Building up the Body

Introduction

This morning we will continue our study in the book of Ephesians and examine how the church was meant to be built up.

Ephesians 4:11–16 ESV

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, 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 the 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.

There is so much to unpack in just these few verses but for our purpose today, I wanted to focus on the disparity between the extreme individualism that we find in modern society and the building of a biblically balanced church. In other words, there are certain things in our culture that that make it very difficult to grow a healthy congregation and we need to be aware of those problems as we come back together to rebuild this ministry. There are three particular areas that this passage points to that are at odds with the attitudes and viewpoints that are naturally inherent in our individualistic society. These three areas are our views on the role of leadership, the importance of growing with a community, and the purpose of Christian relationships.

Body

Role of Leaders

Growing with a Community

Purpose of Christian Relationships

In our society, personal growth is largely seen as an individual pursuit. It is about the books I read, the steps I need to take, the belief in myself, and the dreams that I need to follow. Personal growth is largely disconnected from the influence of relationships, our responsibility to community, and the pursuit of the greater good. Sociologists like Robert Bellah have labeled this trend in modern secularism as expressive individualism and it’s something that has shaped our perspectives on life far more than we realize. In so many different ways, our society teaches us that we can only develop as we look inward and break through the confines and limits set by our culture, family, and religion. You see it subtly in classic movies like “The Sound of Music” where Maria sings:

“Climb every mountain,

Ford every stream,

Follow every rainbow,

Til you find your dream.”

I guess a more modern rendition of this very same perspective on life is found in the famous song from Frozen, where Elsa sings:

“It’s time to see what I can do

To test the limits and break through,

No right, no wrong, no rules for me,

I’m free!”

In the 50 years between these two movies, this expressive individualism has become the prevailing view of life that people are born into and anything that puts this into question is seen as confining, repressive, limiting, and old fashioned. As a result, most structures of authority have been placed under a great deal of scrutiny including leadership in the church. Understandably because of all the scandals that we hear about with high profile pastors, we justify our suspicion of all Christian leaders. However, it’s one thing to be careful about who we decide to follow, it’s another thing to reject the important role of leaders in the church.

Here in Ephesians, we see very clearly that certain individuals are needed to lead the church. Whatever you may beleive about modern day apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, the church has always had official positions of leadership that have been filled by people who have been gifted and called by God. The existence of bad leaders does not negate the need for good leadership especially in times like these. There is an appropriate relationship that members of the church are meant to have with those who are called to lead the church.

1. You cannot concede everything to even the best spiritual leaders. Jesus makes this point abundantly clear in the gospels to his closest followers.

Matthew 23:8–10 ESV

But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.

No matter how spiritual a person may seem, no matter how many followers they may have, no man’s teaching and guidance should be blindly followed. This is the danger that we find in certain circles of believers and when their leaders fall, they’re often left disillusioned. But if they would have just gone directly to the Scriptures and asked the Lord to teach them, they would have been able to see the warning signs of bad leadership. False teachers and bad pastors have been around forever, there is nothing new here and it’s the responsiblity of all believers to discern correctly. Just becasue someone has the title of pastor doesn’t make him/her a good one. Our attitude towards any spiritual leaders should mirror that of the Bereans in the book of Acts.

Acts 17:11 (ESV)

Now these Berean Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

The person that is in question here is the apostle Paul, even his teaching was cross-examined by the Bereans but this was balanced by an eagerness to receive the word. There are people who are just downright critical and though, they are quick to examine what is being taught, they are not eager to accept truth even when it is consistent with the Scriptures. A Christian of noble character is able to eagerly accept a leader’s teaching while at the same time examining what is being said according to the Bible.

2. Now, the problem that we have here in the Bay Area is usually the opposite one. And that is the second issue: people don’t concede anything to church leadership. Unfortunately, some will even use these verses to argue that there shouldn’t be any positions of leadership and authority in the church which is a gross misunderstanding of what Jesus is trying to teach us. What he is warning us about is over reliance on leaders not the removal of all leadership from the church. If that wasn’t the case, it would be inconsistent for Jesus to set up the original 12 apostles and then for the apostles to then appoint other leaders in the church. And in relationship to these leaders, there is clear instruction left for the church.

Hebrews 13:17 ESV

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

In a place like the Bay Area which is extremeley individualistic, the indirect result is that people won’t submit themselves under any form of leadership. When pastors encourage you to come to church regularly, to serve faithfully, to attend prayer meetings, and take the classes that are offered, we are doing what we can to watch over your souls. And if you disagree with a methods of a church and you have no desire to sumbit to what is reasonable, then it’s probably time to move onto another church where you can joyfully submit to its leadership and make their job easier.

To this end, I think it’s important for every member of the congregation to understand the primary role of leadership in the church as it is outlined for us in these verses. (A brother from church once asked me what I do all day: Do you just read the bible and pray? I told him, yeah something like that). But here is what Christians leaders are called to do all day:

To equip the saints for the work of ministry. The bulk of ministry was meant to be done by the congregation not by paid staff. The slogan for “Home Depot” is fitting for the church: You can do it, we can help.

To build up the body of Christ and to strengthen it so that the church can fulfill her purpose.

To grow the unity of the congregation in terms of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. We are called protect the unity of the church by ensuring that we all share a common faith and that we are all following the same Jesus Christ.

Matthew 24:24 ESV

For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.

To move every member of the church towards maturity and to not settle or be content until we all reach the stature of the fullness of Christ together.

If I would have read this job description before I became a pastor, I don’t know if I would have signed up for this. A friend of mine in ministry shared how we have an impossible task, we have get people to voluntarily come to church on their day off so that we can yell at them and have thme pay us for the privilege. He was obviously joking in part but sometimes, it does feel like that and other days, it feels like the greatest calling to be a part of what God is doing in each of your lives.

