Third Sunday after the Epiphany
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
January 26, 2025
How can we, who are many, be one – the one body of Christ with Christ as our head? Perhaps Paul is just being uplifting and rhetorically just trying to move the members of the Corinthian church to live more fulfilled lives. Maybe Paul doesn’t really mean they are one body, but wrote it because it sounds good, it feels good, it’s encouraging. Maybe there’s nothing theological about it at all when Paul writes, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”
Maybe Paul really means, “You are all a bunch of individuals each believing and doing what you think is right, and that’s fine, but be individuals in a way that isn’t overly offensive. Be tolerant of one another’s individuality and individual lifestyles. Celebrate and affirm them.” Maybe that’s what he really means.
But no, this can’t be what Paul is saying. It can’t be, because in the very first chapter of this 1st letter to the Corinthians, Paul sets the table for the rest of the letter. In the very first chapter, and in the second verse, Paul sets the table when He writes, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.” Together. And then just a few verses later, Paul writes, “PLEASE, brothers, I beg of you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you think the same way, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same doctrine and the same understanding of what is true and what is not. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is fighting among you, my brothers.”
And then, every chapter going forward, Paul deals with this division. He starts with who they follow, the name into which they think they were baptized. Then he confronts the matter of wisdom and calls the members there to seek only the wisdom of God and not of men. Then he deals with the role of the Apostles and pastors that have been with them and tells them that these spiritual leaders are but servants of Christ, and not men to be followed as gods or judging between them. Then he deals with sexual immorality in the congregation and how to handle those who live sexually impure lives. Then he deals with divisions caused by lawsuits, then divisions caused by living unchaste lives, then divisions caused by the abuse of Christian freedom, then divisions caused by idolatry, then divisions caused by an abuse and misuse of the Lord’s Supper, and finally divisions caused by an abuse of the spiritual gifts.
In chapter 12, Paul is dealing with the spiritual gifts and how the members in Corinth are abusing these gifts and causing division. He tells the members to stop seeking after the “supercool” gifts such as healings and tongues at the expense of the greater gifts such as teaching and preaching and serving. Paul says that no one repents and is saved because someone speaks in a foreign language to him, and as cool as it might look to do it, it doesn’t save anyone. Instead speak in intelligible words that edify the whole congregation. He tells them that the greater gifts are the gifts that don’t draw attention to the individual, which is an abuse of the gifts, but the gifts that bring people together under one Word, one doctrine, one head who is Christ.
And so, in our reading today, Paul is bringing it all together, all the previous chapters concerning that church’s division.
You are one body. You are not a bunch of individuals believing and thinking and acting as you please, but you are one body and each part, each individual acts for the good of the whole, and acts in submission to the one head, Christ Jesus.
You know, just under 2,000 years has past since Paul wrote this letter to the Corinthian church. You’d think that 2,000 years would give the church enough time to figure this out. But instead, 2,000 years has led to the Christian church being more divided today than it ever was before.
And not just the Christian church as a whole, but within each church there is division. And folks, this is not something we should be proud of. We should not take pride in our unwillingness to submit to the head, to Christ and His teaching. We should be ashamed, certainly each of us as individuals, but also each church body, each denomination that is stubbornly refusing to submit to its head who is Christ.
But no, rather than repenting and listening to our Lord, what do we do. We dig our heals deeper. “I follow Luther, I follow Calvin, I follow Erasmus, I follow Arminius, I follow Joseph Smith, I follow Charles Russel, I follow Charles Spurgeon, I follow Joel Osteen, I follow President Harrison, I follow President Kieschnick,” and on and on and on. And even in our district and national LCMS conventions, we fall into the same way of thinking. We vote for synod and district presidents based on what we, as individuals, want.
“But pastor, we’re a democratic society, and our church body is a congregationalist church body. It’s all about the vote!” Sure, in some things, this is absolutely true, 100%. But not in matters of theology or the faith. We don’t vote on what we believe, teach, and confess about Jesus or salvation or the Sacraments or the Bible. We don’t have a vote to decide who is saved and who is not. We don’t vote on communion practice. We don’t vote on whether or not we subscribe to the Book of Concord as a true exposition of the Holy Scripture. Our congregationalist system is not meant to prop up individuality when it comes to the things of God or to our confession of faith. In such matters, only Jesus gets the vote and the body follows.
