Chapter 3 —The Fundamental Truth: Christ’s Church as His Corporate Body

Our laborious exhortations to become a “caring church” have wearied us. Endless commands to “do” something are transcended by a simple divine invitation to “see” something.

To understand what is involved in Christ’s call to repentance we must consider Paul’s brilliant metaphor of the church as a “body.” We sustain a corporate relationship to one another and to Christ Himself as our Head. Although this idea is foreign to much of our Western thinking, it is essential to the Bible concepts.

In fact, the word “corporate” is a good Bible word, for Paul addresses his letters “to believers incorporate in Christ” (Ephesians 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:1, etc.; Romans 6:5, NEB). ‘As the body is one and has many members, … so also is Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). Paul goes on to illustrate his idea.

There is a corporate unity of the “one body” (verse 13), a corporate diversity of its various “members” (verses 15-18), a corporate need felt by all (“the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’” verses 21, 22), a corporate balance of the various members (verses 23, 24), a corporate “care” they feel for each other and for the head (verse 25), and corporate suffering and rejoicing which all the members share together (verse 26). If I stub my toe on a sharp rock, my whole body feels the pain. If the leg could speak it would say, “I’m sorry; I projected the toe against the rock.” The eye would say, “No, it’s my fault; I should have seen the sharp rock.”

The Meaning of the Word “Corporate”

The word “body” is a noun, and the word “bodily” is an adverb; but there is no meaningful English adjective that can describe the nature of this relationship within the “body” except the word “corporate” from the Latin word for body, corpus. The dictionary defines it as “relating to a whole composed of individuals.”

Your own experience can make this plain. What happens when you stub your toe badly? At once you realize the corporate relationship of the limbs and organs of your body. You stop while your whole body cooperates by rubbing the hurting toe to lessen the pain. You may even hurt all over. Your other organs and limbs feel a corporate concern for that wounded toe, as if each feels the pain. “If one organ suffers, they all suffer together” (1 Corinthians 12:26, NEB).

Any 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. It is as alien as disease or accident is to our human body. Sin is such an accident to the “body of Christ,” and guilt is its disease.

Often we suffer disease without knowing which organ is ill, or even what causes it. We can also suffer from sin without knowing what it is. How can sin have both a personal and corporate nature?

In malarial areas, people are bitten by the anopheles mosquito, and infected with the disease. Some ten days after the bite, the parasites in the blood stream produce malarial fever. Not only is the one “member” such as the finger affected which received the mosquito bite, but the whole body partakes of the common fever. The blood stream has carried the parasites everywhere. This is a corporate disease.

When we receive an injection of an anti-malarial drug in one “member,” the arm receiving it is not the only member to benefit. The 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.” This is a corporate healing.

The 17^th century poet John Donne grasped the idea:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee (Devotions, XVII).

It would have been a short step more for Donne to have said, “Any man’s sin diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know who crucified the Christ; it was you.”

This solidarity of humanity can be illustrated by lions. A few lions in Africa become man-eaters, but most never get to taste of human beings. Does this mean that some lions are good and others are bad? There is no difference so far as lion character is concerned. Given the right circumstances, any hungry lion will be a man-eater.

Does Jesus say in His message to Laodicea that our pride, our blindness, our spiritual poverty, our wretchedness, are corporate? Do we partake of a common spiritual disease that is like a fever to a body or a lion’s nature—something pervading the whole? The Hebrew mind says yes.

The Bible Idea of “Adam”

The Bible writers perceived the whole of humanity as being one corporate man—the fallen “Adam.” “In Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22). An outstanding example is found in Hebrews. Paul said that Levi paid “tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his [great-grand] father, when Melchizedek met him.” Abraham did not yet have even one son (Hebrews 7:9, 10, KJV). Daniel asks forgiveness for the sins of “our fathers,” saying, “We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God,” although he himself had been obedient (9:8-11).

