Evangelists & Pastors who are teachers are God's creation.
"God Made Ministers for My Maturity" b
Ephesians 4:11-13 b
Pastor Kerry Kinchen, Bridgeway Bible Church
Please turn to Ephesians 4. We are going to be learning from Ephesians 4:11-13 this morning. As you are turning there, I want to remind you of the fact that terminology in the Bible is very important. If we get off a little bit on the terminology of things, then we will almost certainly get off on the doctrine concerning those very same things. Let me give you some quick examples. The word saint is used by the Roman Catholics to describe only a certain small segment of Christians throughout the last 2000 years or so. But, all Christians are saints. A saint is simply someone who has been set apart by God, in Christ. That is what the word, saint means. Sanctify is a similar word. A lot of Christians have no idea what sanctify means. The word is similar to saint. To be sanctified means to be set apart. So, to sanctify yourself from sin, for example, is to separate yourself from it. Deacon is another word that makes sense when we know the proper definition. Deacon literally means one who serves. In the New Covenant church sense, a deacon is a specific person who is a servant of the church. As we go into our passage this morning, we are going to examine some words that have specific definitions that help us get an accurate understanding of what they mean doctrinally. Without the proper definitions, we would be off concerning the terminology. Whenever we are off on our terminology, we quickly get off on the doctrines concerning those very same things. Don't think this can't happen to you too. We've got to be careful because it can happen to any of us. Please read along with me now, and I want you to be thinking of the various terms for the people-ministries that Paul mentions as I start in verse 9, and we go to verse 16. Paul says,
"9 (Now this expression, 'He ascended,' what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10 He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.) 11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, [why?] 12 for the equipping of the set apart ones for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. 14 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; 15 but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love." Ephesians 4
Please prepare your heart for the sacred preaching of God's word, in this second installment of our two part sermon series, titled,
"God Made Ministers for My Maturity" b
[prayer]
As we continue with gleaning from Paul's instructions in Ephesians, we remember that Paul is focused in the first 4 chapters with God's sovereign creation of the church. The church is a mystery plan accomplished. It is something new and surprising to the Jews of that time and culture. It is not just the surprise of it all that Paul is concerned with, though the surprise of the mystery revealed is the most amazing revelation in Messianic prophecy to be unveiled. It's not just the amazing revelation of the mystery of God calling Gentiles to be His people, but, it is the great blessing experience that all of it means. It is the great blessing to God that He experiences, and it is the great blessing to the Gentiles that the elect experience. God gets blessed in being glorified for creating His church in the rejection, crucifixion, and resurrection of the promised Messiah. He elects people to be the church, and so they are blessed in eternal spiritual salvation, which by the way, is your primary blessing in the body of Christ. This is why I wrote a book called Defending Biblical Salvation. The reason is because our primary blessing of being in the body of Messiah, is that we are saved forever and we can not lose it. Our salvation is eternal, where we glorify God as being trophies of His grace in the great display case of the heavenlies forever and ever. God is making sure that He will be praised eternally in the glory of His special grace on us sin wrecked people. I look at myself and I know how sin wrecked I am. When we compare ourselves to the word of God, we know how sin wrecked we are. So, when we know these things about ourselves, we also recognize that to be a trophy of God's grace forever and ever, means that a huge thick layer of His grace must permeate us and coat us with purifying glory to make us the trophies that we are. The glory of His grace goes on shining forever in eternity. But, we have God's glory right now, and just as God's glory is expressed now, our salvation is also now. Right now we live out the everyday ins and outs of this world by living out our salvation here. We live it out at home. We live it out at work. We live it out at school, driving down the road, surfing the net, watching movies, eating, drinking, and whatever we do. We are the body, as always the body. We don't step in and out of it at will. We can not step in and out of it. So, Paul goes on with intense teachings on the various ways we express our salvation right now. Paul focuses upon the all important nurture of the unity that is supposed to exist in the body of Christ, which is the church. Unity, and proper ways of treating one another are important for expressing God's glory, because we are expressing it to one another. To get all of this done, God has made sure that He has created the system to equip us. He wants us equipped in all the