How Authority Works in the Body of Christ
I want to put some flesh on the bones of what we have been feeling about healing and oneness among ourselves right now.
This is not a new theme for me, but it has been deepening as I have been leading my children through 1 Corinthians, as well as through my own consideration and discussions with other brothers on what Scripture calls “the doctrine of Christ” (2 John 9).
Corinth and Galatia are nearly complete counterparts of each other. Corinth is excellent in speech, lacking no knowledge, clever, full of fleshly wisdom; the gifts of the Spirit are present among them, and yet they lack unity. They are being led astray. They are allowing a leaven into the church that is causing dislocation of the very joints of Christ’s body. Galatia is in the other ditch, maybe in reaction to Corinth, and therefore taking a hard-line, rule-keeping, do-and-don’t, toeing-the-line, pointing-at-every-problem approach, and losing the Spirit in the process. They are being perfected, but in the flesh, and that effort is bringing them under bondage to things that are not the grace and will of God.
Paul does not like either ditch. And our church body battles both of these ditches. We have to come to an agreement that the Galatians among us must become more spiritual, more like Corinth in that way, and the Corinthians among us must become more grounded, more united, more submitted. The healing of the joints requires that movement in both directions.
1. The Two-Sided Mystery of Incarnation
The doctrine of Christ is not a single sentence, and I will not pretend to summarize it that way. But here is what I believe it is, at its root: the truth that the Almighty, the invisible, the spiritual, the eternal God, has decided to tabernacle Himself in human form, ultimately in the man Jesus of Nazareth.
“Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16).
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
He spoke to them about His own body, He being the temple (John 2:19). The mystery of the incarnation is that the Almighty would come down into the limited, the visible, the tangible, the weakness of flesh. And that union between the divine and the human is not merely a declaration of unity, nor a path to unity, nor a guidebook to unity. It is unity. Jesus is breathing, walking, talking reconciliation between God and man—the living merger of two beings that ought not to be able to be completely united. Fully man and fully God. “It pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell” (Col. 1:19). “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). To the rest of us, a measure of the Spirit is given; to the Son, the Spirit is given without measure (John 3:34).
This is what hurt the know-it-alls’ brains. How can that be? Every twisted and confused doctrine the early church gave us stemmed from that single enigma. It is what offended the Pharisees. It is what invented the Cappadocian nonsense that would later be called the Great Mystery. People literally killed one another over non-Biblical differences about the nature of this union.
But the mystery has two aspects that have to be seen together, and the second is what speaks to us today.
The first is the union itself—the divine indwelling the human. The second is the relational attitude that made the union possible. Jesus never once suggested or hinted at any equality between the Son and the Father. “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). Of the Son, the Gospel records relentless submission:
“The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do” (John 5:19).
“I can of Myself do nothing . . . I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me”(John 5:30).
“I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things” (John 8:28).
“I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command” (John 12:49).
“The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works” (John 14:10).
That does not sound divine. It sounds human. And it is—because what speaks there is the human aspect of Christ. It is the sonship of Christ in submission. And indwelling that same man is the divine aspect, the Father Himself, doing the works through Him.
Here is the principle, and I want you to feel its weight before we go anywhere else:
The Father indwells as the Son submits.
The doctrine of Christ does not end with Jesus of Nazareth or His resurrection, because He determined to incarnate Himself in a people. And if God is going to indwell a people, we cannot focus only on the glory and the power. We have to focus on the attitude that allows the glory and the power to come.
If a church is depleted of power, that depletion signals a lack of submission. Where there is submission, there will be glory. Where chafing and bristling and refusal to come into submission to Christ remain in us, to that extent we will remain weak. He will give His authority to those who have themselves accepted it—have truly submitted to it in faith from the heart. The goal is to manifest the Spirit’s life and power in every member of the Body, which is achieved through the flesh’s submission to the Spirit and order of Christ.
2. Corporate Incarnation
Christ refused to keep the incarnation to Himself. He determined that the same union the Father had with Him would be extended into a people, and He does not call that people merely a community. He calls it Himself. We are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh (Eph. 5:30). We are the temple of God.
