DAILY DEVOT IONAL S T UD I E S IN THE NEW TE S T AMEN T FOR INDIVIDUAL MEDITATION AND FAMILY WORSHIP By R A. TORREY
Saturday, December i. 1 Corinthians 12 : 12 , 13 .
mutual protection and helpfulness by mem bers that differ very widely from one another, as for example, hand and eye. It is by baptism “in the one Spirit” that we become one body. The great solution, therefore of the problem of Christian unity is. to have every believer, every Christian, every member of the church, baptised with (or, in) the Holy Spirit. In verse 13, Paul speaks as if every member were thus bap tized. He says, “In one Spirit were we all baptized into one body,” and this is the actual case when the church attains to God’s idea of the church. It was the actual case at Pentecost and what unity resulted (Acts 2:41-47; 4:31, 32, 34, 35). It is true also in a very important sense of all believers in all periods of Christian history. When Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, He as the head of the church received the Holy Spirit for His whole body, the church, the whole church and every mem ber of it was baptized with the Holy Ghost in Him; just as when the high priest was annointed with the. oil (which was a type of the Holy Ghost) it ran down over his whole body (Ps. 133:1, 2 ; cf. Acts 2:33). So in Christ “we were all baptized with (or, in) the Spirit,” and the baptism with (or, in) the Spirit is the birthright- of every regenerate man and woman (cf. Acts 2:38, 39). Potentially every believer in Christ is baptized with the Spirit. However, experimentally, as the Bible clearly shows and as the experience of many individuals shows, a regenerate man may be without a definite experi mental baptism with the Spirit (Acts 8:16; cf. v. 12; Acts 19:1, 2; 1:4, 5; cf. John 15:3; 13:10). But what should a person do who has not been experimentally bap tized in the Holy Spirit? Simply, just claim his birthright in Christ. The bap tism with the Spirit is his birthright, why
The church is the body of Christ. He is the head, we are the members (Eph. 1:22, 23; Rom, 12:4, 5; Eph. 5:23-28). When Paul says, in verse 12, “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body being many, are one body; so also is Christ,” by “Christ” he means the whole Christ, i.e., as made up of Himself as the head and of us as members. What a wonderful thought this is, that we are a part of Christ, a real, vital part, so that it takes us to make up the Christ. Now we are many members, with 'widely differing gifts; “some apostles” with illustrious gifts, -and some merely “helps” with very ordinary gifts (v , 28), yet we are all parts of one glorious .body. We are “all the members of the body” and though we are “many” yet we “are one body.” And what makes us one? The one indwelling (ch. 3:16) and baptizing Spirit (v. 13). Just as in the human body, the many separate mem bers, hands, feet, eyes, etc., are held together by the indwelling and all-govern ing spirit of man; so in the church the many separate members, apostles, prophets, teachers, helps, governments, etc., are held together in one body by the indwelling and all-governing Spirit of God. Withdraw the human spirit from the human body and the body begins at once to crumble into dust. Withdraw the Spirit of God from the church and separation and disintegra tion begins at once. There is no real or lasting unity possible except “in the Spirit” (Eph. 4:3). All efforts at unity by out ward combinations and federations are bound to be futile. The unity which the Spirit brings, as is very evident from this chapter, is not uniformity, but a unity of body where there is co-operation and a
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