The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the CorinthiansDods, Marcus
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the Corinthians
Dods, Marcus
Bible. Corinthians, 1st -- Commentaries
One important function of the Church therefore is to elicit and
utilize every faculty for good which its members possess. In a society
in which Christianity is but beginning to take root, it may fall to
one man to do the work of the whole Christian body--to be eye, tongue,
foot, hand, and heart. He must evangelise, he must teach, he must
legislate, he must enforce law; he must preach, he must pray, he must
lead the singing; he must plan the church and help to build it;
translate the Scriptures and help to print them; teach the savages to
wear a little clothing and help to make it; dissuade them from war and
instruct them in the arts of peace, instilling a taste for agriculture
and commerce. But when the Christian society has left this rudimentary
stage behind, those various functions are discharged by different
individuals; and as it advances towards a perfect condition its
functions and organs become as multifarious and as distinctly
differentiated as the organs of the human body. Every member of the
Church is different from every other, and has a gift of his own. Some
are fitted to nourish the Church herself and maintain the body of
Christ in health and efficiency; some are fitted to act on the world
outside: they are eyes to perceive, feet to pursue, hands to lay hold
of those who are straying from the light.
Every one therefore who is drawn into the fellowship of the body of
Christ has something to contribute to its good and to the work it
does. He is in connection with that body because the Spirit of Christ
has possessed and assimilated him to it; and that Spirit energizes in
him. He may not see that anything the Church is presently engaged in
is work he can undertake. He may feel out of place and awkward when he
attempts to do what others are doing. He feels himself like a
greyhound, compelled to run by scent and not by sight, and expected to
do the work of a pointer, and not seize his quarry, or as if set to do
the work of an eye with the hand. He can do it only in a groping,
fumbling, imperfect manner. But this is only a hint that he is meant
for other work, not for none. And it is for him to discover what his
Christian instincts lead him to. The eye does not need to be told it
is for seeing, or the hand that it is for grasping. The eye and the
hand of the child instinctively do their office. And where there is
true Christian life, it matters not what the member of Christ's body
be, it will find its function, even though that function is new in the
Church's experience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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