Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
Luke 15:1-7, I Corinthians 12:21-31
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit
me together in mother’s womb. Thank you
for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
Paul corrects the Corinthians
Church in this way
Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy
Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought
you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body. I Co. 6:19
Thinking about the organs of a human body and our passage
about the church as body, the appendix is fascinating. Despite centuries of research, the exact purpose of the
appendix is still not certain. It is
sometimes said, perhaps as encourage a person who has had their appendix
removed, ‘well, you don’t need that’.
What they really mean to say is “you can survive without it”. But as Paul reminds us, it is against the
rules to say, “we don’t need you”.
There are two examples of complaints that Paul uses in his
teaching about the church as body. The
first complaint is “Because I am not”.
An imaginary hand might say “Because I am not an eye, I am not
important”. The second complaint is “I
don’t need you” to another member of the body.
Appendix, you aren’t needed.
Begone.
“Because I am not…"
When a part of the body needlessly compares itself to
another part in an inappropriate way, it rejects God’s part for them in the
body. How absurd that the stomach demand
to see? The body would die because it
wasn’t doing the job it was called to do.
It isn’t inappropriate to see strength in another person and
wish to emulate that. But it isn’t
appropriate to compare yourself to another part of Christ’s body when he has called
you to your role. Needlessly comparing
yourself draws you away from God, while following God’s purpose for you brings
health to the body.
The Scripture calls us to spur one another on to good deeds, to encourage one another as long as it called today. Scripture also commands us to take sin and wrongdoing seriously enough to identify it and seek to leave it behind. But the Scripture does not devalue humanity. And it is wrong for us to say to another part of Christ’s body: I don’t need you.
Also, there is a finality to the phrase “I don’t need
you”. But the Scripture says that an eye
saying to the head ‘I don’t need you’ doesn’t cease to make the head continue
to be a head.
What is God showing us through the church as body image?
- He has put his Son Jesus Christ in Charge, and Jesus is the head of the body.
- God places emphasis on ‘senses’. The body as a big eye would lose the majesty of the sense of smell. A big nose would lose out on music. The body losing their senses is a sick body, not complete, dysfunctional.
- God wants his body to awaken to all that God has created it to be.
- God has a specific intent for specific parts. Scripture says that God has put each part exactly where it should be. His will, not ours.
- God looks at the parts of the body uniquely and purposefully. He has good plans for all the parts of the body.
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