Paul uses the body of Christ to help teach you and me about embracing our differences
In episode 221 of the "No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe" podcast, host Greg Ryan expands on his previous discussion of the body of Christ by diving into 1 Corinthians 12. He emphasizes that all believers—regardless of ethnicity, social status, or spiritual gift—are united as one body under the Holy Spirit. Using a vivid hammer‑and‑toe analogy, he illustrates the pain of harming another part of the body and underscores the importance of recognizing each member’s unique role. Ryan urges listeners to engage daily in worship, prayer, Scripture study, and service as practical ways to stay connected to the body. He warns that Satan’s primary tactic is division, citing biblical examples, and stresses that unity is grounded in the inerrant truth of the Bible. He also shares a personal testimony of being baptized into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit at salvation, affirming that God intentionally places each person in a specific role that cannot be changed. The episode concludes with a prayer for understanding, unity, and guidance from the Holy Spirit.
Welcome to episode 221.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.
Welcome to episode 221. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm continuing on— actually, it's a continuation of the last podcast, podcast episode number 220. I said in that podcast, which was a complete falsehood— I don't like saying I'm a liar, but sometimes it's the truth, it just comes crystal clear. I said I was going to talk to you about the body of Christ and how we are one body in that podcast of 220, and I never got around to talking about it because I looked up at the clock and it said 13 minutes or 14 minutes, and I'm like, oh no, because I'm trying to make this point that we can get into the word of God in less than 15 minutes. I don't know that I've ever verbalized that, but I want to try to keep our time together 10-15 minutes because there's a lot of podcasts, there's a lot of things going on. You don't need to hear my teeth rattling around in my head any longer than possible, but I just wanna encourage, empower, and inspire you to get into the word of God. And I have just tried to concentrate my message down to like one thought or one topic for the day so that you can kinda mill it around as you're listening to it, as you're working out, or as you're going to your job, you're driving around in your car, or you're doing yard work. I don't know, this time of year you're doing yard, you may be raking leaves if you're anything like me, or pine straw, oh my gosh. I've got 13 mature pine trees, and if you need pine straw, just hit me up. I have got a boatload of pine straw. It comes 4 or 5 times a year, maybe more than that, I just quit counting. That's a whole nother topic, but I wanna let you know that I'm just a regular guy. I've got the same kind of thing going on that you probably have in your life. You've got honey-do's, you've got things you gotta do around the house, you've got family, you've got responsibilities, But all of that, you can weave all of that in and get into the Word of God. I'm telling you, the most important time that you will spend with God is worshiping, praying, and in his Word. And really, service people, getting— helping the body of Christ, helping people that need help. Those things right there are things that if you are looking for something to do in God's kingdom Those are like 4 really good things that you can start with. The Bible is pretty clear. How can you say that you love God and then hate your brother? I think that's in 1 John. It is important because we see men and women all the time. We've never— I've never seen God. I can't tell you that I've ever had a vision or have ever personally looked upon Jesus. He's never come into my room or into my house. It is just not. Now, the Holy Spirit is there. I can see him with my spiritual eyes. I talk to the Holy Spirit all the time, but I've never seen God. I want to make it clear that when you see a brother or sister that's in need and the Holy Spirit kind of says, hey, kind of do something with that, or you might want to think about doing that. And Jesus said, you know, if you give a cup of water to this little one or to someone in need, it is like you're giving it to Jesus. I don't even know who was supposed to hear that, but there you go. If you are here, if you're— this this is your first time, we get into the Bible and sometimes I ramble. You just got to kind of deal with that. Most of the time I want to talk about a specific scripture, and that this time is no different. I want to go right now to 1 Corinthians 12, and we're going to start in verse 13. