Spiritual Community by the Spirit – 1 Cor. 12:12-31
By Jeff Fry, Darwin Park Community Church
NIV 1 Corinthians 12:12 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body-- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15 If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28 And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way.
Thesis: We must relate to each other in the Spirit, not the flesh.
I. Intro
A. Review
B. Thesis: Spiritual community needs the Spirit whose launchpad is the Word.
II. We should be filled with the Spirit through the indwelling word.
A. State
1. Background
a) Remember the problem of the Lord’s Supper – some members going hungry while richer ones were getting drunk and having their own meals.
2. vv. 12-14
a) “body … though all its parts are many they form one body. So it is with Christ.”
(1) Christ is a body of believers with many parts
b) “For we are all baptized by one Spirit into one body … and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
(1) The Spirit is what we all have in common and what give us our unity
(2) All believers are given the Spirit the minute they believe. The Holy Spirit comes in and dwells in us.
(a) It is now our choice to allow the Spirit to direct us or not (ie. allow the flesh to direct us)
(i) We can choose to live like the rest of the world(ii) or we can choose to live in the realm of the Spirit
(b) For Paul the key to the christian life wass the Spirit
(c) Romans 8 (Read from “The Message”)
(d) Colossians 3:16 “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God”.
(i) The importance of community:
(ii) When is the last time you did this with one another?…
(a) Teach = to hold discourse with one another in order to instruct; provide instruction in a formal or informal setting
(b) Admonish = to put in mind; to warn; to instruct; to advise
B. Illustrate
1. Read Romans 8 in “The Message”
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
3–4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
5–8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.
9–11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
12–14 So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
[1]
a)
C. Apply
III. Conclusion
A. Let’s go for true spiritual community which is by the Spirit which means:
1. we recognize that without the Spirit we are no different than a secular club
2. we recognize that as believers we have the privilege to relate to each other on the level of the Spirit
3. we recognize that as believers we have the responsibility to relate to each other on the level of the Spirit.
4. we recognize that we as broken people need the Spirit to be healed and to be all that Christ wants us to be.
[1]Peterson, E. H. (2002). The Message : The Bible in contemporary language (Ro 8:1-14). Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress.