Restores My Soul

Historical Context

Paul wrote this letter to the church he himself had founded in Corinth, in the mid-50s AD. Corinth was a Roman colony that Julius Caesar rebuilt after Rome leveled the old Greek city a century before. By Paul’s time it worked like a Roman city, not a Greek one. Many of the believers there had come out of pagan idol worship. The church was already split into rival camps, each claiming a different leader as its own.

By the point in the letter where today’s verse falls, Paul was deep into a long argument about spiritual gifts, a subject that runs across three full chapters. The believers were sorting each other by their gifts. Tongues in particular were treated as proof of being highly gifted. Paul had just pictured the church as a single body to answer two things people there were actually saying. One voice, like a foot, said it did not belong because it was not a hand. A second voice told a quieter part that it was not needed. Into that argument, Paul told them plainly what they were.

Reflection

You are part of Christ’s body, Paul tells the Corinthians, all of you, with no exception. You are not the whole body by yourself. You are a real part of it, with a place that belongs to no one else.

That settles both problems he had just named. A part with a small job is still a part. A part someone else dismisses does not stop being a part because of that. If you have ever downplayed your own place in a group because it seemed less impressive than someone else’s, this verse includes you as fully as it included them. If you have ever written off what a quieter person contributes, this verse asks you to think again. The measure was never how visible the part is. It was only whether it belongs.