A Deeper Repentance That
Pervades the "Body"
Most of us are deeply thankful for the church as a “body” of believers in Christ. Around the world there are some solitary, isolated believers deprived of the warm fellowship most of us enjoy. It’s no fun being alone, especially with an unpopular faith. We like being a part of “the body.”
A person is store than a scattered assortment of limbs, organs, or cells. All these organs of a “body” thrive on a vital relationship together. None could survive alone. Such is the church. Christ is “the Head,” and we are all individually “members of His body.”
In fact, no individual believer in Christ could possibly reveal all the infinite facets of the Saviour’s character, any more than a single part of one’s body could express or fulfill all of the thoughts or intents of the head. The feet, for example, can do some things the hands can’t do and vice versa. Each of us is needed in order to reflect to the world and the universe all those aspects of the loveliness of Christ’s character. If we don’t realize this, sinful pride can force us to exhibit to the world a deformed representation of the body of Christ.
The apostle Paul grasped the idea of this vital member-to-member-to-Christ relationship. Truly inspired by the Holy Spirit, his illustration is brilliant.
Everyone can understand it, even children. It is almost as if the human body had been created Just to provide this perfect symbol of the relationship the church bears to the world and to Christ:
Christ is like a single body with its many limbs and organs, which, many as they are, together make up one body. … A body is not a single organ, but many. … God appointed each limb and organ to its own place in the body, as He chose. If the whole were one single organ, there would not be a body at all; in fact, however, there are many different organs, but one body. … God has combined the various parts of the body, giving special honour to the humbler parts, so that there might be no sense of division in the body, but that all its organs might feel the same concern for one another. If one organ suffers, they all suffer together. … Now you are Christ’s body, and each of you is a limb or organ of it. (1 Corinthians 12:12-27, NEB).
The Meaning of the Word “Corporate”
The word “body” is a noun, and the word “bodily” is an adverb; but there is no English adjective that can describe the nature of this relationship within the “body,” except the word “corporate” from the Latin word for body. Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defines it as “of or relating to a whole composed of individuals.”
Corporate guilt is becoming a well-known theological term. For example, Senator Mark Hatfield presented a resolution to Congress in January, 1974, saying, “I believe that only a national confession of corporate guilt can save us.” In his Second Inaugural Address Abraham Lincoln recognized the corporate guilt of the entire nation for the sin of slavery.*
If you stub your toe badly, you will realize this corporate relationship of the limbs and organs of your body. You stop while your whole body cooperates in an effort to rub that sore toe and lessen the pain. You may even hurt all through your body. All your various organs and limbs feel a corporate concern for that wounded toe, as if each feels the pain.
Any illness or amputation in the body becomes a “schism” to be avoided at almost any cost. Likewise, any measure of disunity or misunderstanding, or lack of compassion in the church, is foreign to Christ and His body, as alien as disease or an accident is to our human body. Sin is such an accident to the “body of Christ,” and guilt is its disease.
The wounded toe may be the individual that suffers, but the whole body suffers with it. The other members may be conceived as feeling responsible for the wound, the leg saying, “Had I been more careful, the toe would not have been stubbed,” or the eye saying, “If I had been more watchful, it wouldn’t have happened.” “If one organ suffers, they all suffer together.” 1 Corinthians 12:26, NEB. The idea of corporate sin and guilt is implicit in Paul’s inspired illustration.
Often we humans suffer from mysterious diseases that lay us low, without our even knowing what organ is ill, or what causes the sickness. Could our Laodicean disease of lukewarmness be something similar? Could there be in our hearts today a depth of guilt that we do not realize or understand?
Are Some Lions “Good” and Some “Bad”?
Some lions in Africa become man-eaters; but the vast majority never get a taste of human beings. Does this mean that most lions are “good” and only a few are “bad”? Is there a difference in lions so far as “character” is concerned?
The fact is that all lions are alike, and given the proper circumstances, any lion will be a man-eater. When he becomes weak or old, separated from the pride which would normally supply him with food, he readily turns to man-eating. We noticed in our last chapter Ellen White’s disturbing statement, “The books of heaven record the sins that would have been committed had there been opportunity.” A man-eating lion is simply acting out his basic nature and we can be thankful that most of them don’t get the “opportunity” to demonstrate it fully!
