The Body of Christ
1 Corinthians 12:12-27
If you have your Bibles, turn to the 12th Chapter of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians Chapter 12. The title of our message to you tonight is The Body of Christ.
There has been in the last couple of years tremendous amount of dialogue on this particular subject. And there is today in the frame of Christianity a rebellion against denominationalism and against the organized church. And an emphasis on the body of Christ with extreme emphasis give to non-structural type of format. No organization of any kind at all.
And of course, I feel that that's going a little too far, because in the New Testament you had very definitely certain organizational structures. They were obviously elders and presbyteros and bishops. Of course, all those are the same thing, it just means pastors. It's not a hierarchy. There were also deacons who ministered. There were also these elders to be ordained in every city. There were those who had the oversight of the flock. So there was to a degree a certain organization, which was necessary in order to assure that every particular flock had a shepherd and had those to minister to it. So there was a minimum of organization.
And so there's been much discussion in recent days about the idea of the body of Christ. And most decidedly, I suppose the saddest part of all the discussion is the ignorance of most people on the subject altogether. When it is, in fact, perhaps the greatest subject in understanding Christian relationships. We don't know where we belong or who we really are without understanding the concept of the body of Christ.
And when we do understand it, we understand not only our obligation to God and relation to Him through Christ, but our obligation and relation to every other believer in the world. And what our ministries are to be together, and so it's very, very strategic that we understand the concept of the body of Christ.
There is today so much organization and structure that it is true that the true church is often lost in the fog. And many major denominations are nothing but great groups of people who want to rally around some point other than Jesus Christ. Tragically that's the case. And they exist purely as an organization structure without any life. Without any proper function in relation to Jesus Christ.
And they are in many cases helationists. What is the church? And what is it that we are, the body of Christ? What does it mean. Well, before we look particularly at the body of Christ, I want us to see exactly what we are as a church by looking at several metaphors that are given in the New Testament.
Some of these metaphors come from the Old Testament. Three very dominant ones, if you're taking notes, you'll want to get these down. Three very dominant metaphors that the New Testament uses to describe the church, which are also Old Testament metaphors to describe Israel, are these, the bride, the vineyard, and the flock.
Now, each of these metaphors was an Old Testament designation of Israel. Israel was God's bride, God's vineyard, and God's flock. All of them are repeated in the New Testament. We are Christ's bride, we are the branches of which He is the vine, and we also are His flock of which He is the shepherd.
Now, in the Old Testament, God looked upon Israel in her maidenhood, Hosea tells us this. God betrothed Israel to Himself. God entered to a marriage covenant with Israel. Spiritually Israel became God's bride people. And then from that point on God had to deal with Israel's continual unfaithfulness, continual acts of spiritual adultery as Israel went after other gods incessantly.
And Israel, Hosea says, "was indeed an unfaithful wife." Also in the New Testament, the church is seen as a vine, as well as we are seen as a bride. And in the Old Testament, the vine was or the vineyard, either particular metaphor, represented Israel. God said that he went and planted and a vineyard. He said, "I planted it in a very fertile hill." And this was a picture of God taking Israel out of Egypt and putting them in Canaan. God said, "I removed them and I planted this vine in a very fertile hill." There it took root and filled the land.
And then God built a watch tower and from the watch tower, God guarded that vineyard and He also built a wine vat to prepare the vintage. And He looked over his vineyard, Isaiah tell us, and He wanted His vineyard to yield righteousness, but his vineyard yielded wild grapes of injustice, unrighteousness, oppression, and sin.
And so Isaiah 51 says, "God made His vineyard a waste." And He did. The third Old Testament metaphor God used was that Israel was the flock and He was the shepherd of Israel. He led Joseph like a flock, the Bible says. As He had redeemed them from Egypt says Isaiah, he lifted them up and carried them like you would carry a lamb.
So after the Babylonian captivity, Isaiah again says that He gathered the lambs in His arms and gently led those that were with young. And God has a relationship to Israel that is that of a shepherd to a flock. Now, there we see three images that God used to determine His relationship to Israel in the Old Testament.
Each of those images shows God's relation to Israel. And it stresses, now mark this, it stresses that God's dealing with His people was direct. It was direct and it was a sovereign saving ministry, as well as a keeping ministry. So in the Old Testament, God chose Israel as His bride. He planted Israel as His vineyard. He shepherded Israel as His flock.
Now, when we come to the New Testament, Jesus boldly applies these very same metaphors to the church. He emphasizes even more strongly the personal relationship. Let me illustrate it. First of all, the Old Testament metaphor of the marriage, Jesus applies to us by saying He is the bridegroom and we are what? The bride. He says, "I am the bridegroom," and you remember in the gospels that when the bridegroom showed up, fasting became unnecessary. Let's get on with the festivities, the bridegroom is here.
Paul describes this metaphor in greater detail with a reference to Christ's loving self-sacrifice for the church. He talks also about Christ's leadership over the church, His final purpose for the church. Christ has taken the church as a bride in order that, and this is the book of Ephesians, "that He might present that church to Himself." That Christ has taken us as a bride to present us to Himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or blemish or any such thing. In other words, He gathered us as a chased and pure virgin.
And so we as church are related to Christ as a bride to the bridegroom. In fact, at the end of Revelation when we go to be with Jesus Christ in glory, the Bible says we shall have a supper. What kind of supper is it? It's a marriage supper. That's right.
Not only that in 2 Corinthians Chapter 5, it tells that "God has given two us the arrahbon of the Spirit." And the Greek word arrahbon literally means engagement ring. And the reason we know we're going to be married to Jesus Christ is because we have an engagement ring who is none other than the Holy Spirit. So the marriage metaphor is carried all throughout Paul's writing particularly and culminating in John's vision of the great marriage supper of the lamb in the new Jerusalem at the end of the book of Revelation.
So Jesus uses the marriage metaphor to describe the church. Jesus also took up the image of the vineyard. In the parable of the wicked husband in Mark 12, and there he refers it to Israel, but he also extended it, because in John Chapter 15 He says, "I am the true vine and ye are all," what, "branches." And the same metaphor is used there. The church are the branches which are dependent upon the vine. We must abide in Him and we must be subject to the purging of the vine dresser. We are the branches and He is the vine.
And so Jesus used the vine metaphor. But He did not stop there, He also used the shepherd metaphor. We are a flock, John 10, are we not? "My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me." And Jesus is the good shepherd. He goes out into the wilderness to save just one of His lost sheep. He lays down His life for the sheep. He leads the sheep into good pasture. He protects the sheep from wolves. This metaphor is expanded all throughout the New Testament.
So there you have three basic Old Testament metaphors that are applied by Jesus to the church. These are the main ones. Now, there are four other ones. These are the main ones that are in the Old Testament. There are four other ones that are eluded to in the Old Testament that Christ also uses or the New Testament applies to the church.
They are these, God's people are also a kingdom, a kingdom. And by that we mean a kingdom is a spear of rule. A kingdom is a dominion where somebody rules. And we as Christ's on beloved sons, children, brothers, God's sons, Christ's brothers, are in the dominion of God's rule and Christ's rule. We are literally right now in Hi