New Testament Metaphor of the Church

The nature of the church cannot be understood apart from its mission and the needs of the world. By reviewing some of the common metaphors used in the New Testament that reveal the nature of the church we are able to back into an understanding of how it originally saw its mission. The needs of the world, then as now, are only discernable by being present. The needs are also subject to change based on time, place, and culture.

In his letters to Corinth and Rome Paul uses the metaphor of the body of Christ to convey the idea of the nature of the church. It was to be a unified yet diverse group of people working together for their common good and to provide the spiritual needs of the world. Both letters are to a specific community, so, they were to be read and understood in that context. He likens the members of each community to specific members of a human body, each with its own function and purpose – a purpose determined by God and used in conjunction with the other gifts to fulfill the general mission of the church.

The gifts listed in the two passages give us an indication of the mission of the church. The lists seem to focus on two main activities: the discipleship of existing members and the evangelism of unbelievers. Gifts like prophecy, teaching, exhortation, and leadership are gifts that are used to build up members of the church. Young believers are truly converted as their life becomes transformed by the direction provided by these gifts. It is through the direction of these kinds of gifts that new habits of life are gained and spirit empowered discipleship can occur. A second classification of gifts: service, healing, tongues, contribution, and acts of mercy are gifts that minister, not only to the believers, but primarily to unbelievers. Members of the body of Christ are to follow Jesus’ example in the gospels; he healed many, calmed storms, forgave sins, raised the dead, and encouraged people to have faith (Mt. 8-9). Knoxvillians and Nashvillians of today, like their Corinthian and Roman counterparts, must identify the questions, hopes, spiritual understandings, maladies, sins, and death which cover their communities in darkness and dispel it through a missional approach to evangelism. The ‘body of Christ’ is not the metaphor of a group of people with a building who plan to be the church, but a living, breathing organism that dwells in and with the people of a particular neighborhood so that the gospel it embodies can change them.

This leads to another aspect of the body of Christ metaphor. Beyond the unity and diversity of the body’s giftedness for mission; the image of the body also implies presence. John 1.14 states that the Word, later identified as Jesus, made his dwelling among us. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of this verse states that the Word “moved into the neighborhood”. God did not try to resolve his dispute with man by remaining behind heaven’s veil, but he sent his son in the flesh to faithfully represent him. Theologians call this the incarnation. As the body of Christ we are called to an incarnational mission to the world. We are to be present with God’s enemies in order to help reconcile them to him. We need to move into their neighborhoods in order to understand their particular needs and be close enough to them to do something about it. Greg Ogden wrote in his book Discipleship Essentials that, “the manner in which the Lord works is incarnational: life rubs up against life. We pass on Christlikeness through intimate modeling”. Paul seems to encourage this when he wrote, "I urge you to imitate me" (1 Corinthians 4:16) and "You became imitators of us and of the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 1:6).

The body of Christ as a metaphor is instructive for discipleship and evangelism. Every gathering of believers who allow Christ to be their head has the genetic potential to fulfill his work within their communities. The role of leaders is to discern and act on what the Spirit is saying to the church through the voices of its many members.