Search Results for: spiritual gifts

On Church, Part 2: What’s in It for You

February 28, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We’ve noted that some people resist committing to a local church, and I think we’ve demonstrated that their reasons for doing so are short-sighted. Even in a broken world with broken institutions full of broken people, surrounding yourself with your fellow travelers—and committing to them—is not only worth it, but it’s a mark of personal and social health.

So why get involved? Several reasons.

First, social health. It really isn’t good for man—male or female—to be alone. Sure, there are introverts, and they’re not weird or antisocial or dangerous. But introversion and isolation are not the same thing, and we all need healthy relationships with other people. It broadens our outlook, it imports a wealth of experiences and wisdom, and it keeps us normal.

But there are reasons beyond that. Any old social club can broaden your outlook. What else?

Committing to a local church connects you with other believers—fellow travelers, as I called them above—and those connections are part of God’s plan for your spiritual growth. When you were converted, you didn’t just find the fire escape from hell; you began a life-long process of spiritual growth, of increasing Christ-likeness, superintended by the Spirit of God himself (2Co 3.18). He uses various instruments to keep you climbing that mountain—the Scripture (Ac 20.32), prayer (Heb 4.18), and interaction with other believers (Eph 4.29). As your fellow believers interact with you and exercise their spiritual gifts on your behalf, you’re going to be helped, even propelled, on your trek up that mountain. I could use the help; couldn’t you?

If you won’t commit to a local assembly of believers, chances are that you’re losing battles in your mind and in your home because you’re trying to fight alone, and you’re getting outflanked every day. And chances are that you’re not that serious about studying your Bible—really getting into it up to your eyeballs, and applying every day the things that you’re learning there. And chances are further that prayer isn’t that a big a deal to you—or that it doesn’t seem to be making a genuine connection.

The means of grace matter. And the assembly is one of them.

One more benefit of committing—and here I mean committing specifically by becoming an official member.

You ought to join your church because if you don’t, you can’t get kicked out.

Well, that was blunt. Perhaps I should explain.

An important part of your soul care, endorsed and even commanded by Jesus himself, is accountability to the fellow believers who know you best—your local assembly. When you’re headed for trouble, God’s plan is that you’ll be surrounded by people who know God and who love you and who are willing to invest the time necessary to see to the care of your soul. I’m not talking here about busybodies or snoops or gossips; I’m talking about people who genuinely love you and are ready to sacrifice their time, their money, their prayers, and their energy for your good. Maybe they’ll do that by helping you move, or cooking you a meal or three, or watching your kids when you have to go to the doctor. But one of the ways they’ll do that is by lovingly encouraging you to walk with them on the road to Christ-likeness. They’ll tell you, lovingly and graciously, when you’ve said or done something you shouldn’t. They’ll forgive you when you apologize; they’ll pray with you even if you’re crying and the whole thing is really awkward. And they’ll love you through it all.

Jesus said that if the church does that, and the sinning person (you, in this instance) will not repent, they slowly ratchet up the pressure until you do the right thing and have peace restored to your soul. And if you still resist, they are to remove you from the church as a way of increasing pressure on you to repent—even as they long and pray that you will repent and be restored to fellowship.

But if you’re not a member, they can’t kick you out. By not joining, you’re depriving God of one of the instruments he uses for your eternal spiritual good.

You’ve left the front door unlocked, and you’re in serious danger.

Don’t do that. Join.

Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

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Dan’s Top Ten List

December 27, 2018 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Since it’s customary for bloggers to post a “top-ten” list at the end of the year, I thought I’d do the same. I didn’t do one last year, because I’d only been blogging since the previous July, and it seemed silly to do a top-ten list for less than 6 months’ worth of material. But so as not to leave those 6 months unaccounted for, I’m going to include them in this year’s inventory.

So here’s my all-time top-ten list, for what it’s worth.