important details of His revelation. Being equipped in all the revelation that God has for us is important to God, so it should be important to us too. He wants us to be mature in Christ. So, God, in His grace, equips His people of His church with all that it takes to be mature Christians. The equipping part is what Paul says are gifts. So, God has given gifts to His body, in much the same way that He gave the gift of spiritual salvation to His body. Even the people that He designed, called, and gifted to ground the church in the foundations of the blessing of the mystery revealed, are, in fact, gifts, themselves. They are people-gifts, or people-presents. They are people-gifts like apostles, and prophets. Apostles are people-presents from God, who are sent out; typically on a mission. Prophets are people-presents who speak for God by speaking forth the words of God, by the Spirit of God. We saw that in Paul's context, he is specifically referring to the unique group of primary apostles and prophets who established the fledgling church in the first generation. The primary apostles were inducted into service by the risen Christ in a personal meeting with Him. Many of these men prophesied revelations of the New Covenant kingdom to God's called out and gathered ones of the body of Christ. Their ministry that they had then, is still ministering to us today through the word of God. The same revelations establish us in the necessities of the faith. This morning, we need to look at the other people-gifts that God has given to His church. They are the evangelists. Paul continues and says,
11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, ..." Ephesians 4:11
The Greek word for evangelist is Euaggelistes, pronounced, yoo-ang-ghel-is-tace'. It comes from the Greek word for "the gospel," which is Euaggelion, pronounced, yoo-ang-ghel'-ee-on. Notice that the two words sound similar, and that is because they are closely related. When we start out recognizing that the word, evangelist is derived from, and connected to, the gospel, we quickly get a feel for what an evangelist actually was in establishing the church in the first century, and, also, for what an evangelist is today. The word, gospel, means good news. It is also a word that means, all is well. So, whenever we think of the gospel, we should be thinking of the Good news as the message that in the midst of the fist of life, all is well. We have the great hope of our eternal spiritual salvation in Christ, and we know that all is well. We know it even through the tears, and sleepless nights of nerve wracking despair at emergencies and tragedies. Though it hurts, it is well. I think of the wealthy Chicago lawyer by the name of Horatio Spafford, when I think of this particular meaning of this word. Horatio Spafford was a close friend of the famous evangelist, DL Moody, who lived in the mid 1800's. Mr. Spafford was a Christian, and a family man who was happily married. He had one son, and four daughters--five children in all. Horatio lived in Chicago in 1871. Some of you might recall, from American History, that 1871 was the same year that a huge fire consumed the city of Chicago, leaving most of it desolate. The desolation, by the way, included most of Horatio Spafford's investments. About the same time of this tragedy, Horatio lost his only son. Grief was added to grief for Horatio Spafford. Horatio spent the next two years helping out about 100,000 people who were left homeless, destitute, and immersed in their own experiences of grief because of the fire. Wearied from the work, Horatio decided that he and his family needed to go on a vacation. They made plans to go to England to join up with DL Moody on one of his evangelistic preaching outreaches. As vacation time was approaching, Horatio was to be delayed because of some business concerns, but he decided to let his wife and four daughters go on ahead. The plan was that he would wrap things up at home, and then he would set out to meet with them in a short period of time. But, the family meeting that they all anticipated, did not come about. The ship that Horatio's family was on, never made it. It collided with another ship, and sunk within 20 minutes. Horatio's wife survived by clutching a piece of wreckage that was floating in the water. But all four of their precious little daughters drowned in the cold, dark, merciless ocean, never to be seen again. Horatio did not know what had happened, until he received a telegram from his wife. The telegram had only two words on it, "saved alone." Horatio boarded the next available ship, and was able to meet with his grieving wife who had been saved alone. When Horatio met up with DL Moody, Horatio said in a quiet voice, "It is well." He then said, "The will of God be done." In those days of grief that had occurred because of the fist of life, Horatio wrote the words to one of the most famous hymns of the last couple of centuries. He wrote, six stanzas. Listen to the first three as I read,
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
This is the Gospel. So, when we think of this word, "gospel" and we think of a person-gift that God calls an evangelist, we see that when the Greeks put the adverb before the word for gospel, to make the word evangelist, what they have made is a word that means:
One who heralds, and announces the good news, or, one who heralds and announces that it is well.
