The First Consequence of Division: A Sick Body

Causes of division in the Body of Christ are compared in the scriptures to gangrene and leprosy. There are also valid comparisons to cancers and autoimmune disorders. Divisions have led to rejection of whole branches of the church by other branches, to religious violence and persecution and to bloody wars. They have also caused many to reject Christianity.

So, we are one Body. It is Christ’s Body, not our own. If we believe in Christ, we cannot exclude ourselves, or anyone else who believes, from that Body. So, what happens when I refuse to recognize my oneness with another believer? Does the Body cease to be one? On a larger scale, when two denominations are at enmity with each other, does Christ then have two separate Bodies rather than one? No, Christ still has only one Body, but that Body is sick. This illness can have serious consequences for the world, and for all of the individual members of the Body. These consequences extend far beyond the individual members or denominations involved in the hostilities, as is discussed below.

A Sick Body

            What happens when the parts of a human body cease to recognize or cooperate with each other? The result is a sick body, and medicine describes a number of different illnesses that result, essentially, from disunity in a body. The Bible explicitly compares the results of disunity to two of these diseases—gangrene and leprosy—and all of these diseases can properly be regarded as natural pictures of what can happen when members of the Body of Christ cease to recognize each other.

            In 2 Timothy 2:14-18, Paul compares the effects of arguments about words, of vain, empty talk, and of false teaching to gangrene. The Greek word used in verse 17 is gangraina, and, while lexicons note that it may also refer to ulcerative skin diseases and cancers, its primary meaning is “gangrene” in the modern sense—death and putrefaction of parts still attached to the body.  Gangrene occurs in two broad forms—“dry” and “wet”^1,2—and both are pictures of the effect of disunity. “Dry” gangrene often has a slow onset, and results from complete loss of blood flow to a body part—sometimes because of systemic diseases (e.g, diabetes, peripheral artery disease) and sometimes because of mechanical constriction.  In “dry” gangrene, if the cause of the blood flow restriction is not treated early, before gangrene develops, the affected part dies, dries out, and then sometimes simply falls off.  But, because blood flow is completely shut off, if the affected part remains dry, no infection sets in.  The part itself is merely lost.  In a similar way, loose talk, gossip, and arguments about words—sometimes words contained in doctrinal statements , sometimes words about personal or political issues or about money—can result in individual members of the Body of Christ being cut off from its life.  Moreover, whole communities within the Body have, historically, been cut off from each other by such issues, at least impairing and impoverishing the life of all of them—and sometimes resulting in the death and “autoamputation” of some of the excluded communities.

By contrast, all of the various “wet” forms of gangrene are infected, and, often, fatal.  “Wet” forms of gangrene most commonly result from severe crushing or stabbing injuries suffered under dirty conditions (such as on a battlefield), so that blood flow is limited by the same wound that introduces infectious organisms, though they can also result from systemic diseases or from infection setting in to living tissue connected to tissue that has died due to “dry” gangrene.  Toxins from the infection enter the blood stream affecting the whole body.  It should be remembered that Christians live in a spiritual battlefield, in which we all sometimes suffer deep crushing and stabbing emotional and spiritual wounds, all too often from each other. (For a reminder of this, see Romans 7:21-8:1; 2 Corinthians 10:3-4; Ephesians 6:11-12; 2 Timothy 2:3-4; James 4:1; 1 Peter 2:11; Revelation 12:17; and Revelation 13:7), The correct response for dealing with the wounds of other believers is to show mercy ^3,4 and aid in restoration^5,6, but often our reflex response is to ostracize the wounded, gossip about them, and ignore their needs. It has been said with some justification that the Christian church is the only army on earth that shoots its wounded.  However, our reflex response can lead to a condition analogous to “wet” gangrene.  Many are defiled by one root of bitterness⁷.

In either form of gangrene, the limitation on blood flow that restricts the affected part’s ability to share in the life of the body is usually not the “fault” of that body part. Instead, it can result from some other systemic disease or from an injury. But the result of it is that the affected body part, usually through no “fault” of its own, dies and endangers the whole body.

            As Paul recognized, gangrene is an appropriate picture of the effect of loose talk on the Body of Christ. Empty talk—gossip, malicious speech and prejudiced speech which counts unworthy all members of a group of people—can isolate members of the Body and thereby leave them vulnerable to infection with sin or false teaching. False teaching can cut off whole groups of believers from the life of the Body. Both loose talk and false teaching kill members of the Body and leave the entire Body vulnerable to systemic infection.

