determine what your spiritual gift is. And by the time you get done with that, You're either really disappointed because you can't arrive at one or you're really arrogant because you figured out I have two or three.

And they're all fleshly based and they're all for you personally. Why do you have a spiritual gift? You have the spiritual gift to manifest the Lord Jesus Christ and to serve everybody in the body. It's not for your edification, it's for your fellow members' edification. So when you keep that in mind, which the Corinthians weren't doing, it helps you understand that everything that the Spirit of God has done in the body is to edify the person next to you or across from you or somebody else.

You know, you can't go home and say, oh, I exercised my gift today. I feel so good. Nope. Nope. You know, Malloy used to talk about that all the time. He'd be on the way home. This little voice in his ear would say, oh, Hal, you knocked him dead today, right? The next voice he heard was from the Holy Spirit saying to him, oh, really? You did all of that today, did you?

So, Paul is first because, notice apostles are first, so we can move it down one because there aren't any more apostles. But it's first because he had all-encompassing gifts. These apostles, were incredible men. They had pretty much all the gifts, and they were very powerful men. They could raise people from the dead. They could heal. They could do all kinds of things. They could prophesy. They could teach. They could perform miracles. They could heal.

And then he says, well, okay, the second one are prophets. However, a prophet couldn't exercise apostolic authority. It wasn't given to him. Then there's the teacher who's listed third, had neither apostolic authority nor a prophetic gift. Teaching is a special gift.

But it's the Lord who calls, and this pertains to us in a big sense. It's the Lord who calls and it's not the church who calls. You hear guys say all the time, well, so-and-so church called me to be the pastor. Really? If the Lord doesn't call you, why are you going? It's just another job.

The church may be the sphere of exercise of the gifts, but it's never the source of authority any more than the power, both of which come from Christ. It is God who gives missions. It is God who sends laborers into the field to sow and to reap. Nor does scripture ever assert it to be the church's office to examine a candidate for ministry.

How about that one? I read that and I thought, oh, well, as it is called, nor authoritative to declare its judgment. We have the right to discern, but we don't make the decision. We observe what God has done and we go along with it. There's no appointment way for the church in either case because it is not the church's work or duty. The Lord qualifies the servants whom he calls for the work. He appoints them. He works by the spirit, not only in this member but in all others to have his call and work and workmen respected. Though flesh and the world be stirred up by the enemy to discredit it all.

I haven't been a Christian that long and I wasn't raised in a Christian home. I was raised in a denomination where there was a clergy and there were certain things you had to do to get your credentials. in order to qualify to lead a church. Not the least of which was wearing your collar backwards. And these people don't fit this parameter that the Spirit of God takes care of His own and calls people within the body to serve. And He equips them and He gets them ready. Now sometimes that school takes decades, but He's equipping.

And even if you're like, Miles Stanford used to say, even if God has called you to be a flower along the road, for people to come by and admire the glory of God, that's enough. Because that's what he called you to do. He also said that at the beam of judgment, somebody said to him one day, well Miles, you're gonna be down in the front row at the beam of judgment. He said, nope, he said, I'm just gonna be happy to be there, because all the moms are gonna be in the front row, because moms just did what God called them to do, and that was be a mom.

Oh, I thought, I just love that. So it takes the idea that you need a clergy, that you need super educated, that you need all of these things that the world says you need, except for reliance on the spirit of God to function and run his body the way he wants to. The Lord qualifies the servant, like I said. Therefore, we find in the Church of Corinth, as well as those of Galatia, were so arrogant that they actually questioned the authority of the Apostle Paul. I can't imagine that, but they did it. Where did they get the nerve to do that?

So Peter says to them in 1 Peter 4.10, as every man, each one, has received the gift, even so minister the same one to another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

The apostle had a place of governing for Christ which prophets didn't have. though both constitute the foundation of which this building or this body of God is built. You can look at Ephesians 2. Teachers were subordinate to prophets and apostles. Helps and governments are commonly supposed to be the gifts needed for offices of deacons or elders respectively. The thing is, is that if you're serving, you don't care about the title. You're just serving. And then he asks these rhetorical questions that I really like.

All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they? So he questions supposed distribution of gifts among the members of Christ and not their concentration in either one or in all.

I was in a meeting one time as an early Christian in a mission thing I was involved in and there was a guy that we'd heard about on the street that had a ministry going so we called him in to see if we wanted to do a partnership or something with him. And one of the men that I was working with said to this guy, he said, so what spiritual gifts do you have? You know what his answer was? I got them all. Guess what? He just got disqualified. Neither have all the same function, nor has anyone all the functions which are expressly said to be distributed among each of the many members. to this one or to that other one.

The great fact of the body, with its many members, wherein the Holy Spirit works to glorify the Lord Jesus, that's what the Spirit of God is doing. There is therefore no real ministry according to God without a gift in the word. Every single one of us have this gift of studying the word. We can read and understand. The word of God isn't taught to you by the most intellectual person in the world. The spirit of God is the teacher. He's the one that explains to you what he means, because he wrote it. And if you trust him, he'll show you.

Only there are also lower gifts of power, such as the apostle points in their place, as the Corinthians had put them out of place. Of course, the Corinthians should have started at the bottom and worked up in terms of importance, and Paul starts at the top and works down. So, verse 30 says, and do all have the gifts of healing? All do not have the gifts of healing, do they? All don't speak in tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?

If you go to the epistle of Ephesians, you'll learn that the gifts are given from Christ, the ascended head to the body. In Corinth, we learn that the Holy Spirit distributes the gifts in the assembly on earth. Some of these gifts, like the sign gifts, were for the inauguration of Christianity. There's not a word to say that they would continue through the whole church period. And when you think about the gifts, you have to look at them and say, well, what's the relevance of that gift today? There wouldn't be. It's significant that the gifts which men covet are placed lowest on the scale. That's not a surprise to us.

So, he closes this, chapter up by saying, but earnestly desire the greater gifts, and I show you still a more excellent way. Now, is he talking to you as an individual to desire the greater gifts, or is he saying that to the entire church at Corinth? that you as a church should desire or wish for the greater gifts, the gifts that are more important. I think it's the church. And Roger's gonna expand on that. The church at Corinth is encouraged to desire earnestly the greater gifts. The gifts were for edification of the body, they were not for show. So we can easily abuse gifts by seeking to use them to exalt ourselves.

I think that's a given. But we're told that there is a better way of serving one another and a better way of manifesting Christ in the body. A better way for believers to feel and think and walk and worship beyond all gifts. And if you wanna know what that is, you gotta come next week. Let's close.

Father, how thankful we are for your grace. How thankful we are for your spirit who enables us to function as the body of your son, the Lord Jesus, to manifest him to the world and to serve one another in love. We thank you, Father. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.