In the New Testament meaning that Paul is giving to this word, we recognize that it means one who heralds and announces the good news of the saving message of the crucified and resurrected Christ Jesus for salvation by grace through faith, or, one who heralds and announces tidings that make one well spiritually in reconciliation with God. An evangelist is one who tells people, that through God's plan in the New Covenant, it is well. OK, with this kind of essential breakdown of the word, we already get the gist of what Paul is meaning. Paul's contextual meaning is that evangelists typically took the gospel of the grace of God, in Christ, to the unreached in that first generation. At this point, we need to understand that there was a lot of overflow with the terminology. In other words, in the same way that primary apostles were also prophets who spoke forth their direct revelations from the risen Christ, apostles were also evangelists who proclaimed the good news. Philip, who was one of the seven men chosen to tend to the feast day Israelite converts, was one such evangelist, who through his ministry, was a living definition of the word. He was called that in Acts 21:8, and demonstrated what being an evangelist means in Acts 8, where we first see his evangelizing ministry in action, where,
"5 Philip went down to the city of Samaria and began proclaiming Christ to them. 6 The crowds with one accord were giving attention to what was said by Philip, ... 12 ... preaching the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, ... 25 ... So, when they [Philip and Peter, and John] had solemnly testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they started back to Jerusalem, and were preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans." Acts 8
This describes what an evangelist does. He proclaims Christ, verse 5. He proclaims the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus the Messiah, verse 12. He solemnly testifies and speaks the word of the Lord, verse 25. He preaches the gospel, the good news, which is that all is well in Christ, verse 25. Immediately, in the next verse, we read more about Philip's personal ministry as an evangelist, where he announces the good news:
26 ... an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, 'Get up and go south to the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza.' (This is a desert road.) 27 So he got up and went; and there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure; and he had come to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go up and join this chariot.' 30 Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, 'Do you understand what you are reading?' 31 And he said, 'Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?' And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 Now the passage of Scripture which he was reading was this: 'He was led as a sheep to slaughter; and as a Lamb before its shearers is silent, so He does not open His mouth. 33 In humiliation His judgment was taken away; Who will relate His generation? For his life is removed from the earth.'
[Notice that what the Eunuch is reading from Isaiah does not sound like very good news. It sounds like bad news. In fact, it does not sound like all is well concerning the person of the prophecy. So, when the eunuch asks about this news, Philip explains it as the good news, where all is well concerning the rest of the story. All is well, because Messiah resurrected from the dead just a few weeks beforehand. The first part, which is found in the prophecy, happened to Messiah in an excruciating and humiliating way, but the "all is well part" is that Christ is alive--the New Covenant is here--there is hope, and it is only hope in Christ Jesus who had to be crucified, and has now ascended to the Father as King of kings and Lord of lords, seated in the heavenlies in glory according to more prophecies concerning Him. This is what it means to evangelize the good news. Next we read,
"34 The eunuch answered Philip and said, 'Please tell me, of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself or of someone else?' 35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him." Acts 8:34-35
Simply put, the work of an evangelist is to preach Jesus in all His fullness, as Savior, and Lord. Later, in the last letter he wrote before being executed, Paul the apostle instructed his child in the faith (Timothy) to do the work of an evangelist. There are evangelists today. They do that work where they specifically proclaim the good news of the New Covenant salvation message. God has given such people to the church as presents to build up His church in spreading the good news to the elect among the nations. The primary task of the missionary to unreached people, is to do the work of an evangelist. Through the work of the evangelist the church is built up when the elect respond positively to the effectual call. In their salvation, the body of Christ grows according to God's sovereign hand. So, the evangelist proclaims the good news to the unreached, that all is well in Christ, but, there is something that we must not miss about the evangelist. The evangelist is given to the body of Christ to build up the Christians of the body of Christ. An immediate question comes to mind, and that is, How does an evangelist build up Christians, since Christians are already saved. The answer is that God has given people-gifts to the body to encourage the body in things that they already know. God thinks it is necessary, and it is. How many of us get encouraged by a word from someone at times, and we already know that what they are saying is true? But, the reminder was somehow needed to build us up. Peter, who briefly covered what is important to know for salvation and godly living in the first 11 verses of 2 Peter, says next in verse 12,
