Ephesians 4 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...we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, (Ephesians 4:11-13, 15 ESV) This passage and verse 15 comes in parts. 1) God gave to us 2) For the purpose of A) ministry B) helping each other 3) With intentions of A) unity of faith B) to know Christ fully C) and to be fully like Christ Im not too sure about the apostles, as far as I know they are people who were directly under Christs leadership in person. I dont know more of apostles beyond that knowledge. Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds and Teachers, however, I know more about. Those are what God gave us. In our last lesson we learned that we aught to be good stewards of what is given to us, like grace, mercy, love, etc. Now what actions should be taken in stewardship of people like those? First off they are leaders, which makes us followers. (For encouragement and an attack against pride and feeling less important, I will say neither is greater then the other for God is the grower and we are all the growees.) So in terms of stewardships in correspondence to leaders, Id say we are to do a good job being followers. We in turn, are given to them so hopefully they will be good at leading us. It is both the followers and leaders job however to be aware of false and poor doctrine, as no one should be leading anyone astray or follow anyone blindly. Maturity should be a result of both leading and following, as God is the grower of both. And what have we to measure our growth in? Sound doctrine! And how will we know if doctrine is sound? Heres a part of it, ...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...we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ should be a part of that sound doctrine. That passage in it self holds a lot, as there is much to know about Christ and the faith that is ours, which stems from him. Regardless of who you are, or consider yourself to be, a leader or a follower, we are to test ourselves to see if we are in the faith, which should result in the praise, glory and honor of the Truth, Way, and Life of Jesus Christ.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 03:46:10 +0000
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