One vs. One: Which One Are We?

Corporate. Community. Union. Assembly. Congregation.

Words used in faith-based gatherings to refer to the the Church; the Body of Christ. While distinct in their own ways, all share a common element: the concept of One.

For such One-ness Jesus prayed in the Garden, "that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us" (John 17.21).

You know this. But have you ever noticed - even within this concept of One - there exist variations?

Look up the word in Merriam-Webster and two distinctions emerge: 1) One as a union or gathering together of many parts to make a whole, and 2) One as a singular something with only one part - unique in its singularity.

An analogy would be a bucket of small rocks versus one BIG rock. Lots of parts vs. one part that makes the whole - complete in itself.

Which One Are We?

Asked another way, of which One was Christ speaking in the Garden? 

Certainly the union of parts - the Father, Son and Spirit who coexist in the Trinity, along with the many who coexist in it (or, as Christ said, "in Us.")  Of such a union the Church also speaks to the Church, invoking Christ's prayer for One-ness among its members buttressed with Pauline exhortations to dwell together in the self-same unity (Col. 3:14).

• Practicably applied, what does this union look like? You and I (hopefully) share a common set of beliefs, mindset and purpose, within which we have our individual priorities, challenges and struggles. To each other we contribute our individual strengths and rely upon one another to help in our individual weaknesses. (Eph. 4:16)

But could it be Jesus was also speaking of the other One? Scripture seems to. If this is true, then Christ was also envisioning a collective singular One-ness for God's People - not just the union of parts that flows from a group of individuals who share a common bond and mindset, but the singular One-ness of which Paul spoke where we are quite literally "one body … and individually members one of another" (Rom. 12:5) that collectively has the singular one "mind of Christ." (1 Cor. 2:16) Contrary to union, this is a mode of existence where there are no distinctions, is no separate-ness and no individuality, but all who follow in His footsteps live in literal fact as one singular entity in Christ. (Gal. 3:28)

• Practicably applied, what does this singularity look like? Literally (not figuratively), your joy is my joy; my success, your success; and your strength, my strength. There are no divisions. No separations. None. And no opt-outs. As goes one, so go all, just like with our individual body where the hand does not (cannot) exist separate from the wrist or the foot from the ankle. When this "whole body" is firing on all cylinders, it moves as one with the singleness of mind and purpose for which it's designed (Eph. 4:16, 1 Cor. 12:14-26).

So, back to the question: which One is the Church? Is it union - with lots of folks in a room, each with a part to play? Or singular - there's only one person in the room, and it's us? The correct answer, of course, is that we're both. But to ask the question yet another way: on any given day what combination of One as union vs. One as singular do we think (and therefore act, speak and live as if) we are? Ahhh … perhaps there's the rub. One we'll explore in our next post.

What say you?

Reading Through a Corporate Lens

We've discussed this miracle called the body of Christ in terms of a corporate One-ness from which we draw our personal identity where we are at the same time collectively both one in union and one in singularity. If this is true, it changes how we read and apply scripture. 

Begin With Community

There is a widening discussion underway that such a corporate identity was surely forefront for the Jewish community who shaped the mindset of the early Church and, as we're coming to recognize, was central to the Apostles who gave it form and substance. Paul's letters to the churches bear this witness. Contrary to our knee-jerk habit of first wrapping his directives and exhortations tightly around our individual particular lives (and, perhaps as an after-thought, making a larger corporate application), Paul turns that upside down and spends most of his time speaking not to individuals, but to and about the church communities as the singular Body of Christ. Only after first establishing this larger corporate context does he address individuals, and then as their response to who they are as a community as in Rom. 12:5.

As Tom Holland says, "Paul begins his theology with the community and not the individual. There has been a fundamental error in traditional methods of exegesis in which the NT text especially has been interpreted as though it spoke of the experience of the individual believer. We have found that this is a mistake of massive proportions which has left Christianity with an enormous emphasis on the individual with hardly any texts to support its doctrine of the church.” [1]

Y'all Are the Body of Christ

Fact is, whenever Paul uses some variation of the word "you" in his letters to the churches, it is usually plural, not singular. But even when it's singular it's intention is plural, such as in Rom. 2:5 where he's talking to the Jewish Christians stirring the pot on one side of the room, and then later in Rom. 11:18 when he turns his attention to the like-minded Gentile Christians on other side of the room. Likewise when he brings forward the exhortations of Moses (Rom. 10:8) or of God Himself (Rom. 13:9), the "you" is singular but addressed to all of Israel.

As Holland mentions, our knee-jerk habit is to immediately wrap these and other "you" scriptures around our personal life as if they were written first and foremost for our individual application when, in truth, that was not at all the author's original intent. In his church letters, Paul was speaking to distinct communities, not to individual persons. 

Yes, it takes individuals to make a community, and there remains personal application to everything he said, but many well-worn exhortations like "be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:1) were corporate, not an individual, directives.

This is where distinguishing between the two traits of One-ness - union versus singularity - can be both helpful and life-altering. To read Paul through a corporate lens is to appreciate when he's referring to the union of y'all (as we say in Tennessee) that serves as the foundation for a yet larger, singular One-ness with a singular identity. The many-in-one (1 Cor. 12:19-20) begins with the many, but ends with the One.

