All Scripture quotations are taken from the English Standard Version, 2016 Ed. (ESV)

So we’ve seen what our obligations are to each other as members of God’s family, and brothers and sisters in that family. Then, we examined how a brotherly attitude should naturally work out in everyday relationships. And lastly, we marked the most prevalent of obstacles that stand in the way of most western believers living out true, heartfelt, and affectionate, brotherly love.

But we’ve yet to look at the big picture of the Lord’s body on earth, and remind ourselves of the main purposes for our lives as believers and partners in the body of Christ. The question that needs to be answered is, “how does our love for each other promote the major missions given to us as the assembly of God”?

First, we’ll outline our main purposes in living on this earth as God’s people. And then we’ll discover how our brotherly love fulfills those purposes in practical and specific ways.

So, what are the main purposes of Jesus’s body on earth? In essence, you could describe all of them in the statement, “The assembly of God exists on earth to make Jesus increasingly known to more and more people by obeying His teachings through the Holy Spirit’s power.” But this mission statement can be broken down into three main components:

  1. Serve the Body.
  2. Build Up the Body.
  3. Unite the Body.

All three of these phases of the Assembly’s mission are found in the landmark passage of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, in chapter 4, and verses 7-8, 11-16, which reads:

“But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says,

            ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.’

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 theunity 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 be 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 I sthe 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.” (ESV)

Using the subjects that we’ve already noted, we’ll briefly explain Paul’s description here for the body of Messiah, and how its purposes are worked out.

Serve the Body

To start off, we can see here that the service of the Assembly is universal, equipped, and primary. If we were to try to describe the main mission of all Christians on earth with one word, we would do very well to use the word, “serve.” Serve who, though? God? Of course – but service of God always manifests itself in service of others. Further, Christian service is focused on the service of believers for one another. In this whole passage, Paul says nothing specific about believers’ interactions with the world. Rather, all three of our purposes are focused on our relationships with the brethren.

So, the first characteristic of our service is that it’s universal. Paul starts by saying that each one of us has been given “grace” according to “Christ’s gift.” He has just been referring to what all believers have in common, so it’s clear that he’s saying that all believers have a gift of grace that’s been given them in the service of the brethren. This is confirmed by the facts that Paul supports his point by quoting an Old Testament passage describing the Messiah as giving “gifts to men,” and then by him listing a series of leadership gifts that Jesus has given to His people in verse 11, beginning with apostles, and ending with teachers.

Further, the believers’ service is equipped by these gifted leaders in verse 11. The Lord, Paul says, has bestowed to His people certain specialized leadership roles, whose function it is “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry” (v. 12). From this purpose we can also learn that the service of the body of Christ is entrusted to all believers, since Paul says that “the saints” are the ones prepared “for the work of the ministry”. The Greek word Paul uses for “ministry,” simply means “service,” or any act of meeting needs, whether physical or spiritual.

But there is clearly an integral part for the leaders of the Assembly here, since it’s their responsibility to equip, or “fully supply,” the rest of the saints to work in service. How do they do this? Through their leadership and teaching, obviously. This can be deduced from the fact that all these types of men have some speaking and teaching role.

In spite of the primary importance of the leaders to equip the rest of the body to perform service, it’s still those other saints who are doing this service. Thus, there is no place here for something like a “one-man ministry,” or a division between clergy and laity.

Build Up the Body

Next, we come to the aim of believers’ service of each other. According to Paul’s words, we could understand this goal as strengthening, maturing, educating, and stimulating the body. As mentioned earlier, the simple way Paul puts it is as the “building up the body of Christ.” By describing God’s people as Messiah’s body, Paul is communicating at least three main truths. First, it’s that Christians on earth represent and embody Jesus through His Spirit on the earth. That is, Jesus is accomplishing all of His goals on the earth through His worshipers. Second, the image of His people as His body conveys the truth that each individual believer is essential to the carrying on of His work on earth. There are to be no sideline Christians. Every believer must be working with their brethren to promote the purposes of the Lord in His service. Third, the picture of God’s people as Jesus’s body also allows Paul to teach that there is potential for growth. That is, the goals that God has for His people on earth are yet to be reached.

