NOTES for Co1 12:12-31
Continuing the conversation about ministries and gifts, Paul turns to the image of the Church as the body of Christ, an image he often uses in his letters. The origin of this image is connected with traditional Jewish ideas about the Jewish people as one spiritual body sanctified by God's presence dwelling in the Jerusalem Temple. The apostle transfers this idea to the Church as the messianic remnant of the people of God, sanctified in the same way by the presence of the risen Christ in church gatherings.
And everyone who belongs to the Church is part of the body of Christ, a spiritual unity that allows the Kingdom to remain in our world and transform it. But in that case the Church cannot simply function the way various organizations function in our world, including religious organizations. The Church's only task is to remain in the world and reveal the Kingdom to the world, and all church activity is only the forms and means of solving this main task.
That is why the significance of each member of the Church cannot be measured by the function he performs in the sense of external activity. The logic of this world suggests that in every organization the most important and most valuable people are those who perform the most important tasks. The director is more important than the cleaning woman, though at times a scientist may prove more important than the director.
However that may be, the cleaning woman in any case cannot claim the most important place. For the Church, such logic is unacceptable. It is unacceptable for two reasons. First, the fullness of life in the Kingdom of a concrete person is, as a rule, little connected with the function he performs in this world.
It may very well turn out that the cleaning woman is ahead of the director in this regard: her spiritual life may be fuller and more intense, and the work of cleaning rooms cannot in any way hinder such fullness. Then it will turn out that for the Church and its witness the cleaning woman does more than the director. And second, every person is absolutely important for the Church.
After all, the Church's only goal is to open the way into the Kingdom to as many people as possible. What ministry they will carry out in the Church once they enter it is a secondary question. In the end, ministry for a Christian is only a way and form of expressing his own spiritual life. The main thing is that life itself. And here no one can be told that the Church does not need him or that he is not important. If a person is faithful to Christ and lives the life of the Kingdom, then the Church needs him, and without him the Church will be incomplete. This, in fact, is what Paul reminds us of.