1 Corinthians 12:12-13 No: 4 Prayers Bible Study
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1 Corinthians 12:12-13 No: 4 Week:315 Thursday 18/08/11 Prayers Opening prayer Raise us up, Lord Jesus, to walk tall as Your people, according to our calling. May we have the courage to engage with others in appropriate conversation about You, about our Faith and about the Church of God. May we not be ashamed of our heritage, but glad to be servants of the Lord of all Creation and the Saviour of the world! Thank You, Lord Jesus; AMEN. Prayer Suggestions Prayer ideas (Alternatives that can broaden the experience of prayer) Give space to praying about yourself, especially if you do not usually pray about yourself. Be sure to bring your deepest concerns to the Lord and set them out before Him fully. Listen for His voice in response to your concerns On-going prayers Pray for remote churches. Pray for Christians in countries where there is a state church, but few people really believe in Jesus or know about God’s salvation Pray for teachers in your local school, especially the primary school teachers who have a great responsibility to help young in their earliest years Give thanks to God for the people you meet today, especially any who appear to you to be annoying and difficult Meditation Brothers and Sisters in Christ; the Lord is with you, He hears Your prayers and He longs to answer; To listen to your troubles and set you free; To open up your world and call you higher; To forgive your sins and restore your souls; To explain your faith and defeat the enemy; To touch your wounds and heal your bodies; To ignite your joy and light up your happiness; To give you gifts and help you become fruitful; To speak to your hearts and set your minds free; To brighten your life and inspire your relationships; Let Him do His work in you; and liberate your spirit! Bible Study Bible passage – 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 12 Just as the body is one even though it has many separate parts, so it is with Christ; all the individual parts of the body, though many, make up one body. 13 Indeed, we were all baptized in the one Spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all of us were filled with the one Spirit. © Paul H Ashby Derby 2011 www.prayerandbiblestudy.org 18/08/2011 page 1 Review These two verses stand at the centre of 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Here, Paul paints his famous picture of the church as like a body, Christ's body, made up of many different parts (12:12), and he appeals to his readers to accept this teaching because they have all been baptised in the same way, and ‘in the one Spirit’ (12:13). This is a remarkable passage. It would be easy to read swiftly through this passage to what comes next, which is Paul's detailed description of the body of Christ and its many parts (12:14-26). These two verses, however, form the heart of Paul's message about the nature of Christ's church, which is made up of individuals but is one thing, one body, which is Christ. Now the previous passage about individual spiritual gifts (12:7-10) is fascinating, as is Paul's picture of the body of Christ coming next (12:14-26). But we miss the point completely if we did not focus on what it means to be God's united people, in Christ, as we read here. This is one of many places where Scripture uses the language of allegory. In everyday speech, we use allegory to liken one thing to another, but something more than allegory is at work here. Paul begins by likening Christ to a body with different parts (12:12) and yet without him saying so directly, we can only assume that the parts making up Christ's body are individual Christians. This all follows on from yesterday's passage. There, Paul said that the nine individual spiritual gifts (12:7-10) are united in the one Spirit of Christ (12:11), so he now says here that every individual Christian is united in Christ, as a body with various parts. Paul does not say that the church is like the body of Christ and its parts, he says that it is Christ's body, made up of individual Christians and their gifts! This should make us stop and think before we go on to read what comes next (12:14-26). What we have just read it is extraordinary. It only makes sense if we say that you and I do not just represent Christ or act for Him in this world, we are Christ Himself, doing God's work. Moreover, we do not just contribute to this, everything we do is 'the church in action', and our entire lives are Christ's body 'in action'. This is more than allegory and Christ’s body is more than an example; we find our purpose and unity in Him! This is clearly in Paul's mind as he writes verse 13, in which he appeals to his readers to accept their unity in Christ and in their baptism. Most people forget this mention of baptism here, but it is crucial to this passage. Baptism is the foremost example of the church’s unity in Christ. Whatever experiences a Christian may have, whatever gifts a Christian may have, and whatever pathway of faith has led an individual to Christ, all God's people have been baptised in the same baptism. From the earliest of times, people have been baptised in the name of 'the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit' (see Matthew 28:19), and the practice persists to this very day. Indeed, whatever our own views about how baptism is done and when it is offered, it still unites almost all Christians. Across most of the great divides within the Christian church baptism is the same ritual, and the baptism performed in one church is largely accepted in others. Thank God for this. Paul says here, 'we were all baptised in the one Spirit into one body' (12:13), and thereby challenges us to accept that the Holy Spirit is central to baptism. This may come as something of a surprise to some, for most baptism liturgies speak of being baptised 'into Christ', and few speak of being baptised 'in the one spirit into one body', as Paul says here. Is this something we should be concerned about? First of all, Paul slips quickly between talking about Jesus and the Holy Spirit throughout his letters (e.g. Romans 8:10, 9:1, Philippians 2:1 etc.), and he does here. By contrast, Christians speak about the Holy Spirit today as something different from Christ, but Paul knew no such difference. The 'one Spirit' he speaks of here is Christ (12:13), and the Spirit who comes on the individual in baptism is Christ Himself who empowers the believer. There is much more to this, but we cannot fail to notice that our passage ends with these words 'all of us were filled with the one Spirit' (12:13). Yes, Paul believed that everyone who was baptised was filled with the one Spirit of Jesus Christ. This was the Christian norm, and he would have had little regard for any teaching about baptism that excluded talk of the Holy Spirit. If we can learn one thing from this passage today, perhaps it is that where the Holy Spirit is truly active, God’s people come together to do His wil, and Christ’s body becomes a visible entity, doing God’s work in the world. Let us all seek this! Going Deeper Notes on the translation of the passage Verse 12 – where does the ‘body’ come from? Verse 13 – baptism in the spirit! Notes on the translation of the passage © Paul H Ashby Derby 2011 www.prayerandbiblestudy.org 18/08/2011 page 2 V12 ‘Just as the body is one even though it has many separate parts.’ The conjunctions (joining word) within this verse make it hard to work out exactly how to put together the different phrases in the sentence, so although the meaning of it is perfectly clear, you will actually find that nearly all translations are very different. V12 ‘separate parts ... individual parts.’ More importantly for the meaning of the passage, the Greek word ‘mele’ is used here meaning ‘a body part’. If the sentence was to be translated literally, the word ‘body’ would occur so often it would read strangely in English. Some translations use the term ‘member’ because this does mean ‘body part’ in English; however I have avoided this because it is not common and also makes the sentence sound strange. Instead, I have used two adjectives ‘separate’ and ‘individual’ attached to ‘part’, that make it clear we are talking about ‘body parts’ within an illustration about something else, i.e. Christ. V13 ‘Indeed, we were all baptized in the one Spirit into one body.’ The order of the phrases within this sentence is different in various translations, and appears to give slightly different meaning; for example ‘for in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body’ (NRSV). I have chosen this phrase order because it gives an emphasis on unity; ‘one Spirit ... one body’ and this is the purpose of the sentence. V13 ‘all of us were filled with the one spirit’ You will not find this translation anywhere, because the Greek words translate literally as ‘all of us were made to drink of one Spirit’ (NRSV).