What kind of body is the Church?

The apostle Paul used the analogy of the human body a lot to describe the Church, and it's a fitting comparison, at least in theory. Like the human body, the Church is a diverse collection of parts, personalities, gifts and backgrounds, with many different roles and jobs for its members to do. And all of it is meant to be united under one Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 1:22-23) And, if one might wonder why the unity of heart and effort that is supposed to characterize the Church is not more evident in real life, the most obvious place to look for an answer would be in the Church's relationship to her Head.

When a human body is sick, it may be due to one of many different diseases that afflict its various parts. But when a person's entire body is devastated by a system-wide disease that affects the movements and functions of the whole body, it's usually a problem somewhere in the brain, or an interruption in the nervous system that gets its signals from the brain. Parkinson's, Cerebral Palsy, paralysis, strokes and other brain injuries, and many other dysfunctions can totally disable an otherwise healthy body.

Unlike the human body, the Body of Christ has a Head that always does His job. But the Church Body, and its individual members, have a will of their own that may prevent the Head from giving the right directions. So with the Church, there may be different members who are suffering the effects of spiritual sicknesses, like undisciplined desires, lust, pride or ambition; but when the whole body of a local church or a church denomination is reeling from the effects of sinful practices, fleshly politics and worldly ambitions, you can bet there's a significant loss of communication with the Head.

If the Church was always following her Head, there would be no fractious splits, no heresies, no drifting into worldliness, no rivalries and disputes and other things that Paul attributes to the "deeds of the flesh." There would be no "arms" of the church going off in a direction totally contrary to His Word. If Christ was truly directing His Body, there would be harmony of heart and effort in carrying out His mission of making disciples; there would be unity of faith in His Word, instead of myriad theologies and sects competing with each other.

Instead, the Church is seen by an increasingly skeptical world as "spastic", given to "convulsions" and widely divergent signals in communication that totally distort the unity of message and mind that Paul sought for the Body of Christ when he urged Christians to "make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose." (Philippians 2:2) How different would be the history and present life of the Church, if the apostle's words had been lived out on a world-wide scale. Though we can't reverse history, we could at least commit ourselves in our own local churches to making sure our Head is in charge of His Church, rather than just being attached to a dysfunctional Body.