Ephesians

1. One body

We are one body. The apostle does not say one organization or one institution; he uses a specific word-picture, describing the church as a body. While an organization is an assemblage of departments or units, a body is a living organism. A body consists of thousands of cells with one mutually shared life. That shared life and shared unity exists despite surface divisions and distinctions, even despite differences of culture and language.

I have had the privilege of traveling around the world, meeting with Christians in widespread places around the earth. I have discovered that it is easy to recognize this fundamental unity wherever I go. I may not understand the words of an African, Latin, European, or Asian brother in Christ, and he may not understand mine—but within moments of our first handshake, we both know that we jointly share one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God the Father. We know it, we feel it, we revel in the warmth of the Spirit, who joins our two spirits together in the bond of peace.

It is important to remember how a body comes about. A body begins with a single cell, which divides into two cells, then four cells, then eight, then sixteen, and on and on and on until it becomes a fully formed mature body—but every cell shares the life of the original cell. You and I are cells in a single body— “one body,” as Paul says—that extends geographically around the world and chronologically back to the very first followers of Christ.