Kayinsola is a wound-care nurse. For most of her working life she has dressed the feet of diabetic patients in a busy teaching hospital in Lagos, and she will tell you, with the flat certainty of someone who has seen it too often, that the most dangerous foot is the one that cannot feel.
She learned it again at home. Her father, a retired headmaster with careful habits and a stubborn streak, had lived with diabetes for twenty years. One evening in the rainy season he stepped on a broken piece of tile in his own compound. He felt nothing. He washed, put on his socks and went to bed. For nearly three weeks he walked on that foot to church, to the market and to his old school’s board meetings, and the wound quietly deepened. He only mentioned it when Kayinsola, visiting on a Sunday afternoon, noticed a smell in the sitting room and asked him to take off his socks.
He kept the toe, though it was close. On the day he was discharged, the consultant said something to the family that Kayinsola has repeated to me more than once. “The foot did not stop belonging to him,” he said. “It stopped talking to the rest of him. The nerves were damaged, so the foot could not tell the body it was hurt, and the body could not send help in time.”
Since then she checks her father’s feet every evening. He grumbles, but he lets her.
The story stayed with her for another reason. A few months later she was sitting in the same seat she had occupied for eleven years in her parish in Yaba, and she realised, quite suddenly, that she was a numb foot. She attended faithfully. She paid her tithe by transfer. She sang the songs and left during the closing hymn to beat the traffic. Nobody in that congregation had known her father was in hospital, because she had told no one. She knew almost nothing of anyone else’s troubles either. She was attached, she said, but she was not connected. And she had always assumed it did not matter much, because she could not sing, would not preach and had no title in the church. “I thought ministry was for the people at the front,” she told me. “I was just a member.”
Just a member. Paul would have been puzzled by that phrase. In his letters, a member is the most remarkable thing a person can be.
The body Paul had in mind
When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he was writing to a congregation with a status problem. Corinth was a proud, commercial city where people cared a great deal about rank, patronage and public display. That culture had followed the believers into church. They were dividing around favourite teachers (1 Corinthians 1:12). At the Lord’s Supper the wealthier members were eating and drinking well while poorer members, who probably arrived late from work, went hungry. Paul’s rebuke is sharp: “despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not?” (1 Corinthians 11:22). And when it came to spiritual gifts, the more spectacular ones had become a kind of badge, while quieter believers felt they hardly counted.
Into that situation Paul writes his great chapter on the body. He opens with a sentence that ends in a surprising place: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). We would expect him to say, “so also is the church.” He says, “so also is Christ.” The union between the Lord and His people is so close that Paul can speak of the whole, Head and members together, by the name of Christ.
He may have learned this on the road to Damascus. Saul of Tarsus was travelling with letters from the high priest, intending to arrest followers of Jesus, when the risen Lord stopped him:
And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
Notice the question. Saul had never laid a hand on Jesus of Nazareth. He was persecuting men and women in Jerusalem and Damascus. Yet the Lord asked, “why persecutest thou me?” To strike the members was to strike the Head. Jesus would later say something similar about the hungry, the stranger and the prisoner among His brethren: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40).
That is the foundation of everything else. Your membership in the body of Christ did not begin when you filled a membership form. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13). The Spirit who joined you to Christ joined you, in the same act, to everyone else who belongs to Him. A local church is where that belonging becomes visible and practical, and it matters deeply which congregation you commit to. But the belonging itself is the gift of God. You are a member before you are a worker.
A place that does not depend on visibility
Paul then gives voice to two members of the body who feel left out:
“If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?” (1 Corinthians 12:15). The ear says the same about the eye. Notice that the foot does not compare itself with the knee or the ankle, its near neighbours. It compares itself with the hand, the part that gestures, greets, writes and gets noticed. The ear compares itself with the eye, the part that people look into when they speak to you. The comparison always runs upward, toward whatever is most visible.
Kayinsola knew that voice well. Because I am not the choir, I am not of the body. Because I am not on the altar, because I am not a deacon, because nobody calls my name in the announcements, I am not really part of this.
