What if I told you that the biblical purpose of community wasn’t to just spend time together, encourage each other, pray for each other, teach each other, love one another, etc?
What if I told you that all of those things are true, but there is something so much more that we are called into? Something that inevitably leads to everything I listed above.
Well, let’s take a look at Ephesians 4: 11-16:
“And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherd, and the 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, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
Holy run-on sentence, I know.
So, I’ve written about the first half of this passage before, but I will give a brief overview since it sets up necessary context.
Notice that the five-folds of ministry are all used within the context of “building up the body”. Very simply, what that means is that those gifts aren’t to free us as believers from the responsibility of what each entail. These 5 positions are listed within building up the body. What does that mean? That means that the evangelist isn’t here so that I don’t have to evangelize. It isn’t that I just need to get my friends/family close to the evangelist so they can share the Gospel. The evangelist’s role is within the context of believers… not those who don’t know Jesus. The evangelist’s role isn’t to share with my friends/family. The evangelist’s role is to teach, equip, and provoke the church to do something with the Gospel. The same idea holds for all 5 of those positions. We as believers are called to walk out ALL of those areas in our own lives.
And part of that is the simple fact that each and every believer brings something to the table. Think about coming together for a potluck. There is a unique experience that everybody misses out on if you withhold bringing what you have to offer… or as this passage suggests, we miss out on “knowledge of the Song of God” if you withhold.
But guess what? That knowledge isn’t just an academic understanding or a factual statement. The Greek word for knowledge in this passage translates literally to “contact knowledge”. It is that unity is produced by common experience more than common belief… the kind of knowledge that produces unity is shared experience far more than academics.
And that gets me to my point. We are called to experience the Lord together. We aren’t simply called to all go experience the Lord and come back together to share about it. Yes, that is wildly important. Every single believer has a personal relationship with the Lord that must be fostered. But, a personal relationship does not mean a private relationship. We are also called to go experience the Lord together. Think about a marriage. How weird would it be if a husband loved his wife incredibly well at home, but kept his wife locked inside the house… never spoke about her to anyone… never invited anyone to come over, meet her, and spend time with her?! The unity that God calls us into is impossible to reach without experiential knowledge.
So, what does that mean? It means GO! And go together! Intentionally serve together, share the Gospel together, pray together, give together… be a community! Don’t ever settle for a fake, false sense of community that lives entirely individualized lives for a week and come together for just an hour to talk about it.
The expression of the perfect man that God has His heart set on, in this passage, isn’t me… it’s us. Every single person’s experiential knowledge produces a grace to become closer to this perfect man, as a body. Truthfully, that almost sounds a little heretical… the fullness of the measure of Christ?! Honestly, I don’t fully understand how wild that truth that we are called into is. But, I can’t preach down the standard that scripture sets for us as a body… as the bride of Christ.
Look at the second half of this Ephesians 4 passage, “joined and held together by every joint”. Don’t miss this imagery. I think the church has done a really good job of driving home the point that all giftings are valuable… that the body needs a hand just as much as it needs a mouth. But think about joints. Joints are by definition where two body parts come together. Think about it this way, a hand is completely worthless to the body if it isn’t connected to an arm. It can’t function. In the same way this is our call to go together… to experience the Lord together. The joints are the thing that join and hold the body together in unity. There is a reason that Jesus sent out His disciples 2×2 as opposed to on their own. The unity of experiential knowledge is essential to the body being able to be the body!
We aren’t called into church for the sake of church. We are called to be the church because this world desperately needs the image of Christ put on display for all to see… dynamic, pure, passionate communities that love God and each other. The evidence of your status as a disciple of Christ is not because you have great theology… the greatest evidence of your status as a disciple of Christ is that you love those that you come into contact with.
Hear me out on this next part: The first priority of that call is to love your body well… to love the believers that you are walking life with. The first priority is to the family of God. Yes, we are absolutely called to love unbelievers. But before we have any hope of loving others, we must have a unified house to invite those people into.
Look at John 17:9. Jesus prays for His disciples… He very specifically prays for those that the Father gave Him, and not the world. His primary concern here wasn’t that the nations would be inherited. His primary concern was that if I love the people the Lord has given me well, then the nations will be inherited. Because a body walking in experiential knowledge… a body walking in unity and love… will inevitably lead to a body that goes after the nations.
Look at Pentecost in Acts 2. The Holy Spirit comes and fills the body of believers in the upper room. Immediately (without even mentioning going down the stairs or outside or any of that) they are sharing the Gospel in the streets.
In addition to the simple task of choosing to go together… To intentionally serve together, share the Gospel together, pray together, give together, etc… I would love to leave us with 2 things when it comes to being a body that chooses to experience the Lord together in unity.
It is possible to share truth incorrectly. Look at Acts 16. Paul and Silas rebuke a demon out of a woman who is crying out, “These men are servants of the most high God”. She is speaking truth, yet it is not done in love.
So, pray with one another. Let your voice speak life, and choose to intentionally enter into experiencing the Lord together.
Love y’all!
