Abraham Nial
This is the second installment of my meditation about unity in the Body of Christ, something I strongly believe the Holy Spirit is determined to bring it to pass because it is Jesus’ heart’s desire and it pleases our God the Father the most.
Jesus prophesied that his followers will be united with the Trinity and with each other in ways that has never been seen before (John 17:20-21) . This will bring glory to the Father who sent His Son to be the Messiah--the Anointed King of the Jews and will result in the world recognizing Jesus as the King of kings and the Lord of lords ushering in the great harvest of souls before the end of this present age.
What is the end of the age? Jesus said “… The harvest is the end of the age,…”(Matthew 13:39). In the Parable of the Weeds Jesus is the Man who sows good seeds. The devil is the one who sows weeds. And the angels are the harvesters. The people of the kingdom are the good seeds that Jesus is interested to receive as His reward. He wont allow the weeds to be pulled out and burned until the people of the kingdom are ready to be harvested--mature and full grown.
When can it be said that the people of the kingdom have matured? How does Jesus intend to mature the people in his kingdom? The apostle Paul tells us that only a global united Church--the body of Christ-- can be called a mature Church. Indeed how immature we look to God and to the world with all our doctrinal and denominational and all other reasons that have caused so much of divisions in the Church. A natural question in the mind of those being introduced to the gospel is, “If gospel is such good news, why are Christians who claim to believe in the gospel so divided? So much so that you don’t go along and sometimes you hate each other!” We have to admit the Church is in such bad condition because of our immaturity. The Church that Jesus is waiting to receive as His reward is not the immature and divided Church. No wonder the apostle Paul was begging us to be united: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” (Eph 4:3)
The important question than is how does God plan to unite the people of His kingdom--the global Body of Christ? In the same chapter of Ephesians 4, Paul reveals to us how God plans to unite the Body of Christ. “It was he [Jesus] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:11-13) Wow God has a glorious plan to mature us. He has made provision for us to mature us. And for that reason he gave what we call the Five-fold ministry: of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. The Church in the Book of Acts was greatly united and therefore still looks glorious; and experienced great exploit for the Kingdom because it operated not under any one particular office, but all of the five offices of ministers, without envy or competition.
Anyone in the kingdom needs the ministry of all these five ministers in order to be mature. Unless we receive ministry from all five type of ministers whom Jesus himself in his infinite wisdom has given us we cannot get matured. If someone thinks he or she does not need the ministry of all of the five to get matured, that person claims to be smarter and wiser than Jesus, which is disastrous!
If one is honest to take a study, in 2000 years of the history of the Church, Jesus gave incredible and amazing apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. We still have anointed apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastros and teachers and their ministries in our days and age. They have been given to us by Jesus. What have we done with them? Even with an average IQ anyone can say that we did picking and choosing and made idols of our favorite or to the one we were exposed early. We designed and developed ministry pattern over only one two. No doubt we have great prophetic ministries just as we have great pastoral or evangelistic or even teaching ministries. But these ministries have tried to operate on their own; and what is worse we have become fault finder of each others, not realizing that any ministry built on only one or two of the Five ministers that Jesus has given will be immature. It is the grace of God that has allowed us not to be uprooted and used us with some success even in our present conditions. Each one of us and our ministries are as immature as the one we would like to call out to be immature. And that sadly is the reason for all the divisions.
But as I said earlier, God has ignored our immaturity and not uprooted us in spite of our immaturity and helped us to grow to some extent and taste some success because He is able to create the context where each person and each ministry in the kingdom will break its man-made boundaries and seek out the ministry of all the five type of servants Jesus has given to the Church to help it get matured. God who works for good in all things is using the Internet, Youtube and other social media platforms and even pandemic, lockdown, online meetings, and all other crises affecting the churches to bring us together for unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
God willing I will write more about the Five-fold ministry the next week. Thanks for reading. Ephesians chapter 4 is a must read for this hour.