The whole apostolic witness drives at this:
“I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (2 Cor. 6:16).
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people” (Rev. 21:3).
“That He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29).
“You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2:5).
“Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16).
“In whom you also are being built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22).
You think of God in heaven, but God wants to live in a people. That is the whole point. So when Jesus prays “that they may be one as We are one” (John 17), we usually translate that as, “I want them to be close with each other like You and I are.” That is not at all what He is saying. He says, “I have given them the glory which You gave Me, that they may be one just as We are one” (John 17:22)—“that the love with which You loved Me may be in them” (John 17:26). What He is saying is, “I want You, O God, to be incarnated in a people the way You have been incarnated in a man.” That is the emphasis of John 17.
And if Christ is going to be embodied in a people, the same mechanism that made the original incarnation work has to make corporate incarnation work: the attitude of total submission that lets the Father do the works.
This is what Paul means when he says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). The mind that was in Christ—the mind of self-emptying, of taking the form of a servant, of obedience to death—that mind has to be in us before the corporate incarnation can come.
3. The Audacity of Philippians 2
Read Philippians 2 carefully, and you will see Paul make a move so audacious that it ought to stop us in our tracks. He sets up the Christ Hymn:
“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant . . . . He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him . . . .” (Phil. 2:5-9).
The pattern is plain. Jesus walked in total submission to the Father, and thus God highly exalted Him. Glory followed submission.
Then comes the word therefore, and what follows hooks up to everything Paul has just said like a trailer to a truck:
“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).
Here is the audacity: Paul has just said that “Jesus was obedient to the Father.” Then he says, “Therefore, you be obedient to me.” Not to the Father in the abstract—to me, the apostle. Now much more in my absence.
He is not adopting a works theology. He is saying that the attitude that kept the Spirit alive and operative in Christ is the attitude that has to keep the Spirit alive and operative in you. And in your life, that attitude takes the form of obedience to the ministry God has set in the church.
This does not mean that anything calling itself a church gets blanket obedience—the Ephesian church was praised by Jesus for testing those who called themselves apostles but were not. Jesus warned of false prophets who would open and pave a wide, easier path, but who could be discerned and rejected by evaluating their fruits. Discerning the Spirit’s confirmation of a ministry is still a deeply personal matter—something that the head of each household must weigh with his head uncovered before God; but as confirmed by God, it becomes a mechanism for great grace.
If a body does not bear the fruit of the Spirit, you are in the wrong place. And even in a true church, the Spirit must bear witness with your spirit about what leaders say. But where God has truly planted you, working out your salvation is not about earning it; it is about staying in a posture of humility and incarnation, where the Spirit can will and do His good pleasure in you. And fear and trembling come in because the apostle is not always watching, and you can start to fake it.
Peter says the same thing in 1 Peter 5. After speaking to elders, he turns to the rest of the church:
“Likewise, you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (1 Pet. 5:5-6).
Again the word therefore. To submit to your elders is how you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. The mighty hand of God in the church is—at least in part—the fivefold ministry through which He is shepherding His people. And Peter promises that this humbling will be the road to exaltation. That He may exalt you.
The equation is everywhere:
Glory comes on the heels of submission. Power comes on the heels of submission.
Every know-it-all is going to say, “Me and Jesus have our own submission going.” And that private submission is a little bit like Teddy Kennedy’s religion—so private we don’t even impose it on ourselves. But the submission God has ordained is a submission in and through the church.
4. The Head of Every Man Is Christ—But How?
Now follow me into 1 Corinthians 11. Paul is dealing with disorder in the church and he writes this:
“Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ. Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:1-3).
People love to crumble Scripture into cookie crumbs and decide what each piece means in isolation. But think about how Paul must have been thinking when he wrote like this: “Imitate me,” and in the same breath, “The head of every man is Christ.” You cannot tell me there is no connection. Unless he was just having a brain burp and putting whatever came to mind on the page, the very next sentence is meant to explain what the first one rests on.