10. On Calling God by His First Name. One of my personal favorites.

9. One Tiny Reason Why I’m Not a Secular Humanist. Confession time.

8. Those Spiritual Gifts Tests? Maybe You Ought to Ignore Them. Don’t put words in God’s mouth.

7. On Sexual Assault, Due Process, and Supreme Court Nominations. Wading into the fray.

6. What Jury Duty Taught Me about Comment Threads. My first post.

5. Freak Out Thou Not. This Means You. A common theme; worth a hashtag, I guess.

4. I Was Born That Way. Bringing biblical theology to bear on a controversy.

3. Pants on Fire. What ever happened to telling the truth?

2. Are We Doing Church Wrong? A biblical teaching that reoriented my life many years ago.

And number 1 …

1. The Great Sin of the Evangelical Right. Sacrificing the permanent on the altar of the immediate.

I’ve noticed a trend that doesn’t surprise me and won’t surprise you either. Rants get clicks.

I’m not going to pander to that.

Onward.

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7 Stabilizing Principles in a Chaotic World, Part 4

July 23, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Number 3: Giftedness. You can’t do everything, but you can do something. Do what you can.

A consequence of providence is that God has directed in your life as well as in the life of the planet. Your conception, birth, and life circumstances are not random or accidental; they are purposeful, and better yet, those purposes come from a good and great person, whose interest in you is entirely benevolent.

There are people in Scripture of whom that is said specifically. Jeremiah comes most easily to mind (Jer 1.4-10); God created him for a specific purpose. Of course, we’re not all formed for the same purpose he was; but if you’ll think about the arc of the biblical storyline, everybody fits into the story, bringing it to its next level of development. Purpose runs through all of it.

Now, we’re not part of biblical history; we’re a couple of millennia later. But the biblical story itself indicates that we’re part of the plan too. First, Jesus clearly thought of those of us who would believe on him later, and he prayed for our success in his plan (John 17.20-26). And second, the extensive biblical material on spiritual gifts (Rom 12, 1 Cor 12-14, Eph 4, 1 Pet 4) indicates that the Spirit has gifted each of us individually according to his purposes for us in his church, the body of Christ (1 Cor 12.4-11).

The fact that there have been some odd teachings about spiritual gifts over the years doesn’t mean that spiritual gifts themselves should be downplayed or viewed with suspicion. God has gifted you—if you are a believer—in specific ways to enable you to serve him.

You’re good at something. Or somethings. By divine design, and for powerful purposes. You may need to get some experience before you become really facile at what you’re good at (2 Tim 1.6), but the gift is there.

What does all this have to do with the chaos of the present?

Everything.

Perhaps you’ve experienced an event where everything was moving so fast that you just froze. Had no idea what to do. There are people whose professions put them in those situations all the time. EMTs arriving at a multi-car accident scene—what do you do first? They’ll tell you that they have to fall back on their training; they have to stay calm and work through the processes that they’ve been taught. Survey the scene to ensure that it’s safe to enter. Then survey the victims to determine which ones are beyond hope. (There are ways to do that, the details of which, for the sake of the squeamish, I won’t go into here.) Then move to those in need of the most rapid intervention—typically, those not breathing.

And so on. Do what you’re trained to do, one thing at a time. Make the difference you can make.

I suspect you’re not an EMT, but you’re very much in a parallel situation. You come across things every day that you find grievous, or fearsome, or enraging. How do you respond?

Well, you can be a sucker, and just get angrier, which is what the social-media poster likely wants you to do.

Or you can do something. You can make a difference.

What can you do? Well, that depends on who you are, and how God has gifted you.

Are you a bulldog, with a character that radiates rugged persistence? Then find a need that’s going to take some time and energy to accomplish—just one need—and work on that.
Are you characterized by mercy, a heart that breaks for the pain you hear about? Then pick one of those situations that’s within your reach—in your community, in your circle of acquaintances, connected to you in some way—and make the connection and help bring grace and peace to the hurting.
Are you more of a thinker than a doer? Then do some thinking about the thing that troubles you, and propose a solution or two, and get it out to the people who can make a difference. (As I’ve said before, if you’re not a thinker, shut up and do the things you’re good at. :-) )

You can sit there and stew, giving in to the fear or the anger or the frustration.

