Body of Christ part 4

Five Foot Zero

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be?
1 Corinthians 12:17-19

Where would the church be if there were no diversity indeed? Maybe it’s just as easy to ask where is the church, right here and now. With this passage, we are starting to get into the why of all this. Paul did not call this concept of unity in diversity the body of Christ arbitrarily. It’s because the church is one of the ways that  Jesus reveals himself to the world. Let’s face it. There is no way that any lone person could be everything that Jesus was, but when we bring our many different Christ-like qualities together in seamless selfless unity, we can get far closer than we ever could apart. That won’t happen when we focus on select aspects of holiness rather than all of it. That won’t happen when we make it all about us and expect the rest of the church to center everything around our needs alone as if we are the definitive standard of what’s needed. It’s all centered around Christ for a reason, we fail as a church when we stray from that. When we fail as a church we just end up painting  Jesus in a negative light, and the result of that is turning this hurting world away from him rather than towards him. Separately we have done so little, but together by God’s spirit we could do so much. For that to happen, the individual is going to have to think of someone other than self. (1 Corinthians 12:7)

“We’re all in this together if we’re in it at all.” -Johnny Cash

“We don’t have it all together, but together we have it all.” -Unknown