Paul’s answer is a little question with a great deal of weight in it: “is it therefore not of the body?” Feelings of insignificance are real, and they deserve gentle attention. But they do not change the facts. Then he adds a touch of humour to show how absurd a church of identical members would be. “If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing?” (1 Corinthians 12:17). Picture a giant eyeball rolling down the aisle. It would see everything and hear nothing. “And if they were all one member, where were the body?” (1 Corinthians 12:19).
At the centre of this paragraph is one sentence that settles the question of your place: “But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him” (1 Corinthians 12:18). You did not wander into the body by accident, and you were not placed there as a filler. God set you there, and He did so with pleasure. Your place is His design, not a consolation prize.
Educated readers in Paul’s day would have known that the body was a familiar picture in political speeches. The Roman historian Livy tells an old story of Menenius Agrippa, who persuaded rebellious common people to return to the city with a fable about the limbs of a body that refused to feed the belly. The point of that kind of speech was usually to keep the lower orders in their place: the hands should stop complaining and keep serving the stomach.
Paul takes the same picture and turns it upside down. “Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary” (1 Corinthians 12:22). The parts we think less honourable receive more abundant honour, because “God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked” (1 Corinthians 12:24). In the world, honour flows toward the visible and the strong. In the body of Christ, God deliberately directs it toward the members who are overlooked.
That should confront two errors at once. It confronts the believer who thinks he does not matter because his contribution is unseen. And it confronts any church culture that only celebrates what happens on the platform.
Members one of another
Paul uses the same picture in his letter to Rome, a church he had not yet visited, and he adds a phrase that is easy to read past:
For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.
“Every one members one of another.” We are members of Christ, yes. But Paul says we are also members of each other. I belong to you, and you belong to me, in a way that has consequences. My growth is partly in your hands, and yours is partly in mine.
Look at the gifts Paul lists. Prophecy and teaching are there, the gifts we tend to associate with the pulpit. But so are ministry, which translates the ordinary word for service, giving, ruling and showing mercy. Paul places the woman who quietly visits the sick and the man who carefully administers the church’s affairs in the same sentence as the prophet. He makes no ranking among them. Each is a grace given, and each is to be exercised wholeheartedly: let the giver give “with simplicity,” without hidden motives; let the leader lead “with diligence”; let the one who shows mercy do it “with cheerfulness,” which is a hard thing to do in a hospital corridor at two in the morning, and a beautiful thing when it happens.
Just before this passage Paul gives a warning that cuts in both directions: each believer is “not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly” (Romans 12:3). Most sermons on that verse aim at pride, and rightly. But sober thinking also forbids false humility. A believer who says, “I have nothing to offer,” is not thinking soberly either. He has simply chosen a different inaccuracy. God has dealt to every man a measure. Peter says the same: “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10). Every man hath received. The question is never whether you have something to give. It is what you have been given, and whom it is for.
PunchlineYou are not “just a member.” In the body of Christ, a member is a person God has deliberately placed, joined to Christ and to every other believer, carrying grace that others need.
Why passive attendance falls short
Here is a verse that would surprise many Sunday congregations if it were read aloud slowly:
How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.
“Every one of you hath.” Paul is correcting disorder in Corinth. Their meetings had become noisy and competitive, with several people speaking at once and tongues uninterpreted. He will go on to require order, limits and discernment. But notice what he assumes even while he corrects them. When the church came together, people came expecting to contribute. A psalm. A teaching. A revelation. The problem in Corinth was an excess of participation that needed shaping. The problem in many of our churches is the opposite.
We have often arranged church life so that a few people give and many people receive. The worship team performs, the preacher preaches, the ushers usher and the congregation watches. There is a place for skilled leadership in public worship, and order is a gift. But if the body only ever has a mouth and a pair of hands, while the rest of it sits still, something has gone wrong. An audience can be very large and still not be a body.
Passive attendance is often not laziness. Some believers have simply never been told that they are expected to bring anything. Others were once told that unless they had a title, their contribution was not wanted. Some are new in the faith, recently bereaved, ill or carrying burdens so heavy that, for a season, receiving is all they can do. That is not failure. A body rushes resources to its injured parts, and the injured part’s first task is to heal. If you are in that season, let the church carry you without guilt.