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and all have been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I am not part of the body," is it therefore not of the body? And if an ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I am not part of the body," is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as he pleased. And I could read on, but I just want, I think you get the point. Paul is trying to say, hey, we're all, he's using an example, or he's using our body, something that we see every day, and something that we deal with every day, is the body. And I'm telling you, and I've used this example before, but I want you to go in your mind, or even go out in your garage, or in your, in my junk drawer, I've got a hammer, 'cause my wife's always wanting me to hang pictures, or take pictures down. It's not a big deal, I get over it rather quickly. I've got that hammer ready, ready for whenever she tells me, hey, we're going to put something else up over here. But that's a whole nother story. I want you to take that hammer wherever it's located in the garage or in the junk drawer, and I want you to grab that hammer in your hand, and I want you to get it about 3 feet off the ground. I want you to take your shoe and your sock off, and I want you to look at your little toe, and I want you to look at it because whatever you're looking at when you start hitting with a hammer, that's what you're going to hit. So I want you to look at your little toe. I want you to hold that hammer up, bend at the waist a little bit so you can get a good solid swing with that hammer, and get about 3 feet, get about waist high, and I want you to bring that hammer down onto your little toe. And I just want you to just picture how much pain and how much anguish you would be going through. And that is what Paul is trying to tell us. Look, we're all part of this body. We're part of the body of Christ. Now, this is a spiritual truth. We got to take it into the physical realm to give you a good picture of what's going on here. One of the most difficult things about Christianity is that we're all part of one body, but we're all different. We're all a different part of the same body of Christ. And when we look at people, or when they talk, or the way they act, you know, you're thinking, well, how in the world could that person be a Christian? And you know, we're told not to judge, and it's really hard to not walk around in a judgmental body. If you're looking with your eyes and you're listening with your physical ears, you're making judgments based on your past. And everybody's got a past, everybody's got a little physical prism. You know, we put everybody into a category. Teacher was real angry, or she was— and I made her a she, but that say this teacher was really angry and you had her for third grade, and she just berated you and belittled you. So now anybody that kind of sort of looks like that teacher in your mind, you don't even realize, I don't think that you're doing it, but you put them in a category as being angry or being mean. And that's judgmental, and we're going to talk about that in the next episode. But I just want to stay on this body part here. I've told people, you know, if I'm a little toe, and that's why I had you mash your little toe with the hammer, because one of my examples, that if I am a little toe in the body of Christ, if you give me the microphone and if I'm standing up in front of the congregation to talk about what God's telling me, my message is going to be totally different than someone that is a nose or someone that is an eye or someone that is a hand. It is going to be totally different if I'm a little toe and you give me the microphone, I am gonna talk about balance. I am gonna talk about filling a shoe out. I'm gonna talk about running, or I'm gonna talk about walking, but I have got no idea about vision. I've got no idea about hearing or about smelling. I've got no idea. And when you start talking to me about, you know, if you are an eye and you start talking about the vision that God gave you, or that you just gotta be able to see, can't you see it, brother? Can't you see your future? Can't you? And I'm a little toe. I can't see anything. I'm stuck in the bottom of this shoe on the right side of this body, and the only time I even get to feel anything besides a shoe is when someone stubs me. Like if Jesus— if this is the body of Christ and Jesus is walking and he walks into a wall and it stubs my little toe, I'm gonna know it. And I know that's not a very good picture, but I just want you to think about, you know, when Paul starts talking about— and that's what I want to do is I want to help you kind of picture what Paul is talking about. He's saying, hey, we're all part of this body of Christ. We are all part of one body, and none of us, present company included, have all of this stuff figured out. And I've got just a little bit of an idea of what God is showing me. But as you get into his word— and that's why I encourage you all the time, this is soapbox moment— I encourage you all the time to get into God's word because the Holy Spirit will talk to you through the word of God. He's going to use me, and I hope he's using me to motivate you to get into the word of God because that is my whole deal. I didn't want to use modus operandi because I used it, I think, in the last episode. But we know how I love that word. Anyway, we're going into this thing. It's very difficult. And one of the reasons I think that Jesus said that it was difficult is because we try to put everybody in these little cookie cutter, like, if you're not this, then you're not that kind of thing. And if you're not a Jew, then you're a Greek. And if you're a Greek, you're not a Jew. And God, you know, Paul's saying, look, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter we're slave or free, Greek or Jew. Male or female, it does not matter. We are all part of the body of Christ. We are