Gifts For The Body
GIFTS FOR THE BODY
1 CORINTHIANS 12:27-31
Although each believer has different gifts, each is equally a member of the body of Christ.
Paul sums up his teaching in a final verse (12:27), after he has drawn maximum content from the analogy of the human body. There is one body, into which all believers are baptized at conversion as they utter the Spirit-inspired confession (12:3,13). Christ is the head of this body (Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:18), and gathers the members into a true unity as his limbs and organs. So individual Christians are likened to the several parts of the body which, under the control of the head, represents “the whole Christ,” ie Christ’s agents in the world. A body’s health consists in its organs and cells functioning properly and in unison, so, with “each part … working properly” (Ephesians 4:16), Christ’s body grows and matures. What is the pervasive atmosphere in which this development takes place (Ephesians 4:16)? Paul will turn to this theme as to “a still more excellent way” (12:31).
The New Testament church, from its inception, was an ordered society. It was, however, not hierarchical and institutional in the later sense of possessing rigid orders of a priesthood of ministry; but equally it was not a shapeless and loose association of freely consenting individuals who decided to form a church as a convenient social unit. There was, from the beginning, an ordered life and a rudimentary ministerial pattern, indicated in 12:28. Much controversy has centered on the exact nature of the apostolic office and other various ministerial functions in the early church.
“Apostles” rank as the first in Paul’s list, for the reason supplied in Ephesians 2:20 (see also Revelation 21:14). They were the original founder members of the Christian society, with certain additional people (notably Paul) who claimed to have met the requirements of Acts 1:22 (see also 1 Corinthians 9:1; Galatians 1:1). The order of “prophets” (eg Agabus in Acts 11:27f.; 21:10) was concerned with a revelation of the divine will for the congregation (Acts 13:1), a function shared with “teachers”—and mainly of an itinerant character (Ephesians 4:11). The other people referred to (in 12:28) possessed a functional gift, exercised in the assembled worship of the church.
The point of the rhetorical questions (12:29-30) is that in each case the expected answer (clearly stated in the Greek) is No. Not all Christians can claim to possess the full range of the gifts: and there are some gifts (eg apostleship) which are unique and unrepeatable. But one “way” in which any gift is to be exercised is open to all.