The building up of the Body of Christ is through the gifts produced by the Head of the Body in His resurrection (Eph. 4:7-8,11). The gifts in Ephesians 4:11 are the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers. These are the gifted persons. These gifted persons were produced not by a seminary or a Bible institute but by the Head of the Body in His resurrection. In this regard, Ephesians 4 describes a wonderful process. Christ firstly descended, not only from the heavens to the earth, but also from the earth to Hades (v. 9). Then He resurrected and ascended from Hades, not only to the earth, but also to the third heavens (vv. 8-10). When He was doing this, He was like a victorious, overcoming general. By His death and resurrection He saved those who had been taken captive by Satan. In His ascension He rescued them from Satan’s captivity and made them His own captives. Then He brought all these captives to the heavens in His ascension to present them to God as presents. God was pleased and returned these captives to Him as gifts. Through this procedure of the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, Christ’s presentation of the captives to God, and God’s returning them to Christ, all the captives became gifts. Paul was such a gift. He was a captive of Satan but was rescued out of the hand of Satan by Christ’s death and resurrection. Through Christ’s ascension and presentation of him to God the Father and through God’s returning of him to Christ, this captive became a top gift.
Do you realize that you are a gift given by God to Christ for the building up of His Body? Before you were saved, you were a captive in the hand of Satan. However, through His death and resurrection, Christ has rescued you, saving you out of the hand of Satan. Furthermore, He has brought you to the heavens and presented you to His Father to please the Father, and the Father has returned you to Christ. By this process you, who were a sinner and a captive of Satan, became not only a member of Christ but also a gift. Each of us is a gift from the Triune God to the church (Eph. 4:7-8). You are so precious to the Body, and the Body cannot be built up without you.
We are not gifts in an organizational way. If one loses his teeth, a dentist may supply a denture to replace them in an organizational way. This denture is inorganic, but every part of our physical body is organic and indispensable. The little finger, the hand, the arm, and the shoulder are all gifts to our physical body. What could I do without my shoulders, arms, or hands? Even to be without the little finger would be awkward. While we have it, we may not feel that it is useful, but if we lost it, we would feel that we lacked something. In like manner, we are members of the Body of Christ. If any of us were not here, the church would miss us. Each of us is a gift to the Body.
The gifts are produced by the Head, Christ, in His resurrection. We have been crucified with Him (Rom. 6:6a; Gal. 2:20a). We were raised up from the dead, and we have also ascended in Him and with Him to the heavens (Eph. 2:6). We have been made gifts full of life in His resurrection. As gifts to the Body, we are altogether organic. All of our natural ability and strength mean nothing because being gifts given by God to Christ for His Body is something in Christ’s resurrection, not something in the natural life by our first birth. What we do by our natural life results in death, but what we do in resurrection is organic. We should act, move, and do things in the church life organically in the resurrection of Christ, not in our natural life.
If we do things in the church life by our natural life and strength, we are moving and acting in an organizational way. To clean the meeting hall in our natural life according to an outward arrangement is to act in an organizational way. But if we are living in the spirit, in the organic way, contacting God in resurrection, we may have the inner feeling and leading to come to the hall to clean in resurrection by life and not by organization. The proper way to clean the hall is to do it organically. Under the organizational way, sometimes those who are charged to clean the hall become offended. Those who serve in the organic way will never be offended. Whatever we do—whether we clean the hall, preach the gospel, take care of home meetings, or come to the meetings to function—must be altogether organic, not organizational. The way to have the proper church life is to move and act in an organic way.
In the past we charged the saints to open their mouths to say something for the Lord. Some felt that it was too hard to speak for the Lord, so we fellowshipped with them in order to help them. However, much of our fellowship may not have been organic; it may have been organizational. The right way to help the saints get into this practice is to bring them into an organic realization. We should teach them, that is, feed them, with some spiritual nourishment so that they can be strengthened and realize they have another life, the life of resurrection. They need to realize that they can live, walk, and have their being in this life every day and all day. If they live such a life, they will come to the meeting and open up their mouths organically. Organically they will utter something. You will not need to teach them to say “Hallelujah.” They will say “Hallelujah” organically, in the way that comes out of life, not out of arrangement or organization. The perfecting by the gifted persons is altogether not something organizational but organic.