To imitate Paul is how the headship of Christ reaches the man.
But now look at the harder line: “The head of Christ is God.” Does that mean Christ is not divine? Superficially, yes. The Jehovah’s Witness will jump on that. But what it actually means is this: it refers to the human aspect of Christ that submits. It is the sonship aspect of Christ—the Man indwelt by the Father—that is in headship to God. The divine aspect of Christ is God; it is the Father in Him doing the works. The human aspect, the bondservant aspect, is the one under headship.
Now ask the obvious question: “How is the divine aspect of Christ alive in the world today?” Through the Spirit. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). “If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10).
And the harder question: How is the human aspect of Christ alive today?
Through the church.
And if that is right, then Paul’s whole argument in 1 Corinthians 11 holds together. The “Christ” who is the head of every man is the human aspect of Christ, and that human aspect—that submitted, embodied, fleshly aspect—is now realized in the church. Paul can say, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ,” and in the same breath say, “The head of every man is Christ,” because the imitation of Paul is the imitation of Christ, by way of Christ’s headship being exercised through Paul.
The Amplified makes Ephesians 1 unmistakable here:
“And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22-23).
“. . . the universal and supreme Head of the church—a headship exercised throughout the church—which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all; for in that body lives the full measure of Him who makes everything complete, and who fulfills everything everywhere with Himself” (Eph. 1:22-23, Amp.).
Full stop.
The headship of Christ is not exercised over the church from outside the church. It is exercised in and through the church. The church is the fullness of Him who fills all in all. That phrase is breathtaking. There is nothing God is personally doing outside the church. There is nothing He is invested in or unified with outside the church. There is nothing saved outside the church, which is His bride, whom He is cleansing till she will be without spot or wrinkle. If something is happening in the world and it is not in the church, it is not God.
And if Christ’s headship over every man is exercised in and through the church, then it cannot be the case that big-shot men are exempt from that headship. That is what the writer of Hebrews is saying when he chains together, “Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct,”and, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:7, 8). The doctrine of Christ is still real in the church, not because any man is Jesus, but because the church is the instrumentality through which we humble ourselves into the indwelling and the glory.
The head, in other words, has feet. The head says to the feet, “I need thee” (1 Cor. 12:21). Jesus needs you to be Jesus to each other. That is all there is to it.
5. A Witness from the First Generation
I do not enshrine the early fathers as Scripture. But sometimes a witness from outside the canon is helpful, because it shows us what the immediate generation that knew the apostles was already wrestling with. When Brother Zach sent me some quotations from Ignatius this past week, I was greatly intrigued.
Ignatius of Antioch was killed roughly thirty years after Paul. He had been a young man in Paul’s day. He would have been a contemporary, perhaps a disciple, of John. When he was arrested and being transported to Rome to be martyred, he wrote a series of letters to the churches. One of them, to the Magnesians, says this (and remember, this is around 110, well within a generation of the apostles):
“Just as the Lord did nothing apart from the Father, being united with Him, neither on His own initiative nor through His apostles, so you are to do nothing apart from the bishop and the presbyters. Do not attempt to work out anything as reasonable on your own, separately from others. Rather, when gathered together, let there be one prayer, one petition, one mind, one hope in love and flawless joy” (Magnesians 7).
“You are to follow your leaders as Jesus Christ follows the Father, and the presbytery as the apostles.”
“Whoever acts apart from the bishop and the presbytery and the deacons is not clean, and he is outside the sanctuary.”
I am not endorsing every implication that bishoprics came to carry centuries later. Ignatius uses episkopos (overseer) and presbyteros (elder) in the apostolic sense. But the substance of what he says is striking. He is making exactly the connection I am making here. “Just as the Lord did nothing apart from the Father, . . . so you are to do nothing apart from the bishop and the presbyters.” The doctrine of Christ is being applied structurally to the church. This is not a man teaching a heresy of priestly absolutism. This is a man, about to die, naming what he believes is the threat to a church already drifting toward disarray.
