THE CROWNED
CHRIST
CHAPTER XII
Head of the Body
We read nothing of any "Body of Christ" (in the sense in
which we are now considering it), until Christ is a man in heaven. Figure, as
of course it is, the appropriateness of the figure depends upon this, that it
is a relationship to Christ as Man of which it speaks. Being a figure, we are
to examine its force as such, as Scripture develops it, expecting to find in it
the instruction which all figures have: for, as in Israels history, the
"things that happened to them" (not merely can be used in a typical sense, but)
"happened to them for types" (1 Cor. x. 11), so we may be sure also that in
nature everywhere, according to the design of God, the clothing of the natural
is but the veil of the spiritual; nor shall we "materialize too much" by
allowing the glory of the light to shine through its earthly tabernacle.
This at once reminds us that the Lord compares His body with the temple of
God, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up: He spake of
the temple of His body" (John ii. 19 and 21). And this is directly in the line
of John's testimony, that "The Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us;
and we beheld His glory - glory as of an Only-begotten with the Father, full of
grace and truth" (chap. i. 14). Here it is said, "was made flesh," not because
He assumed nothing but a human body, but because in taking flesh, He came
within the sphere of human observation and knowledge - here the direct
revelation of His glory began: He was in the world and the light of it.
The body prepared Him was as the instrument of His Spirit by which His
words and works made known the unique obedience which proclaimed Him the Second
Man; while over all, through all, shone, in strange yet blessed harmony with
this, the higher glory. Thus the body of Christ was the tabernacle or temple of
God on earth.
Now the apostle, speaking of the responsibility of
Christians, as flowing from their relationship to Christ, uses the same figure
and connection of thought. The Church, as baptized by the Spirit of God, is one
body, and that the body of Christ (1 Cor. xii. 13,27). Christians are also the
temple of God for the same reason, the Spirit of God dwells in them (chap.iii.
16). These thoughts are here no further connected, but in another place in the
same epistle (chap. vi. 1520) he does connect them further, and applies
them to the individual Christian and to his body as indwelt by the Holy Ghost.
"Your bodies," he says, "are members of Christ... Do ye not know that your body
is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye
are not your own? For ye are bought with a pride; wherefore glorify God in your
body."
Here in the Christian, as in Christ, the body is the temple of
God, He being glorified in it by the devotion to Him of those members in which
humanity in its highest faculties is manifested. The practical life glorifies
Him, not only in the character exhibited in it, but this as the fruit of divine
grace acting in virtue of Christ's blessed work, and by the Spirit of God.
It is not, of course, of the Church that the apostle is speaking, but of
the individual; and therefore it is that he says that "your bodies are the
members of Christ" - he could not go further. Yet the basis is the same, the
being "joined to the Lord" by the Spirit; and the individual is thus in the
same way the temple of God as the whole Church is. Thus far, at least, the
individual represents the whole, the "living stone" represents or shows the
nature of the whole building.
As the "body prepared" Him was that in
which the Word was manifested, and the Life, thus seen, became "the Light of
men," so now in the night of His personal absence, He has a Body in which
(though not in that original brightness) the same Light shines. Thus the Body
of Christ is always spoken of as here, in the place of manifestation. The
Church is "the epistle of Christ, read and known of all men, written with the
Spirit of the living God upon fleshy tables of the heart"- written with the
rays of that glory hidden from the world, but to faith unveiled: "for God who
caused the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give
out the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"
(2 Cor. iii.-iv. 6). Thus "we have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. ii. 16): in the
body of Christ, as energized by His Spirit, and controlled by the unseen Head
in heaven, the life of Christ continually renews itself on earth. For the body
speaks of living activities, of an organic unity in which communion is wrought
out in the ministry of every member to the whole: for no member of a body
liveth to itself, and the love of Christ to His own is reproduced in the mutual
service which is love's outflow, and for which He who knows best our interests
has provided by the variety and inequality of the gifts He has given, that we
may be bound the more together by our mutual dependence.
