In Ephesians 4:11-13 we are told, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 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.” Is there anywhere on earth that a church has matured to the stature of the fullness of Christ? Obviously not, but this must be our goal. We are told above that all five of these “equipping ministries” are given to the church “until” this is accomplished. Therefore, we can expect all of them to be functioning at the end of the age when the church, the bride of Christ, will come to full maturity.
Much of the church now recognizes all of these ministries, and the number of churches, ministries, and Christians are growing fast. Those who qualify for these titles may be open for debate, and should be, but they must exist and be functioning together for the church to be equipped and come to the stature to which she is called.
It should also be noted that this is the only place in the New Testament where the ministry of the pastor is mentioned, with no real definition being given, and yet this one ministry now virtually dominates the ministry of the church. How did this happen? Was it meant to be this way? Nothing in the Scriptures indicates this, rather as we see in the text above, the ministry of the pastor is called to be one in a team of ministries given to the church. Actually, the ministry of the pastor is called to be much more than it typically is today—not less, but different.
Most pastors are actually one of the other equipping ministries, but since the ministry of the pastor is virtually the only ministry which most of the church will support, that is the title they have to take to be in ministry at all. This needs to change, and will. All of the ministries will go to a higher level of effectiveness when they can specialize, instead of trying to be something that they are not.
In the Old Testament, the prophets often stood alone, though they might have had a company of disciples. In the above text, we should note that the prophet is but one in a team of ministries and their function is not just to speak the word of God, but to equip the saints, just as all of the ministries are called to do. So how does the prophet equip the saints? As we covered previously in John 10, all of God’s people are supposed to know His voice. Prophets are called to help equip all of God’s people to know the voice of the Lord.
This is where we want to go now—not just knowing what God has said, but what He is saying. As Jesus quoted from the Scriptures in Matthew 4:4: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” He said every word that “proceeds out of the mouth of God,” not “proceeded,” past tense. His name is not “I Was,” or “I Will Be,” but “I Am.” If we do not know Him in the present, we do not really know Him. He is no longer Jesus of Nazareth—He is the risen Lord who sits on the throne above all thrones. It is important to know about His life on earth and what He accomplished for us, but our relationship with Him must be in the present. This is why the Scriptures were never intended to supplant prophecy or His ability to speak to His people in a living, present way.
In the coming weeks, we will go deeper into the basics of spiritual language in a way that will help us to understand just how much God has been speaking to us but we have not realized it, and how our relationship to Him can be dramatically revitalized by this. The quality of any relationship will be determined by the quality of the communication, and thereby the quality of the understanding between us. Therefore, the quality of our relationship to the Lord will be based on the communication between us.
If you have been taught that the Lord no longer speaks to us through prophecy or other ways, please consider this: What kind of relationship would it be if on their wedding day the bridegroom handed his new bride a book he had written for her so that he would never have to speak to her again? We do not want to in any way belittle the importance of the Bible, and should acknowledge that it alone has been given for us to establish doctrine, but by no means was it ever intended to supplant our living relationship with God—all relationships are built on communication. Neither is prophecy meant to take the place of the Bible. We need to have both, which is why He gave us both. Either one without the other leaves us crippled, at best.
