1 Corinthians 12:12-13 No: 4 Week:315 Thursday 18/08/11

Prayers

Opening prayer

Raise us up, Lord , 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. :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). However, the Greek word ‘potidzo’ which means ‘to make drink’ or ‘to give a drink’, gives a rather meaningless result, because it is hard to see what ‘drink’ could mean in this context. However, many Greek analytical commentaries state quite firmly that this word was commonly used in the first century to refer to water being made to ‘fill up’ an irrigation system or conduit. It is not contentious for me to translate ‘filled’, indeed, Greek analysts suggest that the word means ‘imbued’ or ‘filled up’. I have simply taken this advice.

Verse 12 – where does the ‘body’ come from? The principle of unity and diversity is readily understandable in verse 12, however, not many people know the origins of this idea. Generally, Paul drew extensively from the Old Testament for his illustrations, and this is true of his use of the idea of Christ as the ‘head’ (Eph 5:23, Col 1:18, Psalm 110:7), and the ‘cornerstone’ (Eph 2:20, Psalm 18:22). However, the idea of Christ as the body has no Old Testament background. Instead, this is a rare example of Paul’s using an illustration from Roman literature, current in his day as a popular description of the Roman state. Years before, aggrieved plebeians in Rome complained that they did all the work while the wealthy patricians (high society) consumed the goods they made. An aristocrat named Menenius Agrippa replied by saying that the Roman state was like a body, and appealed to the unity of Rome to appease the plebeians by likening them to the ‘many parts’ of the body. In a different, but typically grand way, Greek Stoic philosophers used the same illustration to describe the unity of the universe! Paul therefore took a common illustration of the day to appeal to his largely Gentile and Roman audience in Corinth to describe the unity of God’s people, the church, and the unity of the spiritual gifts in the Spirit! He may have known that they accepted this analogy for the stability of the Roman state, which in those days appeared to be a fixed reality, so he used it to persuade them of his point about Christ and the Spirit. To add to this, it has also been discovered that some Jewish rabbis took up the ‘body’ argument, and taught that past patriarchs and prophets of the Israelite people (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses etc.) were like one body that would be complete when the ‘Messiah’ came. Indeed, some even argued about whether Adam was a part of this ‘body’! This rabbinic discussion had no root in scripture, but it illustrates the power of the ‘body’ analogy in popular culture during the first century AD. All this could well explain why Paul hedged this illustration around closely with repeated descriptions of Christ and the Spirit. If you read verses 12 and 13 again, you will find that in each verse, he makes the point twice. Firstly, verse 12 links the body with Christ by a double illustration, with each illustration taking about half the verse. In verse 13, he links the body with the Spirit (via baptism) in another double illustration. By repeating himself in this way and over-emphasising ‘Christ’ and ‘the Spirit’, Paul wanted his readers to be absolutely clear that he was taking this illustration out of its pagan setting. The unity and diversity of God’s people is an important matter, but this verse tells us that God’s people need to ensure that their work and service (including worship) needs to reflect the whole body of Christ. This means the life and witness of all Christians, and not just the various parts of it, whether they be individuals or different church groups today. It does not take much for us to observe that this does not happen today; each congregation seeks to do what it wants. So, how we make this unity visible is not clear to us, but we must be patient to see whether the next few verses will help us with this difficult point.

