What does the Bible say about individualism?

In the 17th verse he puts it thus, "If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?" The blessedness of the body is in each member doing its own function; because it is not merely my ear that hears, but I that hear, nor is it only my eye that sees, but rather I who see. It is the man. And this it is which gives, therefore, such a sense of unity and is so real a means of blessing to every member, the least just as much as the greatest. They all contribute; and indeed there would be a most sensible loss, were the least member to fail in doing its part. This is what the Corinthians had seriously lost sight of; but we are in just the same danger as they were, and indeed we are more particularly in danger, because, having come out of systems where there was only room for the priest or the minister, we naturally tend to it. There is nothing that people sooner slip into than this kind of isolation and individuality; because for the most part they have come from where individuality was strong, and the place of the church was unknown or swamped. For not more truly does the "church" principle destroy the "individual" one, than the "individual" principle does the "church" one, if each stands alone.

Further we have to beware of the individualism which takes a form which has been sometimes spoken of as "independency". This may take the form of an individual saint asserting himself, his judgement, his actions against the assembly where he is found, or the form of an individual assembly acting in complete indifference to, and as having no connection with, other assemblies equally walking in subjection to the same Lord.

Further, we have to beware of the individualism which takes a form which has been sometimes spoken of as “independency.” This may take the form of an individual saint asserting himself, his judgment, his actions against the assembly where he is found, or the form of an individual assembly acting in complete indifference to, and as having no connection with, other assemblies equally walking in subjection to the same Lord.

Further, we have to beware of the individualism which takes a form which has been sometimes spoken of as "independency." This may take the form of an individual saint asserting himself, his judgment, his actions against the assembly where he is found, or the form of an individual assembly acting in complete indifference to, and as having no connection with, other assemblies equally walking in subjection to the same Lord.

And there will be a great many delicate points to consider, which nothing but real nearness to God will enable us to have settled; for are we not members of Christ's body together, and not mere individuals? and does not this impose limits on the individuality of the path? Here we must answer, No; in no wise. It is by the careful preservation of our individuality alone that the church's welfare can be realised and maintained.

14 All the reasoning relative to a Jewish church comes from judaizing Christianity, or rests on the utterly fallacious idea that, because men are saved in the same way, they therefore form a visible community, and even the same community. Why so? Men could be saved without forming a community. Individuality is quite as important as community — nay, more so in divine things. Conscience and faith are both individual; sonship is individual. The Jews were a community, but not of saved persons; but a national community of the sons of Jacob. The Church is a community, but not in any way of the same kind, be it profession or reality; it stands by faith. Individual salvation does not affirm the existence of a community, and there may be a religious community which does not imply salvation. The Jewish nation was such.

The Church of God is one, though consisting of many members. It is not local, or geographical; it is corporate. All the members have a double responsibility; they are responsible to the Head, and they are responsible to one another. It is utterly impossible to ignore this responsibility. Men may seek to shirk it; they may deny it; they may assert their individual rights, and act according to their own reason, judgement, or will; but they cannot get rid of the responsibility founded upon the fact of the one compact body. They have to do with the Head in Heaven and with the members on earth. They stand in this double relationship — they were incorporated thereinto by the Holy Ghost, and to deny it is to deny their very spiritual existence. It is founded in life, formed by the Spirit, and taught and maintained in the Holy Scriptures. There is no such thing as independency. Christians cannot view themselves as mere individuals — as isolated atoms. "We are members one of another." This is as true as that we are "justified by faith." No doubt there is a sense in which we are individual: we are individual in our repentance; individual in our faith; individual in our justification; individual in our walk with God and in our service to Christ; individual in our rewards for service, for each one shall get a white stone and a new name engraved thereon known only to himself. All this is quite true, but it in no wise touches the other grand practical truth of our union with the Head above and with each and all of the members below.

The member of the body of Christ is not regarded as an isolated person, not as an individual. He is an individual so far as his reception of the gospel is concerned; he is an individual so far as his responsibilities are concerned. As a sinner before God a man is, and must be, an individual amenable to judgment, but when he comes to Christ he is thereupon brought into this unity, this holy association, this new place in the church of God, where all are one because the Holy Spirit is dwelling there. At the beginning, this oneness was expressed continuously in every form of spiritual activity.

It is not to be passed over that, whatever the corporate blessings of the church (and they are very great and eminent) the individual relationship of the saint holds the first place, and that the action of the members of the body as such is for the perfecting of the saints individually. Indeed, seeing the place that God must have, and the unutterable obligation and relationship in which we stand to Him - we may add, the very place Christ Himself has with God as man - this could not be otherwise, whatever peculiar privileges the counsel of God gave to us in union with Christ.

202 We speak of what belongs to the Church, according to the common use of language, when we really mean what belongs to those who compose it. And this has no great practical harm when it is not used to make the idea, exclusively as such, our only blessing. I might say, The corporation are very good men, when I mean the men that compose it. But when an idea newly acquired gets hold of the soul, men are apt to be exclusively full of it. It shuts out other important truths. If any one has been filled with the sense of the importance of the doctrine of the Church, I think I may say I have. But conscience is individual; justification is individual; sonship is individual; communion, in perhaps its most important and certainly necessary part, is individual. Take all the writings of the apostle John, and, unless one allusion to a local body, you would never know that a church existed. I never lose, or at any rate never should lose, the consciousness of being a member of Christ; as I have said, it throws, when I have it, its light on all. I add the idea of unity in the body to union in the family. I am one with all those who are my brethren. But surely there is a vast flood of unspeakable blessing in John, in whose writings the thought or name of the Church never comes. I speak of the Gospel and Epistles. All is individual there. Those who enjoy it being to the Church, and do not put themselves out of the Church mentally in enjoying it; but it is not, for all that, the less individual.