1 Corinthians 12:18 Commentary and Bible Study

God has designed each local church and every individual member of that church. The picture of believers is not one of free agents wandering from one church to another as they please, but of each member having a place in a particular local church assigned to him or her by God. It has pleased God to save you and to set you in a certain place, and you are not there! That is very sad. You are an individual believer; you love the Lord. If you are open and your heart is open to Christian service and to living for him, God will call you into a role, whether it is an inconspicuous role or conspicuous role. He will place you, and you will always be able to say, ‘God has placed me in this role. He has given me my portion, my mix of abilities, which I must exercise for his glory and for the sake of Christ. I am called by him, and at his pleasure. It has pleased him to put me in whatever position I am in.’ If all the body consisted of one member, the body could not function. Each member has great value, and each member has abilities of its own and makes its own unique contribution to the body, but God has deliberately made the members incomplete in themselves, so that they are forced to depend on the contribution of other members. Each member is therefore to value the body as a whole and not just its own contribution. The individual Christian is loved by the Lord with an everlasting love, but he also loves the body as a whole and each local church is a colony of heaven.