1 Cor. 12: 12-15; 18-22; 25-27; 31
“For, just as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members, while being many, are the one body, so, also, with the Anointed. For, indeed, by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Judeans or Gentiles, whether slaves or free, and all of us were given one Spirit to drink. For indeed the body is not a single member but many. If the foot says, ‘because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,’ it is not for this reason not of the body…But now God has situated the members, each one of them, in the body, as God has willed. And if all were one member, where would the body be? Yet now, in fact, (there are) many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say of the hand ‘I have no need of you’…Rather, much more necessary are the members of the body that seem weaker…So that there be no division in the body, but that instead members have the same love one for another. And if one member suffers, all the members co-suffer; if a member is glorified, all the members co-rejoice! And you all together are the Anointed’s (Christ’s) body and members of one another…and now, I will show you a more excellent path…” (DBH)
Chapter 12 of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church is a manifesto of quantum theology. According to the Apostle, we are all the body of Christ, and members of one another, and of Christ. Every one of us matters. Every one of us is essential. No one is superfluous. No one is expendable.
Using the metaphor of the body, he systematically demonstrates how every individual member of a body is necessary to fulfill the definition of a body, and yet, if we separate all the individual parts, where is the body? There is no body without the members, and there are no functioning members apart from their connection to the body. Both must be true at once: The body is one, and the individual members make up the one body.
Paul furthers this metaphor to explain why we need one another. We cannot exclude individuals because they are not the same as we are, and we cannot be excluded from the body because we are not like all the other members. Diversity is essential. There can be no harmony if we all sing the same note. Therefore, we celebrate our differences. We rejoice in our variety. We honor the spectrum of humanity.
In the Jewish tradition, no one can be said to enjoy shalom unless everyone enjoys shalom. As long as one person does not have everything they need for peace, no one can be said to rightly have peace. Here, the Apostle goes even deeper than this to say that, as long as anyone is excluded from Christ, none of us can be said to be in (or of) Christ. Christ is all of us. Christ is everyone. For any of us who are in Christ to believe that there are some who are not of (or in) Christ, then we are not in (or of) Christ, either.
To be in (and of) Christ is to recognize that everyone is in (and of) Christ, and to know that we all belong to Christ, and to one another.
When we truly understand and embrace our radical oneness with Christ and with all the myriad members of the body of Christ, and everyone’s oneness with Christ, and with us, that’s when humanity fully awakens to the ultimate reality: Christ is all and is in all.
And, when we awaken to this truth, what is the fruit of that awakening?
Well, according to the Apostle Paul, what flows out of that realization is simply this: Love.
My new book, The Quantum Gospel of Philip and the Valentinian Christ is available now on Amazon.
Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has appeared on CNN, USA Today, Coast To Coast with George Noory, BuzzFeed, and John
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