Or you can do some good, based on God’s kind providence in your life.

Which is the better choice?

Well, if everyone around you really is in the image of God, then I think the choice is obvious.

Bloom where you’re providentially planted.

Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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On Ministry, Part 10: Summary

July 27, 2026 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

So what have we learned?

We’ve started with the premise that although there is a place for “full-time Christian service” and a “vocational ministry,” the Scripture calls all believers to “the ministry” in a certain sense. We are all called to serve one another, to be servants at heart and in action (1Co 12.5). Service follows logically from the second great commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mk 12.31).

What should that service look like? Well, because we are each gifted and talented in different ways, we will render services of different sorts and levels of influence. But there will be some guiding principles and common characteristics.

Probably the fundamental defining characteristic is that the minister is not focused on his own needs; he is thinking of and working on behalf of others. This is the essential characteristic of love, the obligation of every follower of Jesus.

We must admit that we all fall far short of this expectation. We simply cannot consistently elevate the needs of others above our own. This is going to require divine enablement, which we receive through the person of the Son–we are “in him” (Ep 3.6)–and the means of grace, including Scripture, prayer, and fellowship. These are powerful enablers, ones that few of us recognize as essential to our daily, serious practice.

We’ve noted that there are church offices in which some Christians serve full-time in “ministry.” The seriousness of the qualifications for these offices (1Ti 3.1-13; Titus 1.5-9) evidence just how seriously we “laity” should take our own “ministry” in the body.

We start this process by caring about the truth. We learn, from our pastor’s preaching and from our own diligent and well-informed study, what the Scripture teaches–that’s called “doctrine”–and conform our thinking and teaching, either to groups or one on one, to it. If we’re loving others, then we’re influencing them in the direction of revealed divine truth, not our own opinions or priorities.

Paul’s case studies in ministry–widows (1Ti 5.3-16) and elders (1Ti 5.17-25)–demonstrate that the church should see to it that the needs of these specific classes are met. We should all play a part in that, and we should expand that care and provision to all the manifold types of people that participate in the body of Christ.

I suppose we could summarize the rest of the subject under two main responsibilities.

First, take it seriously. Give this task serious thought; prioritize this thoughtfulness throughout the life of the church. What should we be doing? How should we do these things responsibly and effectively? What specific things am I particularly qualified to do, and what things should be better assigned to those with different gifts and circumstances? This will likely call for thoughtful and careful coordination across the church body.

But there’s also a place for keeping certain things to yourself. You can perform acts of service that no one else knows about, not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing (Mt 6.3). As an elder I once had a church member hand me an envelope–a thick one–with the name of a young couple in the church and ask me to deliver it to them anonymously. Nobody needed to know.

Second, keep at it. We’ve mentioned the sequence of Paul’s imperatives here: contentment, loyalty, commitment. When all is said and done, Just Do It. And keep doing it.

This is not easy. No one said it would be.

But it’s glorious. The joy it brings, even in the midst of a congregation of sinners, is inexpressible. There are heavenly rewards, of course, which the Bible talks about (2Ti 4.8; 1P 5.4)–so it’s not unspiritual to be motivated by them. But the earthly rewards in joy and unity and quiet satisfaction are sufficient.

As they should be, for serving such a Master.

Next time, the promised New Testament background to Paul’s appeal to Caesar.

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Demystifying Discipleship, Part 4: What, and Where / How?

January 15, 2026 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Why Disciple? | Part 3: When?

As I anticipated in the previous post, I think a couple “journalism questions” remain for our survey of discipleship:

What happened when you were converted?

Where do you go from here?

And because I’ve written on these questions here before, I think a couple of links and a comment or two might be sufficient for this post.

We begin discipling a new convert by explaining to him where he is, or what happened to him when he came to Christ in repentance and faith (or, in today’s common expression, “got saved”). God was doing things in his heart before that happened, and a whole raft of things, many of which he didn’t notice, happened to him at the moment of conversion. And God’s work will continue in him in the days ahead, and for the rest of his life.