Human sin is personal, but it is also corporate, for “all alike have sinned,” and “all the world [has] become guilty before God” (Romans 3:23, NEB; 3:19, KJV). Adam’s real guilt was that of crucifying Christ, although his original sin was 4000 years removed; no one of us “in Adam” is even now excused. What is our basic human nature? The answer is unpalatable—we are by nature at enmity with God, and await only the proper circumstances to demonstrate it. A few people did demonstrate this for us by crucifying the Son of God. In them we see ourselves.

The original sin of the first pair was the acorn that grew into the oak of Calvary. Any sin that we today commit is another acorn that needs only time and circumstance to become the same oak, for “the carnal mind is enmity against God,” and murder is always involved in enmity for “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer” (Romans 8:7; 1 John 3:15, KJV).

The sin that another human has committed I could commit if Christ had not saved me from it. The righteousness of Christ cannot be a mere adjunct to my own good works, a slight push to get me over the top. My righteousness is all of Him or it is nothing. “In me … nothing good dwells” (Romans 7:18). If “nothing good” is there, as I am part of the corporate body of Adam, all evil could dwell there. Nobody else is intrinsically any worse than I am—apart from my Saviour. Oh, how it hurts us to begin to realize this!

Not until we can see the sin of someone else as our sin too can we learn to love him as Christ has loved us. The reason is that in loving us He took our sin upon Himself. When He died on His cross, we died with Him—in principle. For us, love is also to realize corporate identity. “Be tenderhearted, … just as God in Christ also forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). Paul prays for us, not that we might “do” more works, but that we might see or “comprehend” something—the dimensions of that love (Ephesians 3:14-21).

The reality that Scripture would bring to our conscience is that we need the robe of Christ’s righteousness imputed 100%. Thosewho crucified Christ 2000 years ago acted as our surrogates. Luther wisely says that we are all made of the same dough.

The Other Side of the Coin

If this seems to be bad news, there is also good news: Christ forgave His murderers (Luke 23:34), and that means He also forgave us. Even the fallen Adam and Eve in the Garden were forgiven. But you and I can never know that forgiveness unless we “see” the sin that makes it necessary. Since God had promised them that “in the day that you eat” of the forbidden tree “you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17), they would have died on that very day had there not been a Lamb slain for them “from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).

The guilt that Romans says rests upon “all the world” is “in Adam,” and legal. The “trespasses” of all the world were imputed unto Christ as He died on His cross as the second or “last Adam” (2 Corinthians 5:19). That means that all the “condemnation” that the first Adam brought on the world was reversed by the second Adam, by virtue of His sacrifice (Romans 5:16-18).

Consider the Jewish nation. Those who crucified Christ asked that “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25). This does not mean that every individual Jew is personally more guilty than people who are Gentiles. They were invoking a blood-responsibility upon their children in a national sense. This is the Jews’ corporate guilt. But we are in reality no better than they are. Apart from specific repentance, we share the same involvement in the crucifixion of Christ:

That prayer of Christ for His enemies embraced the world. It took in every sinner that had lived or should live, from the beginning of the world to the end of time. Upon all rests the guilt of crucifying the Son of God. To all, forgiveness is freely offered (The Desire of Ages, page 745).

Let us all remember that we are still in a world where Jesus, the Son of God, was rejected and crucified, where the guilt of despising Christ and preferring a robber rather than the spotless Lamb of God still rests. Unless we individually repent toward God because of transgression of His law, and exercise faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the world has rejected, we shall lie under the full condemnation that the action of choosing Barabbas instead of Christ merited. The whole world stands charged today with the deliberate rejection and murder of the Son of God. … All classes and sects who reveal the same spirit of envy, hatred, prejudice, and unbelief manifested by those who put to death the Son of God—would act the same part, were the opportunity granted, as did the Jews and people of the time of Christ. They would be partakers of the same spirit that demanded the death of the Son of God (Testimonies to Ministers, page 38).

