Lesson 85 · Unit 13 · The Body of Christ
Four Portraits of the Church
Body, household, temple, bride - before you decide what the church is, look at what God painted.
Open
You have rated a restaurant, and you have rated a film. One day you notice that you are rating the church: preaching, four stars; the choir, three; parking, two; nobody said hello to me last week, take off another half. The draft of the bad review is already written in your head.
There is nothing wrong with rating things - if the church were an organization providing spiritual services. But comb the New Testament and you will not find an institutional word for her: no "unit," no "platform," no "provider." When God paints the church, every word he uses is a word about relationship - body, household, temple, bride.
Look at the four portraits, and the rating hand slowly comes down.
Scripture
Paul painted the first portrait in the most detail. (1 Corinthians 12:12-27, selected; 1 Peter 2:4-5, WEB)
12For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.
14For the body is not one member, but many.
15If the foot would say, “Because I’m not the hand, I’m not part of the body,” it is not therefore not part of the body.
17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the smelling be?
18But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as he desired.
21The eye can’t tell the hand, “I have no need for you,” or again the head to the feet, “I have no need for you.”
26When one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. When one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
27Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.
4Come to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious.
5You also as living stones are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
See
Body: nobody gets to say "I have no need for you"
Paul does not say the church is *like* a body; he says you *are* the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27). The logic of a body runs two ways. First, the members are placed: "God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as he desired" (12:18) - which church you are in and who sits next to you came before your preferences. Second, the members need each other: however distinguished the eye, it cannot say to the hand, "I have no need for you" (12:21). The one who feels inferior says, "Because I'm not the hand, I'm not part of the body"; the one who feels superior says, "I have no need for you" - and Paul blocks both exits. And the nerves are connected: when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it (12:26). Losing sleep because a brother lost his job is not sentimentality; it is the sensation a body is supposed to have.
Household: a registry, not a courtesy
Paul wants Timothy to know "how men ought to behave themselves in God's house, which is the assembly of the living God" (1 Tim 3:15 - "assembly" is how this translation renders the word we usually read as "church"). "Brother" and "sister" are not church jargon; they are a registry - one Father, one elder brother. The mark of a family is that you do not choose the members: you can pick your friends, never your siblings. Which is exactly why a family is the place love is trained - loving the people you get along with requires no grace at all.
Temple: one stone is not a building
Peter says the Lord is the living stone, rejected by men, precious to God, and that you also "as living stones are built up as a spiritual house" (1 Pet 2:4-5). In the Old Testament the temple was the place where God and people met; now that place is not a building but a people under construction. What matters is the passive voice - stones do not lay themselves, they "are built up." However square a single stone is, standing alone in a wilderness it is not a temple; once it is set into the wall, its position, its load and its angle are all interlocked with other stones.
Bride: he loves her and gave himself for her
The last portrait is the most surprising: "Christ also loved the assembly and gave himself up for her," so that he might "present the assembly to himself gloriously, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing" (Eph 5:25-27). Notice the tense: the bride has spots and wrinkles now - Christ knows, loves her anyway, and is at this moment washing her. This portrait is the cure for our disappointment. You are disappointed with the church largely because you are treating her as an institution, and an institution that underperforms deserves a bad review. But if she is the betrothed of Christ, then before you mark her down you had better think about who the bridegroom is. Every word God uses for the church is a relationship word; not once does he call her an organization.
Deeper
Members (1 Cor 12:27)
your relationship to the church is not a membership scheme, it is organ-level; an organ outside the body is not free, it is dead.
The house of God (1 Tim 3:15)
brother and sister is a registry, not a courtesy; the fact that you cannot choose your family is precisely the training ground of grace.
Living stones, spiritual house (1 Pet 2:5)
God's dwelling moved from a building to a congregation; the stones are alive, and the building is done to them, not by them.
The bride (Eph 5:27)
the church has wrinkles now and Christ is still washing her; his commitment to her is the reason for ours.
Story
Old Ou collects scrap in Guiyang, with a steelyard scale riding in the back of his three-wheeler all year round. He was the quietest man in the small group: he could barely read, so the reading never came round to him, and he could not get a word into the discussion. He said so himself: "In church I'm just a head count."
Last year he was in hospital a month with a stomach bleed. The group visited, and on the bedside cabinet they saw a plastic-covered notebook frayed at the edges - inside, in crooked handwriting, was every name in the group, and under each name the things going on in that household: whose child had exams, whose mother was in chemotherapy, who had been out of work three months. Every day, after finishing his rounds, he prayed his way down the list under a streetlamp. Four years, not one day missed.
Later the group leader said, "All the time we were having our lively discussions, somebody underneath was holding us up." That was the day everyone understood that the parts of the body which seem weaker are the indispensable ones - the head count was never him; it was our assumption that the church only needs people who can talk.
Respond
Reflect — alone, or talk it through together
1Of the four portraits - body, household, temple, bride - which one most corrects the way you currently see the church? Why?
2"When one member suffers, all the members suffer with it" - whose situation have you genuinely grieved or rejoiced over lately?
3What bad reviews of the church have you drafted in your heart? Put the portrait of the bride over them and rewrite them - how do they read now?
Saved on this device only — visible to no one but you.
Pray together
God who set the members in the body just as you desired: thank you for laying me into a temple whose blueprint I never drew. Forgive me for walking into your house with a scorecard, forgetting that I am also a stone other people are carrying. Give me the sensation of a body: when a member suffers, let me hurt; when one is honoured, let me be glad. And thank you that your Son loves this wrinkled bride and gave himself for her - teach me to look at the one he loves with the bridegroom's eyes. Amen.
Walk
This week's actionabout 20 min
Invite the member of your church least like you (the furthest away in age, trade or temperament) for tea or twenty minutes of conversation, and do one thing only: listen to how they came to faith and how they ended up staying in this church.
Mark it when it happens — this week, at your pace.
Spiritual practice
Every time you want to complain about the church this week, stop for three seconds, call one of the four portraits to mind, and then give thanks aloud for one specific person in it.
Memory verse · 1 Corinthians 12:27
NowyouarethebodyofChrist,andmembersindividually.
Walk further
Peter, who wrote "living stones," Solomon's question at the dedication of the temple, the background of the temple worship system, lesson 32 on the hypocrites in the church, and a prayer for friendship and community.