Individual and Community

In my previous post, I talk about how we can attain the spiritual markers for spiritual growth. On further thoughts, I would like to elaborate more on the personal tools for spiritual growth.

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who told me that he does not believe that our spiritual life is just between us and God, but the community comes into play. Fair enough, considering how God intends for the church to be His vessel on Earth to serve His people. But he went one step beyond this and claim to the effect that both are equal in status (which by the way is not a very good representation of his original view). The argument stems that Jesus is the head and the church is the body and they are never meant to be separated from one another. 

It is easy to see how such a view can be derived. But there are major problems actually when one adopts such a position. Firstly, let's target at the verses that give us the idea of the head and body. There are, as far as I understand, three direct verses which give us this idea. The first time it was mentioned (in the order that the text was written, not arranged in our NT) was in 1 Corinthians 12:

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

The second of such verses comes in Ephesians 4:

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

 The last was written by Paul in Romans 12:

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

A brief glance at the passages will yield a few conclusions regarding Paul's analogy of the church being the body of Christ:

Firstly, we have to bear in mind that the context that Paul was addressing in the three epistles seemed to be about church unity more than anything else. The Corinthian church was torn in its argument and disagreements about spiritual gifts and hence Paul had to intervene to teach them that all spiritual gifts are from God and meant for the church to serve and edify one another. In Ephesians, while the immediate context was also about the church being united together as one, suggested by the preceding three chapters. Likewise, Paul was implicitly addressing a potential schism in the Roman church between the Gentile majority and Jewish minority. Hence, to extrapolate from these ideas to say that relationship with the community is con-substantial with our relationship with God is really stretching the idea a bit too far.

Secondly, nothing in these passages suggests that our personal relationship with God is not important. In fact, one just needs to read any books on spiritual discipline to understand that our personal relationship with God is first and paramount and it is never meant to be replaced by the community. The community is never meant to be stand on par with our relationship with God. To get the idea from these passages would really be committing too much into the interpretation. Moreover, one can even argue that while we are part of the body, we are also individual cells connected to the head. So while we work together as part of the body, we cannot individually detach from the head, lest we die.

So what are the implications based on this debate?

For one, we need to know that the Christian life is not merely an individualistic one. We maintain our own individual walk with God but each individual walk with God should come together to form a collective one. No Christian is meant to survive alone but then no Christian is meant to have a relationship with God communally and not individually. This is the reason why being connected and rooted to a local church remains such an important concept today, despite the advent in live streaming technology and other social media platform.

It also means that the community will benefit if our walk with God is strong. If each individual part comes together to form one big body, then it is essential that each individual part is strong to begin with. And how strong it can get when we are empowered by God and maintain a vibrant relationship with Him?

So how is your individual walk with God coming along today? Is it so strong that it is going to boost the faith community that you are in?