C. S. Lewis Quote 5e

The Bible and C. S. Lewis

A Study of the Christian World View

The Necessity of the Church

Mere Christianity
God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body.

The Weight of Glory -- Membership
The society into which the Christian is called at baptism is not a collective but a Body. It is in fact that Body of which the family is an image on the natural level. If anyone came to it with the misconception of membership of the Church was membership in a debased modern sense--a massing together of persons as if they were pennies or counters--he would be corrected at the threshold by the discovery that the Head of this Body is so unlike the inferior members that they share no predicate with Him save by analogy. We are summoned from the outset to combine as creatures with our Creator, as mortals with immortal, as redeemed sinners with sinless Redeemer. His presence, the interaction between Him and us, must always be the overwhelming dominant factor in the life we are to lead with the Body; and any conception of Christian fellowship which does not mean primarily fellowship with Him is out of court.

First Timothy 3:14-15
“I hope to come to you soon so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth."

First Corinthians 12:12-13
"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit."