What is the church

The Body of Christ

1 Corinthians 12:12, 27 · The church, the people of God

The Bible's deepest picture of the church is a body: Christ's own body, with many members. Every believer is a living part of it, given by the Spirit a place and a gift the whole body needs. No member is unnecessary and no member is the whole. We belong to Christ the head, and we belong to one another, so that when one part suffers, all suffer, and when one is honored, all rejoice.

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.1 Corinthians 12:12, 27 (KJV)

One body with many members

Writing to a divided church in Corinth, the apostle Paul reached for the most human image he could find. Think of a body, he said. It is one thing, and yet it has many members, hands and feet and eyes and ears, each different, all belonging to the same living whole. So it is with Christ. The church is not a crowd of separate individuals who happen to share a belief. It is a single body, alive with one life, and every believer is a member of it.

This means your belonging is not a formality. When you come to Christ you are joined to him and, in him, joined to everyone else who is his. You become part of something living. Paul says that by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we come from very different backgrounds or nations, and all made to drink into one Spirit. The thing that unites the church is not sameness but the shared life of Christ running through every part.

That is a far stronger bond than agreement or affection. Two Christians may differ in language, culture, temperament, and taste, and still be nearer to one another than any club or cause could make them, because the same Spirit lives in both. Membership in the body of Christ is not something you sign up for and can cancel like a subscription. It is a new relationship the Spirit creates, joining you to a life you did not generate and cannot exhaust.

Every part is needed

Paul presses the picture further to comfort those who feel small. A foot might say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body. But that does not make it any less part of the body. The ear might wish it were an eye. But if the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be. God has arranged the members, every one of them, just as it pleased him, and the body needs them all.

If you have ever felt you have nothing to offer, that the church would carry on fine without you, this is the answer. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, nor the head to the feet, I have no need of you. The parts that seem weaker or less honorable are, Paul insists, necessary. There is no spare member in the body of Christ. There is a place that is yours, and a gift the rest of us need from you.

This is also a rebuke to pride. The gifted and the prominent are tempted to think the body depends on them, but Paul says God gives greater honor to the parts that lack it, so that there would be no division in the body. In a healthy church the quiet servant and the visible leader need each other, and neither can look down on the other, because the same Lord placed them both and the body is poorer without either one.

When one suffers, all suffer

Because the church is one body, its members are bound together in a real and living sympathy. Paul says that when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, and when one member is honored, all rejoice together. This is not sentiment. It is what a body is. When you cut your hand, your whole self hurts and attends to it. So it is meant to be among Christians: your pain is not yours alone to carry, and your joy is not yours alone to keep.

This is the answer to loneliness that the world cannot give. To belong to the body of Christ is to be woven into a company of people who are meant to weep with you when you weep and rejoice with you when you rejoice. If you have been carrying something alone, the body of Christ is where you were meant to set it down among people who will help you bear it.

It is worth saying plainly that the church often falls short of this, and members are sometimes left to suffer unnoticed. That failure is real, and it grieves the head of the body more than it grieves us. But the failure does not change the design. The body is still meant to feel with its members, and where the Spirit is at work you will find people who show up in the hospital room, sit with the grieving, and carry what you cannot carry alone.

Christ the head, holding it all together

A body is not a loose collection of parts. It is held together and directed by its head, and the head of the church is Christ himself. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. Every gift, every member, every part serves under him and draws its life from him. The church does not gather around a leader, a building, or a cause. It gathers around, and lives from, Jesus.

That is why the church can be so gloriously varied and still be one. The gifts differ, the members differ, the local gatherings differ, but there is one head, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. To find your place in the body is not to lose yourself in a crowd. It is to become fully yourself in the company of Christ, given a part only you can play in something he is building and keeping alive.

Gifts given for others, not for self

When Paul lists the gifts the Spirit gives to the body, he is careful to say why they are given: for the common good, for the perfecting of the saints and the building up of the body. No gift in the church is for private display. Whatever the Spirit has given you, whether it is teaching or mercy or hospitality or quiet helps behind the scenes, it was given so that someone else might be strengthened. The body grows as each part does its work.

This turns the search for your place into something freeing. You do not have to be gifted at everything, or compare yourself to others, or find your worth in being noticed. You simply ask what the Spirit has put in your hands and use it to serve. And as every member does that, the whole body is knit together and grows up into Christ its head. Your part matters, not because it makes you important, but because the family of God is meant to be built by the love of every member, including you.

This is why finding your place in the body is not mainly about a role or a title, but about belonging and giving yourself away. Somewhere there is a local church that needs exactly what the Spirit has put in you, and where you need exactly what he has put in others. You will not discover your part by standing at a distance and weighing it up; you will discover it by joining in, serving, and letting yourself be woven into the life of a real congregation. The body grows as each member does its work, and there is a place in it waiting for you.

Across the traditions: Across the traditions Christians describe the gifts and offices of the body differently, but all hold the same core: the church is one body under Christ its head, and each member matters. If you want to see this pictured as a doorway into the wider family, visit our page on the Body of Christ as a place to find your part.

An honest word: No body on earth is without its wounds, and the church has often failed to love its own members well. Real people are hurt by real churches. Yet the answer to a body that limps is not to abandon the body, but to let the head, Christ, keep healing and re-membering it, with you in it.

Related: The Body of Christ, a doorway to the family · What is the church · Find a church near you · What is the church