Why Minister to the Body?

Excerpt from How the Saints Minister to the Body by John Piper

[Ephesians 4:7-16]

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One was that the aim of our ministry is the upbuilding of the body. Verse 12: Christ gives leaders to the church (like pastors and teachers) "for the equipping of the saints for the work of service [or ministry], to the building up of the body of Christ." So the aim of our ministry is building up the body. Not just the individual members of the body but the body as a whole.

Second, the aim of our ministry is the unity of faith and the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God. Verse 13: " . . . until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God." So our aim is to keep on building up the body until there is unity in our faith and unity in our knowledge of Christ.

Third, the aim of ministry is that the body of Christ attain a corporate personality of Christ-likeness. Verse 13b: (keep on building up the body) "until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ." In other words the aim of ministry is not just that individuals be built up, but that the body of Christ attain to a mature man (not men, but man).

Christ is the head of the body and he is fully mature and complete. The church is his body, and we are not fully mature and complete. The aim of ministry is to build the church and to cause it to grow up into the kind of maturity that corresponds to Christ. The aim of ministry is corporate likeness to Christ. A kind of corporate personality that is like Jesus.

... and so we should add this week (as a fourth part of our aim in ministry) that this corporate likeness to Christ in verse 13 has definite implications for us as individuals. It results in our not being gullible and unstable. Verse 14: "As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming."

When the whole body is building itself up in corporate likeness to the maturity of Christ, the effect is that the members of the body in that process become discerning and perceptive and stable. They have their faculties trained to see through the subtle, manipulative use of language that tricks people into affirming things that are not true or right.

So one of the reasons why the saints minister to the body of Christ is so that every member would become more astute and penetrating and perceptive and stable, and less gullible and credulous and unthinking.

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