In this chapter we want to have more fellowship concerning how the Body of Christ causes itself to grow unto the building up of itself. We saw in chapter three that the first means by which all the Body causes the growth of the Body is every joint of the rich supply. In this chapter we want to go on to see that the Body grows and is built up also through the operation in measure of each one part.
Ephesians 4:11-16 is a very particular portion of the holy Word. It tells us that the ascended Christ in all His qualifications and in His position as the Head in the heavens, gave His church some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers. The terms apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers are very particular. Before the church came into being, there were not terms such as apostles and evangelists. When we read such a portion of the Word today, we may take it for granted. Actually, we may understand very little.
These verses mainly unveil to us that the ascended Head gave some apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers for the perfecting of the saints. According to our concept, the apostles were given merely for the establishment of the churches, the prophets for speaking the Lord, the evangelists for the preaching of the gospel, and the shepherd-teachers for shepherding and teaching the saints. Although this is true, Paul emphasizes that these gifted ones were given for the same thing—the perfecting of the saints. If a person who desires to serve the Lord wants to know what he should do, he must listen to the Apostle Paul. Paul still speaks to us today in his Epistles. If we are going to serve the Lord, we must perfect the saints.
To perfect is to make perfect or complete. A newly saved and baptized one is altogether not perfect or complete, so he needs some perfecting, some completing. To perfect the saints you have to teach them, to instruct them, to equip them, and to furnish them. When people join the military service, they are perfected. Because they do not have any knowledge about fighting, they are not perfect or complete in this matter. In order to defend their country, they need to be perfected, or completed, in fighting. The military instructs and disciplines them. They are also equipped with weapons and furnished with supplies to fight. After this perfecting by the military, they are qualified to fight.
A young man who is nineteen years old does not know anything about fighting, so he is not perfect or complete. In the same way, a new believer does not know anything about the Christian life, so he is not perfect or complete either. He was a heathen, but through the saints’ preaching, he believed and was baptized. In the sense of being a Christian, however, he is full of defects and shortages. He does not know who God is or what Christ’s redemption is. He is like a newborn babe who has just been delivered. From the time that a newborn child is delivered, he needs perfecting. It takes about eighteen years for parents to perfect a child until he is full-grown. Every mother and father wants to hear their child say “ma ma” and “da da.” After speaking these words to their babe again and again, he spontaneously and organically begins to address his mother and father in this way. Their little child begins to speak this according to his gift, his talent, by birth. This gift by birth, however, needs some instruction. The mother needs to say “ma ma” again and again to her child until he is able to say it. This is the perfecting of the child. To perfect is to make perfect, to make complete.
Because we love the Lord, we desire to serve the Lord. To serve the Lord we have to follow Paul’s pattern to preach the gospel and to perfect others. Even if we were just saved, we can go to preach the gospel because we have been perfected to lead people to Christ. We saw how someone knocked on our door. We heard what he said to us, and we can repeat that. We saw how we were led to pray and believe in the gospel, and we saw how we were baptized.
If you have just been saved you know at least four points. First, you know about visiting others with the gospel by knocking on their doors. Second, you know how to tell people that Jesus is the Son of God and our Savior. Third, you know how to lead people to call on the name of the Lord and pray. Fourth, you know how to baptize people after they have received the Lord. After this, you need to perfect the ones that you have led to the Lord. Because we in the Lord’s recovery have not risen up to perfect others, the Lord has been delayed. After being saved, not many Christians endeavor to perfect others because they themselves have not received the perfecting. We should not take the excuse that we do not know that much.
We need to be impressed that we Christians, in general, do not function to perfect others because of tradition. Many were saved in big congregations through the preaching of a good speaker. Most do not have the ability to be a top speaker and to carry out an altar call, but this is the pattern of preaching that they saw at their salvation. On the one hand, they received the Lord’s salvation, but on the other hand, they received a pattern that killed their function. After a person gets saved in this way, he may love the Lord very much, but he has not received the perfecting to preach the gospel. He can only invite his friends to a big meeting to hear someone else preach the gospel. The functions of the believers have been killed by the traditional way of meeting and serving.
The beginning of Paul’s ministry is recorded in Acts 13. When he went to Asia Minor, he went to the synagogues to take advantage of the Jews’ gathering there. This shows us that in order to save people, we need to go to them where they are. This is why we go to visit people by knocking on their doors. We are going to them where they are to bring the gospel to them. When we knock on someone’s door, preach the gospel to him, and lead him to believe and be baptized, he will be impressed that this is the way to preach the gospel, to bring sinners to Christ. Immediately after a new one is baptized, we need to instruct him. We may say: “Now you are my brother because we have the same divine life. I am a child of God and so are you. I am organic and so are you. I am living and so are you. I would now like to go with you to knock on other people’s doors to preach to them.” From the very time a new one is baptized, we can instruct him to practice what he has seen of us. He will do it because this will be what he has seen. He will function according to the pattern that has been presented to him. The traditional way of preaching the gospel kills the functions of the believers. It is a threat to them because they think that they need to be good speakers to preach the gospel. We must totally abandon the traditional way of meeting and serving and come back to the scriptural way to meet and to serve for the organic building up of the Body of Christ.
The way that God wants His people to carry out His economy is revealed in Ephesians 4:11-16. The ascended Head gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers to His church to do one thing—to perfect the saints. To perfect the saints is to instruct them, to equip them, to furnish them, making them perfect and complete, that they may do the unique work of the unique New Testament ministry. The work of the New Testament ministry is not to build up anything organizational, a congregation, but something organic, the Body of Christ. To perfect the saints is an organic work.