One Body, One Spirit, One Baptism Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-13
Introduction: The Folly of Expressive Individualism
We live in an age that worships at the altar of the self. Our culture's high priests are the therapists, the influencers, and the pop stars, and their gospel is a simple one: "You do you." Be authentic. Find your truth. Express your unique, inner self. The modern world tells you that you are an isolated unit, a sovereign individual, and that your highest duty is to discover and then perform your personal identity for all the world to see. This is the great lie of expressive individualism, and it is a lonely, fragmenting, and ultimately destructive religion.
The church at Corinth was infected with a similar, albeit more spiritual-sounding, version of this disease. They were spiritual individualists. They were ranking and rating one another based on the flashiness of their spiritual gifts. The tongue-speakers thought they were the spiritual elite, looking down on the teachers. The prophets perhaps thought they had a direct line to God that the administrators lacked. This resulted in pride, envy, division, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what the church is. They were acting like a collection of spiritual superstars competing for stage time, rather than a unified body working together. They had forgotten their corporate identity.
Into this chaos of self-expression and spiritual pride, the apostle Paul brings a potent and revolutionary corrective. He doesn't tell them to try harder to get along. He doesn't give them five steps to better fellowship. He fundamentally reorients their entire understanding of who they are. He tells them they are not a collection of individuals at all. They are a body. They are one organism, animated by one Spirit, incorporated into one Christ. Paul's solution is not to flatter their individualism but to demolish it with the glorious, corporate reality of the gospel.
This passage is not just a quaint metaphor for church unity. It is a description of ontological reality. It tells us what the church is. And in a world that is tearing itself apart through the worship of the self, this truth is more vital than ever. The world offers the loneliness of the selfie; Christ offers the profound belonging of the body.
The Text
For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For also by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
(1 Corinthians 12:12-13 LSB)
The Organic Oneness of Christ (v. 12)
Paul begins with a simple, undeniable illustration from everyday life to explain a profound spiritual reality.
"For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ." (1 Corinthians 12:12)
The logic is straightforward. A human body is a marvel of unity in diversity. It is one thing, a body, but it is composed of many distinct parts: hands, feet, eyes, ears. The hand is not the foot, and the eye is not the ear. Each has a unique function. Yet, for all their diversity, they are not in competition. They are utterly interdependent and form one, single organism. The hand doesn't work for its own glory; it works for the good of the whole body. The eye doesn't see for itself; it sees for the benefit of the feet that walk and the hands that work. This is plain as day.
But then Paul makes a startling turn. After establishing this principle of unity in diversity, he says, "so also is Christ." We would expect him to say, "so also is the church." But he doesn't. He says Christ. This is a profound theological statement. The church is not merely like a body; in a mysterious and glorious way, the church is Christ. We are His physical presence on earth. He is the Head, and we, collectively, are His body. This is not a loose organizational metaphor; it is a statement about our corporate union with Him. When Saul was persecuting the church, Jesus did not ask him, "Saul, why are you persecuting my followers?" He asked, "Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" (Acts 9:4). To touch the church is to touch Christ.
This demolishes all spiritual pride. If you are a hand, you cannot boast against the foot. You are part of the same organism. To despise another member of the body is a form of spiritual auto-immune disease. It is self-harm. Your well-being is inextricably tied to the well-being of every other member. This is corporate solidarity. The modern evangelical mind often thinks of salvation in purely individualistic terms: "Jesus and me." But the biblical picture is that when you were saved, you were not just saved from your sin; you were saved into a body. You were grafted into Christ, and therefore, you were grafted into everyone else who is in Christ.
The Unifying Agent and the Entrance Rite (v. 13)
In verse 13, Paul explains how this diverse collection of people became one body in Christ. What is the mechanism? What is the unifying agent?
"For also by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:13)
The agent of our unity is the Holy Spirit. The verse says "by one Spirit," or perhaps better, "in one Spirit." The Spirit is the sphere, the environment, in which this spiritual transaction takes place. He is the divine glue that binds us all together. The Father planned our salvation, the Son accomplished it on the cross, and the Spirit applies it, uniting us to the Son and, therefore, to one another.