Now, you’ll notice that the role of Christians leaders is to focus mainly on the communal growth of the church as opposed to thinking just about individual members. And this is where it can be very difficult to get complete buy in from those who don’t see that the path to personal growth is through the community which brings us to the second point. Peronal growth is dependent on community. Consider this simple fact…your growth as a human being has always been dependent on relationships. As a child your were dependent on your family to shape you. As an adolescent, your friends and teachers were instrumental in your development. Even as adults, our co-workers, mentors, and poeople we respect help us become who we are. In the same way, our spiritual growth as individual members of the church is tied directly to the rest of the body.

Now as a caveat, there are some good things that have come from a healthy individualism. Traditional cultures can confine people to a certain status in life. Obligations to family and community can limit the pursuit of personal dreams. And healthy individualism does allow people to break free from traditional views of honor and success so that we can follow our passions and do the things that suit the way we have been created. When I was growing up as an Asian American here in the Bay Area, we used to joke that there were only three acceptable professions in life, doctor, lawyer, and engineer.

(That would mean most of you are in unacceptable careers and back in the day, computer engineers didn’t count.). A sister shared with me her mom’s reaction to her getting a job at Google. After she received the offer letter, she was so excited to tell her mom the good news but instead of sharing her joy, she asked, “Why are you working for them? All they do is give out free things. Who can make money on the internet?” Luckily, success is no longer defined by three career paths and becoming a musician, an artist, a chef, even a small business owner is seen as cool. And there are clearly some benefits that come from a healthy individualism but like many things in life, the danger is found in the extremes and over the last 10-20 years, we have begun to see the negative impact that excessive individualism can have in society. The growing isolation, division, and tribalism can all be traced back to this extreme individualism that we find currently.

It’s not hard to see how this rampant individualism in our society will set the stage for the final days before the return of Christ as Paul describes:

2 Timothy 3:1–5 ESV

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

When people are in community, you can’t easily devolve into this level of evil but in isolation and apart from relationships, people become increasingly wicked. It’s simply alarming the increase in crime, mass shootings, strange behavior, and just the wierdness of people as we emerge out of this pandemic. Even among Chrisitans, we can see the the inverse relationship between spiritual maturity and commitment to community. The more individualistic a person is, the greater the chance that they are not as mature or as developed as they might believe.

And this correlation between maturity and community should make perfect sense. Until you begin to build community with a variety of different people, some that might even rub you the wrong way, you don’t necessarily see the areas of sin, immaturity, and the character flaws that remain hidden if no one really knows you. The bottom line is that you need a community to grow personally. At the end of the day, no one can say to themselves, “Almost everyone thinks I have problems but I don’t care because I love myself and that’s all that matters.” I hope you see how preposterous that sounds but more and more frequently I run into people who think they can grow separately from community. That’s the hollow deception that comes from a highly individualistic point of view.

But in contrast to this currentr culture, Christianity offers us a much healthier balance that takes into consideration both our individuality along with our need to be deeply connected to others in order to grow into maturity. In the Scriptures, Paul’s favorite analogy for the church is that we are the body of Christ. This analogy that seems so simple and cliche, is still the best picture of what it means to be an individual member of something far greater than the sum of its parts. When I tore my achilles tendon some years ago, I learned a great deal about my body. One of the lessons I learned through physical therapy is that if a part of the body grows disproportionately stronger than other areas of the body, for example one leg becoming more dominant than the other, you run into a world of problems physiologically. The entire body needs to grow together in order for all the parts to be healthy and that’s exactly the picture of the church that we see at the end of our passage.

“...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.”

At the end of the day, an individualistic view of the world doesn’t take into consideration the purpose of Christian relationships which is to build each other up in love because we are all intricately connected to gether. As the apostle Paul writes:

1 Corinthians 12:26–27 (ESV)

If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

If we know that this is the purpose of our relationships in the church, it becomes much easier to speak the truth in love with one another.

Conclusion

Sadly, the ethics of an individualistic society is driven by this false notion that as long as I don’t hurt someone, I’m free to live the way I want. But things are never that clear cut and as Christians we can never allow our morals to reach such a low baseline. How do you know that premarital sex isn’t damaging to your community? How can you be sure that your failure to committ to a church isn’t having a negative impact? Though we are certainly free to live the way we want, the question that we should be asking ourseves is not whether we are harming someone else, the real question is are we being as loving as possible. Is my exercise of freedom consistent with the love of Christ.

Very early on in the development of this nation, a social critic by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville made a very accurate analysis of the future of “Democracy in America”. When individual freedom is taken to the extreme, it can become poisonous to a society and unravel the ties of family, neighborhood, and nation. He was concerned that self-absorbed people who felt no connection to community would only be concerned about their own individual pursuits. Eventually this would erode involvement in societies and organizations that kept you accountable to a certain degree of human decency and kindness. We know that across the board, participation in neighborhood associations, churches, synogogues, civic organiztions are all at decreasing. Ironically, extreme individualism begins to erode the fabric of democracy which is dependent on these types of institutions.

And yet, it is in the midst of this decaying society that Christian community can shine most brightly. We are told that happiness and fulfillment comes through pursuing our own dreams even at the expense of relationships and yet we are more lonely, more anxious, and more depressed than previous generations. The Scriptures and our own experiences in life, teach us that true happiness and fulfillment come as we are a part of a loving community, where people trust one another, serve one another, and help each other overcome the difficulties of life so that we might become all that God intended us to be. And to this end, I know of no community that is better fit to accomplish this then a community that models on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who gave His life so that we might become a radically new community built on the foundation of His love.