"12 Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you. 13 I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly tent, [meaning his body] to stir you up by way of reminder, 14 knowing that the laying aside of my earthly tent is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. 15 And I will also be diligent that at any time after my departure you will be able to call these things to mind." 2 Peter 1:12-15
Peter says it again in chapter 3;
"This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder." 2 Peter 3:1
Jude, wrote the same thing in the follow up letter to 2 Peter, and I am going to read it out loud. What I want us to do while I read, is to recognize what Jude is reminding his audience about. Listen for, "our common salvation," because it is the gospel. Jude says,
"3 Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the set apart ones. 5 Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all ..."
The point is that the gospel is not something that is relegated only to being evangelized to the lost. It is meant to build up the body of Christ. The gospel is deep theology, and you and I should never forget it. If we were trapped on a desert Island, like for example because of a plane crash, and we were there among a big group of survivors, and we had no Bible, the most important thing we could share with other folks is the plain and simple gospel of Christ. The message is needed for the unsaved, but the message is also needed as the word of encouragement for the saved. It builds up. I want to share one final passage that really presses this point into our hearts in a clear cut way. It is Paul's final words in Romans, where he says in his doxology, where he is speaking to Christians,
"Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith--27 to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen." Romans 16:25-27
What Paul says in Romans in this doxology has everything to do with what Paul is saying in Ephesians 4. The gospel strengthens us Christians, because the gospel is the preaching of Jesus Christ. And let me tell you something; Christmas is approaching, and it doesn't matter how base, selfish, carnal, and weird contemporary society interprets Christmas, folks, we need to use Christmas as an opportunity to strengthen one another with the gospel. The word Christmas, means Christ is sent, and that fact is the foundational starting point of the good news. The gospel is the great mystery revealed, and so heralding, and preaching it, as is the practice of all the people gifts, God is bringing about the obedience of the faith. To be strengthened, is to be built up.
That is what an evangelist is, and does. But, we also need to know that the act of evangelizing does not necessitate that you be specially and uniquely gifted for such a task. God has gifted certain people to be evangelists, but the typical Christian can also evangelize. Anytime you share the gospel with someone, you are evangelizing. This brings us into the next thing that Paul lists; he says,
"11 And He gave ... some as pastors and teachers," Ephesians 4:11
From the way this sentence is worded in the English language, it looks like Paul is talking about two types of people here, doesn't it? He says that God gave some as pastors and teachers. You already know that in our verse to verse surveys of God's word, that I like to bring out important facts that are not typically preached from other pulpits. And you know that I am not into being novel, or clever, or anything like that. I bring these things out because, first of all, they are matters of fact. When it comes to the truth, matters of fact must be provided. This is why I bring out facts that are not typically known by the average Christian in devotional readings. Here I am going to do the same thing by bringing to our attention the fact that most scholars agree that pastors-teachers here is referring to a certain type of person who is gifted to be a person-gift to the body of Christ. In other words, Paul is making a reference to the same person, but using a combination of both words for the distinction. The reason why scholars recognize this, is because Paul uses the article, "the" before every other distinction with the exception of the last, which is teachers. If we were to read Paul's phrase in the Greek, we would see that Paul refers to the apostles, the prophets, and the evangelists, and then finally the pastors; then he adds teachers. So, the last part is written as the pastors-teachers. With this understanding of the Greek, many expositors make it easier to understand what Paul is saying by putting "pastor also teachers," or "pastor even teachers," or "pastors who are teachers." This does not mean, though, that there is a rule here that suggests that Paul is making the statement that all teachers are pastors. Paul is simply saying that the pastors are teachers. In other words, pastors are teachers, as gifts to the church, but not all teachers are pastors. Again, all pastors are teachers, but not all teachers are pastors. This is made more evident as we explore those two terms individually by first looking at the word pastor.