And earlier in the same letter, he writes:
“Guard yourselves from these men. You will be able to do so, if you are not arrogant and remain inseparable from God—Jesus Christ—and from the oversight and from the commandments of the apostles.”
Notice: he does not say you will fix these men. He says you will be guarded from them “if you are not arrogant.” It is the pride in us that wants the disunity. It is in us that the danger lies.
6. Submission Is Not an Attitude—It Is a Structure
Submission is not merely a feeling, not merely a manner, and it does not apply to some members of the body and not to others. The more power or authority or gift or influence God gives you, the more submission must be in your life.
Submission is a structural grace. It is God arranging us into a skeletal structure so that the very arrangement of the body helps us stay in a place of humility. No person, no office, no ministry, no church has unlimited anything. Our power is connected to our limits.
If we can say with Jesus that we “do not act on our own authority,” and if we can say with Ignatius that we “do not act separate from the eldership,” then we can say that the grace of God is still flowing and that we are still a bona fide extension of His body to each other and to the world. If we cannot say that, then somewhere along the way we have decapitated ourselves from Christ.
Paul knew this. Paul—apostle, scripture-writer, the kind of apostle we will not see again in our lifetime—had limits. He explicitly named them:
“We will not boast beyond measure, but within the limits of the sphere which God appointed us —a sphere which especially includes you” (2 Cor. 10:13).
“If I am not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord” (1 Cor. 9:2).
Paul’s apostleship was bounded by the sphere God had given him. What made Corinth that sphere? Labor. Love. Founding. Paternal care. History. It was not, “I am an apostle, therefore everything is mine.” When Paul taught against circumcision, and a dispute arose in Antioch, he did not say, “It seems good to me and me”; he went up to Jerusalem and submitted himself to the corporate discernment of the church (Acts 15). He did not carry the letter back as from Paul; he carried it as from the apostles and elders and brethren, and he carried it with witnesses (Acts 15:22-29). Paul had limits.
If Paul had limits, you have limits. I have limits. Every ministry has limits. Every expression of ministry has to be bounded.
7. The Architecture of the Body — Where the Lines Actually Run
Let me name some of those limits, because abstraction is not the point here. We must understand and apply this specifically.
Fatherhood is bounded by your family. Every dad in this room is a dad—but not to somebody else’s children. Your dadness is not intrinsic to you in isolation; it is limited and specific: his dad, her dad. Try treating another man’s child as though you were the father, and you will find out quickly where the line is.
Pastoring is bounded by your congregation. A pastoral gift has a nuclear family of saints—a covenant of mutual trust formed in a particular place. It is as wrong for me to step in and start pastoring another pastor’s members as it would be for me to step in and start pastoring another father’s children. Those members have made a kind of covenant. They have said, “I believe this is where God planted me.” That is the line.
Discipleship is bounded by invitation. Matthew 18 can be grossly misused in modern church practice. It says, “Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more . . . .” (Matt 18:15-16). What Matthew 18 does not say is: “Then start discipling him.” That passage is not a discipleship mandate. It is a mandate to intervene exceptionally and situationally in a moment of demonstrable sin.
Discipleship—coaching, training, formation into one’s gift, the kind of help that makes you a better dad, a better witness, a better steward of your business—is something else entirely. And to exercise discipleship in someone’s life requires them to ask for it. The rich young ruler shows us this. Jesus tells him, “One thing you lack” (Mark 10:21)—and what he lacked, fundamentally, was a team and a purpose. An idol of riches stood in the place of his calling. “Go, sell what you have, and come follow Me.” That is an invitation. And the rich young ruler walks away. And Jesus does not send Peter and Andrew to bring him back. The church has to be a place where the independent can utterly avoid discipleship and bear the consequences for it.
If you go and start discipling people who have not asked for it from you, you are out of order. You are not in the lane God has given you. This applies to men, to women, to ministers, to everyone. Correcting demonstrable sin is not discipleship. Leaders should not be negligent in rebuking transgression (1 Tim. 5:20; Titus 1:13; 2:15). But that is a different category from discipling, and we have to stop blurring them.
