"And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no
need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you." 1 Corinthians 12:21
The context of this passage deals with the church as the body of
Christ in the same way that our different members form one body. Christ
is the head of His body, and in this passage, we are told something
about the head that when applied to Christ and his body will be mind
boggling. In the same way as the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no
need of you, the head cannot say to the parts of the body, I have no
need of you. Before we were brought into the body of Christ, we were of
no use to Him, but after we were joined to Him and became His members,
the same cannot be said of us, that we are of no use to Him.
Now, we are to Him what members of our human bodies are to us. It is
impossible to contemplate Christ in His glorified human state apart from
His body, which we are. It is not surprising that the scriptures say
that as He is, so are we in this world. The enormous implication of our
union with Christ is something that we have not fully grasped, and when
we do, it will radically change both the way we conduct our affairs and
how we estimate our placement in Christ. How do you receive the truth
that Christ, the head of the body, cannot say of you, His member, "I
have no need of you?" Contrary to what many of us had come to believe,
we are actually important to Jesus in the same way as the members of the
human body are important to the body.
But this importance of the body, it must be remembered, has nothing
to do with anything that we have done, it is a result of the
magnificence of God's grace.
Toni