This is the world’s corporate guilt. Note that no one bears the condemnation unless he repeats the sin “were the opportunity granted.” But “unless we individually repent,” we share the corporate guilt that is involved “in Adam.”

Our Special Involvement in Corporate Guilt

But as Seventh-day Adventists, we share another example of corporate guilt in a special way for a very special sin. Not that we are personally guilty, but we are the spiritual “children” of our forefathers who in a notable sense repeated the sin of the ancient Jews. This corporate guilt causes the latter rain to be withheld from us as surely as the Jews’ impenitence keeps the blessings of the Messiah’s ministry from them. “We” rejected the “most precious message” that the Lord sent to us and which in a special way represented Him. What our forefathers really said was similar to what the ancient Jews said, “The responsibility for delaying the coming of the Lord be on us and on our children!” In fact, Ellen White has said that “we” did worse than the Jews, for “we” had far greater light than they had. The reality of this indictment is alarming:

The light that is to lighten the whole earth with its glory was resisted, and by the action of our own brethren has been in a great degree kept away from the world (Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, page 1575).

These men, whose hearts should have been open to receive the heavenly messengers, were closed to its entreaties. They have ridiculed, mocked, and derided God’s servants who have borne to them the message of mercy from heaven. … Had these men no fear that the sin of blasphemy might be committed by them? (Ibid., page 1642).

Men professing godliness have despised Christ in the person of His messengers. Like the Jews, they reject God’s message (Ibid., page 1651).

You hated the messages sent from heaven. You manifested against Christ a prejudice of the very same character and more offensive to God than that of the Jewish nation. … You, and all who like yourself, had sufficient evidence, yet refused the blessing of God, were persistent in refusing because at first you would not receive it (Ibid., page 1656).

We may claim that we are not repeating that sin of our forefathers; but what means the constant effort to suppress the actual message of 1888, and keep it from the people?

The ancient Jews continued in their course until “there was no remedy” for their impenitence. The wrath of the Lord at last arose against them (2 Chronicles 36:16). Then began the tragic history of the cruel world empires, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. In a sense the guilt of ancient Israel was responsible for the rise of those empires. Untold sorrow has filled the world because of the impenitence of God’s people.¹

Unbelieving Jews still gather at the Wailing Wall in old Jerusalem to pray for God to send them their long-awaited Messiah. A better plan would be for them to repent of rejecting Him when He came 2000 years ago, and recover the gospel message which they lost at that time. We pray for the Lord to send us the gift of the latter rain so that the final message can lighten the earth with glory. Says a recent Sabbath School Quarterly:

At the 1990 General Conference session hundreds of people committed themselves to daily prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in both the former and latter rains. Since then thousands all over the world have been praying daily for the special blessing of the Lord. Such prayer is sure to result in changed hearts, spiritually revitalized churches, and more earnest outreach for those who do not believe. Moreover, in response to this united prayer, the Lord promises to grant the greatest outpouring of the Spirit in human history, the latter rain predicted by Joel and Peter (Teachers’ Comments for March 9, 1992).

To pray for the latter rain is good. But is there something we are leaving out? We have been earnestly praying for it for a hundred years, as the Jews have been praying for the coming of their Messiah for thousands of years. Would it not be a better plan for us to repent of rejecting “the beginning” of that same blessing which the Lord sent us a century ago, and to demonstrate our repentance by recovering the message which we lost?

Is our Lord’s call to repent as serious a matter as this? Does decade after decade of spiritual drought roll by because His call has not been seriously considered? If He calls for repentance, there must be some way that we can respond.

We must look into this more deeply.

Notes for Chapter 3:

1. God told Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Israel was intended to be the greatest nation on earth (Exodus 19:5, 6), “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). If they had preserved the faith of their father Abraham and had repented, Israel would have remained the greatest and most powerful nation on earth. The four cruel and tyrannous world empires had to fill a vacuum in history left by the failure of Israel.