1 Corinthians 12:21 And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. These words indicate, not only the principles that ought to govern the Church of Christ, but also the Divine order and law of all human society. The New Testament Church, like the ancient Jewish commonwealth, bears a representative character. We have to regard it, not only as a spiritual fellowship distinct from the world, united by a different bond, ruled by different laws, inspired by a different spirit, living a different life, advancing to a different destiny, but also as a fellowship that is called to illustrate before the world the Divine idea of social human life. Taking this broader view of the passage, observe - I. THE WAY IN WHICH CHRISTIANITY RECOGNIZES SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS. These are suggested by the "eye," the "hand," the "head," and the "feet." The distinctions that exist among men are of various kinds - natural and acquired, essential and conventional. There are distinctions intellectual, moral, educational, national, official, circumstantial. All these are recognized in some way or other by the religion of Christ. But they do not receive from it precisely the same recognition. They are not recognized by it to the same extent. There are certain social distinctions that are far too deeply rooted in the instinctive tendencies of our nature, or in the moral necessity of things, ever to be obliterated. If they could be levelled in one age they would inevitably rise again in the next. If levelled in a violent and repressive way, they only spring up afterwards in some exaggerated and extravagant form. The French Revolution began with glorious dreams of "liberty, fraternity, and equality;" it ended in a "Reign of Terror" in which every man's hand was against his brother, in a military despotism that crushed the hopes and energies of the people in the dust, in social separations broader and deeper than had been known before. The religion of Christ is in no way antagonistic to those radical and natural tendencies - it does but mould and regulate them. It seeks to control, but not to crush them, wisely to direct the current, but not to stay its course. Revolutionary as it is in its purpose and workings, it is truly conservative, gradually transforming the whole life of man, but demanding no violent changes, developing the form of the nobler future out of the crude, imperfect, and misshapen past. Hence what seems to some the strange silence of apostolic teaching in reference to many of the dark facts and phases of the social life of the world as then existing - slavery, polygamy, military tyranny, oppressive laws, etc. The chief lesson for us here, however, is this - that in the body politic, the living frame of society, each man according to his distinction has his own special function and special work to do. There is the eye - the discerning, perceptive, observant power; the head - the regulative, guiding, governmental power; the hand - the operative faculty, the power that does the finer and more skilful work of the world; and the feet - the part of the frame that bears the heavier burdens, does the drudgery, endures in the way of physical toil the more painful pressure of life. Each member has its own particular work to do, and which another cannot do. The eye cannot handle, the hand cannot see, the head cannot bear the heavy burdens, the feet cannot direct. There are men of fine speculative, philosophic thought, but who have little practical capacity; a nice discernment of the truth of things, but no power to embody even their own ideas in real and substantial forms. Again, there are men of great administrative ability, quick for all the practical business of life, "born to rule" or to manage affairs; place them where you will they will soon assert their power, and others will recognize it and follow their leading. While there are also men to whom physical toil is a natural instinctive delight, and whom the educational influences of life never have fitted or, perhaps, could fit for any other function. Distinctions that grow thus in a natural way out of radical qualities in men Christianity recognizes. Also those that belong to the parental and family relations, or that may be necessary to assert the majesty of law (Romans 13:1-6). But as to any further distinctions, any that rest upon a purely fictitious and conventional basis, having no foundation in nature, which merely feed the lust of power and the pride of life, it would seem to acknowledge none. II. THE LAW OF MUTUAL DEPENDENCE THAT GOVERNS ALL PARTS OF THE SOCIAL FRAME. The conditions of our life in this world involve us all, in a thousand subtle ways, in the obligation to serve one another, and subject us all, whether we will or not, to the law of self sacrifice. All nature, in its purely physical aspects, is framed on this principle. "Nothing in the world is single, All things, by a law Divine, In another's being mingle." Every form of physical existence draws its life from those beneath it, and in its turn has to surrender its life to them. The lower forms exist for the higher, the highest can never assert its freedom from the law of dependence on the lowest. So in the complex system of human life, no grade in the social scale, no order of faculty, no kind of "interest," can claim exemption from the common bond. Take e.g. the relation that exists between the men of thought and the men of action, the theoretical and the practical. They are apt to think and to speak slightingly of each other; the one intolerant of being brought continually to a merely utilitarian test, the other always ready with the charge of speculative dreaming. This is a mistake. God has set the one over against the other, "that the one without the other should not be made perfect." Thought without action is worthless. Yet it is thought that rules the world, and if there were no "eye" to guide it the labour of the "hand" would soon cease. So also of social conditions. The tendency sometimes seen in those upon whom the burdens of toil and privation press most heavily, to look up enviously, suspiciously, and even defiantly towards those who occupy a higher level, may be very senseless; but, on the other hand, what more false and irrational than the tone of lofty superiority that social distinction sometimes assumes? Can the head, then, say to the feet, "I have no need of you"? What would become of the loftiest dignities of the world if there were none to bear the heavier burdens and do the rougher work of life? From what do the fairest forms of our civilization spring, our comforts and indulgences, and all the thousand pleasant associations of our life? of what are they the fruits, but of patient, life consuming labour in field and factory and mine? All the bright and beautiful things of the world, all the pride and glory of man's existence in it, have their roots more or less directly in the base earth. The eye and the head, with all their fine sensibility and lofty faculty, can do nothing without the hands and the feet. Christianity gives the utmost sanctity and force to this lesson. It is in the light of the incarnation, the sympathetic humanity, the lowly life, the beneficent ministry, the sacrificial death, of the Lord Jesus that we see what a wondrous bond of brotherhood it is that unites the whole human family together, and that we learn to understand the great law that God has formed us all to "live not unto ourselves." The gospel makes us more keenly sensible of our obligations than of our rights, of what we owe to others than of what they owe to us. It inspires us with the spirit of him who was "among us as one that serveth" and who "gave his life a ransom for many." III. THE GROUND ON WHICH WE OUGHT TO PAY SPECIAL HONOUR TO OUR FELLOW MEN. The Law of Christ teaches us to reverence our common humanity in all its conditions. "Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king" (1 Peter 2:17). These utterances would seem to embrace all the points of Christian duty in this respect. But the whole drift of the apostle's teaching, in this as in so many other places, is to the effect that special honour is due to the faithful discharge of personal responsibility. Whatever station men occupy, whatever function they perform, it is the profitable use of faculty for the common good that confers upon them the noblest distinction. "Honour and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part; there all the honour lies." W. Parallel Verses KJV: And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. |
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