The fivefold lanes are real lanes. Paul writes, “God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles ” (1 Cor. 12:28), and elsewhere, “He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-12). Each of these has its own range of motion.
- Apostles and prophets are mobile ministries. They are ordained to minister across local congregational lines, to bring pattern, voice, correction, and formation into the wider body, and to foster unity and team coordination among ministries. Even that authority is voluntary—Paul pleaded with the Corinthians (2 Cor. 6:11-13)—showing that they could spurn his God-given role in their church.
- Evangelists are also often mobile, but the nature of their calling is to reach individuals who are not yet part of the church. Thus they should not presume to unilaterally guide or correct congregations, other ministries, or the doctrine of the church unless they are specifically and situationally commissioned to do so by the overseeing ministries.
- Pastors and teachers are local unless sent. The word “sent” is apostolos. A pastor acting beyond his nuclear pastorate is only in the will of God if he is functioning as an extension of apostolic or prophetic ministry that has sent him. In that role, he serves as a situational apostle—temporarily, accountably, on a particular task. But if he acts as though God has given him an abiding apostolic office when he has only been granted a seasonal role and he begins to interfere in another congregation, before the Spirit and the church have confirmed such an office, he is out of line.
The distinction is situational versus constitutional. Both are real. Both have limits. And every transgression of those limits is where the glory begins to evaporate, and the power begins to stop flowing.
8. What to Do When You Carry a Burden
The above raises the obvious question. What if you genuinely see something wrong? What if a saint in one congregation has a real burden about another congregation—or about her own leadership? What do you do with it?
There are wrong ways and right ways, and Scripture is not silent.
The wrong way is to blab. “A whisperer separates the best of friends” (Prov. 16:28). If you talk about other churches in our covenant—or beyond—in a way that makes them feel belittled, mocked, marginalized, or reduced, you are an instrument of the devil. I include myself in that. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21). We have to establish, absolutely, that this caustic talk stops. Real concern does not license disorderly speech. Gossip is blabbing about something that harms another, exposes or disparages another, and does not build up the body of Christ. Somebody will say, “But Ihave real concerns.” The world has been dismantled by people with real concerns and no real submission to the place and the limits God gave them. We have to establish right now, in this meeting, that this stops. It cannot happen.Can we say “Amen” in Jesus’ name?
Uzzah is the warning. The ark really was wobbling. He really did see something the others did not. And God killed him on the spot (2 Sam. 6:6-7), because the issue was never the accuracy of his diagnosis. The issue was whether God had ordained him to that role. Your authority is not your insight. Your authority is whether God has placed you, situationally or constitutionally, where you are reaching.
The right ways are three.
One. You can take it to the person directly. Call the brother. Or call the leadership of the congregation you are concerned about. “Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone” (Matt. 18:15). Speak with respect for the office. That is honorable. Go to your brother.
Two. You can yield to the Spirit situationally. Stand up and prophesy and let the rest judge (1 Cor. 14:29). The church will honor a word that comes by the Spirit and is tested by the body. That, too, is a legitimate way to bring a burden.
Three. You can take it to oversight. Bring it to the ministries God has set in the church to cover other congregations—apostolic or prophetic ministries with broader reach. This is the Chloe pattern. Paul did not write 1 Corinthians out of nothing. “It has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household, that there are contentions among you” (1 Cor. 1:11). Chloe’s household passed on a real burden to a man with apostolic reach. And Paul says, “In part, I believe it.” He weighed it. He did not write the letter just because Chloe was burdened, but he could not have written the letter without Chloe. That is how it is done. If Chloe had gossiped instead of writing Paul, maybe we would not have 1 Corinthians.
Those are the three honorable lanes. The more legitimate your concern, the more destructive it is to handle it dishonorably. Because when you do, you have effectively given the matter to the devil, and nothing good will come of it.
9. Isaac or Ishmael—The Birth That Decides Everything
Everything done by grace through the power of the Holy Spirit is done in submission. Everything not done by grace is done by human control. And in this, Paul gives us the deciding image.
