There is a beautiful song we sing every so often entitled, I Need Thee Every Hour. In the chorus it says, “I need Thee, O I need Thee; Every hour I need Thee! O bless me now my Savior; I come to Thee!” Lately I have been thinking about my need for God and how it is reflected in my understanding of His church. I realize that, intellectually, we understand that the people are the church; even so, it seems we battle with the concept at times. When Jesus confronted Saul on the road to Damascus, He asked, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4) What Saul was doing to the church, he was doing to Jesus. The church of Christ is “His body!” (Ephesians 1:23) For the Christian, our understanding of the precious nature of the church (His body) plays a role in my understanding of how much I need Him; that is, God.
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.
1st Corinthians 12:12
Apparently, the church in Corinth was having some issues concerning the miraculous gifts the early church received, placing higher value on some and lesser on others. In so doing, they were suggesting that some (the lesser valued ones) were not needed as much. He would write, “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,’ is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,’ is it therefore not of the body?” (1st Corinthians 12:15-16) Simply put, everyone who is in Christ is part of His body (the church) and is needed! (1st Corinthians 12:22) The fact is, “God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.” (1st Corinthians 12:18) “But now indeed there are many members, yet one body.” (1st Corinthians 12:20)
In his commentary on 1st Corinthians, Carl Holladay writes, “The several members, regardless of their position and function within the body, are interdependent.” What a powerful word! It’s meaning is so simplistic, yet challenging. It means depending on each other. It is here where I come full circle. Does the “me” in “we” need all of you? Then it dawned on me, I can’t separate “me” from “you” because we are His church. We are one body in Christ!
Dennis
