Thayer Thursday – How are you doing spiritually?
If somebody asked: “How are you doing spiritually?” I would venture to say that most of us would immediately begin to take inventory of a few select personal activities.
Namely, most of us would recount how frequently over the past month or two we’d read the scriptures, spent time in prayer, and maybe how much we’d served other people.
That tends to be how we assess our spiritual health. We look in a mirror and assess only what we see: ourselves.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Each of us must make a personal decision to follow Jesus and spiritual disciplines we perform on our own can greatly benefit to our relationship with the Lord.
However, several years ago I began to realize that in many ways I’d individualized what God set up as a corporate endeavor.
Our discipleship – our active pursuit to become more like Jesus – was never intended to take place in silos.
Part of the function of the body of Christ, the church, is to encourage and challenge each other in that discipleship.
Ephesians 4 is one of the clearest areas of scripture we find this described. In Ephesians 4:11-16, Paul paints a beautiful picture of what is attained when the body of Christ comes together in unity, each part serving their own function:
11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
In this passage, Paul takes everybody’s individual gifts and applies them to the body. Rather than emphasizing the individual’s maturity through the exercise of their God given gifts, he emphasizes the corporate maturity that is a result of everybody using their gifts together.
In other words, our maturity in the faith, our ability to “attain the full measure of the fullness of Christ” and to be guarded against deceitful teaching and wickedness is to be united together.
Discipleship is inextricably linked with community.
However, our tendency is to go it alone. Our tendency is to assess our spiritual maturity on an individual level rather than realizing that God never intended us to live our faith and become mature on our own.
In fact, Paul paints so strong a picture that it seems impossible to become mature unless we are bound together with the community of believers. This is why community is so important in the life of a believer in Jesus Christ.
Discipleship isn’t something that is a personal pursuit.
The unity we share in Christ, that already exists between believers, is to be guarded. The gifts we have are to be used not to our own ends but to the benefit of the maturity and unity of the entire body of Christ. While we must each individually choose to follow Jesus, we are not to follow Him alone.
You need the body and the body needs you.
Chris Thayer
Categories: Biblical Theology, Blog, Ministry, New Testament
Chris, I loved this! I talked about a very similar topic on my blog this week and I think it’s fantastic when we Christian bloggers collaborate without even meaning to. Great topic!
by Matthew Gaither on Sep 28, 2013 at 12:27 am