An example of when the church scandalizes its submission to Christ the head of the church happened back in 2006 when the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted at its national convention in St. Paul to allow gay ministers to preach and marry. The individuals who wanted this cut the head off the body and put themselves in His place, forcing the body to do what is contrary to the teaching of the true Head, Christ Jesus.
And this wasn’t the only time that a church body put itself in the place of Christ and forced the body to submit to a teaching or practice contrary to the true Head. Most of the church bodies that exist today exist because someone or a small group of someone’s put themselves in the place of Christ, putting their beliefs, their opinions, their theology ahead of God and His Word.
And when you live in a society like America where individuality is propped up as equal to God, guess what, everyone is going to try and be the head of his own church body. Everyone wants to be a pope over Scripture and over others.
Simple fact: there is division in the churches of God. It would be foolish to deny it. How, then, do we deal with the division?
I love America, but the American way of thinking and politicking is not a good template for how the Christian church should operate. The American way is all about individuality and individual freedoms, and this is a wonderful blessing from God – IN THE LEFT KINGDOM. You having the freedom to get whatever job you want, drive wherever you want, live your life however you want, speak your mind about your politicians and others, to own weapons for sport, for protection, and to ward off a tyrannical government…this is all very good. But it stops when it comes to the body of Christ.
In God’s kingdom, you are the body, and you are subject only to the Head, Christ Jesus and to what He teaches.
See, in the world you might have wars and battles where you are required to kill another person for the sake of the nation, but not in the body of Christ. In the world, there may be wicked things like transgenderism, abortion, theft, false witness and slanderous gossip, but not in the body of Christ. In the world, there may a plethora of other religions and religious practices and traditions galore to occupy the masses, but not in the body of Christ.
In the church, we are one body; we are servants of the Head. Sure, we are different parts of the body and serve different functions, but it is as one body that we serve, and our functions are in submission to the Head. No part of the body is more important than another, though some parts may be more front and center than others, all parts of the body are important and in submission to the Head.
Being in submission to the Head keeps theology and practice in line. Rather than each individual reading the Scripture and saying, “What shall I as an individual believe about that passage or that matter of doctrine,” instead as the body, we say, “What does our Lord want us to believe about that passage or matter of doctrine.” Rather than each person saying, “I follow Luther,” or, “I follow Calvin,” we, as the body with Christ as our head, say, “I follow Christ and His teaching even if it doesn’t fully make sense.”
So, what would it look like to be the body of Christ in this way? Would it look like the Lutheran church, would it look like the Catholic church, would it look like the Baptist church? Well, that really doesn’t matter, does it? What it would look like would be Christ the Head, and His church the body all working together as one.
But, because there is a lot of stubbornness and lack of repentance among the Christian churches, we know that such is far from ever happening. There will be even more division in the churches of God before the Lord returns.
So, what do we do? Well, we could do like the Corinthian church and pretend theology isn’t important. But look how divided they were and how much sinfulness they were allowing in their congregation. Sexual sins, lawsuits, idolatry, spiritual abuse? How the Corinthian church approached togetherness just isn’t the answer.
And there’s been other attempts at this. Burying all the theological matters and points of division under the rug of good intentions and saying, “as long as you believe in Jesus, we’re united.” But it never works. Those theological concerns come bubbling up because they are in the Scripture and our Lord talks about them and teaches them and He who is our Head wants us who are the body to believe certain things about them. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the way of salvation, good works, vices and virtues, Law and Gospel, end times. Our Lord who is our head is not ambivalent about any of what He teaches; He wants us believing these things in a particular way, and so they simply cannot be shoved under the rug.
Theological tolerance is not the answer.