But for most of us, the honest question is whether we have settled into a consumer’s relationship with the people of God. We come, we take what is offered, we evaluate the quality, and we leave. If the music was good and the sermon was helpful, it was a good church. That is how one relates to a restaurant. It is not how one relates to one’s own body.
Contribution in the body rarely means a microphone. It may mean noticing the visitor who is sitting alone and inviting her to lunch. It may mean using your accounting skill to help the church’s finances become transparent, or your legal training to advise a widow being pushed off her late husband’s land. It may mean a phone call to a member whose seat has been empty for three weeks. It may mean prayer, done faithfully and without announcement. The body grows through countless small acts of supply.
Receiving is also part of membership
There is a second voice in 1 Corinthians 12, and it is the opposite of the first: “And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee” (1 Corinthians 12:21). The foot thought it did not belong because it was too small. The eye thinks it does not need anyone because it is so capable.
Many of the most active people in a church are quietly speaking with the eye’s voice. They give constantly and never receive. They pray for others and tell no one what they are carrying. They visit the sick and refuse to be visited. It can look like strength. Often it is a form of pride, or of fear: a reluctance to be known, a belief that one’s value lies only in being useful. Kayinsola’s father is a good picture of this. He was not careless. He was proud. He did not want to be the old man whose daughter examined his feet.
Paul’s purpose for the whole body is “That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another” (1 Corinthians 12:25). Care is meant to circulate, flowing out from you and back toward you. “And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26). That can only happen if the suffering is made known. A member who hides every wound makes it impossible for the body to respond, however loving the body may be.
Paul gives the same instruction in Romans from a slightly different angle:
Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.
“Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us.” The measure of our welcome is the welcome Christ gave us. He did not receive us because we were impressive, useful or self-sufficient. He received us in our need. To let another believer help you is to honour that pattern. To insist on always being the helper and never the helped is to quietly step outside it.
NuggetSo ask yourself both questions. Where am I giving? And where am I allowing myself to be given to? A healthy member does both.
Growing from the Head through every joint
Paul’s fullest picture of how the body grows comes in Ephesians. He has described the gifts Christ has given the church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, and their purpose: “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry” (Ephesians 4:12). The leaders equip; the saints do the work of ministry. Then he describes where the growth comes from:
But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
Read it slowly. Growth is “into him,” toward Christ, “which is the head.” It comes “from whom,” out of Christ. The whole body is “fitly joined together and compacted,” closely fitted and held together. And the means is “that which every joint supplieth.” The joints are the points of contact, the places where one part meets another. The word for supplieth comes from a family of words once used of a patron who paid for a public chorus and its costumes. Supply is generous provision. Each point of contact between believers is meant to carry something from Christ to the next member.
Then comes the phrase I love most: “according to the effectual working in the measure of every part.” Not the measure of the few prominent parts. Every part. The body “maketh increase... unto the edifying of itself in love” when each part is working in its measure.
Paul makes the same point to the Colossians, where some teachers were drawing believers away into private visions and special experiences:
And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.
“Not holding the Head.” That was their real failure. And notice what follows from holding the Head: the whole body is nourished “by joints and bands.” The nourishment comes from Christ, but it travels through the connections. A part that cuts itself off from the other members does not only stop giving. It stops receiving. That is what happened to Kayinsola’s father’s foot. The blood supply and the nerve signals both depend on connection. A disconnected part begins to starve.
Two things follow from this. First, the Head of the body is Christ. “And he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). The church is not the pastor’s body, and its members are not the founder’s property. Leaders are gifts to the body, and their task is to equip the members, not to replace them or own them. Any teaching that makes a human leader the source of the body’s life has misplaced the Head.
Second, growth “in love” is the test. The body does not edify itself in efficiency, or in numbers, or in impressive programmes, though all of these may have their place. It edifies itself in love. A church can grow larger while its members grow lonelier. Paul’s measure is whether truth is spoken in love and every part is supplying what it has.
Finding your place without waiting for a title
How then do you find your place? Let me make it practical.
