Paul was probably the first to describe a parallel between the human body and the corporate community of Christian believers (the Latin root of "corporate" is "corpus,” meaning "body"). His main intent in using the metaphor was drawing attention to our unity (oneness of the body) despite our diversity (distinction of the parts). For two millennia and across hundreds of diverse human cultures, this metaphor ranks as an especially apt literary device and has been very effective in casting light on the identity of the Church.
But the matter at hand is not so much "the body" as simple metaphor, rather, the Body of Christ as living reality. This is a shocking realization, or should be.
In a very real and profound sense, the Church universal (the family of all true believers in Christ– whoever, wherever, and whenever they are) is very much the actual Body of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We commonly use the term "body" in reference to the organic forms, inside of which we find our selves. Although we often refer to our bodies as "us" we know that is not really the whole truth. We may look into a mirror and say "I am looking at myself," but we know that what we see from the outside is not fully the deepest and most real core of who we are. We know that our selves, our beings, although utterly connected to and enmeshed with our bodies, are so much more than the physical stuff that houses us.
Consider our brains. We believe this organ– complex and rich beyond understanding– is inextricably connected with who we are. We believe it to be the very seat of our consciousness, our life. To the ancient Hebrews, the physical organ most intimately associated with the soul was the bowels. To the Romans, the heart. To us, the brain. And yet, if we were to open our skulls and look at our brains in a mirror, we wouldn't say "See that brain? That's me!" Rather, we would say "That's my brain, my possession. And I am in there!"
Both Paul and Peter, also, held the concept that the physical body was not actually the person, (not us), but it was our "tabernacle," our tent, our dwelling– within which we lived and breathed and walked upon this earth. Paul (and Jesus) also described this physical body as a "seed," which "dies" when planted in the earth, and as it expires, the true life is more fully revealed.
All this to say, the physical body and the lasting, living being within should not be confused with each other or conflated into a single thing.
It is in this sense, the Church is most significantly the Body of Christ. As our own physical bodies are the visible, tangible envelope of our beings in this world, the aggregate of Christian Believers have become the visible, tangible envelope of Christ's being in the world. As we live and breathe and walk across this world, we literally take with us Who He is. As we go here and there, speaking and loving in His name, He goes here and there, speaking and loving.
At the original incarnation– the entrance of God the Son into His physical creation– God, in some mysterious and wholly baffling way, shoe-horned His infinite, eternal Being into the minuscule embryo that was wrapped and restricted in His mother's womb. Even as His physical body grew and matured into a man, the limitation and restriction of God the Son as Jesus the Man is unfathomable. How this could possibly be is one of the greatest mysteries of the ages.
After the Son returned to His eternal abode and took His physical, risen body with Him, so another advent, another incarnation was about to take place. Before He died, rose again to life, and ascended, the Son declared the oneness of the Father and the Son ("He who has seen Me has seen the Father..."). In the same setting He declared that the Believers, the Church, would not only do the same works He had done, but would also be filled with Another, Who would be like Him– in fact, His very Spirit.
The fulfillment of that declaration of the Son had its initiation in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. This was the incarnation of the Spirit of God, whereby, He poured the oceans of His perfect Being into the thimble-sized Body of the corporate Church, composed of individual, imperfect Believers in Christ. This second earth-shaking event stretches our imaginations to the breaking point as did the first.
In much the same way that the human soul fills, animates, and directs the human body, so the Holy Spirit of God saturates and moves the Church. And just as the physical body of a human being is not identical to– not the essence of– the human being, so the Church, the Body of Christ on this earth, is not the essence of God Himself. The Church is simply the dwelling, the tabernacle, the temple of God on earth.
While I use the term "simply," it is, yet, much deeper than that. When the first Man and the first Woman were wedded, God declared that this marriage would be nothing less than a radical and holy union, a cosmic joining of the two into one. In fact, the foundational purpose for this new relationship was they would be so joined "...they would become one flesh." Even in the physical act of consummation of a human marriage, the physical and emotional union runs so thorough and so deep, that it can be difficult to truly understand where the one human being ends and the other begins.
The Lord Jesus, in His glorified state, describes the Church as His Bride, and it is in this deep sense of union that He enters us, and inhabits us as His dwelling. He does not merely breeze back into the universe and set up shop in the nearest vacant building (which just happens to be us), but He loves us, pursues us, and captures us by His holy and tender heart. He purchases us from the slave block, upon which we stood helpless and in chains. He buys us with the extravagant price of His own life-blood, and then sets us free. The consummation of this wedding is nothing less than the grandest and most profound love story of all time.
Those of us whom God changed from darkness to light by the glorious entrance of His Holy Spirit now live as His Body on this earth. May we cherish this entirely unexpected and unwarranted situation. May His Spirit have complete freedom to move us as He wills, to accomplish His perfect purposes and His perfect plans. To Him, may all the glory be!
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>>> Unless otherwise attributed, all text and images are Copyright, Bill Brockmeier, 2015. All rights reserved. Image is detail of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam," 1512.
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