Again, what do we do, how do we deal with all this division? We can’t pretend it’s not there and we can’t become all postmodern about it either. Theology is absolute, it is objective, it is universal. God does not change; His Word does not change. 1 plus 1 equals 2. Baptism saves, or it doesn’t. It can’t be both. Christ’s body and blood are really present in the bread and wine, or not. It can’t be both. We are saved monergistically or synergistically, it can’t be both. Either Christ will literally reign on an earthly throne in Jerusalem for a thousand years, or He won’t, but it can’t be both. A postmodern, “there is not absolute truth,” approach to the Scripture is monstrously dangerous because it allows the individual to rule as the head rather than Christ.
So, again, what do we do?
Well, here’s the thing. Our Lord, the head of the body – His holy church – He told us all about this. He prepared us for this long ago. As He was preaching and teaching His disciples, Jesus started talking about the Christian life, and what it will be like living as Christians in His kingdom. In Matthew 10, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.”
Another way of saying this is that, because of Christ and His cross and His teaching, there is going to be disagreement, even among the closest of people – families. That Christ, though He comes to bring peace and goodwill and grace and salvation, His influence in the world will be so earth-shaking, that division is unavoidable. That, within churches there will be division. That, between churches there will be division.
He warns us because He knows. He is the head of His church, and the body is made up of sinners, just like you and me. And in a body of sinners, sometimes the foot tries to make itself the head. Sometimes the finger tries to cut off Christ and stand in His place. Sometimes the eye is far too prideful and self-absorbed. Sometimes the ear is too eager to listen to false teaching.
But the body simply cannot be the head, and Christ cannot stop being the head of the body.
So, what we do is the only thing we can do. We repent. We acknowledge that we, far too many times, try to cut Jesus off the body and put ourselves in His place. We acknowledge that we, far too readily, believe as we personally choose to believe rather than letting what we believe be shaped and driven by Christ and His Word.
In our Old Testament reading today, the people of Israel just finished building the great temple of Solomon. They all gathered together before the temple to worship and celebrate, but more importantly they gathered together to listen to the Law of God. Ezra the priest opened the book of the Law and read every word, the whole Torah, and the people listened while the other priests and Levites preached and taught the people.
They were all together, in one accord, in communion, believing the same things. It didn’t last long, for no sooner had the festivities and the Feast of Booths ended, then the people started down the road of division once more. But the temple stood tall, and the glory of the Lord remained in the temple.
In our Gospel, Jesus attended His home synagogue. He read from the Prophet Isaiah, and then proceeded to preach. The people went crazy. They tried to throw Jesus off a cliff to murder him. But Jesus remained strong and His teaching spread. Jesus, who tabernacled among them, prevailed over the deep divisions of men.
In the midst of all our division today, where some even want to throw Jesus over a cliff for what He teaches (and some churches actually think they have), our Lord remains strong, and His Word continues to change hearts and lives and keeps His body together.
It’s not our work to save the church. It’s not really even our work to unite the churches. No, God is the one who redeems and preserves His church. Now, we ought not use this fact as an excuse to be theologically stupid and spend as little time in the Word as possible, or be all theologically eclectic and think all beliefs about this, that, or the other are good and please God, but the Lord is the head; He is in control and that simply cannot change.
He will save His church; He will redeem His people, and He is heaven-bent on doing it and it will be done.
As His body, may we daily repent of theological indifference, agreeing to disagree, an overt love of tolerance at the expense of faithful doctrine and practice, and of trying to make God’s holy church look and feel and act more like the world than the body of Christ. May we instead submit ourselves in every way to Christ our Head and as a congregation here in Milaca, may we strive, with the Holy Spirit’s help, to be His one body, a body so dearly loved by God even to the point of His dying on the cross for us. Where His teachings are difficult and hard to believe, may our Lord give us a spirit of submission which believes even the hardest of teachings. Where His teachings stand against the ebb and flow of this world’s wickedness and culture, or where His teachings aren’t popular among many other churches, may the Lord give us a spirit of boldness to confess the truth no matter the cost. But overall, may the Lord give us His peace and assurance that we, who confess His name before others, that our names are daily confessed before our God in heaven. Amen.