            Similarly, throughout the Old Testament and the Gospels, leprosy is presented as an example or definition of “uncleanness.” See, for instance, Leviticus 13-14 and Luke 17:11-19. Though the term “leprosy” under the Law of Moses included a number of different medical conditions that manifest as lesions on the skin⁸, classical leprosy—Hansen’s disease—presents a very good picture of what happens when parts of the body cease to recognize each other. Hansen’s disease is a bacterial infection that causes granulomatous lesions primarily of the skin, upper respiratory tract and peripheral nervous system, though sometimes it also affects the eyes. Like bitterness separating people, leprosy is a slow-developing, chronic disease that often develops without any symptoms for many years before it manifests itself.  The first visible manifestation is usually discolored skin patches.  These patches often lack nerve sensation, and other, opportunistic infections can follow in the affected skin, which cause loss of sensation to larger areas^9,10. Though not highly contagious, it is contagious, and does not have to be symptomatic to be contagious. In this, it is also like bitterness and division in the Church, conditions which can over time “defile many” even when they are only an invisible “root.”¹¹

            Hansen’s disease directly causes skin lesions, numb and discolored “skin patches,” but does not itself rot flesh. It causes the victim to lose the ability to feel touch or pain in the affected patches of skin. In this way, the victim ceases to “recognize” the affected patches of skin as a part of the body. These isolated numb skin patches then often gradually spread, or increase in number, until they include whole body parts. Without the ability to feel the affected body part, the victim is not aware when it is injured and cannot take appropriate measures to avoid injuries or to treat injuries that occur. When infections with other organisms occur in untreated wounds, the victim is not aware of any pain. Whole body parts sometimes rot away because the leper is no longer sensitive to their pain. Untreated lepers sometimes die of gangrene affecting parts of their bodies that they can no longer feel.  But, like bitterness between believers, leprosy is curable, though the damage it leaves may be permanent.

            We have no ability to remove members from the Body, which is Christ’s Body and does not belong to us. We are members of His flesh and of His bones.¹² The parts of the Body of Christ we can no longer feel, because we have deadened ourselves to them, are still members of the Body, and what affects them affects us. But by choosing to deny they are members of the Body and ignoring them, we cause the whole Body to become diseased and vulnerable to opportunistic infection by individual offenses and petty rivalries as well as by false teachers and destructive heresies. We also give the world a picture of division and hypocrisy that turns them away from Christ¹³, as will be discussed in the next two posts.

            At least two other classes of diseases not explicitly mentioned in Scripture—autoimmune diseases and cancer—also deserve discussion here, as typical of the effects of disunity on the Body. Medical science now recognizes that a number of diseases result from the body’s immune system incorrectly declaring some body part to be the “enemy.” Autoimmune disease is, thus, a step beyond leprosy: in leprosy, the body no longer recognizes some body parts, with the result that they are not properly cared for; in autoimmune disease, the body attacks some of its parts as a foreign enemy. Some autoimmune diseases merely cripple the body by impairing the function of some of its parts; others can become fatal. Unfortunately, much of Church history is characterized by a pattern similar to an autoimmune disease, with organized parts of the Body being too busy attacking other parts as enemies to have any positive effect on the world around them. One need only consider the Wars of the Reformation to see an example of this—300 years of violence that left formerly “Christian” Europe almost totally insensitive to the Gospel. Earlier, the violent schisms of the Fourth through Sixth Centuries regarding the nature of the relationship between the human and divine natures in Christ were also a major factor in the vulnerability of Byzantine, mostly Christian, Syria and Egypt to the Muslim invasion under Caliph Umar I. See, for instance, the discussions in McCulloch, Diarmaid, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (NY: Penguin 2009), 253-254, 259-266; Moffett, Samuel H., A History of Christianity in Asia: Vol. I: Beginnings to 1500 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis 1998), Ch. 16.

            Moreover, even where physical violence is lacking, it is sadly quite common for churches and denominations to seek to win members, or to arouse their existing members to greater activity, by verbally attacking other churches or denominations, or their leaders. It is an unfortunate aspect of human nature that people are easiest to emotionally arouse to action when presented with a common human enemy. But our real enemy is not a human organization, or its members or leaders, at all. Our enemy is spiritual.¹⁴ So when the leaders of one part of the Body attempt to manipulate their followers by giving them a human enemy to attack, the result often resembles an autoimmune disease, as one part of the Body attacks other parts that have been identified for them as a part of the “enemy.” The consequences of this are always bad.

            Finally, cancer is also a good medical picture of a form of disunity in the Church—the common, American narcissistic form. A normal cell in a body operates as a part of the organ to which it belongs, keeps its proper place and only grows and divides when the whole body will be served thereby. Cancer occurs when a normal cell becomes genetically “transformed” so that it is no longer able to respond to the body’s mechanisms for regulating its growth. Instead of functioning as a useful part of the body, a malignantly transformed cell grows and divides out of control, as if it were the only cell in the body that mattered. Thus, cancer cells are very much like those of whom Paul warns in Philippians 3:18-19, whose god is their belly, or like those of whom Jude warns us, who turn the grace of God into licentiousness and who walk after their own lusts and feed themselves among us without fear—exactly as if they were the only ones that mattered.^15,16 In their quest to serve only themselves, cancer cells crowd or starve normal, useful cells until, ultimately, the body can no longer continue to support itself. Then the body dies, and the cancer dies with it.