Metaphors of the Church: The Body of Christ

We love stories of people taking over another person’s body, for humorous or dramatic ends (think Big, Freaky Friday, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Face/Off). We also are drawn to stories about individuals who comprise one body (think the Borg of Star Trek). Is the Church as the Body of Christ one of those stories?

Perhaps the beginning of viewing the Church as the Body of Christ is the realization that every believer has been identified with Christ, as if we were “in” Christ when he died and rose again, a spiritual identification with Christ’s body.

So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. (Romans 7:4)

Being in the body of Christ means we died with Jesus and hence, we died to the Law’s obligations, and are free to be joined to another, to God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:16)

We continue to be spiritually joined to Jesus’ body as we take communion. Does this mean that taking communion is giving us tangible saving benefit? Probably not. We are saved no matter what, but we are benefitted by remembering what Christ’s death has done for us. And in so taking communion, we are participating in each other’s lives and acting out the reality that we are one in Christ.

For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. (1 Corinthians 11:29)

And here in this enactment we are then, metaphorically speaking, ourselves the Body of Jesus Christ. This helps us understand just how we as the Church are to function.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. (1 Corinthians 12:27)

Paul makes a great deal of this reality. As Christ’s body we are individual parts with different functions that contribute to the body as a whole. No member is more needed than another, but each is needed to perform all the functions of the body. There is diversity in our unity. In fact, our diversity leads to our unity.

to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up… speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.  (Ephesians 4:12,15)

As members of the Body of Christ our job is to build up the Body to maturity. We must grow, as a body grows, and we must grow in loving unity.

It is also critical that we reflect in every way the Lord Jesus Christ.

For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. (Ephesians 5:23)

As Jesus’ body, we are also completing Christ’s suffering until he returns, not for securing our salvation, which Christ’s sufferings certainly did, but as living the principle of sacrificial love, suffering and serving for the benefit of one another.

Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. (Colossians 1:24)

We are the Body of Christ, and extension of our Head, whose limbs we become as we minister to one another and to the world. We represent him to the world and to each other, growing as a body into maturity. Are we there yet?