Ephesians 4:11-16 ESV
“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
By Every Wind of Doctrine
God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – gave ministers and
spiritual gifts and ministries to the church. And he gave us godly people who
love the Lord, who will speak his messages, who will help us to grow to
maturity in Christ, and who will equip (prepare, train) us for the work of the
ministry. And “the work of the ministry” is not just something that official
“ministers” do. It is something that all of us who believe in Jesus Christ are to
be doing.
But sadly, not everyone who calls himself a “minister of the
gospel” is one. Wolves in sheep’s clothing abound! They are charlatans, who by their
cunning and craftiness in deceitful scheming are leading many people astray and
straight to hell on the promise of heaven when they die. For they are not
teaching them the truth of the gospel but an altered gospel message based
largely in Scriptures taught outside their context and then twisted.
So, we who are following Jesus Christ with our lives need to
be discerners of truth and lies, and we need to be students of the Scriptures
who study them in context and who compare them with other Scriptures, and to do
so prayerfully, asking for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that we
correctly handle the word of truth and so that we do not end up teaching what
is false. And I know many of us as children were taught some things wrongly.
And one of those things that comes to my mind is that little
poem we learned as children, which came with hand motions, which says something
like this: “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and see all
the people.” It was instilled in many of us as children and then reinforced in
our adult years that the church is the building, that it is God’s house, and
that we enter God’s house when we walk inside the building.
But as I began to study the Scriptures for myself I learned
that the church is the people of God. We who trust in Jesus Christ to be our
Lord and Savior are the church, the body of Christ. We don’t “go to church.” We
are the church. And the church is universal. It meets in lots of different
locations throughout the world, but the locations are not the church, i.e. for
example, the church at Laodicea is the church, the body of Christ, in that
specific location, but Laodicea is not the church. The people are the church.
The Truth of the Gospel
Another thing I learned when I was young was a gospel
presentation called the “Four Spiritual Laws” and other such presentations
which presented the gospel by taking a few select passages of Scripture out of
their context to fit with the plan of salvation they were presenting. But out
of context, not all those Scriptures were taught in truth. And it wasn’t until
I began reading the Bible in context, verse by verse, that I began to see some
of these discrepancies between what I had been taught and what I was reading.
One example of that is Romans 6:23. I think Romans 3:23 came
first to show that we are all born sinners who are separate from God and who
are not capable in ourselves to be acceptable and approved by God. And then
came this: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal
life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And then they taught that we just needed to
pray a prayer to invite Jesus into our hearts and now we had eternal life.
But that is not what that verse is teaching. All of Romans 6
is teaching us the truth of what it means to be “in Christ.” If we believe in
Jesus with genuine faith we are crucified with Christ in death to sin and we
are raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in Christ. For our old self
was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to
nothing, so that we would no longer be ENSLAVED to sin, but so we would now be
slaves to God and to his righteousness. By his grace we are saved through
faith.
Therefore, and here comes the warning, we are to not let sin
continue to reign in our mortal bodies, to make us obey its passions, for sin
will have no more dominion over us because we are under grace. God’s grace does
not free us to keep on sinning deliberately and habitually only now without
guilt. God’s grace frees us from our addiction to sin so that we will live our
lives in freedom from the control of sin over our lives.
Therefore we must know that we are slaves of the one whom we
obey, either of sin, which leads to DEATH, or of obedience, which leads to
righteousness leading to sanctification, and its end is eternal life. For the
wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life.. In other
words, if we continue in slavery to sin, in deliberate and habitual sin, which
is what many are doing, it will end in death, not in eternal life with God, for
the free gift frees us from our slavery to sin and empowers us to live godly
lives.
So, if we do what it teaches us here in Ephesians 4, we will
be people who will speak the truth of the gospel to one another, not the lies,
and we will be those who expose the lies for what they are, and for the
building up of the body of Christ to maturity in Christ, which involves daily
dying to sin and daily walking in obedience to our Lord’s commands (New
Covenant). And this will happen if each part of the body does its work assigned
by God in ministering to one another the truth and by exposing the lies.
[Lu 9:23-26; Jn 6:35-58; Jn
15:1-11; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-24; 1 Pet 2:24; 1
Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; Tit 2:11-14; Jas 1:21-25; Rom 12:1-2; Eph 2:8-10; Php 2:12-13; Col 1:21-23; Gal
5:16-21; Eph 5:3-6; Gal
6:7-8; Rom 2:6-8; Heb
10:26-27; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Matt 7:21-23; Ac 26:18; Rev
18:1-6; Rev 21:8,27; Rev 22:14-15]
For
Our Nation
An
Original Work / September 11, 2012
Bombs are bursting. Night is falling.
Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.
Trust Him with your life today.
Make Him your Lord and your Savior.
Turn from your sin. Follow Jesus.
He will forgive you of your sin;
Cleanse your heart, made new within.
Men betraying: Our trust fraying.
On our knees to God we’re praying,
Seeking God to give us answers
That are only found in Him.
God is sovereign over all things.
Nothing from His mind escaping.
He has all things under His command,
And will work all for good.
Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.
Men deceiving: we’re believing
In our Lord, and interceding
For our nation and its people
To obey their God today.
He is our hope for our future.
For our wounds He offers suture.
He is all we need for this life.
Trust Him with your life today.
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