He needs to know these things in order to understand his place in God’s plan now.

I’ve written about those things in this series, using the analogy of opening presents at Christmas. It’s a long series (22 posts!), because it needs to be.

We conclude by answering the question “Where do we go from here?” To some degree the last few posts of the series linked above will help to answer this question—there’s progressive sanctification and filling and glorification—but our new brother will need some help with getting there—with fulfilling his responsibilities in the shared (“synergistic”) work of progressive sanctification.

For these helps, I suggest another earlier series, in which I use the analogy of working out, or building muscle. That’s just 6 posts, covering what we call the three (or maybe five) “means of grace.” It’s a subject that I think is taught less clearly than it ought to be these days.

May we all comprehend, and apprehend, our inheritance and our responsibilities in this remarkable spiritual journey.

Photo by Nathan McDine on Unsplash

Demystifying Discipleship, Part 1: Introduction

January 5, 2026 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We hear a lot about discipleship in the church these days. Pastors and teachers often point out that discipleship is the focus of the Great Commission (we’ll get to that in a bit), but a recent Barna study (2022) concluded that while about 56% of Christians are being discipled, only about 33% are discipling others.

A couple of caveats.

Accurate surveying is a complicated business; minor inattention can produce huge errors, and every survey that does its statistical work prudently will report a certain “margin of error,” usually 3 to 7 percent, based on sample size and other factors. (The margin of error in this study is +/- 1.5% at 95% confidence.) But even a very large sample size can yield unreliable results—as is the case in virtually every Facebook poll, in which the respondents self-select. That said, Barna is a well-regarded research group.

Nowhere does the article report how Barna defined “Christian”; it says simply that the respondents self-identified as Christian. (I didn’t read the study itself, which is behind a paywall.) Given Barna’s history, I think it’s safe to assume that they were interacting with evangelicals.

The article also doesn’t define “discipleship,” though I’m sure the study itself does. Given that only 56% percent of Christians are “being discipled,” I’m confident that the definition does not include pulpit ministry.

With those factors in mind, I think we can take the percentages as reasonably accurate. That said, though the percentage of Christians who are being discipled is significantly higher than the percentage of those who are discipling others, I still think it’s lower than it ought to be; and the number of those discipling others is disturbingly low.

When a subset of the survey group was asked why they’re not discipling anyone, the most common response was that they didn’t think they were qualified. I rather suspect that apathy and/or fear play a larger role than the survey indicates, but because people are not likely to give answers that find fault with themselves, I doubt that any survey would yield reliable data on that question.

So then. A large percentage of self-proclaimed Christians are rendering only casual obedience, if that, to Jesus’ last command.

Maybe we should try to clarify, in a few posts, what discipleship is all about.

I plan to proceed by tracking the basic journalistic questions:

Why should we disciple others?

What does discipleship consist of?

When should we call for a decision in evangelism?

What should we teach the disciple about salvation? (This will consist of a blog series I posted some years ago. A link will suffice.)

How should the disciple be enabled to grow? (This too will be an earlier series on this blog.)

We’ll start down this path next time.

Part 2: Why Disciple? | Part 3: When? | Part 4: What, and Where / How?

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On Discipline, Part 1: Perspective

July 22, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

No, I’m not referring to child-rearing, but to how we discipline ourselves. It’s a truism that if you aim at nothing, you’ll certainly hit it. Pretty much everybody understands that you have to set goals, and then persist in pursuing them, in order to accomplish anything worthwhile.

There’s a whole industry of advisors, people who are happy to coach you on making the best of life—whether on the secular side or on the spiritual. Reading these works discerningly and thoughtfully can be highly profitable.

More reliably, though, the Scripture addresses this topic extensively. A series of blog posts is not the place for a comprehensive survey of the biblical theology of personal discipline, but it’s reasonable to focus on a single passage that concentrates on the idea.