Sarah and Hagar. Isaac and Ishmael.
We tend to read that allegory as if Hagar were the loose, irreligious one and Sarah were the dutiful and observant one. That is not Paul’s reading. Paul does the opposite:
“Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? . . . These things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai, which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar . . . but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:21-26).
“Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now” (Gal. 4:28-29).
Hagar is the bondwoman—bound in rules, in human striving, in the flesh’s attempt to produce what only God can produce. Sarah is the free woman—barren without God, but empowered by the Spirit when the Almighty visited. “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son” (Gen. 18:10, 14; Rom. 9:9).
The control-freak spirit in the church is a Hagar spirit. Every panicked, manual, religiously garmented attempt to fix it—every effort to keep everything tightened together by human management instead of by the Spirit—is a Hagar spirit. We can garden by the grace of God’s planting and watering and weeding, or we can garden by measures God has not given us. Sometimes the organic garden looks worse in the short term. The weeds look terrible. We are tempted to reach for the chemical. But if the Lord builds the house, we will not labor in vain. If He does not, we are spinning our wheels (Ps. 127:1).
Every bit of ministry that is not a return of the Holy Spirit is bringing forth Ishmael. And the more real-looking the Ishmaels become, the more tragic our future becomes—because Ishmaels grow up and become enemies of Isaac.
So get the little control freak out of you. Do an exorcism if you have to. Get to the place where fear sends you to prayer. Get to the place where anxiety turns into faith and prophecy. Get to the place where discernment turns into love and a phone call. Do not become a control freak. Do not act like everything has to be kept tightened by your hand. This is the Lord’s house. This is the Lord’s church. If He is not the active player, we are all spinning our wheels. But if the Lord is building it, we are not laboring in vain.
It is scary to wait on the Lord. It will sometimes feel like leaving the future of the church in the hands of twelve men who do not even have the Holy Spirit yet and are still jockeying for position. But the alternative—the self-generated mechanism—produces Ishmael. Only the visitation of the Most High produces Isaac.
When God comes, something is conceived that man cannot stop.
We want a church of promise. We want a church born of the visitation of the Holy Spirit. We want a church that requires faith and risk and trust. We want a church of submission leading to grace and glory.
10. Examine Ourselves
We are often condemning in others what is still wrong in ourselves. We are saying that they are out of order, but we are out of order in the way we have said it. We are saying, “They are throwing things away,” but we are throwing away our confidence (Heb. 10:35), which has great reward—the confidence that God is the one who builds this house. But if we are going about it the wrong way, going behind their back to share even what is, in fact, a real burden, we are contributing to the problem and have become a hindrance to the needed grace and solution.
Everything done in disorder is ultimately harmful and lethal to the body of Christ. Yes, often, the very thing we accuse the disordered of doing, we are doing, too—not in the same measure, perhaps, but in the same kind. We are violating the order of God while complaining about their disobedience. That cannot continue.
If you hate the headship of Christ exercised through the church, that is your right. You will languish in your hatred, and I hope you make it to heaven. But your house will be burned, because it is built with wood, hay, and stubble (1 Cor. 3:12-15). If, however, you can learn to love the appearing of the Lord, you can learn to love His grace and authority. You will find it is to build you up and not to tear you down. It is only in this way that your God-given gift will be released and you will find the sense of fulfillment in Christ that your heart longs for.
You need to find your place on a team. This is not an individual sprint. It’s a relay race, and only team members win the prize of fulfilling their high calling in Christ Jesus. You need to find what the rich young ruler did not find. And for those of us who carry authority, we had better be in more submission than what we ask of others. We had better stay within our limits.
Sarah will bring forth Isaac.
Hagar will bring forth Ishmael.
Submission is structural grace. Submission is the architecture by which the Father indwells the Son and the Son indwells the church. Glory is proportionate to submission. Power is proportionate to submission. The doctrine of Christ has not ended. It is being worked out in us, fearfully and tremblingly, as God works in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Therefore, beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in His presence only, but now much more in His absence—work it out.