God's Voice in Paul's hand

Recently I have been digging in a bit to the book of Ephesians. What I am finding is a great amount of insight into how the body of Christ is to function. Unity is one of the biggest, if not the biggest theme running through the book. Paul again and again encourages the people to be unified. Two passages that have been very exciting for me is Chapter 4 verses 11-16 and chapter 5 from verse 18 through chapter 6 verse 9.
First off chapter 4 Paul is talking about the different gifts of the Spirit, what some call the five-fold ministry. This is very key to understanding what I would like to share. If you keep reading and get to verse 16 you will find that it says, “from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” (NASB) Now what I find so cool about this is how much unity it calls for. You see right on the heals of describing the gifts of the Spirit Paul says that the body is, “fitted and held together by what every joint supplies,” in other words the body of Christ falls apart if each person along with their unique gift is not present serving the body as part of their service to Christ. Continuing on he says, “according to the proper working of each individual part,” This is great, he before says that we need all the different gifts of the Spirit and then goes on to make a very important stipulation, you might say. Each “part” must be working properly. So not only do we NEED every part but also we NEED them in proper working order. That proper working order is set forth in God’s Word as well. I don’t have time to go into each gift and how it should be used but one could read Paul’s letters alone and get a great idea of how each gift is to be used. I will even go as far to say that you could extend this beyond just Spiritual gifts and apply it to Spiritual well being in general. If a member of Christ is wayward it affects every member of the body because according to Paul we are all members of one another. I understand unity much more now having looked though this passage. Before I believed unity was a very good thing, what I failed to realize is that it is a necessity. For possibly the first time, or at least to this degree, God has reveled to me that I cannot do it on my own that I need other members of Christ in order to serve Him the way I was designed to. We really are a body that needs every part. If you look one verse higher you will find the object of the “whom” in verse 16 it is Christ! He is the head, far be it from any of us fingers and toes to determine the way things should run. Praise be to His name for what He is teaching me. I hope this blesses you.

You will have to wait for what I am learning from 5:18- 6:9 till later right now I am must go fellowship with the other members of Christ, because like I said I have learned I cant do it alone.
Be Blessed in Him!!!