In chapters three and four, we saw that the Lord desires to recover the organic building up of the Body of Christ. The building up of the Body must be organic. It is altogether a matter of life. Without life, there is no genuine building up of the church. There is very little of the element of life in today’s Christianity. What we see built up among most of today’s Christians is mostly inorganic. According to the New Testament, however, the building up of the church should be altogether in life.
The Body of Christ is like our physical body. In our physical body, no part is lifeless. If a person has false teeth, these false teeth are artificial and inorganic. We may say that they are parts of a person’s body, yet they have nothing to do with the person’s life. They have nothing to do with the blood circulation of a person’s body. The circulation of blood within our body must reach every member of our body. If the circulation of our blood is cut off from a certain part of our body, that part will begin to die. The circulation of blood is the circulation of life. In order for the Body of Christ to be built up, there is the need for the circulation of life and the growth in life.
Ephesians 4 tells us clearly how the Body of Christ is built up. Paul pointed out in Ephesians 4 that Christ, the ascended Head, in His ascension gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ. When we Christians read the Bible, we have a tendency to take everything for granted. We need to get into the depths of the truth revealed in Ephesians 4:11-16. Not many Christians understand these six verses. What does it mean to perfect the saints? What is the work of the ministry, and what is it to build up the Body of Christ? Ephesians 4:11-16 is a portion of the Word that has been missed by most Christians. This portion of the Word has to be recovered, and I believe that today is the right time and that we are the right people for the Lord to carry out such a recovery. We must cooperate with the Lord for the advance of His recovery today.
We need to enter into the Apostle Paul’s thought when he talked about the perfecting of the saints. The thought of his word concerning the perfecting of the saints is that God’s intention is to have every believer able to do the things that the gifted persons do. Every believer should be able to do the work of the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the shepherds and teachers. The thought in today’s Christianity, however, is different from this. A certain group of people is a clerical class. They are the ones who do the holy service; whereas the rest of the believers are the laity. This kind of philosophy and practice annuls the spiritual, organic function of all the believers.
There is a capacity in the divine life which the believers possess and enjoy, and this capacity needs to be developed unto their ability. In the human life there is the capacity of hearing, seeing, smelling, speaking, and walking. All these capacities need a certain amount of development, and for the development to take place there is the need of practice. A little infant has the capacity to see, but if his eyes are always covered, he will become blind because his seeing function has never been practiced or developed. To cover the infant’s eyes is to annul the seeing function. For the function to be developed, there is the need for the growth of life and practice. An infant learns to speak by practicing and by the growth of life.
The traditional practice of Christianity annuls the capacity in the divine life that the believers possess and enjoy. The practice of Christianity with one pastor speaking to many believers week after week annuls their spiritual ability and function. Hundreds of Christians may sit in a pew and listen to sermons for many years without learning how to pray. When there is the need of prayer, they will go to their pastor.
The practice of Christianity also robs the believers of the opportunities to function. If a person gets saved and sits in a pew for a year, he will not learn how to function. Mostly he will learn how to sit passively and listen to a choir sing and a pastor preach. Even listening to a choir annuls the singing ability of the saints. The truth concerning the perfecting of the saints is the opposite of the practice of traditional Christianity. The Apostle Paul’s way was to perfect the saints in everything. Ephesians 4:11-12 shows us that for the building up of the Body of Christ, the saints need to be perfected by the gifted persons.
The organic building up of the Body of Christ is carried out by the living, organic perfecting of the saints by the gifts. In order to accomplish His desire to build up the church, Christ went through a marvelous process. He passed through incarnation, human living, an all-inclusive death on the cross, and resurrection. After His resurrection, Christ ascended to the height, the highest place in the universe, the third heaven (Eph. 4:8). The distance from the earth to the moon is very small compared with the universal system that Christ passed through to ascend to the height. In His ascension, Christ became the One above all, and He received the headship over all things.
Ephesians 4:8 tells us that in Christ’s ascension, “He led captive those taken captive and gave gifts to men.” The redeemed saints were taken captive by Satan before they were saved by Christ’s death and resurrection. In His ascension, Christ led them captive; that is, He rescued them from Satan’s captivity and took them to Himself. After conquering and rescuing them from Satan and death through His death and resurrection, Christ in His ascension made the rescued sinners gifts with His resurrection life. These gifts were constituted and formed through Christ’s incarnation, human living, all-inclusive death, resurrection, and ascension. In His ascension, the formation and the constitution of the gifts was completed.
These believers as completed gifts are the possessions of God the Father. Ephesians 1 says that Christ’s redeeming blood made us the inheritance of God (v. 11). When Christ ascended to the heavens, He completed His constituting work to make us all God’s inheritance. In His ascension, after He completed such a constitution of all the believers as God the Father’s inheritance, God the Father gave all of us as an inheritance to His Son, Christ. The Father gave us as gifts to the Son, and the Son gave these gifts to the church, His Body, for its building up. Every believer is a gift given by the Father to His Son. In the book of John, we are told that all the believers were given by the Father to the Son as gifts (17:2, 6, 9, 24; 6:37, 39; cf. Psa. 68:18).
As the inheritance of God the Father, we were sealed by His Spirit to indicate that we belong to God (Eph. 1:13). Ephesians 1 also tells us that God is the pledge of our inheritance (v. 14). The sealing Spirit becomes a pledge in us, guaranteeing us that God is our inheritance. Therefore, we are God’s inheritance, and God is our inheritance. Our unique inheritance is our God.