-These gifts, these teachers and shepherds and evangelists and prophets and apostles, these were given by Christ to the Body of Christ in order to (better) equip each and every follower of Christ - TO SERVE. Service - it is not a gift confined to only a few or a handful within the Body. It is not something that only some are cut out to do. It is THE NORM. It is part of the job description for each and every Christian. To be sure there is in fact a gift of serving (Romans 12.7), but the work of serving is for every saint, every person who names the Name of Christ, this One Who was among us as One Who served (Luke 22.27, Matthew 20.28). ‘to serve’ simply means to do something for someone else, i.e. NOT yourself. Unfortunately me-first happens to be the default position of the world - coming to Christ therefore means a complete reprogramming of our innate predisposition, all our natural tendencies to look out for numero uno. When we place our faith in Christ, He brings these gift(ed one)s to bear on our lives and His Spirit comes into our hearts and gradually He begins to transform us into - wait for it - servers. Spiritual waiters and waitresses - that is honestly the best picture of a saint - a person whose job it is to serve. Of course, a server in a restaurant is focused on serving people, and there are myriad ways to serve within the Body of Christ, in a local assembly, some of which are more people-oriented and some which are less so. Serving others is liable to be thankless work, possibly dirty, certainly incessant, as the needs of others are unabating, but the picture here is the church FULL of servers, people waiting hand and foot on ONE ANOTHER.
-But thus we see that the sum total of all Christian teaching and evangelistic and church-planting efforts should result in the production of servants. We are (or should be) ‘outfitting’ believers to become (more) suitable servants. This is the word used for mending a fishing net, and to the extent our people aren’t learning to serve, there are indeed holes in our nets. There is more to it than this of course, but this is the yardstick, it begins here.
-This service we render in turn is for building up the Body. The word is used for the construction of a house, a barn, a tower, a tomb, a temple, but only Paul uses it to picture this magnificent mother of all construction projects, a metaphysical temple (Ephesians 2.21, 1Corinthians 3.9) uniquely designed and dedicated for the celebration and showing off of God’s breathtaking goodness, whose Cornerstone (and Master-Builder) is Jesus Christ (Acts 4.11) and whose building blocks happen to also be the worker-builders. Each and every person who has trusted in Christ for eternal life has been (re)created to be a part of this building process, the Spirit of Christ actively working (or desiring to do so) in and through the life of every believer to make this temple, this Body of Christ, both bigger and stronger. If I have trusted in Christ, God has entrusted to me some level of responsibility in the building process - via serving, some way, somehow.
-So, the question is, if I am a believer in Christ, am I serving? Am I helping to make this Body bigger and stronger in some way? Am I serving? If not, I need to get up off my donkey and get in the game...
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