As he said, "Your [plural] body [singular] is a temple [singular]" (1 Cor. 6:19) where God makes His dwelling [singular], (1 Cor. 3:16) because "you [plural] were called in one [singular] body" (Col. 3:15). That is, the singular corporate Body of Christ which is God's singular dwelling on earth is us, all taken together - not me or you, by ourselves. This should give us pause. 

Shining As Lights

Helpful in understanding the need and benefits of this mindshift is Holland's Beyond Individualism: A Radical Reconvery of the New Testament's Corporate Context. If  scholars like Holland are correct, our much-loved Bible is more about our corporate One-ness than about our individual alone-ness, which means that both our personal and collective identity and response "as lights in the world" (Phil. 2:15) is missing something when we're not responding in kind as the singular-minded union that is the "fullness of Him who fills all in all" (Eph. 1:22-23). 

It also calls us, when reading and making application of scripture, that we apply it first to the collective y'all that is His Body. Only after we have done so can we fully comprehend how to make our indiviudal application as a response to the corporate One. The question becomes first not who I am in Christ and how it applies to me, but who we are and what it is speaking to us; and given this, what is the part I am to play. 

Perhaps this is good in theory, but what might it look like in practice? We'll begin to delve into that next.

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[1] Contours of Pauline Theology, Chapter five-The Paschal Community and the Body of Sin, Tom Holland, p. 110

I Am Not a Temple

We've been discussing putting on a mindset of corporate Oneness, and reading God's Word in like fashion. What say we start bringing this down to a personal level? What can (should?) this look like in our doings day-to-day?

Did you ever notice that whenever Paul uses some variation of the word "you" in his letters to the churches, most often the tense of the word is plural, not singular. And even when one finds a singular "you," the intent is still plural, such as when he pulls forward a prophet's exhortation to the singular nation of Israel (2 Cor. 6:2), or when he's speaking to one side of the room and not the other as in Romans (Rom. 2:27). 

To Paul, this community – Christ’s body – is at one and the same time both the unified “many in one” and the singular “one in one another." He speaks of it often with great passion and an overwhelming desire that the concept be fully understood. It's a vision Paul implanted in the mind and heart of the churches he served—weaving a message of simultaneous union and singularity like a thread throughout all he said to help bind Christ’s body together so that it might understand its reason and purpose, and be able to stand against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places that strive to take it down. (Eph. 6:12)

Like a master artist, he uses characteristics and word pictures to paint a portrait of a collective, corporate community in which each believer is a part, and from which each draws personal identity and purpose as part of the whole. This does not minimize individual application, but it becomes application made as one’s individual part in the community’s collective response to this miracle.

As such, I can say that:

• I am not the Body, but we are the Body;

• I am not a temple, but we are the Temple;

• I am not the Bride, but we are the Bride;

• So before I speak of how God saved me, let me proclaim how God saved a people.

So back to the question … what does this look like? For one thing, my individual focus shifts from self to others, from inward to outward, from my personal walk to our collective witness as God’s dwelling place into which we call the nations. As such, the overriding question becomes not how can I be a better person or live a purer life (as important as these might be), but how can I better serve the Body, build the temple, protect the Bride, and be a “living stone” joined with other “stones” as God's dwelling that is His visible hands and heart on earth? 

As Paul reminds us, the goal of our instruction is not moral perfection or righteous behavior, but love for one another (1 Tim. 1:5 ). Put another way, the ultimate outcome of my personal faith in this life is found not in "doing right," but in loving those both within and outside Christ's Body. From this all else flows, and giving this love (or not?) becomes the driver behind all I do, say and think. Sometimes this can be quite uncomfortable, particularly when it comes to tearing down whatever barriers might stand in the way. We'll explore that next.

It's Not Easy Being Singular

There's a downside to community in singular One-ness. If your joy is literally my joy, then conversely your sadness is every bit mine, too; and my failure becomes your failure, and your weakness or pain becomes part of me, and my addiction or unlovingness infects and weakens you as it does me. 

Again, to be clear, this is not figurative speech. Think about your own individual body. When one part is sick or injured or hurting or just being obstinate, the rest of you has to work harder to compensate. It's no different in the singular Body of Christ.

Nor is it about one or the other of us choosing to have empathy or sympathy for another who's struggling - something as individuals in union we can either do or not depending on how we're feeling on any particular day about the New Commandment (John 13:34). Rather, it's the hard reality that when I fall, I take you down with me (whether or not you want to go there) because you are quite literally a part of me; or the cold truth that in the midst of your indulgence, I am right there beside you soaking up whatever it is you're sucking into your spirit, and sharing in whatever consequence befalls you as a result. 

And perhaps most challenging in our present-day cubicle world is the uncomfortable fact that living in singularity means my space is your space, and your space is my space, because we all stand together in one space before God.

Fact is, community life in union can be relatively "safe" when it comes to our personal stuff, particularly if you know how to hide out in a crowd, but in singularity not so much. There's nowhere to hide; no opt-out short of denying the faith.