© Paul H Ashby Derby 2011 www.prayerandbiblestudy.org 18/08/2011 page 3 Verse 13 – baptism in the spirit! If the Corinthians were good at going their own way, as churches tend to do today, and they needed to be told to take a balanced view of spiritual gifts, as many churches need to hear today, then these texts in 1 Corinthians 12 are important. Verse 13, however, focuses on baptism as a symbol of Christian unity, and this is an important addition to what Paul says in verse 12. It is difficult to read what Paul says about baptism and not be aware of the deep divisions today between churches about adult and infant baptism; I certainly have views about this, but must hold them at bay in the interests of exploring the text before me. All of us must do this for the good of the ‘body’ today, because too many texts about baptism are used for one or other side of this divide, and are consequently ignored by those for whom the text does not ‘fit’ the standard church view they hold. In attempting to be impartial, I found it very surprising to find that good scholarship by others who know Greek far better than I led me to the translation I have given above. If you read the NIV you will find; ‘For we were all baptised into one body ... and we were all given the one Spirit to drink’. Other modern translations end the verse ‘... and all were washed in one Spirit’! The reasons for my translation are given above, but what do these translations mean by talking about water or drink? Washing can refer to baptism, of course, but the reference to ‘drink’ in the NIV reads very strangely. It surely cannot be the ‘drink’ of the ‘cup’ in the Lord’s Supper only just mentioned (11:25) because Paul said that was a drink of the ‘new Covenant’, and there is no real connection between the idea of the covenant and the Spirit, which dominates this particular verse. However, the translation I have given reinforces the idea that baptism, according to Paul, is a sign of entry into the church that links to the evidence of the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer. Now, there are a number of texts in which Paul speaks about baptism, and these are firstly Romans 6:3,4, :29 and Colossians 2:12, which all speak of being baptised into Jesus death; the symbolism of water is not mentioned here. Then, there is this passage, Galatians 3:27 and :6, which all speak about baptism and unity in Christ; and again, according to my translation, no water is mentioned. We must conclude that whilst Paul clearly baptised using water (as was commonly done), it was his expectation that baptism both reflected the spiritual transformation of the believer (through death in Christ) and the release of spiritual gifts (see here and Acts 19:1-6). So, the water used reflected repentance on the part of the believer (Acts 1`3:24, 18:25), as first indicated by John the Baptist, but Christian baptism crucially included the Spirit as evidence of the presence of Christ and the fruits of faith in the life of the believer. It is interesting that Paul’s emphasis on the Spirit accurately reflects what John the Baptist said about Jesus; ‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’ (Matthew 3:11). It is even more interesting to observe that in this famous text, the word for ‘with’ and ‘in’ is the same in Greek (‘en’), and can mean one or the other according to context. Therefore, what Paul says here in 1 Corinthians is virtually the same as the prophecy of John the Baptist about the baptism given by Jesus! In addition, Jesus’ teaching as found in John 3 speaks of being ‘born of water and the Spirit’ (John 3:5), and Jesus tells Nicodemus that without being ‘born of the Spirit’ he cannot ‘see the Kingdom of God’ (John 3:3,8). Jesus did not speak about baptism directly in his discussion with Nicodemus, but it certainly lay behind what he said, as is clear in the remaining verses of John 3. The evidence is strong therefore that although the practice of baptism using water is assumed in the , all the important theological discussions of the subject in the Bible are about the Spirit and the evidence of new life and salvation in the life of the believer. This is true whether we read about Jesus or about Paul, and is typified in 1 Corinthians 12:13. Baptism both represents and enables a two-way process of belonging; we submit to Christ in His death for our salvation, and Christ comes to us in His Spirit to invigorate and enable our ‘new life’. 1 Corinthians 12:12 and 13 also celebrates the fact that Christian baptism is ‘in the one Spirit’ and unites everyone in Christ, and it speaks challengingly of all God’s people as being ‘filled with the one Spirit’.

Discipleship

Application

There is no doubt therefore, that the challenge of this small passage is for all Christians to demonstrate being ‘one’ in the Spirit and in Christ Jesus their Lord. Unfortunately, this is very difficult for us to do. Most Christians are content to believe that the one true Church is all those who believe in Jesus, but accept that we do not have any way of knowing exactly who such people are. They are not visible as a group in society. We are content to accept the challenge of scripture to unite as best we can within our churches, and rejoice

© Paul H Ashby Derby 2011 www.prayerandbiblestudy.org 18/08/2011 page 4 in the idea that each person in a church has some gift or part to play that needs to be respected in order for the church as a whole to work. However, this does not rise to the great challenge of this text; we remain entrenched within our denominations, whether they are called this or not. All this affects our witness to the Gospel. In many countries today where there are a vast number of different churches, a quick read of the press or viewing of the television will show that people in the world generally do not know clearly what the Gospel is. There are so many different church voices, people do not know where to look. I once suggested to someone who was seeking to know more about Christ that they attend a church for a bit and listen to the message and talk to people. I received a sharp retort ‘How do I know what kind of religion I am going to get from which church?’ Therein lies the problem. We have no visible unity in Christ, so our witness to the world is compromised. We will read some more about this in coming days, so I will say no more about it now. However, I am one who feels that the churches of God need to hear a prophetic call today that tells them their self contentedness is an affront to God. In addition, they stand under judgement as idolaters (placing themselves above Christ) unless they attempt to demonstrate to the world their unity with all others who believe in the Lordship of Christ and the historic faith of the church. It sounds hard, but unless the message is put bluntly, I doubt that anyone will listen, even if it is fundamental to the whole of scripture, and even though people pay lip service to the notion that we are all ‘one’ in Christ by the Spirit. We all know the problems, but who is prepared to seek any kind of possible answer?

Questions for groups

1. What does the illustration of the body and many parts suggest to you about Christian faith? 2. What does baptism mean to you, and how may we make the best use of what it means in church life today? 3. What does it mean to be baptised in the Holy Spirit? Should this term be used, or should it be banned? (Some attempted to do this in the 1970’s as a backlash against the charismatic movement)

Discipleship challenges

 Which issue challenges you most, an understanding of baptism or the issue of church unity in Christ? Whichever it is, take time to explore the issue and try to discern God’s will, not by what people say, but according to scripture and the evidence of Christian witness and the effectiveness of the Gospel.  Pray for all who find the Bible difficult to read or who will not give time to explore in depth what it says. Pray about this because without serious intent to know God’s Word, God’s people will continue in ignorance about these things.

Final Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, so fill us with Your Holy Spirit, that we are one in You and at one with our fellow Christians. Give us the courage to accept that the many different things Christians disagree about are nothing compared to what they agree about, which is that Christ is the Saviour of us all. Make us content to live with each other in fellowship and honour one another in love; through Jesus Christ we pray: AMEN

© Paul H Ashby Derby 2011 www.prayerandbiblestudy.org 18/08/2011 page 5