Paul gives the foot a voice. It compares itself to the hand and decides it does not belong. Paul's question shows how wrong that conclusion is: a foot is still part of the body, whatever it says about itself. Barnes applies the picture to believers: "no Christian, however humble his endowments, could pretend that he was useless because he was not more highly gifted." Gill suggests the foot may represent a believer in "the lowest station in the church, a doorkeeper in the house of God," and the hand one who gives generously to others. His answer to the question: "it nevertheless belongs to it, and is a member of it."

The answer is plain: of course the foot is still part of the body. Paul then says why. God has "set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him" (1 Corinthians 12:18). The members "which seem to be more feeble, are necessary" (1 Corinthians 12:22). And he applies it straight to his readers: "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular" (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Picturing a community as a body was familiar in the ancient world. Barnes notes that pagan writers used the same figure, including the fable of the body's members told by Menenius Agrippa to quiet a rebellion, and a similar fable of Aesop. In Greek, Paul's question carries a double negative: ou para touto ouk estin ek tou somatos, roughly "not on account of this is it not of the body." Gill cites the Syriac version's rendering, "it is not therefore not of the body." The ESV turns the question into a statement: "that would not make it any less a part of the body."

This question is about belonging, and in the church belonging is God's doing. The Spirit gives gifts "dividing to every man severally as he will" (1 Corinthians 12:11), and "by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13). A member's place does not depend on how it compares to others. Matthew Henry says that "the meanest member of his body is as much a member as the noblest," using "meanest" in its older sense of lowliest.

The Corinthians had already divided over leaders (1 Corinthians 1:12). Paul's picture works against comparison from both directions. Here, the lowly member must not write itself out. A few lines later, the honored member must not write others out: "the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee" (1 Corinthians 12:21).