Body of Christ

“ The transmutation of the earthly body of Christ into a glorified body will be repeated in the case of many of His followers, for, as he says, "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." ”

“ The body of Christ, in this holy Sacrament, is not separated from his blood, nor his blood from his body, nor is either of them disjoined from his soul and his divinity: but all and the whole living Christ is entirely contained under each species : so that whoever receives under one kind, becomes truly partaker of the whole Sacrament: he is not deprived either of the body or of the blood of Christ. ”

“ In an age which believed, without doubt or pretence, that the body of a holy man was incorporated into the body of Christ, that the seeming dust was pure as Christ’s body was pure, and would form again the living home of the spirit which had gone away but for awhile, such dust was looked upon with awe and pious fear. ”

“ So that, using the figure He used, we may say that the company of Christians now on earth are Christ in a new form, His body indeed. “That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, but bare grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body.” Christ having been sown, lives now in His people. They are the body in which He dwells. ”

“ For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.’ His earnest expectation and hope was, ‘that Christ be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.’ The relation between body and spirit is so intimate, the power of sin in the spirit comes so much through the body, the body is so distinctly the object both of Christ’s redemption and the Holy Spirit’s renewal, that our study of holiness will be seriously defective if we do not take in the teaching of Scripture on holiness in the body. ”

“ In the fifteenth and sixteenth verses the apostle uses the physical body of man with its dependent members to illustrate the one body of Christ. These members work in blissful harmony and are dependent upon each other. A destruction of one member impairs the whole body. ”

“ Like Christ, we too have a body in which the Holy Spirit dwells. Like Christ, we too must yield our body, with every member, every power, every action, to fulfil His will, to be offered up to Him, to glorify Him. Like Christ, we must prove in our body that we are holy to the Lord.—Andrew Murray. ”

“ But the mind that thinks it is a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His purpose folds the body in His light, and fills it with the Holiness that shines from Him. And nothing that the body says or does but makes Him manifest. To those who know Him not it carries Him in gentleness and love, to heal their minds. ”

“ Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists. ”

“ To have every appetite of the body under the rule and regulation of the Holy Spirit appears to some needless, to others too difficult. And yet it must be, if the body is to be holy, as God’s temple, and we are to glorify Him in our body and our spirit. The first approaches of sin are made through the body: in the body the complete victory will be gained. ”

“ As, in truth, God straightway took dust from the earth, and fashioned man in His image, [and no man is able to say that he is not the image of God] , so also was it the case of the bread of which He said, ‘This is My Body,’ for it is not to be regarded as a merely commemorative thing, and we believe that it is indeed the Body of Christ. ”

“ First; for Christ's body, his natural body, is changed into a spiritual body, and it is not now a natural body, but a spiritual, and therefore cannot be now in the Sacrament after a natural manner, because it is so no where, and therefore not there: It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. ”

“ For naturally nothing nourisheth our bodies but what is made flesh and blood by the last digestion, which it would be blasphemous to say of the incorruptible Body of Christ. Yet the sacred Elements, which in some manner are, and are said to be the Body and Blood of Christ, yield nourishment and encrease to our bodies by their earthly nature, in such sort, that by virtue also of the heavenly and spiritual food which the faithful receive by means of the material, our bodies are fitted for a blessed Resurrection to immortal glory. ”

“ Christ has a body, incorruptible and glorified indeed, such as they who are Christ's shall also wear at his coming, yet still a body. Christ is not to be seen, indeed, for the clouds have received him out of our sight: yet he may be conceived of as in one place--at the right hand of God; as in one certain and well-known form--the form of the Son of man. Yet let us observe again, and be thankful for the perfect wisdom of God. ”

“ I wonder not, indeed, that Paul should exclaim along with those who had the first-fruits of the Spirit, "Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of our body."
With these bright hopes let us who are now alive seek to glorify God in the body which is to be glorified together with Christ. "The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?" "Know ye not that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost? ”

