The Body Bleeds

Today's Reading

Read 1 Corinthians 1:10-17: "I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers... What I mean is that each one of you says, 'I follow Paul,' or 'I follow Apollos,' or 'I follow Cephas,' or 'I follow Christ.' Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?"

Then read 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 ("for while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving only in a human way?"), Ephesians 4:1-6 ("one body and one Spirit... one Lord, one faith, one baptism"), and John 17:20-23, where Jesus prays specifically for the unity of those who would believe through the apostles' word — "that they may all be one... so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

Reflection

Notice where Paul does not start.

He does not start by figuring out which faction is right. He does not begin a forensic audit of who slighted whom or whose theology is more refined. He does not propose a denominational split — Apollos here, Paul there, Peter people in another building. His first move, and the move that frames the entire letter, is to grieve that the body of Christ is divided at all.

That instinct is rare in modern Christian life. When we encounter division in our church, our denomination, or our online tribe, the first question we ask is usually who is right? Paul's first question is closer to what does this division say about whether we have grasped the cross? "Is Christ divided?" he asks. "Was Paul crucified for you?" The accusation is not that the Corinthians are picking the wrong leader. The accusation is that they have made leaders into something Christ alone is supposed to be — the source of their identity. That is why Paul calls them, a few verses later, infants and worldly. They are doing what the world does. They are forming tribes around personalities. The fact that the personalities happen to be apostles does not make the dynamic less worldly.

John Calvin, who knew more about church division than any of us care to, put his finger on the cure: "There is nothing more effectual for procuring peace than to be torn away from all selfish considerations, and to have an eye exclusively to the glory of Christ." Tribes form around what we want — a certain style, a certain politics, a certain leader who validates our instincts. They dissolve, slowly, when we are forced to ask whether what we want is the same as what Christ wants.

Bonhoeffer, who watched the German church tear itself apart in the 1930s and ultimately gave his life within that conflict, saw the deeper temptation. Most splits are dressed up as principle, but underneath them is something subtler — a fantasy of what church should be. "He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial." The most dangerous Christian in any congregation is not the obvious troublemaker. It is the one who has a vivid mental picture of the perfect church and treats every actual brother and sister as an obstacle to that picture.

This is where 1 Corinthians 1 and Ephesians 4 do their hardest work. Paul does not say try to be united. He says we are united. "There is one body and one Spirit... one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all." The unity of the church is not a project we are building. It is a given fact about the body of Christ that our quarrels obscure but cannot abolish. To split a local church carelessly is not to dissolve a unity. It is to slash the body whose unity is already secured by the cross.

That does not mean every split is wrong. The rest of this plan will take seriously the moments when faithful believers must, with grief, walk away — Athanasius from the Arian church, Luther from Rome, Bonhoeffer's circle from the German Christians, Spurgeon from the Baptist Union. But before we discuss those harder questions, Paul forces us to see what we are doing first. The body bleeds when it is torn. Even when the tear is necessary, it is never small.

Going Deeper

Spend a few quiet minutes naming the faction in your own church or denomination that you most quietly disdain. Name it without softening it. Then ask: do I refuse fellowship with them because Christ refuses fellowship with them, or because I prefer my own kind? The answer to that question is the beginning of either faithful staying or faithful leaving — but only if it is asked honestly.