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The True Church
Lesson #7
The Gifts of Christ for the Church
The Gifts of Christ for the Church:
This is what Paul wrote: “
But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore He says:
When He ascended on high,
He led captivity captive,
And gave gifts to men.” Ephesians 4:7-8 NKJV
What are the gifts that Christ gave the Body?
And He Himself gave some
to be
apostles,
some prophets,
some evangelists,
some pastors
and teachers Ephesians 4:11
Christ operated with the power of the Holy Spirit in all these 5 ministries:
Christ was an apostle—Hebrew 3:1
Christ was a prophet—Deuteronomy 18:15
Christ was an evangelist/preacher—Luke 4:43
Christ was a teacher—Matthew 23:8
Christ was a pastor/shepherd –John 10:14
When Christ went back to the Father, He gave all these gifts to the Body of Christ so that it could continue to do His work here on earth with the power of the Holy Spirit, like He operated with these gifts.
Why did Christ give these 5 ministry gifts to the Body?
Paul continues to explain:
For the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry
for the edifying of the body of Christ
till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God
to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:12-13 NKJV
All these ministry gifts that Christ gave the Body of Christ, the church, were to be used in order to teach, train, equip, and prepare the disciples for the work that Christ had commissioned the church to do.
All 5 ministries were needed in order to prepare the disciples and in order for the church to complete the assignment that He had given them to do: Take the gospel of the Kingdom into all the world—make disciples and baptize them—and teach the new disciples all that He had commanded. (Matt. 28:19-20)
This was the way that the Kingdom of God would extend to all the world.
What has happened to Christ’s 5 ministry gifts?
Today there is an erroneous teaching, which claims that most of these gifts ended with the apostles.
They are claiming that the only ones left are the pastor and the teacher.
This is a very dangerous teaching because nowhere in the Scriptures does it say that most of Christ’s gifts were to end with the first apostle and that it was only meant for the New Testament Church.
This teaching is completely out of order.
Another group is also teaching error by the way they are accepting all 5 gifts, but they are given wrong descriptions to each of these ministries. They are especially wrong in their interpretation of the ministry of apostle and prophet.
WARNING!!
When Christ went back to the Father, He gave gifts to the church. If the church has chosen not use some of these gifts or to use them erroneously, that is human intervention. The sovereign God gave an order and a pattern for the church to follow and if humans chose to change it, they will be accountable for their opposition to God’s order. The Word of God tells us that we are not to add or delete anything from the Scriptures—the WARNING is real!!
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