“ Hence bodily refulgence is not miraculous in a glorified body. But in Christ's transfiguration clarity overflowed from His Godhead and from His soul into His body, not as an immanent quality affecting His very body, but rather after the manner of a transient passion, as when the air is lit up by the sun. ”

“ For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. ”

“ It is not bad, perhaps, that among the special connections with particular bodies of Christians which come in our lives, there should be one period in which, from the very breaking of our associations with the bodies of Christians, we are able to realize more directly our relation to the body of Christ. ”

“ But glorified bodies, Christ's especially, do not stand in need of being so contained, because they draw nothing from the heavenly bodies, but from God through the soul. So there is nothing to prevent Christ's body from being beyond the containing radius of the heavenly bodies, and not in a containing place. Nor is there need for a vacuum to exist outside heaven, since there is no place there, nor is there any potentiality susceptive of a body, but the potentiality of reaching thither lies in Christ. ”

“ For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the Church; because we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. ”

“ For if the body of Jesus was not raised, and if our bodies are not to be raised, then we Christians are making tremendous sacrifices for a lie. Paul says further that if our bodies are not to be raised, then Christ's body has not been raised and Christianity is a humbug. Christianity as taught in the New Testament stands or falls with the resurrection of the body of Jesus and the resurrection of our bodies. ”

“ But if any one were to think that the earthy image is the flesh itself, but the heavenly image some other spiritual body besides the flesh; let him first consider that Christ, the heavenly man, when He appeared, bore the same form of limbs and the same image of flesh as ours, through which also He, who was not man, became man, that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” ”

“ But we must not stop with the Christ after the flesh, the Christ without. He first becomes our life and salvation when He is born within us and is revealed in our hearts, and has become the Life of our lives. We must eat His body, drink His blood until our nature is one with His nature and our spirit one in will and purpose with His spirit. ”

“ Now to the Body we have been considering the Spirit of Christ is, as it were, the soul. It is nothing strange, then, if it was His will to create such a Body, if it be the result of His Incarnation, that the like effects which exist in the case of every human soul and body should take place here. ”

“ In the flesh, not after the flesh,—that is, in the natural functions which the body exercises, to such life is He dead: so that this life has now ceased with Him, and He is now removed to another life and quickened after the spirit, passed into a spiritual and supernatural life, that comprises in itself the whole life that Christ now has in soul and body. ”

“ Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit. The word flesh is common in Scripture, as is also the word spirit, and the Apostles usually present the two in contrast. The sense is this: that Christ, through His sufferings, is taken out of this life that consists in flesh and blood, as a man on earth who lives by flesh and blood,—walks and stands, eats, drinks, sleeps, wakes, sees, hears, grasps, and feels,—and, in brief, whatever the body does while it is sensible; to all this Christ has died. This is what St. Paul calls a natural body,—that is, the animal life. ”

“ But the change of the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood is a work not less miraculous than the creation of things, or than the formation of Christ's body in the womb of a virgin: which things could not be done by any created power. Therefore, neither is this sacrament consecrated by any created power of the aforesaid words. ”

“ We are not to consider the body as the cause of sin, as something outside the redemption wrought by Christ, “the Saviour of the body.” The fashioning anew will not lose any essential part of the body. ”

“ Under the species of bread only the body is present in virtue of the words of consecration, and similarly under the species of wine only the blood; but since Christ's body is now a living body, it follows that in the Blessed Eucharist, where the body is, there also are the blood and the soul in virtue of the natural connection between the parts of a living body, and there, too, the Divinity, in virtue of the hypostatic union. ”

“ AN ASSURED HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. 2 Cor. 5:1-8 describes the longing of the Christian to be clothed with a body after he has been called upon to lay aside this earthly tabernacle. He has no desire for a bodiless existence. The ascension and exaltation of Christ assures the believer that as Christ, so he also will take his place in heaven with a body like unto Christ's own glorious body. ”

“ It is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, given to us as food for the sanctification of our souls and bodies. "He that eateth my Flesh, and drinketh my Blood, hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day." ”