I find such a passage in Philippians 4. It’s a concise presentation, and a familiar one; many Christians have memorized the passage, or at least parts of it. In verses 4-9, I find a list of five aspects of our lifestyle—what the King James translators called “conversation”—that we ought to discipline in certain ways. Lord willing, I’ll devote a post to each of the five.

The section opens with Paul’s goal for his (and our) perspective:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice (Php 4.4).

Our view of things, he says, should be consistently joyful.

Several things to note about that.

First, this is Paul writing. He has not had an easy life; as he has already noted in this short epistle, he has sacrificed early professional success to follow Jesus (Php 3.4-11), and a few years earlier he has listed for the church in Corinth a litany of hardship (2Co 11.23-29). Even as he writes these words, he is under house arrest in Rome, waiting for a hearing before Caesar that threatens capital punishment. He is not speaking platitudes.

Second, he is writing to Philippi, a church founded out of a night in prison, an earthquake, and government opposition (Ac 16.13-40). He is about to say that this church has already given sacrificially to support his ministry from a distance (Php 4.16). There is nothing flippant or casual about what he is asking them to do.

Rejoice, he says. No, I really mean it, he repeats.

And furthermore, rejoice all the time.

Rejoice in the good times; rejoice in the bad. Rejoice in success; rejoice in failure.

Rejoice in house arrest. Rejoice in the inner prison.

Interestingly, Paul lives that out. He has already written here that his arrest has yielded good things (Php 1.12-14), and he will go on to say that there are now saints in Caesar’s household (Php 4.22)—though we don’t know whether they became saints as a direct result of his appeal to Caesar.

Now for the fifty-dollar question—how does he do it? How does Paul rejoice in the midst of suffering and injustice greater than you (probably) or I have ever experienced? And by extension, how are we to “rejoice … always”?

The ellipsis provides the answer: “rejoice in the Lord always.”

There’s a lot packed into that tiny prepositional phrase.

What does it mean to “rejoice in the Lord”?

At its purest, it means simply to rejoice in God himself—who he is, and what he does. Meditation on him brings great delight.

But God knows that we are dust, and he understands that we are consistently motivated by self-interest. He graciously works benefits to us, in which we can then rejoice. The blessings of salvation are profitable topics for meditation, as are answers to prayer. (Sidebar: if you don’t pray much, or at all, you’re depriving yourself of the joy that comes from seeing prayers answered.) The confidence that comes from following his will, even through valleys (Ps 23.4), is reason to rejoice. It’s a great gift to know that, really, everything’s going to be OK, and the hard times will eventuate in great good.

So our first step of discipline, according to this passage, is in our perspective: we discipline ourselves to see all things as causes for rejoicing.

This is life-changing.

More next time.

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Continuous Improvement, Part 2: Inch by Inch

January 18, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: No Fear

Deming’s fourteen principles included a second one that has greatly influenced my thinking: being satisfied with slow, iterative change, so long as it is constant because it is built into the system. That, too, reflects something in God’s relationship with us.

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, he has three years to save the world. We would certainly feel a lot of pressure in that situation. And that pressure would be compounded if we had to set up a system that would perpetuate itself for thousands of years—particularly if we found that our disciples unanimously and continuously Just Didn’t Get It.

A remarkable thing about Jesus’ ministry is that he never seems to be in a hurry. As he’s traveling through Galilee, he sees a funeral and stops to raise the lone widow’s only son back to life again (Lk 7.11-17). As he’s walking to a village to heal Jairus’s daughter (Lk 8.41-42), he pauses and asks, “Who touched me?” (Lk 8.45). And he takes time to talk to the woman, to comfort and encourage her. Though he sometimes expresses frustration over the thickheadedness of his disciples, he doesn’t fire them and look for someone else. At the end of his earthly ministry, though they are still essentially numbskulls, he instructs them patiently and at length about what’s coming next and what their responsibilities will be.

A little improvement here, a little improvement there. That’s good. We’re moving in the right direction.

