1 Corinthians 12:27

“Now ye are a body of Christ, and members in particular.”

This verse gives the reason why the parable of the human body may be applied to the readers. They are a body of Christ, not the body of Christ; the apostle takes care not to put the article exactly as in 1 Corinthians 3:16: “Ye are a temple of God.”

The body of Christ is the whole Church; but for that very reason every particular Church shares in that dignity. Christ, dwelling in it, governs it by His Spirit, and gives it the organic forms fitted to manifest its action.

In virtue of this character belonging to the Church of Corinth, each Corinthian is to it what each member is to the body. The term μέλη, members, should not be applied to the particular Churches in their relation to the Church as a whole, as has been thought by several commentators ancient and modern. For this we should have to understand ὑμεῖς, ye, of Christians in general, which is not natural; and would not this idea be out of place in the context? The word μέλη, members, applies to all the individuals composing the Church of Corinth. The term expresses their plurality, and the restrictive word ἐκ μέρους, in particular, their qualitative diversity. Each has only a part in the life of the whole, that which accrues to him in virtue of his individual gifts; comp. the ἐκ μέρους, in part, 1 Corinthians 13:9-10; 1 Corinthians 13:12. No member, consequently, may call himself the whole, and claim to absorb for his own advantage the fulness of ecclesiastical activity, as Paul proceeds to point out in the following enumeration, 1 Corinthians 12:28-30. Each one, therefore, has need of his brethren. Side by side with his gift, there should be room for the exercise of the gifts of all the rest. The reading of D Vulg. ἐκ μέλους, members taken from the member, seems to allude to Christ's being Himself, as the head, one of the members (1 Corinthians 12:21); but it is evident that in 1 Corinthians 12:21 the word head is taken in another sense.

In the three following verses we find two successive enumerations of those gifts and offices which form the counterpart of the organs and members of the body. The aim of the first, 1 Corinthians 12:28, is to affirm the dignity of all those gifts and offices as being willed and given by God Himself independently of the sort of hierarchy which He has thought good to establish among them. All have their part to play, and no one ought to be excluded, if the whole is to prosper. This idea corresponds to that of the passage 18-26, where Paul had shown that all the members of the body, even those apparently most inferior, are entitled and bound to discharge their function for the good of the whole. The second enumeration, 1 Corinthians 12:29-30, has a wholly different bearing. The idea which inspires it is this: The gifts and offices have been Divinely distributed; no member unites them all in himself. Every brother then, even should he possess the most exalted function, needs the gifts and offices of all his brethren; no one consequently should presume to hinder the exercise of those gifts which he does not himself possess. This second idea exactly corresponds to that of the passage 15-17, regarding the need which the most highly endowed members of the body have of the services of all the rest. 1 Corinthians 12:28-30 are therefore the application of the whole passage 1 Corinthians 12:14-26, where the apostle develops the necessity of the diversity of the members in the unity of the human body; only in the application the order of the two ideas developed in the parable is reversed: the necessity of the part and the honour to be given to the inferior gifts and offices, developed in the second place in the parable (1 Corinthians 12:18-26), takes the first in application (1 Corinthians 12:28); and the need which all, even the most eminent gifts, have of all the rest, expounded in the first place in regard to the members of the body (1 Corinthians 12:14-17), takes the second place in the application (1 Corinthians 12:29-30).