What is our basic nature as sinners? The answer’ is obvious, but very unpalatable to recognize: we are at enmity with God by nature, and await only the proper circumstances to demonstrate it by crucifying the Son of God. This is the ultimate measure of our corporate guilt.
A familiar disease may help to illustrate our relationship as a body. In malarial areas, people are often bitten by the anopheles mosquito, and infected with malarial parasites. Some ten days after the bite, the parasites in the blood stream produce malarial fever. Not only is the one “member” affected which actually received the mosquito bite, such as the finger, but the whole body partakes of the common fever. The blood stream has carried the parasites all over the body. Let us call this a “corporate” disease, for that is what it is.
We then receive an injection of an anti-malarial drug in one “member,” perhaps the arm or the hip. The one “member” receiving the injection is not the only one to benefit. The parasite-destroying medicine begins to course throughout the blood stream. Soon the entire body is healed of the disease, and the fever disappears over all the body, not Just in the one “member.” The injection has provided a “corporate” healing.
In order to understand what full repentance is, we need to understand our corporate relationship to the entire human race in Adam.” The entire body feels the fever of the malarial infection. So did Christ feel the weight of the sins of the world. This we must appreciate, if we are to appreciate His healing. As long as we feel that we have escaped infection by the common parasite of sin “in Adam,” as long as we feel superior to other “sinners” simply because the infection happened not to occur in our particular “member,” we will be unable to share in the corporate healing provided by Christ. This means that we are powerless to help another person find deliverance from his sin if we in superiority refuse to feel the weight of his guilt. In order to feel this weight we do not need to repeat his actual sinful deed. By sensing the reality or corporate guilt and repentance, we put ourselves in his place. As we shall see in the next chapter, Christ has shown us the way.
A Portrait of Christ and of His Body
Marvelous will be the results when God’s people as a church learn to love sinners as Christ loves them. The only way He has to show that love to them is through His church on earth. Therefore “God hath set … in the church’’ the various gifts of His Spirit so that the church may become His efficient “body” for expressing Himself to the world in the same way that a healthy person expresses through the “members” of his physical body the thoughts and intent of his mind. These “gifts” lead up to the supreme gift of love, which Paul says is “a more excellent way.”
1 Corinthians 12 discusses the corporate relationship of the “many members” with one another and with Christ in the church, “the body.” The “more excellent way” of love is revealed in chapter 13 as the normal function of the “body,” its corporate effectiveness in service. The two chapters must not be separated. Many have seen in chapter 13 a “portrait” of Christ. But in its full context the portrait really is of the church. Paul added the 13th to the 12th chapter in order to demonstrate how the union of the “many members” with Christ as “the Head” works out in practical life. The “many members” in “one body” in Christ become the actual body of Christ on earth for the great purpose of expressing His love to a world that is dark with misapprehension of God. And every member is needed for this glorious work to be effective!
Here in 1 Corinthians 13 is a picture of the church in the time of the final outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Every individual church becomes in its respective community what Christ would be to that community if He were living there in the flesh. Thus His love is communicated effectively to the world, and the lines will be clearly drawn. All men will decide for or against this final revelation. And thus the Lord’s prophecy will be completely fulfilled: “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations; and then shall the end come.” Matthew 24:14.
When the members of the body perform naturally the intents and feelings of the head, there is perfect bliss. Imagine if you will the most delightful enjoyments that the body experiences when there is no conflict between the intent of the mind and the pleasures of the physical senses. Each organ of the body cooperates in perfect unity; the combination of physical and mental joy is indescribable. “So also is Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12).
The perfect joy the human personality experiences is a symbol of the perfect joy the church experiences. “There should be no schism [paralysis] in the body; … the members should have the same care one for another” (verses 25, 26). There is no breakdown of the vital system of nerve pathways conveying communication between the “Head” and the “body.”
Repentance is this nerve pathway that will communicate this effective love to every member of Christ’s body.
*See Christianity Today, February 1, 1974 and March 12, 1971, article by Vance Havner; and Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation for a “National Day for Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer” of April 30, 1863.