Now you are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
Read Chapter 12
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. The Latin version gives "members of the member." This is explained (1.) by S. Thomas: "You are members of the principal member, viz, Christ, for Christ is the head of the Church;" (2.) by S. Anselm, "You are members of Christ through the agency of another member, viz, Paul, by whom you were united to Christ, the head, and to the Church, the body." But (3.) the Greek gives "members in part," and this is the rendering of some Latin Fathers, or "members of each other." S. Ambrose seems to understand it so. The Latin version also means "fellow-members," brethren in the same society, of the same mystical body, the Church. So too S. Chrysostom and Ephrem, whose meaning may be paraphrased: "Each one, in his part and place, is a member of the Church."
Notice here that, as in the body there is (1.) a unity and a union of soul and body; (2.) diversity of members; (3.) differences of function between the several members; (4.) an aptitude ...
Members of member. The sense seems to be, you are members of the particular Church of Corinth, which is only a part or member of the whole body of the Christian Catholic Church. This is agreeable to the common reading in the Greek, where it is said, you are members of a part. See St. Chrysostom, hom. xxxii. (Witham)
For lest any should say, What is the example of the body to us? Since the body is a slave to nature but our good deeds are of choice; he applies it to our own concerns; and to signify that we ought to have the same concord of design as they have from nature, he says, Now you are the body of Christ. But if our body ought not to be divided, much less the body of Christ, and so much less as grace is more powerful than nature.
But what is the expression, severally? So far at least as appertains to you; and so far as naturally a part should be built up from you. For because he had said, the body, whereas the whole body was not the Corinthian Church, but the Church in every part of the world, therefore he said, severally: i.e., the Church among you is a part of the Church existing every where and of the body which is made up of all the Churches: so that not only with yourselves alone, but also with the whole Church throughout the world, you ought to be at peace, if at least ye be members...
The Corinthian church was not the whole body by itself but was part of a worldwide community of faith. Therefore the Corinthians ought to be at peace with the church in every other place, if it is a true member of the body.
In Christ’s resurrection, all his members have necessarily risen with him. For while he passes from the depths to the heights, he has made us pass from death to life.
