The “Athletic” Unity Of The Church -- By: Mark T. Coppenger

Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 08:3 (Summer 1999)
Article: The “Athletic” Unity Of The Church
Author: Mark T. Coppenger


The “Athletic” Unity Of The Church

Mark Coppenger

My fifty-first summer has been a time of modest athletic achievement and considerable discomfort in service of that achievement. First, I passed an army physical fitness test. To meet the weight standard for my height, I had to devote several weeks to serious dieting. To manage the push-ups, sit-ups, and two-mile run, I had to drive my muscles and pulmonary and cardiovascular systems from their Midwest winter lethargy.

Second, I completed a 485-mile bike ride across Iowa on a seminary team of eight. Along with more than 10,000 of our closest friends, we discovered that Iowa wasn’t so flat after all. We needed hundreds of miles of road work to get ready for this undertaking, particularly the quadriceps “burns” of the hill climbs.

Not surprisingly, as I’ve studied the matter of unity in the body of Christ, I’ve come again and again to consider what I’ve experienced in my own body in these last months. I think that it is fair to draw lessons of fitness from the latter and that such lessons are well founded in Scripture.

The Church Is A Body Needing Fitness To Be
Effectual And Pleasing To God

The Bible uses a number of images to characterize the church. We read of “fellow citizens,” “God’s household” and His “dwelling” (Eph. 2:19–22), Jesus’ “flock” (John 10:16), “branches” (Rom. 11:21), a “spiritual house,” “a

royal priesthood,” and a “holy nation” (1 Peter 2:5–9), and the “bride of Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2).

The image of the body, however, is ubiquitous in the writing of Paul and particularly compelling when we speak of unity. The body of Christ is a unit made up of many parts, each needing the others (1 Cor. 12:12–31). God has acted to prevent divisions in this body and has so designed it that the parts suffer and rejoice in concert. Though there is essential diversity of gifts and functions, there is unity in the spirit and the identity in Christ.

On through the epistles, we find the same metaphor. There is “one body and one Spirit” (Eph. 4:4); Christ is called “the head of the body, the church” (Col. 1:18); in Christ “we have many members in one body” (Rom. 12:4

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