It should be no surprise, then, that he works with us in the same way. At our conversion, a lot happens from the divine side, but we’re still just babies, dependent on constant care, feeding on milk and not solid food (He 5.12; 1P 2.2). Yet God has committed himself to us for the long term, uniting our efforts with his in the lifelong process called sanctification (Php 2.12-13). With our active participation, he begins to conform us to the character of his Son, a process that will take our entire lifetimes, even with the Spirit’s empowerment. And even at the end, we still won’t be there, and God will have to take us the rest of the way to perfect Christ-likeness—and he certainly will (1J 3.2).

He knows, of course, that all along that lifelong pathway we’ll stumble, sometimes from weakness, sometimes from inattention, sometimes from sheer bone-headedness. Even Paul didn’t do any better than that (Ro 7.14-25).

But our Father is utterly committed to our long-term reclamation, and he is in this with us for the long haul. He knows our dusty frame (Ps 103.14), and he knows that we’re going to progress in tiny steps, and that sometimes we’ll take steps backward. Though we are frustrated by the fickleness of our love for God and by the consequent inconsistency of our spiritual growth, he is not.

Why not?

Because God’s plans are never frustrated.

And because he loves us.

We’re going to get there, by God’s grace and with his empowerment. You can take that to the bank.

So, every day, we seek continuous improvement. As my pastor said recently, we just take the next step. What that next step is, is different for each of us, but by God’s grace we can see that far, and we can take the step in confidence that he will empower it.

I hope you don’t take this brief series to imply that God is following Deming’s fourteen principles; God is what he is timelessly, and Deming, through common grace, is following God’s principles rather than vice versa.

It shouldn’t surprise us that God is the perfect Father, the perfect Master, the perfect Director and Accomplisher of his good and eternal plans—that he has delivered us from all fear and empowered us to become like Christ, no matter how long it takes or how slow and inconsistent the process.

Take the next step, with confidence.

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On Fun, Part 3: Loving Your Neighbor

October 5, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: It’s Good | Part 2: On Purpose

Jesus told us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mk 12.30; Lk 10.27). As we saw in the previous post, we can and should do that in the fun times as well as in the serious ones.

But Jesus, unbidden, identified the second greatest commandment as well: love your neighbor as yourself (Mk 12.31; Lk 10.27). Is it possible for us to do that when we’re “just having fun”?

I think the question pretty much answers itself. If God’s goal for me is being like Christ, then that’s his goal for everybody I know as well. And if I can make my rest and pleasure purposeful for myself, then I can make it purposeful for my friends and associates too.

I can think of a couple of ways to do that.

First, Paul tell us to be sure that we “edify” our brothers and sisters in Christ—that is, we build them up, make them stronger. We can spend some time thinking about how we strengthen their spiritual walk through our shared entertainment experiences. For example, what are your friend’s strengths or gifts, and how can your shared leisure experiences reinforce those gifts? Is he a “people person”? Then how about doing things that bring you across the paths of others, where he can instruct, encourage, enjoy? Can he teach friends how to build a campfire, cook on it, set up a tent? I believe there’s an obvious activity that could serve that purpose. What if he’s more solitary, bookish? How about reading a book together? Visiting a historical site? Playing Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan?

Now, I know that many readers of this post will think this sounds unbearably dull. Of course. I’m intentionally trying to give examples for the hard cases. You and your friends can certainly come up with options that fit your personalities and interests more specifically. My point is that you should give it all some thought, rather than just “hanging out” unimaginatively.

I said I had a couple of ways. Here’s the flip side. The opposite of building up is tearing down. We also need to be sure that we don’t cause spiritual damage to our friends by the choices we make in having fun. What are the things your friend struggles with spiritually? (You don’t know? Then it’s time to add some substance to your friendship by talking about your spiritual strengths and weaknesses, victories and struggles.) If he has a problem in an environment dominated by bikinis, then you probably shouldn’t be going to the beach. If he’s tempted to isolate himself from others, thereby avoiding the need to love his neighbor, then maybe video games aren’t the wisest choice.

