Some Aspects Of The Church From Its Beginning - Christ's Tender Care And Provision For The Church - Part 7 Series

SOME ASPECTS OF THE CHURCH FROM ITS BEGINNING - CHRIST'S TENDER CARE AND PROVISION FOR THE CHURCH - PART 7

[1]. CHRIST'S THE CARE FOR, AND SUSTENANCE OF THE CHURCH

The Church is not a collection of names on a roll kept in heaven. It is not a detached organisation of people. A secretary might have a register of people who belong to a yachting club who pay fees and receive notices, but the secretary has no deep feeling for that group or the members of it. That is not what the Church is. It is a living, vital organism under the care of the Master Physician. The Church is the most precious entity the Lord possesses. It is so close to His heart and embodied in the first marriage union – bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. We can’t exactly say that of Christ and the Church, but the concept it represents is very real. Each member of the Church is the precious child of the living God found in the living Body of Christ.

One can not read Ephesians and not see that the Lord is so carefully connected with the Church as her Saviour, her Carer and her Sustainer and precious Head. Let us consider some verses from Ephesians –

{{Ephesians 4:7-8 To each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, “When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, and HE GAVE GIFTS TO MEN.”}}

This is personal when it says, “To each one of us”. We are all recipients of God’s grace and God’s gifts. The Lord works through grace and He correspondingly gives gifts in accordance to that grace as part of His very special concern for His Bride. Now we will look at some of those gifts to THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL.

In the two verses just above it says He gave gifts to men. Corinthians deals with the individual gifts to people in a church to help everything function as a local body of believers. These are gifts that every Christian has. However in the two verses above these gifts are MEN. They are men who have been given to the Church and their primary function was to establish the early Church, to fortify and stabilise the Church. Therefore these gifts mentioned now in the verses underneath are men who were given to the Church for that purpose. They were very special in the early church, but as time went on, only evangelists, pastors and teachers have remained.

[2]. MEN WHO WERE GIVEN AS GIFTS TO THE CHURCH

{{Ephesians 4:11 “and He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, Ephesians 4:12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to (in) the building up of the body of Christ, Ephesians 4:13 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.”}}

These gifts in Ephesians are gifts to the Church more than gifts to the individual. Of course individuals have them but these gifts cover a much wider field than the local church. In verse 4 there are 5 specified gifts to establish, teach and succor the Church. The apostles and prophets had an important and foundational role. They belonged to the whole Church. The evangelists worked with and through the Church to reach our beyond the Church. Pastors and teachers in the sense of verse 11 had a wider ministry in the Church beyond the local Church, a ministry to the members of the universal Church. There are no apostles and prophets today, but the other three offices are with us as men who minister in a wide field, even a worldwide setting.

Verse 12 gives us the reason for God supplying these men to His people. Their function was/is to equip the saints. That is, they built up, taught, and endowed the saints for the ministry they would have. These saints would be built up themselves so they would then build up the Body of Christ. These act like arteries running through the Body to supply all that is necessary for full health and growth.

The reason for verse 12 is verse 13. That is the purpose of God’s gifts. The Lord wants us to attain to the unity of the faith. Overall, I think we have failed badly in that objective. We are to work towards the knowledge of the Son of God, but this is not a head knowledge but a practical one. Knowledge puffs up but commitment achieves the goal. The ultimate goal is that each one is mature in the Lord, fully committed to Him, pleasing to Him, and understanding Him, and to be part of “the fullness of Christ”.