“You Are Necessary”
1 Corinthians 12
Sermon Series: “Don’t Waste Your Life”
Main Idea: Every Christian is necessary to the Body of Christ.
Introduction: Jesus loves and died for the church. One of the pictures of the church in the New Testament is the Body of Christ. God is on mission in the world to redeem people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation for Himself. He is building His everlasting kingdom. The primary vehicle through which He is doing this is His Church. The Church is made up of every true believer. We are the family of God, and we are the hands and feet of Jesus. That is part of the connotation of the body of Christ. The reality is that it takes every Christian working together to accomplish everything God has willed to accomplish so each of us is necessary to the body of Christ. There is no better investment we can every make than investing our lives in the body of Christ as we work together to accomplish the Lord’s mission in the world. Here are some of the meanings of the analogy of the body of Christ:
1. Jesus is the Lord, or Head (Colossians 1:18), of the body (v. 1-3).
2. The Holy Spirit places us into the body of Christ at the moment of salvation. In other words, the body of Christ is made up of all true believers (v. 12-13). A true believer is someone who has genuinely confessed Jesus as Lord through faith by the working of the Holy Spirit (v. 3).
3. There are no external distinctions in the body of Christ, but we are equal and inwardly united by the Spirit (v. 13).
4. The Lord places us in the body where He sees fit to do what He chooses (v. 18).
5. There is one body with many parts. In other words, it is a body that has unity and diversity (v. 12-25).
6. This body is interdependent, which means we need each other and must work together (v. 14-24).
7. We cannot withdraw from the body or choose our own role within the body (v. 15-21).
How are we necessary to the body of Christ?
1. Every Christian is necessary to the unity of the Body of Christ (v. 25a). In order to have complete unity, we must all be aligned with the rest of the body.
2. Every Christian is necessary to the care of the Body of Christ (v. 25b-26). We are to all be giving care to and receiving care from one another.
3. Every Christian is necessary to the ministry of the Body of Christ (v. 27-31, v. 4-11). The context of this chapter is Paul correcting misunderstandings regarding spiritual gifts in the Church at Corinth (v. 1). Therefore, he spends a lot of time explaining the relationship between spiritual gifts and the ministry of the body of Christ. Henry Blackaby has written, “A spiritual gift is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit at work in and through a person’s life for the common good of the body of Christ.” J. E. O’Day has written, “A spiritual gift is God’s grace manifested in specific service to others.”
A. God sovereignly distributes the gifts as He chooses (v. 4-6, 11). [We do not decide our own role in the Body.]
B. Every believer has at least one gift, but no believer has all of the gifts (v. 7, 29-30). [1 Peter 4:10]
C. The purpose of the gifts is for the building up of the entire Body (v. 7).
D. Since a variety of ministries are needed for a healthy body and nobody has all the gifts, it is vital for every member of the body to use his or her gifts so all the needed ministries can be performed and the body can be healthy (v. 4-11).
