<p>12:15 <i>If the foot shall say: Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body- that would not make it not a part of the body- </i>When we are first baptized, we can tend to view those who leave our community as simply hard to understand, but we may easily shrug it off. Yet surely we need to do <i>more</i>; to <i>feel</i> more for them. And to realize that we all leave, in that we can be lost in sin for minutes or hours at a time, having numbed our responsibilities to the Father and Son. And yet, we are in covenant relationship with Him. This means that we do not slip in and out of fellowship with Him according to our concentration upon Him or our spirituality. We likewise shouldn&rsquo;t call those who leave us Mr or Mrs. They are always our brother or sister. We are in a family bond with them. Even if the hand says &quot;I am not of the body, it is not therefore not of the body&quot; (1 Cor. 12:15 RV). These words were written in the context of some of the Corinthian brethren effectively resigning from the ecclesia and joining the various temples of even synagogues in the town. But they couldn&rsquo;t really resign from a relationship with God; resign from the fact that their Lord bled to death for them.</p><p>Having reminded us that &quot;by one Spirit are we all baptize into the one body&quot; (1 Cor. 12:13), Paul makes the obvious point- that as members of that body we <i>cannot</i>, we dare not, say to other members of the body &quot;I have no need necessity of you&quot; (1 Cor. 12:21). To fellowship with the others in the body of Christ is our &quot;necessity&quot;; this is why an open table to all those who are in Christ isn't an option, but a necessity. Otherwise, we are declaring ourselves not to be in the body. Indeed &quot;those members of the body which seem to be more feeble, are necessary&quot; (1 Cor. 12:22). By rights, we ought to be condemned for such behaviour; for by refusing our brethren we are refusing membership in Christ. And yet I sense something of the grace of both God and Paul when he writes that if someone says &quot;Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?&quot; (1 Cor. 12:15). I take this to mean that even if a member of the body acts like they aren't in the body, this doesn't mean that ultimately they aren't counted as being in the body. But all the same, we shouldn't stare condemnation in the face by rejecting ourselves from the body of Christ by rejecting the members of His body at the Lord's table. That's the whole point of Paul's argument. Naturally this raises the question: &quot;Well who is in the body?&quot;. Paul says that we are baptized into the body (1 Cor. 10:17); and this throws the question a stage further back: &quot;So what, then, makes baptism valid?&quot;. Baptism is into the body of Christ, into His person, His death and His resurrection; and not into any human denomination or particular set of theology. If the illiterate can understand the Gospel, if thousands could hear the Gospel for a few hours and be baptized into Christ in response to it- it simply can't be that a detailed theology is necessary to make baptism valid. For the essence of Christ, His death and resurrection, is surely simple rather than complicated. Those who believe it and are baptized into it are in His body and are thus our brethren- whatever finer differences in understanding, inherited tradition and style we may have.</p>