From 1 Corinthians 11 onwards Paul turns to deal with issues in the Corinthians’ public worship gatherings. In chapters 12 to 14 Paul takes up the issue of orderliness and love of neighbor in public worship. His goal throughout is pastoral. He is trying to show the Corinthians that true worship cannot be disorderly and self-centered. Worship—and use of the gifts in worship—must always be for the sake of your neighbor.
Paul frames the conversation around the variety of spiritual gifts freely given to the every member of the church, but all by the one Spirit. The gifts are various and unique from person to person, but it is the same Spirit who energizes/activates them all.
Later, in chapter 15, Paul will say that the end goal of all things is that God will be all in all. This doesn’t mean that we will all become the exact same thing, with no differences between us. Rather, for God to truly be all in all there must be diversity. Why? Because God is infinite. As God’s life comes alive in you it takes a unique shape in you that it couldn’t take in me. And vice-versa. He is infinitely creative.
The variety of gifts given to the church are all for the “common good” of the whole church. The Greek word here is “sympheron” from which we get our word “symphony.” A symphony is not uniform, it is a variety of instruments coming together for the sake of one song. The spiritual gifts are always given for the sake of the one song: building up the church-community. They are not given for merely individual/private edification.
All this talk of unity in diversity leads Paul to one of his favorite ways of speaking of the church: the body of Christ. Every member of a human body is important. And it is the members that “seem to be weaker” to us that are actually to be clothed with dignity and honor.
Paul makes the turn in verse 27 “Now [y’all] are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
St. Augustine (4th century) building on Paul’s theology of the church as the body of Christ called the unity between Christ and his body the “total Christ.” To speak of Christ as the head is always to include his body. Christ is never separate from his body, just as the body is never separate from the head. His body makes him who he is.
Augustine makes the point like this: Say you are in a crowded area where people are jostling around each other trying to make their way out. If someone steps on your foot, isn’t it the head that says, “You are treading on me!” But no one has stepped on your head or on your tongue. Both are safely high up off the ground. And yet, he says, because of the bond of love that exists between your head and even your feet, there is a deep unity. This is why you say, “You’ve stepped on me.”
How much more deeply related is Christ (the head) to us (his body)? When someone abuses another person who seems unimportant to us, they’ve stomped on Christ’s feet. “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
But this reveals something even deeper. Something too marvelous to comprehend. It reveals something about the unchanging identity of God: Jesus is not Jesus without us. It almost sounds blasphemous to say, if it weren’t for God saying it. Jesus made us the whole intent and purpose of his life. He lived his entire life, all the way to death, for us.
Jesus refuses to be God without us.
Could God have been God without us? Of course! He lacks nothing and has no need of anything. He doesn’t need us to be God, but he refuses to be the God he is without us.
There is no Jesus except the one who prayed, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” This is his dying prayer. If the Father is going to raise his Son from the dead, it will have to be the Son who prayed this prayer that he raises. It will have to be the Jesus who has united himself to us in extreme solidarity that he resurrects.
Robert Jenson puts it like this: It’s as if on the cross Jesus poses this question to his Father: “Will you still be my Father, even though I am now tied up with these despicable brothers?”
The resurrection is the Father’s resounding “Yes” to Jesus’ question. And because it is a “Yes” to Jesus, it is a “Yes” from God to you and to me.
Jesus refuses to be God without us. It sounds too marvelous to say. But in fact we confess it all the time. He is Emmanuel: God with us.
Jesus Refuses To Be God Without Us