Begin with the people, before the roles. Many believers try to find their place by scanning the list of departments. That can help. But the body is first a set of relationships. Ask God to show you two or three people in your congregation whom you can actually know. A house fellowship, a Bible study, a small group within a department: these are often where membership stops being a word and becomes a life.
Notice what you notice. Gifts are often hidden in what catches our attention. The person who always sees who is missing may have a gift of pastoral care. The one who cannot stand a disorganised store room may have a gift of administration. The one who is moved to tears by a struggling family may have a gift of mercy. Offer what you see.
Bring what you already have. Your profession, your skills and your experience are not separate from the body’s life. Kayinsola’s nursing, a mechanic’s practical sense, a teacher’s patience, a retired civil servant’s knowledge of how forms are filled: the Spirit can use them all as grace “to profit withal” (1 Corinthians 12:7).
PunchlineLet yourself be known. Tell someone when you are struggling. Accept the visit. Accept the meal. That, too, is how the body works.
And refuse comparison. The hand and the foot are not rivals. If another believer’s gift is more visible than yours, rejoice with him: “or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26).
A word to leaders. If the only contributions your church publicly honours are the visible ones, you will train your members to believe Paul was wrong. Give more abundant honour to the parts that lack it. Thank the cleaners by name. Pray publicly for those who care for the sick. Make room for members to contribute outside the official programmes. And do not treat willing members as an endless supply of labour. A body that drives its parts until they fail is not healthy, however busy it looks. Equip people, release them, and let them rest.
A word, too, for anyone whose church has made them feel like a tool rather than a member. If you have been shamed for asking questions, pressured to give what you cannot afford, or kept in a role through guilt, that is not the body Paul describes. Every part matters to God. You are free to seek a congregation where Christ is the Head in practice and not only in the doctrinal statement.
Kayinsola did not join the choir. She told me, laughing, that the choir had been spared.
What she did was smaller and, I think, more beautiful. She asked her pastor whether she could help the welfare team visit elderly members. On those visits she noticed how many of them were diabetic, and how few had anyone to check their feet. So, with the pastor’s blessing, she began a quiet clinic in one of the Sunday school classrooms on the first Sunday of every month. A table, a basin, a box of dressings and a sign-up sheet. Eight people came the first time. Within a year it was forty, and two younger nurses in the congregation had joined her.
The following rainy season, her father was admitted to hospital again with an infection. This time the congregation knew. A man from the welfare team drove her mother to the hospital each morning. Two women from her house fellowship brought food. One of the elderly members she had treated, a widow who walks with a stick, sent a message every evening: “We are praying for Baba’s foot.”
“For eleven years I thought the church needed my presence,” Kayinsola said. “It needed my hands. And I needed theirs.”
That is what it means to be a member. You were set in the body as it pleased God. You are joined to Christ the Head and to every brother and sister who belongs to Him. Some part of the body is waiting for what you carry, and some part of the body is ready to carry you. Let the feeling come back into the foot.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Which voice in 1 Corinthians 12 sounds more like yours: the foot that says “I am not of the body,” or the eye that says “I have no need of thee”?
- What do you think God has given you to “minister the same one to another”? Who could you ask to help you see it?
- Is your relationship with your local church closer to that of a member or that of a customer? What would change if it moved one step toward membership?
- When did you last allow another believer to help you? What makes receiving difficult for you?
- How might your congregation give “more abundant honour” to the members whose service is rarely seen?
This Week
This week, take one step of supply and one step of receiving. For the first, offer one specific contribution to another believer or to your church, drawn from what you already know or do well, and make the offer to a named person. For the second, tell one trusted believer something you are carrying, and let them pray for you or help you. At the end of the week, write down what you noticed about the body when both directions were open.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, You are the Head of the body, and I thank You that by Your Spirit I have been joined to You and to Your people. Forgive me for the times I have attended without belonging, and for the times I have served without letting anyone serve me. Deliver me from the voice that says I do not matter, and from the voice that says I need no one. Show me the place where You have set me, and help me supply what You have given me with simplicity, diligence and cheerfulness. Let the life that flows from You pass through me to others, and through others to me, until Your church grows up into You in love. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.