Week 46—Tuesday Romans 15:5-6
Week 46—TUESDAY
Romans 15:5-6
IN WHAT SENSE IS THE CHURCH THE BODY OF CHRIST?
We come now in our study of the Word become flesh, the Incarnation, to the question, In what sense is the church the body of Christ? In several places the church is called the body of Christ. “He is the head of the body, the church” (Col. 1:18). “Christ is the head of the church, his body” (Eph. 5:23).
Does this mean that as once Christ took a body and inhabited it, that the church is now his new body and the church is now the new Incarnation? Has the church replaced the now discarded body of Christ and become the new “body of Christ”? There is, of course, a sense that each individual and each group of individuals devoted to Christ incarnate in some way the Incarnation and are an extension of that Incarnation. But only as they reincarnate the spirit of Christ.
But to make this collectivity of organized Christianity, called the church, “the body of Christ” makes me inwardly shudder every time I hear it used. It is close to blasphemy. Is Christ’s “body” like this that I see in the organized church? Last week I was in a city where a church building was padlocked and sealed by court decree because two factions within the church were quarreling over which should be in control. Is that church a part of “the body of Christ”? I see church assemblies in voting for high church offices, such as bishops, play low, party politics exactly as any political convention. Is that a part of “the body of Christ”? A group of bishops meet to discuss plans for union of the churches, and four bishops of a particular group stay away lest their coming would be a recognition of other bishops whose ordination supposedly is not as valid as theirs. Is that a part of “the body of Christ”? I was shown a court of the Inquisition where an ecclesiastical judge sat and condemned heretics, and the wooden statue of Christ on the judge’s desk nodded its head in approval when the judge pulled the string! Is that a part of “the body of Christ”?
O Jesus Lord, what kind of a body have you? Are the legs upon which you are walking this earth of ours suffering from gangrene or moral leprosy? There must be something wrong somewhere. Teach us how to look on you and your church. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am “the body of Christ” if Christ is in my body, and not because I belong to a group of believers.