One Body, Many Members

What exactly transforms a group of people so different from one another — in age, background, social class, and even conviction on secondary matters of the faith — into a single church? It is not natural affinity among the members, nor the organization of the institution, nor shared interests. Paul points to a specific Someone: “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body ... and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor 12:13). It is not our own will, nor our own effort, that makes us part of this body, but the action of God's own Spirit. What truly unites the Christians of a church is not having been born in the same city, being the same age, or liking the same things. It is having received the same Spirit. Without this common spiritual origin, any union among Christians would be reduced to a mere human association, subject to the same fragilities as any other group of people.

This unity, however, does not eliminate diversity among the members. “The body does not consist of one member but of many” (1 Cor 12:14), Paul writes, using the image of the human body precisely to show how diversity serves unity rather than competing with it. The same Spirit who distributes different gifts to each person is the one who integrates them into a single body, in which each part contributes to the good of all the others. He does not work by erasing your personality, your history, or your gifts. He works by turning those differences into mutual service within one and the same body. Recognizing this distinction avoids two common errors: treating any disagreement as a breach of unity, or using diversity as an excuse for selfishness within the body.

The New Testament also describes the church as a temple — not each believer in isolation, but the gathered community. Paul asks the Corinthians: “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor 3:16). The pronoun, in Greek, is plural: Paul is speaking of the church of Corinth gathered together, not of each person separately. There is, then, a personal indwelling of the Spirit in each of us, as we have already seen in studying regeneration, and there is also a collective indwelling of him in the midst of his gathered people. That is why neglecting life in community impoverishes the Christian experience: part of God's presence is manifested in a way that only happens when his people are together.

This same Spirit also preserves the unity of the church. And here is a detail that changes everything: this unity is not some distant goal the church must one day achieve. “There is one body and one Spirit” (Eph 4:4). It already exists, as the result of God's own work. What remains for the church is not to manufacture this unity from scratch, but to preserve it in daily fellowship. And unity is not uniformity. A healthy church is not one in which no one disagrees about anything, but one in which legitimate disagreements do not break the bond the Spirit himself has already established.

The strongest proof of this unity is that it overcomes even the oldest hostilities. In the temple in Jerusalem, a physical wall separated Jews from Gentiles, two peoples that had long been enemies. Paul writes that, through Christ, “through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph 2:18). The wall was torn down, and two peoples who had hated each other became one. If the Spirit united Jews and Gentiles after centuries of hostility, he also sustains unity within your own church, however different its members may be today. This unity, in fact, is a gift of the Trinity itself: it was Christ who made access to the Father possible, and it is the Spirit who produces and sustains this communion among believers. One body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all.

The next time you take part in a worship service, consciously recognize that God is present there, in the midst of his gathered people, and not just in you individually. Identify one of your own gifts that can serve to build up someone beside you, and put it into practice, even in a simple way. The next time a difference of opinion, temperament, or tradition arises in your church, ask yourself honestly: am I treating this as grounds for division, when I could instead live it out as part of the very diversity the Spirit uses to build up the same body? A church does not need everyone to think alike in order to be one. It only needs to guard, with humility and love, what the Spirit has already united.