1 Corinthians 12:12

“For as the body is one, and hath many members, but all the members of the body, being many, are one body: so is it with the Christ.”

The apostle has just stated a Divine fact, which is the secret of the Church's life: the unity of the Divine force, which animates it in the variety of its manifestations. This principle is realized, first, from the standpoint of the Divine influence in general, in the triple diversity of gifts, offices, and effects produced (1 Corinthians 12:4-6); then from the special viewpoint of the Spirit's influence, in the variety of gifts (1 Corinthians 12:7-11). In 1 Corinthians 12:12 Paul renders palpable the harmony of this diversity with the unity which produces and governs it, by comparing it with what is nearest us, our own body. What is the human body? One and the same life spreading out into a plurality of functions each attached to one of the members of the organism, and labouring for its preservation and wellbeing. The last words: So it is with the Christ, present a difficulty. It seems as if we should have: So it is with the Church. Must we, with Grotius, de Wette, Heinrici, understand by the Christ the Church itself, or, with Rückert, the ideal Christ? These two meanings cannot be justified: the former because Paul, if that had been his idea, would have expressed himself more clearly; the latter, because it contains a notion foreign to the mind of the apostle. In general, commentators are agreed in applying the word: the Christ, to the personal glorified Christ, seeking, however, in various ways to comprehend the Church under the idea of His person; Chrysostom, Meyer saying: as head of the body, He fills and controls it throughout; Hofmann, Edwards regard Christ as the personal ego of the organism; Holsten thinks that the Christ denotes the Spirit, who generally, in Paul's view, is identical, according to Holsten, with Christ's glorified person. This last meaning is false, as well as the affirmation on which it rests. The Spirit is not identified either by Paul, or John, or any biblical writer, with the person of the Christ. The interpretations of Meyer and Hofmann are undoubtedly well founded, but it seems to me that the exact expression of Paul's idea is rather this: The term the Christ here denotes the whole spiritual economy of which He is the principle in opposition to the natural economy to which the human body belongs. Similarly it might be said, in describing a law of natural humanity: “It is so in Adam,” or in instancing a law of the Jewish economy: “It was so in Abraham.” It is a way of forcibly calling to mind the unity of the personal principle on which an economy rests, and which forms, as it were, its permanent substance. In the first half of the following verse the apostle applies to the Church this figure taken from the human body.