- 12 - I am now speaking metaphorically only. But there is no other way of presenting spiritual matters to you mortals than by employing incomplete metaphors. As you have, in terrestrial Creation, the most widely divergent genera and species of living organisms, high and low, although each one is inherently perfectly designed to fulfill its functions, so too there is a wonderful variety of genera and species among the spirits God has shaped into individual beings endowed with celestial bodies. In your Bible, you yourselves distinguish among cherubim, seraphim, archangels, angels, dominions, powers and principalities in the spirit world. The spirit world created through Christ and united in fellowship with him formed a wonderful living organism in which all spirits were members of one spiritual community, although they differed in kind and perfection. Just as the limbs of a material body, though having different shapes and functions, nevertheless constitute an organic whole in which no part is superfluous while none is independent of the others, so also the created spirits formed a spiritual body of which Christ was the head, the other spirits being the limbs. In a well-ordered kingdom on earth the king, as the head of the country, together with his ministers and his officials high and low, and the mass of his subjects, constitute a single great family in which everyone works for the common good, upon which, in turn, the welfare of the individual depends. The same was true of the great family of the spirits. Every spirit had its allotted task, great or small, but together they all formed one great and glorious unit, in which no spirit was superfluous and in which no spirit worked for itself alone, but in which all collaborated with each other at the wonderful task to be fulfilled by God’s Creation. They were to share in the labours of God and, consequently, in the happiness and beauty of Him Who had called them into existence, in the glory of God and of Christ, their king, whom God had anointed. That is why the Apostle Paul in his epistles constantly refers to the ‘secret of the body of Christ’. Romans 12: 4-6: ‘Just as our bodies have many parts and not all parts have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ. In relation to one another we are all body parts, yet such that the gifts granted to us by the grace of God differ from each other.’ Ephesians 4:15-16: ‘That we may progress in everything through him who is our head, Christ, for in him the whole body is joined together as a unit in which each part has its assigned function, as a result of which the whole being grows.’ Colossians 2: 19: ‘Christ is the head through whom the whole spiritual body, united and held together by its joints and sinews, grows and flourishes in God.’ This great communion of spirits is also referred to by Paul as the ‘church’. Colossians 1: 18: ‘Christ is the head of the body – of the church.’ Ephesians 1: 22-23: ‘God has put all things under his rule and has made him the supreme head of the church, the ‘church’ being his body, and the fullness of him who fulfills all in all.’
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