all one. We are all just like Jesus in our spirit man. Our spirit man becomes one. And I just need you to kind of picture this. I got one more little picture that I need to paint, and then I'm probably going to sign off. There's different baptisms, and I don't know that you need to hear this right now, but I'm going to tell you anyway. But when you get baptized into the body of Christ at salvation, when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit grabs you. I don't know if he grabbed me by the, by the back of my neck and dunked me into this, the body of Christ. I don't know how it happened. It happened in an instant. When I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit grabbed me and placed me into the body. And I want to read 1 Corinthians 12:18 again. But now God has set the members, each one in the body, just as he pleased. I want to read it again because I don't know if you got that. But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as he pleased. And the he is capitalized. God placed you in his body. And I've got to encourage you that God is not schizophrenic. God is a perfect Father, and he's not going to pull you out of the body. If he put me in as a little toe, I am a little toe until Jesus comes back. There is absolutely nothing that I can do to change where God has placed me in his body. We just need to kind of embrace that. We need to embrace our differences. But we're the same. We're all part of one body, but we are not the same part of that one body. We have got to understand that just because you and I don't look the same, just because you and I don't act the same, just because we don't see things the same way, does not mean we are not in God's body. We have got to come together. This unity thing is real. And Satan is a punk, and he tries to divide us. And if you can't feel that, if you can't feel the division going on in the world, you're not paying attention. Because the only thing the enemy wants to do, he wants to come to steal, to kill, and destroy. And he uses deception, and he uses division, and he divides us because he knows the Word of God better than you and I know the Word of God. And he knows that a kingdom divided against himself— this is Jesus speaking when they were claiming that he was Beelzebub, or he was the king of the demons, and he pretty much called them out and said, look, even Satan, as dumb as he is, knows that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. He said, if I'm the head of Satan and I'm casting out demons, that's not going to work. So what happens is, is Satan knows the rules. He knows them so he can break them. But he knows the rules, he knows the Bible, and he knows that if he is going to destroy the church, what he needs to do is he needs to divide us. And I think he's done a wonderful job. If you're thinking about some other Christian or some other this or that and you're thinking negatively, I just want to encourage you to start thinking differently, not negative. Just think about them as a different part of the body, like if you're an elbow I mean, if I'm a little toe and you're an elbow, I mean, you're going to bend and you're going to lift and you're going to do things, but you're not going to help with balance probably. But that's okay. I mean, we need different parts of the same body. And I just want to encourage you, we need to come together as the church. And it's just— I was going to use imperative, but it is, it is at the time now where we need to come together. We need to stress unity. Again. And I think the only way we can do that is we just need to simplify this thing down into things that you and I can believe. And the Word of God is where we start. And if you do not believe— and I'm going to go on like lesson number 17 here— but if you do not believe that the Word of God is the inerrant Word of God, then we're going to have a hard time being locked together. You know, we can't lock arms together on Well, you know, I think— I'm not sure about this. Well, if that's not true, then God's a liar. I mean, I just need you to think about this. If the Bible— if any part of the Bible is not true, then God is a liar. And if God lies about one thing, then he can lie about all things. And I'm here to tell you that God is not a liar. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. There is one truth. And one truth is Jesus. It is the Word of God, and we have got to get that into our spirit man, into our soul. Our spirit man already knows it, but we got to get that into our mind, will, and emotion that this Bible is the Word of God and the Bible is Jesus. And I'm not going to go into that, but let's pray. God, I thank you so much for your Word. I thank you for your Holy Spirit. Jesus, it amazes me every time I read John 16:7 that it says it's to our benefit that you left. That is incredible, but it is even more incredible that you sent the Helper, and the Holy Spirit is here with us. God, help us to understand that you are here to help us, that you are here to comfort us. And Holy Spirit, help us to know, lead God and direct us into our path. You know why you made me. You know why you made this listener. Help us to understand what it is you want us to do to build your kingdom. God, we thank you. We love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
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