Charles Spurgeon Commentary 1 Corinthians 12:25

"that there should be no schism in the body; but [that] the members should have the same care one for another." — 1 Corinthians 12:25 (ASV)

That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.

We have heard this text urged by some who are in the Church of England as a proof that we are wrong in departing from it. They tell us that there should be no schism in the body; we would say to them that there is no schism in the body that we are aware of. We do not belong to their body, and therefore we make no schism in that body; we are entirely separate from them. We have neither stick, nor stone, nor part, nor lot in their State Establishment; therefore, we do not create a schism in the body.

When they divide themselves into Puseyites and Evangelicals, they make a schism in their own body; but, as long as we are all united, as long as the members of a church walk together in unity, there is no schism in the body. We are different bodies altogether. They say that a schismatic is one who departs from a Church, and makes a rent from it; by no means, a schismatic is one who makes a rent in it, not from it. We, I say, are not schismatics. Those who are in the Church, and yet do not agree with its fundamental principles and its Articles of Faith, they are schismatics; but we are not.