The body and the head belong together… the head controls and brings life to every part of the body.
On his way to Damascus, Paul saw the glorified Lord Jesus and heard Him say, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). He might have wondered how that could be. He was pursuing Christians. How could he be persecuting this heavenly person? That was the first intimation to Paul that there was a risen Head of the church in heaven who is linked with His body on earth so much so that He hurts when they hurt. Subsequently, Paul developed this theme, and, five times in his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians, he writes about the Lord Jesus as the Head of the body, the church (Eph. 1:22; 4:15; 5:23; Col. 1:18; 2:19). A body requires a head and the church finds its fullness in Him—we “are complete in Him” (Col. 2:10). A head requires a body and the church is “the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23)
Life
I can live without my finger or my hand, even without a leg; but when the head is severed from the body there can be no life. The body and the head belong together and together they constitute a living organism. Paul refers to this in his letters using two phrases: “in Christ” (Col.1:2; etc.) and “Christ in you” (Col. 1:27; etc.). As the arm and leg and fingers and toes and all the various other parts are united in one body and connected to the head, so are we in Christ; and as the head controls and brings life to every part of the body, so is He in us.
Membership in the universal church is, therefore, a matter of life. Someone believes in the Lord Jesus, receives new life, and is incorporated as a living member into His body. On the other hand, identification with a local church is a matter of profession and may not mean anything. It has been said that external membership is no proof of inward union. What really matters is not our baptism or our church connection but that we are trusting for salvation in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, and that we belong to Him and to the church which is His body.
Authority
William MacDonald, in his New Testament Commentary, suggests that the head provides guidance, direction, and control. In a properly functioning body, the members of the body do what the head tells them. The Lord Jesus is the Head of the church, not the Queen in England as our Anglican friends might suggest, nor the pope in Rome as our Catholic friends would suggest, nor any other ecclesiastical figure. He alone has authority over the church.
That has implications for the local assembly. John saw seven golden lampstands representing seven churches. Each church is a single lampstand; each stands by itself on its own base; each consists of a group of people in a particular place at a particular time; each has its own leadership; and each is accountable to the Lord who walks among them. A local church is responsible to the Head in heaven, not to any man or group of men, and not to any other local church. We may not like some of the practices in a certain church, but we should be careful about how we treat and speak about others who do things somewhat differently than ourselves. They are not accountable to us, but to the Head of the church, as we are.
Unity
We sometimes hear mention of a new world order and the dream of the trans-nationalists that traditional barriers be broken down nationally, economically, and even religiously, and we become one family. The kind of oneness that the trans-nationalists dream about has already happened in God’s new order. The Lord has taken some Jews and some Gentiles and brought them together in Christ, to make one new man “where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised not uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave not free, but Christ is all and in all” (Col. 3:11). Racial, religious, cultural, and social barriers have been broken down and we are “all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). God does not see us riddled with division and friction and fragmented into numerous parts. Rather He sees us united to Christ in a unity which God has established.
Consequently, we are not commanded to create unity but to maintain it, “with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:2f). As far as the company of believers at large is concerned, we are to recognize no narrower oneness than the body of Christ. A line in one of our hymns says, “We would remember we are one with every saint that loves Thy name.” And within the local assembly, we are to do nothing that would mar the unity of that group but “be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind” (Php. 2:2).
Growth
Paul writes about someone “intruding into those things which he has not seen” (Col. 2:18). Some texts omit the word “not,” in which case we could translate it “taking his stand on what he has seen” (or claims to have seen). He uses a technical term for one who went through some sort of initiation experience as part of the mystery religions of the day. It’s a dangerous position to take. It is subjective. Feelings are unreliable and experiences are passing. It contributes to pride which regards others who have not been initiated as less privileged and less spiritual. And it challenges the authority and sufficiency of Scripture and the work of Christ. These people have let go of Christ. They are “not holding fast to the Head” (Col. 2:19). Their experience assumes an authority which is higher than Scripture and Christ. But real growth comes not from men but from God, not from mystical experiences but from contact with the living Christ as part of His body. He is “the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God” (Col. 2:19 cf. Eph. 4:15-16).
Suffering
Paul writes, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in the flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church” (Col. 1:24). He refers not to Christ’s sufferings on account of sin, which cannot be added to, but to the afflictions which were His at the hands of men. He was despised and rejected; they hated Him without a cause; there was opposition, criticism, persecution, and misunderstanding. Now Paul was experiencing the same kind of thing. His afflictions were the afflictions of Christ in the sense that they were similar to those experienced by the Lord Jesus.
But his afflictions were the afflictions of Christ also in the sense that Christ continued to experience in the present what Paul was experiencing. They weren’t simply Paul’s afflictions, something Paul felt; they were also Christ’s afflictions, something Christ felt. The Lord Jesus informed Paul of this on the road that day when He challenged him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9: 4,16). The apostle has suffered much and is now suffering in a Roman prison, but he wasn’t the only one who had experienced this kind of treatment: Christ had. And the opposition he experienced wasn’t directed only at him: it was directed at Christ. He wasn’t the only one hurting: the Head of the church feels the pain when His body suffers.
Real growth comes not from men but from God. Not from mystical experiences but from contact with the living Christ as part of His body.