Hence, we turn to the building of Messiah’s body. Again, it’s through every believers service of his brethren that this building process is advanced. And what is the eventual goal? That the whole body would reach “mature manhood,” “the fullness of Christ,” and be matured “in every way” (v. 13, 15). It’s clear that what Paul is speaking of is the moral, mental, and behavioral perfection of the entire group of believers on earth. Thus, the service of believers needs to be effective in stimulating others so that their thinking, affections, and desires are increasingly made like those of Jesus, as expressed in their specific situations and personalities. And how will this change come about? Through the only instrument God has given by which people’s minds may be changed – the truth.

This is why Paul explains that the path to leaving spiritual childhood, which causes a believer to be tossed by unbiblical teaching, and cunning, crafty, deceit, is through “speaking the truth in love”. If you look at the original Greek term that he uses for “speaking the truth,” however, you’ll find that all he does is make up a word – truthing. He simply turns the Greek word for “truth” into a verb, as if he’s saying, “being truthful in love.” Therefore, we see from this statement that the primary way in which Christians grow in Christlikeness is by hearing, understanding, and obeying the truth of God’s Word. And from whom is that truth supposed to come? From every believer, whether he be an evangelist, teacher, plumber, construction worker, accountant, or janitor. Hence, it’s the responsibility of every Christian to work for the increasing Christlikeness of his brothers and sisters.

But this maturity from the mutual strengthening and stimulating of the body won’t stop at internal building, but also include numerical growth. This is taught from the truth that the Lord specifically didn’t instruct His apostles and first disciples in Jerusalem to stay there as a separated and isolated community of Christians, but to “Go and make disciples of all the nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you . . .” (Mt. 28:19, 20).

Likewise, Peter describes the main purposes of the Lord’s people on earth as His representatives in this majestic mission statement,
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” – 1 Peter 2:9

Basically, what Peter’s saying is that the Lord formed His people on earth as His heavenly representatives to proclaim the gospel to sinners, and call them out of darkness, and into light. That is, one of the main purposes of God’s people on earth is to evangelize and multiply servants of Jesus.

But what is the connection between the spiritual growth of Christ’s body, and the gaining of unbelievers to the faith? Just this – as Christians become more like Jesus, they’ll increasingly make Him known to non-Christians, and so be more and more used by God to save them through the gospel. One of the chief reasons why we so often fail to see unbelievers come to faith is because we are so unlike Jesus, and living so contrary to His instructions given through the apostles.

But as we grow in our character and numbers, we should all be looking forward to the ultimate manifestation of our maturity – intellectual and experiential unity.

Unify the Body

As you could tell as were walking through this passage, we skipped over a major point of Paul’s description of the Lord’s body in verse 13. He writes that the saints serve each other as they’re equipped to continually build up the Lord’s body “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God”. You can see two elements of this unity from these words – faith and knowledge.

First, believers are to be built up in Christlikeness until they’re all united in “the faith,” or the collection of teachings about Jesus that have been handed down by the apostles and their assistants. In other words, by “the faith,” Paul has in mind the main teachings of the New Testament, and their universal implications for all believers of every era. The apostle’s “vision” of the end goal of the Assembly’s work together is that all members of the body on earth would eventually holistically understand the gospel and its implications for their thinking and behavior. Second, the body of Christ will continue to build itself up until we reach the unity “of the knowledge of the Son of God.” In other words, as a result of understanding the faith, the end goal is that all believers on earth would know experientially virtually all it means that Jesus is “the Son of God.” By “knowledge,” therefore, Paul’s not thinking of head knowledge, but of heartfelt and spiritual love and recognition of Jesus for all that He is to us – which works itself out in practical, lifestyle, obedience to Him. To sum up, I believe that Paul is describing the ultimate goal of the Assembly’s building on earth as being the intellectual, moral, and spiritual maturity of every believer, to their fullest capacity. Obviously, we’ve yet to reach that point.

Having said this, how does brotherly love fit into this service, building up, and unifying work of the body?