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3. The Spirit makes "the many" one.

While "salvation in Christ" can only be realized on an individual level, it is not "individualistic." Fee stresses that individual salvation is not the "final goal" of God's saving activity through Christ, according to Paul. Constituting "a people for God's name" is. When Paul proclaims in 1 Corinthians 12:13 that "we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free," he is not outlining the gospel of how people get saved, says Fee. He is, instead, emphasizing that the force of the gospel is seen in how the many (Jew, Gentile, slave, free) become one.

Paul's key images for the church embody relationally interdependent constructs: temple, family, body. The temple was God's new dwelling place in the corporate life of the individual members of his church, the "living stones," to borrow Peter's imagery.

Paul uses the image of the family in Ephesians (2:19), telling the church that they are members of "God's household." Paul carries the idea further when he tells the church in Rome that they have received the "Spirit of adoption" through whom they cry, "Abba, Father" and which "testifies . . . that we are God's children" (Romans 8:15-16).

Paul's body imagery, Fee points out, carries the most pervasive implications. The image reflects the very nature of the Godhead itself in its unity and diversity. The body is unified by "one and the same Spirit," Paul says (1 Cor. 12:11). Yet it is incumbent upon the body to allow the free expression of its individual parts. That is why Paul goes to great lengths in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14 to strike the right balance between free expression of diverse gifts, on the one hand, and mutual, harmonious, restrained (i.e., tested) orchestration of the gifts for the edification of the body on the other. Where the gifts are not exercised, the Spirit is not operating. But where the body is not edified (with or without "gifts"), the Spirit likewise is not operating.

Our interdependence, Fee says, is particularly seen in Paul's relentless use of the Greek word allelon--"each other."

Everything is done "allelon." They are members of one another (Rom. 12:5; Eph. 4:25), who are to build up one another (1 Thess. 5:11; Rom. 14:19), to care for one another (1 Cor. 12:25), to love one another (1 Thess. 3:12; 4:9; 2 Thess. 1:3; Rom. 13:8), to pursue one another's good (1 Thess. 5:15), to bear with one another in love (Eph. 4:2), to bear one another's burdens (Gal. 6:2), to be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another (Eph. 4:32; cf. Col. 3:13), to submit to one another (Eph. 5:21), to consider one another better than ourselves (Phil. 2:3; cf. Rom. 12:10), to be devoted to one another in love (Rom. 12:10), to live in harmony with one another (Rom. 12:16).

Christians are, before all else, members one of another--members of God's family. That diminishes self-importance and independent spirituality. That is why in 1 Corinthians (5:1-13) Paul aims his "heaviest artillery," says Fee, not at the individual living in incest with his step-mother, but at the church for its failure to deal with these matters. "The sinning man is not even spoken to--he is simply to be put outside the believing community. Paul's rebuke is directed at the church for its arrogance and its failure to act."

"We enter the kingdom individually," says Fee, "and I hold a very high value on the individual. But in our culture that is the only value." The church has been lured away from its corporate consciousness and responsibility due to an "intense possessiveness and individualism."

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June 17 1996, Vol. 40, No. 7