Pastor is a word that is translated from the Greek word poimen. A poimen is a shepherd. In Paul's day, when you would see someone overseeing a flock of sheep, that person would be called a pastor, which is a shepherd. So you see, to understand what this person is, we must recognize what this person does. This is made more evident when we look at the verb form of poimen, as it is used in the Bible. The verb form of poimen is poimainein. It means "to shepherd' "to guide" and "to feed." It is important for us to understand that according to the Bible, people who are elders, overseers, and pastors, are shepherds, and that they are all the same thing. What they do is oversee, pastor, shepherd, guide, and feed the flock. Each name comes from a different Greek word, but each person-gift, is, and does, the same things. In Acts 2O, we find that the "elders" of Ephesus are encouraged in their "pastoral" duties as a demonstration of the fact that elders are shepherds, which are pastors. Paul says,
"Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd [to pastor poimainein] the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." Acts 20:28
Peter makes the same pastoral shepherding connection in 1 Peter 5 where he instructs "elders" to do the shepherding-pastoring job. Peter says
"Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight" 1 Peter 5:1-2
This leads us to understand the primary way that God has arranged for pastors to guide and feed the flock. It is through the spiritual food imparted by the word of God through teaching God's word. We find this role of pastors assigned to elders who are overseers in 1 Timothy where Paul states that,
"An elder must be ... able to teach." 1 Timothy 3:2
Paul says of elders in Titus that they must,
"be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict." Titus 1:9
"The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching." 1 Timothy 5:17
To properly guide the flock, a pastor must rely primarily upon the direct revelations from scripture rather than upon human wisdom or philosophy. Being wise is good, but the primary task of an overseer in the church, is to direct the body to the precepts and principles of God's word. Next Paul makes it known why all these people-gifts exist. He says they are given,
"12 for the equipping of the set apart ones for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ." Ephesians 4:12-13
Here, we get right back to the fact that the body of Christ is gifted for specific reasons. Notice that the reasons are not for personal hobbies of collecting doctrinal tidbits, or the typical gimme, gimme, gimme doctrines electrically blazing out of TBN. The reason is for work--serving work. It is plain all through the New Covenant scriptures that God has planned and designed His church to work in service. The main work is to be building up the body, while in the body. The goal of our work is so that we will all become like minded in the doctrines and precepts of the faith. By the way, this is what the term, "the faith" typically means in Scripture. "The faith" means the doctrines and precepts of the realm of Christianity. God wants us all, as the one new man, (Eph 2:15) to attain to a mature man, which if you have a hard time wrapping your mind around that; then realize that the mature man is the measure of Christ that you and I have not yet fully attained. Yes, there is always room for growth, which means we always need God's people gifts. In other words, God wants the body of Christ to grow up in respect to the maturity of Christ. It is the principle of being infants, and then being equipped by God's people, as we grow, until we mature. The full knowledge of the Son of God is how we know what a mature man is supposed to be. Paul goes on into the next section of scripture, which we will cover next week, explaining that the mature man, is one who no longer thinks like the lost world thinks. He no longer thinks like that which he was delivered out of. The Lost world, according to verse 18, thinks according to the ignorance that is inherently within them. But we did not learn Christ in this way, verse 20. The point is that we don't even know we are immature until God's ministers from the past, through His word, in inspiration of the Spirit, identify our immaturity for us. God's people gifts that he raises up and calls to preach the scriptures, are also people who help us identify our immaturity for us. It is from that kind of revelation that we go on to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. If we are not there, then we will be swept away in the violent sea of doctrinal mayhem. Bad teachers, and bad theology will push us through the water of this life like currents sweeping a little twig out to the deep dark depths of the sea. When we are mature, as Christ is mature, then we recognize the craftiness of deceitful scheming for what it is, and we avoid it; we rebuke it, and we do not put up with it. Maturity brings