Perhaps this is why Paul spent so much time reminding folks of who we are (and are not). What did he say? A little leaven [corruption] makes a mess of the whole lump, and that in truth we are unleavened [uncorrupted]? (1 Cor. 5:6-7) There it is. Injecting leaven into our singular One-ness is not a you-thing or a me-thing, but very much an us-thing because of our literal singularity.

So back to the question asked in a previous post, which One is the Church? Is it union? (Lots of folks in a room, each with a part to play.) Or singularity? (There's only one person in the room, and it is us). The correct answer, of course, is that we're both. But to ask the question yet another way: on any given day what combination of One as union vs. singular do we think (and therefore act, speak and live as if) we are? Ahhh … perhaps there's the rub.

Already and Not Yet

The portrait of the body of Christ that Paul painted was of one “upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor. 10:11)—that is, God’s people are at one and the same time in both the already and the not yet of God’s kingdom. 

There are some who speak of this not as something partially fulfilled today with the rest to be finished later, but rather as Paul’s strident call to Christ’s body to regard itself in the here and now as one for whom eternity has already begun in its completeness. As it will be, so we are to live it now.

For Paul, through the resurrection of Christ and the subsequent gift of the Spirit, God himself had set the future inexorably in montion, so that everything in the 'present' is determined by the appearance of the future." [1]

Stated simply, to paraphrase Paul, “This is who you are. Walk in it.” Embracing this, says Fee, is not triumphalism, but rather in Paul’s mind to be the experienced reality of the power of Christ’s resurrection in His Body, the Church: the one that is both “stamped with eternity” and yet presently participates in His sufferings. [2]

That we don’t always see this when looking at Christ’s body with its mistakes and stumbles takes nothing away from the timeless reality Paul sought to convey, for like God’s people of Paul’s time, we in this present day are also in need of reminding of who we are by virtue of what God has done, and having been reminded, to grow and so walk in our love for the Father and one another.

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[1] Gordon Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, (Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2006), 801.

[2] Ibid. 804.

The Body's Immune System

The human body is a marvelous thing. If a part of my body gets infected or diseased, there is within me something of which I have little understanding but great appreciation. It's a network of cells, endothelium, receptors, interferons and other entities called the immune system, whose primary function is to rise up, confront that which is attempting to bring harm into my body and stop it. Or, as someone who knows this stuff said ... "to recognize invading agents and damaged host cells, contain and neutralize the threat and eventually allow healing" of the body. The network exists for the sake (the love?) of my body. It is my body's first line of defense. Without it I would quickly die.

No doubt Paul's exhortation to the Corinthian church about the man sleeping with his father's wife is in your mix somewhere (I Cor. 5 and 2 Cor. 2: 1-11). I used to look at the story as all about enforcing a higher moral code to which believers should adhere. Then, as I began to understand grace, this shifted to thinking that our (the church's) primary motivation was to help ensure the individual's salvation: to help do for him what he was unable or unwilling to do for himself.

While not in any way diminishing the importance of either, of late in reading scripture more from a corporate perspective I've come to appreciate that perhaps Paul's first reason for exhorting the church to take deliberate and intentional action was not to maintain moral order, or to protect the salvation of the individual (as critically important as both of these are and, therefore, essential), but rather to protect the larger body that was the Corinthian church, because he knew "a little leaven leavens the whole lump" and if they did not take action, the "leaven" would spread and the body would eventually weaken and die.

This makes sense if (as suggested in my first email) we are one with God and each other in singularity as well as in union. Like a physical body's immune system, we in Christ's body are called to be watchful for that which seeks to gain a foothold to "steal and kill and destroy" and, when necessary, rise up to ensure the very life and health of the body we share. To that end, I'm coming to appreciate that perhaps our first motivation for such intervention (and what, in turn, sets boundaries around our use of authority) is not one of control, but -- as with our physical body -- for the love of the larger body (which, of course, includes that part who needs healing), and not in a passive way, but with determined intentionality.

Which raises a point about the man whom Paul judged. We don't know, but we could suspect he may have reacted similarly to the one in your church -- resentful that others were trying to "control" his life, and that the church should MYOB. To the first, if your guy is fearful of being "controlled," he may well be right, but I'll get to that in a moment. As to the second, absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. When Paul spoke of marriage in Ephesians, he was speaking only secondarily of husbands and wives. Similarly, his temple analogies in the Corinthian letters have only secondary application to the individual. First and foremost he was saying something about our collective accountability one to another for the welfare of the body. We are one. When I corrupt my body, I bring corruption into Christ's body (us), and so bring it into you. When you hurt another in the body, you bring hurt into His body (us), and so bring it into me. And, yes, also to God, but His skin is tougher than ours. Thus, to think that my choices -- whether for good or ill -- are only "all about me" reveals a serious misunderstanding of what it means to be one of God's people.

That's why, when it comes to protecting the body, I'm thinking this is a charge for the entire community to own, not for just a few behind closed doors. There is nothing in Paul's letters to the Corinthians regarding this matter that appears directed exclusively to the church leadership. What he said, he said to the entire community. They all knew of the situation. He wanted them all to own it. They were one. He spoke to them as such and expected them to respond in kind.