From our 2012 Annual Meeting:
Dear EBF Family,
What does God desire for His Church? Why has He given us each grace to serve each other? The Holy Spirit informs us in Ephesians (chapter 4) that Jesus Christ desires His Church to “grow up in every way into Him who is the Head, Christ, from whom the whole body is supplied…”
In other words, Jesus desires us to be like Him, not merely built up in size or in busyness, but to maturity like His, strength like His, love like His, in a spirit like His, with faith like His. So, how are we to do this?
First, recognize from whom we receive our supply for growth: “from whom the whole Body, working properly…makes the Body grow, building itself up in love.” The whole Body is equipped by the One into whose image we are being formed. Jesus Christ lived, died, rose again, and ascended, and He now reigns on high over His Church. He is building His Church, just as He promised! We get our supply from Him.
Secondly, this growth comes through the gifts that His Spirit has poured out upon all within His Church, v7, for the purpose of building itself up into the likeness of Christ. From Him, by His Spirit, He has gifted each one with a measure of grace (gift) in order to strengthen the entire Body into such transformation.
Thirdly, the goal of our leadership (v11), is to equip the entire Church for the work of ministry (gracious gifts for building the Body into the image of Jesus). What does this ministry mean? Well, we know that it has a very specific goal: “until we all attain unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God”
Here we see that the goal of our ministry is unity of the faith and unity of knowledge. It is this unity of both faith and knowledge, never one without the other, that makes up “maturity, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The aim is unity, but it is not a mere surface unity of doing actions together, of getting along without tension, or with any sense of vague “faith”. It is articulated as THE faith. This faith is specific, made up of very specific truth, not a smattering of possibilities or probabilities, but a set of truths set forth in Scripture as THE FAITH and therefore is coupled with unity in knowledge. Unity of knowledge is not very popular today. The word usually accepted would be diversity of knowledge, not unity. But we are told by Paul that unity of knowledge of Jesus, the Son of God, is the goal of Christian maturity. We are to minister in such a way as to create unity of THE faith and unity of knowledge of Christ.
Any efforts at unity of the faith without the unity of knowledge will not build up the Body. In like manner, any attempts to build unity of knowledge of Christ without the unity of faith in Him will not build the Body. Therefore, we endeavor to strengthen, through the use of our Spirit-enabled gifts, the Body in unity in trusting the LORD in all things at all times through a unity of knowledge of who Jesus really is as revealed by His Spirit through the Word of the apostles.
We at EBF are hungry for unity of the faith and for unity of the knowledge of God’s Son. We want to be mature in Him, like Him, filled up with His love, His holiness, His strength, His faith, His compassion, etc. Yet, the current reality at EBF is that we find ourselves in a functional mish-mash of strange tribes. Because of our newness to one another, a lack of shared history, and frankly some poor leadership on my part, we exist primarily as worshippers on Sunday mornings, sometimes attending a class, yet with little or no personal transformative interactions with each other throughout the week. We have some small groups, and God has been gracious to use these in our transformation into the image of His Son, but we want to be more intentional in our goal: unity in the faith and unity in the knowledge of Christ…together.
This is what I meant by “preaching the gospel to yourself” today in my sermon. Not only preaching the gospel to myself, but to each other, as we struggle to unify in the faith and knowledge of Christ. When we are struggling under life’s load, we need to hear the gospel preached to us in truth and in love. We need to see the goal again. We need to know Christ and His glorious gospel. We need to hear the truth and believe it in my circumstance. This is the goal of ministry. All of our actions within the Church and within our community are to have this Kingdom-minded goal of unity of the faith and unity of knowledge of God’s Son.
So, how does this take place practically? I believe that we are formed into the image of Christ as we “see” Him, which is to know Him as He really is. We are constantly bombarded by deceptive truth claims that attempt to redefine who God is, thus the warning in v14, “so that we no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine (truth claims), by human cunning and craftiness with deceptive schemes.” We are children, but we want to be mature. We fall for deceptions, are tossed to-and-fro by the lies our Enemy tells us, and tossed by the constantly changing plausible deceit of winds of false doctrine. We want to be sure, steadfast, immovable, secure, standing firm against the Enemy’s tirade of lies. This maturity comes through unity of the faith and unity in the knowledge of Christ. To this end we labor by proclaiming the truth to each other, in every moment of doubt and fear and anxiety, in very moment of pride and anger and bitterness.
You see, we believe that what Christ is doing goes much, much deeper than merely changing our behavior. Now, He is changing our behaviors, and I hope that we become more and more involved in action both in the Church and in this city. But it goes much deeper than a mere camaraderie of the bucket brigade. He is changing our affections, our hearts, and our desires. Therefore, we are not content with mere behavior modification, as if by sheer will-power we can alter our behavior and somehow change our hearts. No, we believe that our affections must be changed into the affection of Christ, from the One who supplies the Body, the One into whose image we are being transformed in heart. This is much messier and much more difficult than mere behavior modification, for it requires a deep humility and a deepening trust in the Lord. We need our hearts to be transformed, and we do not have the strength in ourselves to do it, but our Great Redeemer does! And He has promised to build His Church!
So, our aim at EBF this year is to be transformed into the image of Jesus, together, from the heart’s affections to the hand’s actions. We must learn to apply the gospel truths to our fears and anxieties, to salve our wounded pride with the Great Story retold of our unworthiness and God’s sovereign grace that counts us worthy. We must be humbled by our lack of strength and emboldened by the sufficiency of His. We must learn this because that is what it means to be transformed into His image.
Therefore, all of our ministries, from the Sunday morning preaching and worship, to our small group ministries, to the one-on-one relationship both formal and informal, will be working toward the goal of Christ: unity in the faith and unity in the knowledge of God’s Son, until we attain it together and are no longer children, but a mature man, mature in the image of Christ.
Imagine what our community at EBF would look like when we look like Christ together in attitude, heart, and actions. Imagine what our community would look like if we were mature in Christ together and doing His works within it. Imagine the people drawn to Him, to see His glorious beauty, and placing their trust in Him find joy inexpressible and full of glory through worshipping Him. Can you see what Jesus is building?
Sola Dei Gloria
Your teaching elder,
Richard Roberts
Sunday Morning
Worship Service
10:30 a.m.
1855 Cal Young Road
Eugene, Oregon
541.485.2301
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"From the rising of the sun to its setting,
the name of the Lord is to be praised!"
—Psalm 113:3