In a similar vein, we need to respect the consciences of our friends. I’ve touched on that before; let me say here that there is no legitimate place for us to encourage friends to do things that they don’t think they should do—even if we’re convinced that they’re mistaken, and their consciences are being unnecessarily strict with them. When you violate your conscience—in effect, tell it to shut up—you’re weakening it for the next time. Do that enough times, and eventually it won’t speak up at all anymore—and that, my friend, is not a place you want to be. And so it’s not a place you want your friends to be either.

So you engage in activities that you can all enjoy, that will increase your effectiveness as followers of Jesus, that will provide you all with the kind of pleasure and relaxation that God wants you to have.

There’s another general consideration I’d like to address, and then some more specific questions we can ask ourselves as we make our choices.

Next time.

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Part 4: Down with Slavery | Part 5: Question Everything

In Christ, Part 3: More Pictures

May 8, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Pictures

A picture of our union with Christ that illustrates the concept richly—and, I suppose is for that reason the most often-repeated metaphor of the concept—is that of a head and a body.

Paul particularly likes this image. He builds his key ecclesiological work, Ephesians, around it; from the very beginning, he climaxes his description of “all [the] spiritual blessings” (Ep 1.3) God has bestowed on his people with the observation that since Christ has been resurrected and exalted at the right hand of the Father (Ep 1.20-21), he is now the head of the church, which is his body (Ep 1.22-23).

He develops the concept in the next chapter by noting that in our conversion we are raised together with Christ (Ep 2.5-6). He addresses this specifically (though not, as the larger context makes clear, exclusively) to the Gentiles in the Ephesian church (Ep 2.11), exclaiming with wonder in his voice that the formerly alien peoples are now united with believers from God’s longtime chosen people, Israel (Ep 2.12-18). The partition in the Temple courtyard that had excluded Gentiles at the threat of immediate execution was now—spiritually, at least—demolished, and would be physically demolished in just a decade.

This is the first and most obvious teaching of this metaphor: if diverse peoples are all “in Christ,” then they are one with one another as well, despite their apparently insurmountable differences. Paul notes that even the angels are driven to glorify God by the sight of erstwhile enemies—Jews and Gentiles—uniting in worship to God (Ep 3.10). As I often say to my students, “What does it take to astonish people who go to work in heaven every day?”

The metaphor has other implications. We have a firm foundation, and the resultant stability, because we are in Christ (Ep 2.20). We are holy—set apart, special—because we are in the ultimately holy One (Ep 2.21). We are a fit habitation for the Holy Spirit (Ep 2.22). We have confident boldness in his presence (Ep 3.12; cf He 4.16). We have power (Ep 3.16). We have understanding (Ep 3.17-19). We bring him glory (Ep 3.21).

These are the facts. But Paul isn’t one to stop with just the facts. In the second half of his letter, he moves to the application, the response: if this is true, what should we do about it?

And here he gets meddlesome. It turns out that we can’t just sit back and enjoy our situation, our privileges, our blessings. With these privileges comes great responsibility.

As members of the body, we’re designed—and obligated—to work together.

Despite our differences.

As the angels have observed, that’s the whole point.

That’s how we bring him glory.

Since there’s one body (Ep 4.4), with diverse gifts (Ep 4.11), we need to work together, in concert, as a single organism, coordinated, graceful, mature, gainly. We need to grow up together so that the body is the right size for the head (Ep 4.13)—so that we’re rightly proportioned as a body with a perfect head.

Part of that is taking care of each other. When you get something in your eye, your finger recognizes that it is gifted to get foreign objects out of sensitive areas, and it springs into action to help out its fellow member—even though the foreign object isn’t causing the finger any discomfort whatsoever.

And so in the body of Christ we all exercise our gifts for the benefit of differently gifted members—and we accept their ministry in areas where we need help as well.

And we DO need the help.

Paul develops this metaphor further later in this epistle (Ep 5.30) and in other epistles, including one to the church the capital of the Empire (1Co 12.12-27; Ro 12.4-8). It’s a Big Idea.

And so, it turns out, we have work to do.

Photo by Wylly Suhendra on Unsplash