Renewing Discipleship
For Meditation
Last week we looked on Paul’s image of the church as a “household” in Ephesians 2. We are a new kind of community formed through the hospitality of the Trinity. This week, we’ll look at Ephesians chapter 4, in which Paul uses a different kind of image of the church, in this case a “greenhouse” or a “school.” The church is the community in which people “grow up” into maturity, becoming the people God intends each of us to be. What is maturity? It is to be “in Christ,” growing in the our knowledge and experience of grace, becoming increasingly more like him. How to we become mature? Paul’s vision of the process of maturation is very corporate- that we help one another become mature as we exercise our spiritual gifts and encourage one another on the road of discipleship.
We’ll talk this Sunday about how we do this work of mutual maturation with one another here at Third, both through what we do in our church building and also what we do in our homes and parishes. As you prepare for worship, think of one or two people that have been instrumental in your own progress as a follower of Jesus. Thank God for them, and ask him to use you for another person in the same way.
Ephesians 4:11–16
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.