but our comely [parts] have not need. But God has tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to [the part] that lacked;
Paul has been arguing from the human body: the parts we think least of are the ones we cover and care for most. Now he turns from what we do to what God has done, because the balance of the body is God's own arrangement.
Some parts of the body are already presentable, so they need no extra attention. One writer illustrates this with the face and the foot.
Take the face, for instance. It needs no special care, because it is presentable in itself. But we take more care of the part that is not as presentable — the foot, for example. So here we find God's aim: "But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body."
Where the ESV says God "composed" the body, older translations say He "tempered" it together. The word means to mix or compound (Morrish Bible Dictionary). It is a deliberate act of blending, not a loose collection of parts. One writer draws out what that asks of us, and what it shows about God.
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The quieter and more hidden the gift, the more encouragement we ought to give that person. Those with more public gifts do not need the same encouragement, though they need our prayers. It is God who has tempered the body together. He fits each member into its own place, where it depends on all the others and works with them. In doing so, He has shown real care for the weakest member.
We assume the visible, impressive gift must be the important one. Paul says the opposite.
The apostle never presents the gift with the outward, visible sign as the most valuable and important one. He states the exact opposite, and he separates the two kinds of gift.
This had a sharp edge in Corinth.
No doubt this had special application to the conditions in Corinth when the apostle wrote. The most dignified and most useful gifts in the local assembly were not the ones that drew the most attention. They were the ones that brought real blessing to the believers. Gifts of healing, miraculous powers, speaking in tongues and other sign gifts were like the decorations we add to our bodies. The gifts of greatest value were the ones that built up, encouraged and comforted the believers.
Two opposite faults can split a body. The small member envies the great; the great member despises the small. Here God's own work shuts out the second.
There are many members, but only one body. That unity is in great danger if the higher members look down on the lower ones. Envy of one another would break up the diversity; disdain would break up the unity. If the eye treats the hand with contempt, and the head sneers at the feet, all unity of the body would be gone. Only one thing shuts out this disorder: recognising the presence and power of God. He has tempered the body together so that no member can do without the others.
Because the adjusting is God's work, the caring becomes ours. Forgetting this leads to a common failure.
Here we see that our responsibility flows from what God has done. He has tempered the body together. He adjusted it in all its parts for mutual help and blessing, and we are to act in line with His purpose and preserve what He has made... Is there no danger of forgetting this truth? Do we care mainly for prominent members and splendid gifts, and neglect the members we think are less honourable? Very often the assemblies with the most distinguished gifts are the weakest in spiritual life. Their danger is losing their sense of dependence on the Head and on one another, and looking too much to the gifts they admire.
Seeing God's hand in another believer's place changes how you feel about your own.
The moment I see that God has set one brother in his place and another in his, I am content. I say, Thank God for that servant and his ministry! It is his place, not mine. So, if I am right, I neither try to rival it nor copy it. I am satisfied with my own place and niche in the body.
- Blended — To "temper" is to mix. God did not just assemble the parts; He blended them into one another.
- Compensated — He pours extra honour where honour was missing, so no part is neglected.
- Reversed — The gift that draws attention is not the valuable one. The gift that feeds and comforts is.
- Guarded — God's design shuts out disdain from the top and envy from the bottom. Either one would tear the body.
- Imitated — God has already done the adjusting. Our part is to care for the least, not to crowd around the prominent.
that there might be no division in the body, but that the members might have the same concern one for another.
God arranged the body in the verses before this one, and here He states His aim. So what is the "division" He rules out, and what does that care look like in practice?
One writer reads the verse as God's design for the body, and then adds a sober note.
We have seen, then, that God has made the body of Christ like the natural body. He formed it so that there would be no division of interest. Instead, the good of each lies in the good of all, and each member cares for every other. It is His aim, but may not be the fact.
The word behind "division" here is schism. Elsewhere in this letter it describes parties forming among believers.
The word is translated "divisions" in 1 Corinthians 1:10 and elsewhere. It refers to divisions caused by parties in the church. Given the unity of the Spirit, schism can only be sin… Scripture does not teach the modern ideas of "agreeing to differ" or "unity only in essentials." It teaches the opposite.
At Corinth the danger was not a shortage of gifts but a use of them that looked down on others.
There was to be no self-exaltation. But there certainly was among the Corinthians, because of the gifts they had in such abundance, especially the sign-gifts. They looked down on other members who were less prominent. And this was responsible for the threatening division in the body.
One writer points to a subtler version of the same failure:
…and not least where knowledge takes the place of love, and saints stoop to form cliques with a favourite leader, to help them on in the sorry work of jealousy and running others down. Is this the members having the same care for one another? Or is it not schism, against which God tempered the body together so that there should be none?
Knowing that God gave you your place guards against two opposite dangers.
Every member has his own special place in the body, given to him by God… Knowing this for certain keeps us from self-occupation, pride, and envy. Suppose our place looks brilliant. Then, unless we are very watchful, the vanity of the flesh stirs. Instead of being tender and considerate toward others, and using what we have received to build up the body, we will most likely turn haughty, hard, and domineering. We will be an annoyance rather than a comfort to the saints. On the other hand, suppose our place is neither prominent nor brilliant. Then the tendency is to shrink from any service given us to do, and the whole body loses the ministry no one but ourselves can give.
