What does it mean to be the church? A simple enough question, but if someone is really asking what the purpose and function of Christ’s body is, there is ready and straightforward information available. Often the answers to the questions we have need to be inferred from bits and pieces that don’t deal directly with the topic, but in the case of what the church is to be about Paul makes the answer clear.
Christ Gave Gifts, to Build the Church
Jesus Himself gave the gifts of church leaders to the church. But He doesn’t necessarily give them in finished form, as the rest of the passage seems to indicate. That can serve as a background for the rest of the comments.
Already in v.12 Paul tells us that the gifts (of the leaders) that Jesus gave are for equipping the saints to serve. Who are the saints? Plainly and simply, the believers. Those who are already believers. Pastors and teachers and the rest are given to teach the believers how to serve. And to what end? That the church is built up, edified. Edification is a building up not of numbers, but of quality and finish.
Surely, some might say, this can’t be just for the believers, since the list of gifts includes evangelists. While in the New Testament the ‘evangel’, the good news, is always about Christ, it is not limited to the message of conversion, but includes all of the good news of Jesus and so certainly includes much of what would be of ongoing value to those who are already believers.
V.13 gives a marvelous view of the finished product — Unity of faith, (full) Knowledge of Christ, Maturity. Too often today we see unity of the faith being brushed aside in favor of diversity of opinion and expression. Possibly this comes from a misunderstanding of unity as a wooden conformity to a set body of belief, which is nothing more than a static uniformity devoid of life, by static we mean non-growing, non-living. Real unity is condensation of understanding that comes from a depth of understanding of God’s revelation and of each other after we have wrestled together, seen beyond ourselves and pushed aside our agendas submitting our wills to His so we can actually be a body and not a collection of individuals.
While sometimes translated with a future tense, v14 as written by Paul did not speak in the future tense but the present and carried more of the sense of what he saw as the normal state of the church. The church should be mature and see herself as such. If individuals within the church recognize they are not mature, they should take steps to resolve this. But the benefits of maturity, e.g., stability in the faith and not able to be easily detoured from the truth, are only available if the church is mature. Paul clearly saw this as the condition of the normal church and not one the church should see as a future hope.
Paul sees value in this, and the value is just as significant today, that we are not taken in by pretenders to truth. Every time a new and tasty spin on the truth comes along, whole waves of people are taken in, largely because they have no depth and breadth of understanding. The obvious, gross errors weren’t a problem for Paul, rather those who came along sounding good, sounding close, but just off enough to lead to a useless end.
This is Paul’s context for speaking the truth in love. Growth comes from speaking the truth. Agape is the way that truth speaking causes growth. Agape is not a smarmy, syrupy way of being nice, but a way that cares deeply and sacrificially for the other. It says, I cannot stand by seeing you not growing or stagnating and though it’s hard and you may not like me for a while, I have to tell you because I care about you.
Paul finishes the passage with a recursive statement about the body which should forever seal our understanding of how the church is a body. First, it takes the whole body, we all must be in this together, as one. Every joint, every part, each person, supplies what is needed for the proper functioning of the one body. Every joint, every part needs to be functioning properly. Once this proper functioning is happening, growth occurs. Growth of a type that is just short of shocking upon first reading. It is growth of the body itself. Not growth by external addition, but growth by internal maturation, unification of belief and function.
The excellent gifts that Christ gave to the church listed in v11 are for the church itself, for those who have already crossed the line of faith, for the purpose of growing to maturity.
Sheep Make Sheep
Some will say that this is an incomplete picture and that the call of the New Testament is converting the lost. In response, that simply is not the purpose of the church, Christ’s body. It is the sheep who make sheep. The church is to make healthy sheep. Healthy sheep are the way to make more sheep. To confuse the church and the sheep who make up the church prevents the church from being what she is called to be.
Sheep make up the church and Christ gave gifts to the church to build it up and equip it to serve. But sheep also live in this world. They are the point of contact between the world and the church and the means by which those in the world are ministered to by the church.
The church functioning as the church ministers to the church, equipping them to serve. The believers, the sheep, and not the church per se, make sheep. This difference is important for building a healthy church.