The instrument or the event that marks this incorporation is baptism. "We were all baptized into one body." Now, we must be careful here. Paul is not teaching that the physical act of water baptism, in and of itself, regenerates or saves anyone. That would contradict the whole tenor of his gospel. Rather, he is speaking of the spiritual reality to which water baptism points. He is speaking of Spirit-baptism. This is the sovereign, supernatural work of the Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion, whereby a sinner is taken out of Adam and placed into Christ. This is the baptism that truly saves, the "washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5).
Water baptism is the public sign and seal of this spiritual reality. It is the visible ordinance that marks our entrance into the visible body, the covenant community. For Paul, the sign and the thing signified are so closely related that he can speak of them almost interchangeably. In the New Testament, there is no category for an unbaptized Christian who refuses baptism. To be a believer was to be baptized. So, in this one event, both spiritual and physical, we are declared to be part of this one body.
And notice the radical social implications of this reality. This baptism obliterates all the world's dividing walls. "Whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free." In the ancient world, these were the fundamental divisions of humanity. The Jew had the covenants and the law; the Greek was a pagan outsider. The slave was property; the free man was a citizen with rights. These were not small distinctions; they were chasms that defined one's entire life and status. But Paul says that in the body of Christ, these distinctions are rendered irrelevant as a basis for our standing or value. The ground is level at the foot of the cross, and it is level in the baptismal waters.
This does not mean that a Jew ceases to be ethnically Jewish, or that a slave was immediately manumitted upon conversion. It means that their primary identity is no longer found in their ethnicity or social status. Their primary identity is now "in Christ." A Christian slave and a Christian master are now brothers, members of the same body, animated by the same Spirit. This was a socially explosive and revolutionary doctrine. The church is the one place on earth where a slave and his master could kneel side-by-side as equals, partaking of the one loaf and one cup.
Finally, Paul adds another metaphor: "and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." If baptism is the external sign of our incorporation, this speaks of the internal reality of our sustenance. We have all imbibed the same life-giving Spirit. He is not just the agent who puts us into the body; He is the very lifeblood that flows through the body, nourishing and sustaining every member. Just as every part of the physical body is sustained by the same circulatory system, so every Christian is sustained by the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is a shared, universal reality for all believers. There are not different grades of the Spirit. The most prominent apostle and the quietest, bedridden saint drink from the very same spiritual well. This is the basis of our fellowship, our koinonia. We share a common life because we share the common Spirit.
Conclusion: The Antithesis of Babel
What Paul is describing here is the great reversal of Babel. At Babel, humanity was united in a prideful, man-centered project to make a name for themselves. Their unity was in rebellion against God. God judged this arrogant unity by confusing their language and scattering them across the face of the earth. Humanity was fractured, divided, and set at odds with itself.
At Pentecost, God began to reverse the curse of Babel. The Holy Spirit descended, and the apostles began to speak in other tongues, declaring the mighty works of God. People from every nation heard the gospel in their own language. God was taking the scattered, divided fragments of humanity and, by His Spirit, through the gospel of His Son, He was baptizing them into one new body. The church is God's new humanity.
Our unity, therefore, is not something we create through programs or initiatives. Our unity is a fact, accomplished by God. We are one body because the one Spirit has baptized us into the one Christ. Our task is not to create this unity, but to maintain it and live it out (Ephesians 4:3). We do this when we recognize that our diversity is not a threat to our unity, but a gift to it. The eye needs the hand. The Jew needs the Greek. The master needs the slave. We do this when we stop seeing the church as a collection of individuals pursuing their own spiritual fulfillment, and start seeing it as the body of Christ, called to serve one another for the glory of our Head.
So, the question for us is not "Do you feel united?" The question is "Are you living in accordance with the unity that God has already accomplished?" Are you functioning as the member He made you to be, for the good of the whole body? Because in a world that is dying from the poison of individualism, the unified, diverse, interdependent, Spirit-filled body of Christ is the most powerful apologetic there is.