Such is the
Church which is Christ's body, in the thought of it which Scripture gives. The
hindrances to realization of this, Scripture dwells upon also fully, and we are
made to feel them painfully and continually. But these do not come within our
purpose to consider now; as, indeed, it is not even the Church itself which is
the object before us, but Christ in His relation to it. This, while it is in
Him unspeakable condescension and grace, is even thus His glory forever, and
shall fill the hearts of all the hosts of heaven with His praise. Yea, "unto
God" shall "be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus, throughout all the
generations of the age of ages"(Eph. iii. 21, Gk.).
In Corinthians the
Church is contemplated in its order, fellowship, and service. It is the Body of
Christ (1 Cor. xii. 27), and therefore Christ is its Head, but the Head is not
explicitly brought before us, save incidentally, "nor again the Head to the
feet, I have no need of you." I apprehend no difficulty in applying this to
Christ. The Church is, in that divine purpose which is the glory of divine
grace, His "fullness:" the Head must have a body; and it is because of this
wonderful relationship, that it is said, where speaking of the unity of the
body notwithstanding its many members, "so also is the Christ." Some are
beginning to apply even this to the Church exclusively - "the anointed Body."
And they tell us even that, its being the complement of Christ is not the idea
of Scripture, and that, if here we take in Christ, the eye and ear which the
apostle instances as parts of the body would belong to the Head; but even in
Ephesians and Colossians the "body is looked at as complete in itself, though
deriving" from Christ. Nay, even "the force of 'He gave Him to be Head over all
things to the assembly which is His body', is said to be only "that He might in
all things have the pre-eminence - be chief." "All these things," it is finally
urged, "are only human figures;" "we have been materializing too much."
Now it is granted, at once, that the "body of Christ," as applied to the
Church, is a figure, and therefore also the Lord's headship. They are figures
of realities, to convey which all words are feeble. To materialize them would
be profanity; but to take them as language the most suited that could be found
to make us know what may be known and what God would have us know - to take
them at their fullest worth, therefore, instead of diminishing that worth, and
so casting slight upon the communication of the Spirit who gave them - this is
what surely becomes us. The apostle himself assures us that we do "see by means
of a mirror, in an enigma" (1 Cor. xiii. 12, Gk.). Must we not, therefore, scan
the more closely, look the more heedfully into, all the words of the enigma?
Now, it is certain, the apostle uses these terms, "head" and "body,"
very distinctly and determinately, in reference to the relationship between
Christ and the Church. They are words not once merely, or casually used. We can
see, indeed, that the figure fails before the full reality: for the body has to
grow up to the stature of the Head (Eph. iv. 15), and from the Head all the
body maketh increase to the upbuilding of itself (16). Yea, Christ nourisheth
and cherisheth the Church: for we are members of His body (v. 29, 30). And in
Colossians we have a similar statement (ii. 19).
Thus the Body does
surely "derive from the Head;" but that does not show that Headship of the body
does not (so we are told) express authority. Certainly it is the very thing
which in relation to the body the head would express; and this is, I think, why
the apostle can speak of the eye and ear as in the body rather than the head.
For eye and ear are not the governing part: the hearing ear goes with the
spirit of obedience; it is the very part anointed with the blood in the Old
Testament to express this. While the Church sees also, and is governed
intelligently. But the head presides - governs. The crown is put on the head.
To say, "not even the head* to the feet" is to say as much as can be said.
* If the body is "complete in itself," And Christ is not here the head,
what is this "head of the church," (if it mean any thing) which is not Christ?
Again, "wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord:
for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of the
Church" (Eph. v. 23). Will it be said that here there is no question of
authority?
Mere authority, it is true, does not give the proper
thought of headship, which springs out of relationship, with common interests,
and generally implies a representative character. Head and body, while of
course they may be contrasted with one another as such, are yet in union so
intimate that any completeness of one without the other could only be the
completeness of a corpse. Scripture certainly does not contemplate it as to the
Church in Corinthians, as we have seen. It is negatived three times over by
"the Head to the feet," so also is the Christ," and "ye are the body of
Christ."
We might leave the passages in Ephesians and Colossians to
speak for themselves; only it is good to realize how God in them would lift us
up as much as possible to the height of His glorious thoughts. Thus in
Ephesians (i. 22, 23), "He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be
Head over all things to the Church which is His body, the fullness of Him that
filleth all in all." There are the words, but how are we to interpret them?
