109. Members of Christ
1 Corinthians 6:15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.
Faith in Christ makes our bodies members of Christ. So God promises that my very physical body is a member of Christ. I can’t understand how something physical and material and earthly can be a member of something spiritual and invisible and heavenly. Although I can’t scientifically explain it, I can spiritually believe it.
My body is a member of Christ; that is a figure of speech, but it is still real. One way of looking at it is this way: the very body of Christ the man is risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, meaning that the physical human body of Jesus is not on the physical earth any longer. We are the body of Christ, and I am individually a member of it. Jesus lives on earth in a body still today, but you and I are a part of that body since He lives within each of our bodies. Jesus is not floating around in some ethereal ether, but He is here in the flesh, our flesh.
Being a member of Christ places a heavy responsibility upon me. The life of Christ lives on through me. Jesus is still influencing the world, not as a spirit of the air, but as a life lived in my body. Is Jesus living or am I living? Galatians 2:20 expresses the dilemma: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.” So which is it, Jesus or I? It is both, in some kind of symbiotic relationship. Sometimes my life looks like Christ and sometimes it looks like me and sometimes it seems mixed. My personality shows, but mixed with it is the person of Christ. This is a mystery. Nevertheless, my body is a member of Christ. Since Christ doesn’t have a body on earth He must use mine.
I am only one member among many, and all of us believers together make up the body of Christ on the earth; and also in some mysterious way we are connected with the saints who have died and have passed on before us. The saints have no bodily connection to us; but Jesus does have a physical connection to our bodies.
How ridiculous and awful it is, then, to make a member of Christ (my body) a member of a prostitute (any person who is not your spouse). God forbid. This says that sex is not just sex; adultery is a physical and spiritual connection of two people who do not belong together. How can I take the Christ in my body and join it in such wickedness and sin against God? The promise bears a heavy responsibility.