One image that helps fashion our understanding of God’s new covenant people, the Church, is that of a body. This image itself serves to remind us the Church is a living entity, not merely a building. It is composed of people who have been made alive spiritually through a personal relationship with Christ. Like all of the varied metaphors or images of the Church, the Church as the body of Christ is not presented systematically in one grand passage of Scripture. Rather the image is contextual. Some practical or theological need in a specific local church gave rise to the idea of being the body of Christ as a way of presenting truth to meet the occasion.
A hint of the imagery of believers being the body of Christ emerged during a season of persecution against Christians. In Acts 9 the ringleader of the persecution was Saul of Tarsus. When interrupted in his quest to inflict pain on believers in Damascus, the ascended Christ confronted the persecutor with a question, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (v. 4). Implicit in the question is the idea that in some sense Christian believers are so connected to Christ that He feels the pain of any hurt inflicted on them. Pain experienced by the body is felt by the Head of the body. What is implied here about believers being Christ’s body is clearly expressed later in a passage like 1 Corinthians 12:27, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Similarly, Ephesians 5:30 declares of believers, “We are members of His body.”
Christ is the Head
A major truth about the Church as a body is that Christ is its Head: “He is the Head of the body, the Church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead that in everything He might be preeminent” (Col. 1:18). Headship over the Church is one dimension of the preeminence of Christ. In the significant passage about the relationship of a husband to his wife, that relationship is elaborated by comparison with the relationship of Christ to the Church, “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the Head of the Church, His body” (Eph. 5:23).
As Head of the body, the Church, Christ exercises the prerogative of appointing church leaders through the agency of the Holy Spirit. In concert with Christ and a part of our triune God, the Spirit gives some to be pastors and teachers, others to be evangelists and administrators (1 Cor. 12:28).
Church governance
The analogy of Christ as Head of the Church has an implication for church governance. We Baptists classify ourselves among those who espouse what we often term a “congregational” or “democratic” form of church government. We understand congregational church government to mean that members of a local church hold ultimate authority, as opposed to the authority residing in its ministers. This flows from and honors the doctrine of the priesthood of believers. Upon closer reflection we might say church authority, rather than being democratic, is really “Christocratic.” This way of thinking honors the analogy of Christ as Head of His body, the Church. Maybe we do justice to this concept in a practical way by thinking of congregational authority as authority delegated by the church’s Head to its collective membership. In addition whatever authority resides in the church’s ministers also is delegated authority given by the members to the trusted leaders.
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