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.