That Christ should be Head over all things - that is not difficult to
understand if He be what He is, the Creator of all things, the One for whom all
was created, the One by whom all things subsist, and, yet again, the One who
has been pleased to link Himself eternally with this creation of His by the
manhood which He has assumed. But the apostle says, "Head over all things to
the Church:" why and how "to the Church"? That cannot mean to thing to say in
such connections as we have here that to the Church God has made Him
pre-eminent in all things - even if that were the meaning of "Head over all."
No, but this headship over all shows the fullness of His resources for that to
which He is Head in such sort* that it is His Body. The Head over all is Head
to a people so by the Spirit united to Him, that they are one with Him as a
body is with its head; thus His fullness, as the head must have a body in order
that there should be a complete man. Yet, most marvellous to say, He who is in
relation to this Body as His fullness, is Himself divine and filling all in
all!
We can trace these thoughts in Colossians also, though with
characteristic difference of presentation: "For in Him dwelleth all the fulness
of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in Him, who is the Head of all
principality and power... the Head, from which all the body, by joints and
bands having nourishment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the
increase of God" (CoI. ii. 9, 10, 19).
It has been said by some one
that we never read of the body of Christ in heaven: and true that is, surely,
of the whole present time. The Church is not yet in heaven, and is never spoken
of as part here, part there. The condition of the dead is not the question,
though every saint absent from the body is present with the Lord. But against
the Church the gates of hades cannot prevail; and it remains upon earth until
caught up to meet the Lord in the air, completed then by the recovery of all
the many that in the meanwhile have been removed by death.
Till then
the Body will not have reached the full stature of its blessed Head, so as to
be perfectly fitted to Him, a work which is now being carried on by the
continual energy of the Spirit of God, working by the gifts of His grace to
accomplish this result. When this is accomplished, we cannot for a moment
suppose that what has been carefully wrought out will come to an end, and serve
no eternal purpose. We might as well think that our own bodies, perfected by
the change of the living or by resurrection from the dead, will then have
fulfilled their purpose and be laid aside forever. Into the future of each we
are indeed given to see little; but this should no more in one case than the
other, hinder our belief in that future. We feel also that we can evidently
infer from the service of the body here, a good deal as to its future purpose.
What the body is to us now, that (only perfected) will it be to us forever. May
we not as rightly infer that what the Body of Christ is to Him now, that (only
perfected, for perfected we know it is to be) it will be to Him forever? And we
have seen the actual link in meaning between our bodies and His: the scripture
figures given us of God for our instruction may be counted on to instruct and
not deceive us.
The body is the servant of the mind, and in all its
parts speaks of special adaptation to its various needs. As we think of it
often, and prove it in the diseased and maimed conditions which are the result
of sin, we may deem it little beside a hindrance to the activity of the soul -
a clog upon it. Yet the simple fact that we are destined to an eternity in the
body should make us dismiss such hasty inferences. The body is, as we are at
present constituted, a necessity even to the work of the mind itself in many
ways; and the mind trains it, disciplines it, as well as uses it according to
its will.
In how much may one apply this to the Body of Christ while
of course fully remembering how entirely it is of grace, not of necessity, that
He is found in such relationship as this implies with men His creatures. Here,
indeed, how often seeming an obstruction to His will, the light of life how
little shining out of us so as to be His commendatory "epistle" in the world,
the Body how little, as to display, the temple of His glory yet! Still, the
very discipline of His hand upon us, the experience of a grace which abides
with us and does not give us up, the learning however slowly and imperfectly,
something of His path, His cup, His baptism, all this assures us, of what His
word reveals - a purpose to have us with Himself and for Himself, a drilled,
disciplined, at last perfected "Body," through which His Spirit will work out
purposes of His love, of which as yet we can know little, but which will reveal
a special, divinely given oneness with Himself, in which He will be glorified,
His heart satisfied, as He sees in it the fruit of the travail of His soul. And
to God shall be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus, through all the
generations of the age of ages. Amen.
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Chapter Thirteen
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