1 Corinthians 12 Devotion

It’s strange how some (most?) football TEAMS celebrate together but grieve losses separately. In 1992, my high school football team was really good. We had some weak spots but nothing that threatened to stop us. We were #1 in the state most of the year and were expected to go to the championship. When I said weak spots I meant positions. However, a weakness many of us did not expect crept in.

That weakness was a lack of teamwork. We had many individually strong positions players. We had the size. We had the heart. We had a lot of things teams need to win. But we lacked being a team. To be a team you can’t be selfish. You need to be at practice. You need to do your class work. Many things threaten a team but you must be diligent to think of the team over yourself.

We arrived at our last regular season game and for many of the seniors it would be their last regular season game of our lives. The opponent was West Carroll. I can’t remember their record but it should have been a pushover game. Later, while stunned over the loss we find out that some had celebrated the win BEFORE the game. Rage hardly describes what some of us felt that night. How selfish. We lost in the second round of the tournament that year. We never recovered from that loss.

This chapter is full of team language. It’s full of varieties of players that make up the one team. To have a football team you need all kinds of players with different talents and players that are different size physically. The punter is very important to the team. Think about it like Paul is saying, the less noticeable gifts become more noticeable. The quarterback makes lots of mistakes in a game and he makes a lot of good plays too. But if the place kicker misses the winning field goal or extra point (one mistake) he becomes very noticeable.

The church is made of varieties of people and gifts but one Spirit. We were given the Spirit for the “common good” of the body. It’s not just for you personally. And each individual gift of the body was distributed “*just as He wills” and “God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, *just as he desired.” Each member and each gift with the one Spirit working together for the common good of each other. What a beautiful gift!

This is a more excellent way! Let’s be what the Lord has gifted us to be. Let’s do it together for each other to the glory of God. Indeed, it should be that if one suffers the whole body suffers. If one is honored the whole body is honored. Let us all be of one mind and one Spirit working together as one body…the body of Christ.