expertise, and that is what God has gifted His body for--expertise. Listen, God wants you to be an expert in Christianity. He has given you all the means to get there, and so you don't have any excuse, and so He wants you to do the work of service. But listen, we have got to be careful because we may be the bad teacher teaching our self by improperly interpreting and applying the scriptures. This is why we need each other to keep us in check. In fact, this is why I read so many commentaries, exegetical sermons, theological journal articles and so forth. I want to make sure I am working hard at what I am called to do to be the people-present from God to the rest of you that I can be. I think of the quote by the great Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon that is on our website concerning this very issue. It is a timeless word to me, but it applies to all of us. I like to quote it in sermons such as this, so if you have heard it before, then good; it should mean more to you then. Listen, and get the important sense of the bigger picture. Spurgeon said,
In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: a glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight and profit. Of course, you are not such wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound Scripture without assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have laboured before you in the field of exposition. If you are of that opinion, pray remain so, for you are not worth the trouble of conversion, and like a little coterie who think with you, would resent the attempt as an insult to your infallibility. It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others.--CH Spurgeon
Spurgeons' comment leads me to bring us to the next thing that Paul says about getting the truth, and then speaking it to others. Notice that right in the midst of all of this, Paul says,
"15 but speaking the truth in love,"
This is so important. Just as the simple gospel message is about the deepest theology we can learn and teach, this simple little statement is some of the deepest theology we can learn, teach, and do, found anywhere in the Bible. Most Christians can speak. Certainly, most Christians are equipped to speak the truth. But, what an amazing thing it is for so many Christians, it seems, to actually realize that they are commanded to speak the truth in love. All the gifts that Paul has listed are speaking gifts for equipping you and me as the body. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors who are teachers, are all people who speak. God has decided that His truth, in respect to Christianity, has a lot to do with doctrine. God is the one who decided that His truth has to do with speaking doctrine. Speaking the truth is to speak proper doctrine. But, if we are not careful to abide by that same truthful doctrine, we can easily speak truth, but we can speak it in an unloving manner. But such speaking is not building up the body. We are to be about building up the body by speaking the truth, but speaking it always in love. What Paul is saying is that there really is a spiritual, biblical principle concerning the way we minister God's truth. If it is done outside of love, instead of in love, then we will tear down, rather than build up. You know, a lot of folks don't care about this, and that is such a shame. A lot of folks want to tear down another brother, or sister in Christ, and so they use the truth as a sledge hammer to hurt. They are not doing it in love, which is ministry. They are doing it outside of love, which is attack. Here's the lesson:
If you can not speak the truth in love, then do not speak at all.
Folks, the Head is who we want to grow up to be like. In all aspects, He is love, and He commands love. We are His body, and so according to the proper working of each individual, He is the one, as Paul says, who "causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself, but ultimately it is always in love. So Paul says,
"15 but speaking the truth in [that great word] love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, 16 from whom [which is the key word here, because it is always back to Jesus. From whom,] the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, [Christ the Head is the one Who] causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in [that great word again, which is] love." Ephesians 4:15-16
Folks, I encourage you to be comparing yourself to the word of God. Be recognizing that you and I are equipped by God to build up the body. God has given us all the gifts we need to attain to the maturity in Christ that comes through discipleship. God loves you, and His desire is to use to your fullest. I urge you to be the gift to the other members of the body around you that God is equipping you to be. It is only in this way that we will all experience authentic body life together as his people that He brought together to represent His glory on earth. Amen?
