“But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:” (Ephesians 4:15)
This Scripture comes as a conclusion of Paul’s teaching about the five-fold ministry in verse 11. God has given us gifts to help us grow in Him, to be firm in the faith and to be discerners of the Truth. (Verse 14) These are the ministers of the Word of God; apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. The teaching of the Word of God changes us. Paul uses an unusual phrase, “grow up into Him.” When the Word of God changes us, what it’s doing is making us more like Jesus. The Word of God is alive and powerful. (Hebrews 4:12) It’s able to change us. (Romans 12:2) It changes us more and more into the image of Christ. It’s that process of sanctification, that lifelong process of becoming perfected.
When we look at Hebrews where Paul writes, “For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified,” (Hebrews 10:14) we notice that there may be a contradiction. Paul teaches that the ministry gifts to the church, the five-fold ministry helps us through the teaching of the Word to change us, then later Paul writes how the sacrifice of Jesus has already changed us and perfected us. To understand this, we have to know that we are three-part beings. We are spiritual beings who have souls and live in a body.
The sacrifice of Jesus did make us perfect. When we are born again, our old sinful spirit died with Jesus. Yes, we were there at His crucifixion. Paul stated that he was crucified with Christ, but yet he lives. (Galatians 2:20) We have to remember that in God’s world there is no time. The earth’s past present and future are all present at the same time. In our world, only the past and present are real to us. But to God, the future is already revealed to Him. And so, our old sinful man died. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” (Romans 6:6) Hence the term born again. When that old sinful spirit died, we were born again of God. Anything that comes from God is perfect, pure and holy. It may be hard for us to realize that our spirit is perfect, sinless, pure and holy because we know our failures, our faults, defects and weaknesses.
But remembering that we are a three-part being, we learn that we still have that old body that we refer to as the flesh. And we still have that old soul (mind, will and emotions) that is influenced either by the flesh or the spirit. Our bodies and our souls did not die nor were they born again. The flesh still wants comfort, pleasure and ease. It’s constantly at war with the spirit which wants God’s Will. “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” (Galatians 5:16-17) Which wins? It’s evident in our speech and living whether we are yielding more to the spirit or to the flesh.
The five-fold ministry brings the Word of God to us to change us and to help our souls grow more like Christ so that we are yielding more to the spirit than the flesh, so that we can walk in the spirit, influencing the soul, our mind, our will and emotions more than the flesh. A quick and short example: How many of us obeyed the spirit man and rose up earlier to spend more time reading God’s Word this morning? That bed was so comfy and warm, we wanted to just turn over and go back to sleep. Of course, the decision whether to get up earlier was made the night before when we decided to either go to bed earlier or stay up watching TV. This is a simplified example, but a valid one.
The Word of God is alive and powerful, able to change us. The five-fold ministry brings the Word of God to us to help us “grow up into Christ” which means to become of one mind with Him. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2Corinthians 3:18)
Kommentit