One writer sets this care against rules and regulations, and ties it to the table earlier in the letter.
…not a slavish subjection to hard "ecclesiastical" prohibitions and restrictions, to rules and regulations, but a tender care for every member of that one body… I believe this is part of what the Apostle means when he says, "when you come together to eat, wait for one another" (chapter 11:33). That means more than waiting until everyone has arrived. It means the spirit of patience, consideration and compassion that those bound together by such a bond should show each other as they gather in the fellowship of the Lord's death.
Commentators differ in emphasis. Kelly, above, calls this God's aim, which "may not be the fact." Another writer presses the other side:
God has taken care that "there may be no division in the body." The strictest discipline of the house of God can never touch, in the most remote way, the unity of the body of Christ. That unity is absolutely indissoluble. A clear understanding of this would answer a thousand questions and solve a thousand difficulties.
One writer turns the verse into a question the reader has to answer.
Yes, God could not speak more plainly, not only about what He condemns, but also about what His will is as to what is right… Man says there should be sects, and would have me join one or help to grow it. God says there should be none, for the body is one. Shall I obey God or man? Judge for yourselves.
- Aim — God tempered the body together with a stated purpose: no division of interest, the good of each in the good of all.
- Cause — Division starts when gift becomes self-display and the prominent look down on the rest.
- Cure — The same care for one another. Knowing that God gave you your place keeps the gifted from pride and the obscure from shrinking back.
- Proof — Care shows itself at the table: patience, consideration, and waiting for one another.
- Choice — Man builds parties; God says there should be none, because the body is one.
And if one member suffer, all the members suffer with [it]; and if one member be glorified, all the members rejoice with [it].
Paul has just said the body's parts should care for one another. Is the next line a command to try harder, or a description of what is already true of everyone who belongs to Christ?
Start with the verbs. William Kelly shows how far this reaches, and why we may feel so little of it.
It is not said merely that they ought, but that they do. Whether it is good or ill, all that is according to God in one Christian goes out for blessing to all the rest. And when a saint on the other side of the world falls into evil or scandal, its shadow and its suffering reach every other one in these lands. We consciously suffer or rejoice, one may add, in the measure of our spiritual power. But the effect is real throughout the church. It is a body — the body of Christ — and as a whole it feels in joy or sorrow: otherwise it would not be a real organic unity. Its present condition, with denominational barriers that split the saints into independent groups, reduces spiritual sensibility to the lowest. Still, it survives these sad hindrances by its own life, which flows from the Holy Spirit of God who dwells in the church.
Human friendships end at the grave. The tie in this verse is of another kind.
No part of the human body suffers in isolation; the suffering of any one part affects the whole body, and every individual part of it. It is the same where the truth of the one body in Christ is known and taken in. Any trial or sorrow that comes on one saint of God is felt by every other member of the assembly. We suffer with them because a divine unity binds us together. That unity holds us closer in life and affection than any other bond of fellowship in this world. The ties that bind people together here are bonds that death snaps. But in the one body the Holy Spirit binds the saints of God together in a unity of divine life that death cannot touch.
One person's spiritual state is never private. Edward Dennett puts it in kitchen terms.
If one member is suffering spiritually — from lukewarmness, from backsliding, or through falling into temptation — all the members will be affected, though they may not know it. The state of the whole is the state of its individual members. Take a basin of hot water, and if you add only two drops of cold, the temperature of the whole will be lowered. It is so in the Church too. Let one person in the assembly be cold at heart, and the tone of the whole will drop. All suffer with the suffering member.
Samuel Ridout reads this verse beside the warning against division just before it.
We must not lose sight of the truth of the one Body. Just before this verse, in verse 25, we read: "that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another." A member of the Church of Christ in Africa is just as truly linked with us as one we see every day.
Sympathy with pain comes naturally. The second half of the verse is the one that tests us.
It might be comparatively easy to suffer with each other; our compassion, our feelings and our hearts go out to those who suffer in whatever way the suffering is known. But it is a different matter to rejoice with each other. Someone is moving forward. Someone is being blessed. It is plain that the Lord has laid His hand on him and he is growing spiritually. How easy it is then for the seeds of envy to spring up in the heart and mind. "But," says Paul, "we are to rejoice with each other." Can I do that? Yes, we can all do it in the Spirit's power. It is the fruit of the Spirit.
Shared feeling is not meant to stay a feeling.
We must not suppose that fellowship is limited to the privileges and blessings we enjoy when we meet together. It reaches into all the details of the state and circumstances of every member of the body… We are all urged to "rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep," and to "bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."
- Fact. Paul does not say the members ought to feel with each other. He says they do, even when we notice nothing.
- Bond. The tie is not shared interests. The Holy Spirit makes it, and death cannot snap it.
- Spread. One cold heart lowers the temperature of the whole, as two drops of cold water cool a basin.
- Reach. Distance changes nothing; a believer in Africa is as truly linked to you as the one you sit beside.
- Test. Weeping with the suffering is the easier half. Rejoicing when another is honoured exposes envy — and the Spirit produces that fruit in us.
Now *ye* are Christ's body, and members in particular.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.