Service in the House of God

Service in the House of God is not exclusive to a few individuals, but of all the saints.

Rubén Chacón

"He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:10-13).

If we had to summarize these four verses that we have read in Ephesians 4, we could say that in verse 10 we have the purpose of God; what God wants to obtain. The Father's desire is that everything, in the heavens and in the earth, be filled with Christ.

In verses 11 and 12, we have the strategy that the Lord Jesus Christ will use to get his purpose. And in verse 13 we have the fulfillment of that purpose. For that reason verse 13 says: until we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

Between the objective of verse 10 and the fulfillment in verse 13, verses 11 and 12 reveal to us the strategy that the Lord Jesus Christ has designed to reach what he has purposed as His objective.

The strategy of God (1st Part)

I will be mainly concentrating on the strategy, because I believe that that reveals this service in the house of God in a very beautiful and very clear way; who are those that must serve in the house of God, how this must be carried out, and in what order.

In verse 11 we have the first part of the strategy, and the second part is in verse 12. Notice that verse 11 begins by saying: "And He gave some...." "He" from verse 10, "He" who descended, "He" who ascended above all the heavens, "He" who has purposed to fill all things, He Himself who has purposed to fill the earth and the heavens with His glory. "He gave some...." He who has this supreme purpose, is the same who has designed the strategy so that His purpose be reached. So "He" from verse 10 is the one who, in verse 11, "gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers."

Are these the only ministries in the church? Are these the only ones that operate in the house of God? We know that not. But, pay attention, Christ's strategy begins with these gifts, it begins with these ministries. The first thing that Christ exalted has done, by means of the Holy Spirit, is to constitute these gifts in the church.

From the Greek text, it is to be translated as: "And He himself gave...." Christ is the one who gave some to be apostles, others as prophets; Christ the one who gave the gifts, the ministries, it is God who orders the members in the body as He wanted them. Although that is true for other texts, here Paul's emphasis is that these gifts -apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers - are given by Christ.

And so, the emphasis is not in whom He has given them to, which is something that one might hope for, but for what reason these gifts were given. He Himself gave them "for...." Pay attention here, brothers, because we are speaking of the service in the house of God, and we are speaking of the service which is a plural and diverse ministry, made up of different gifts. Paul's emphasis is that they are gifts from Christ given with a purpose. What is that purpose? "For the perfecting of the saints."

These gifts have been given by Christ as the first part of the strategy that Christ uses to reach His objective.

The strategy of God (2nd Part)

If you notice, these brothers are not an end in themselves; if you understand what Paul is trying to tell us, he is establishing that they are a very important means, it is the first thing that the Lord gave after his exaltation, he gave them with the purpose of perfecting the saints. That means that the saints will play a fundamental role in the house of God, a very important role in the service of the house of God, to such an extent that the Lord has given this minority group -in number but not in importance - in order to perfect the saints.

Dear brothers, when Christ designed this strategy, he was thinking of the saints, in the brothers, in that group of brothers who constitute, quantitatively speaking, the majority of Christ's body. The Lord has special care and a special purpose for all the saints. When we speak of service in the house of God, we are speaking fundamentally of the service of all the saints, not just of some.

If the Scriptures say that these men have been given to the church with this objective of perfecting the saints, it is because the saints have a mission to complete. And that is revealed here in such a beautiful and perfect way, when it says: "...for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ."

It would appear, brothers, that in the past - and I have to recognize it publically - we misunderstood this. I was taught mistakenly, I learned it this way, I taught it this way and I practiced it this way. When making an exegesis of the passage, we interpreted it in this way: That the Lord gave these gifts to the church -apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers - in order to: first, perfect the saints; second, to do the work of the ministry; third, to carry out the edification of Christ's body.

When the passage is understood in this way, then the only ones who have any service in the house of God are the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. They have to perfect the saints, that is what their task consists of, they have to do the work of the ministry, and they have to carry out the edification of Christ's body. This small group is the one that has a function, the one that has a ministry, the one that does a great work in the house of God. In that interpretation, the saints do nothing, except be the material upon which these gifts are exercised and ministries developed.

But now I understand that the passage doesn't say that, because the reason for this ministry of the Word described in verse 11 is: "for the perfecting of the saints." But both "unto..." that appear in verse 12, are to be carried out by the saints: "... for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering." Who carries out the work of the ministry? The saints! And if we were speaking of two different things, we would say that there is one second "unto..." for the saints which is the edification of Christ's body.

Dear brothers, there is something revolutionary here; there is something here that could mark a great difference in our service to the Lord from now on. Thanks to the Lord for the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. They clearly have a vital function defined here: to perfect the saints. If the saints are not perfected, they won't be able to fulfill their task; but how interesting it is that within the strategy of the Lord, these brothers that God has established as the first in the church are there to prepare the saints, because the saints are those who have the most important task to carry out.

What is the first task? The work of the ministry. How tremendous, brothers. How revolutionary that we can pass the ministry on to all the saints in practice, not just in concept. The work of the ministry, the great work of the ministry, is carried out by the saints, not by the ministers of the Word.

I marvel when thinking how wise, and harmonious and glorious God was in constituting this plural, diverse ministry, of the Word, for such a magnificent and so great a task as preparing all the saints, all the children of God, so that the saints do the work of the ministry and fulfill the edification of Christ's body.

Do you realize, dear brothers, that there is something which we have to continue growing and advancing in? That we cannot simply look at Catholicism and say: "There they have clergy and lay people, the Protestant structure, for its part, was more or less similar, and we have reached that measure." We are far from that measure.

Who, even among us, in practice, is carrying out the work of the ministry and carrying out the edification of Christ's body today? Today, can we say that it is the saints? Or do we still have to recognize with honesty that it is still the workers, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, the teachers among us?

I believe that we need to grow, brothers, we need to advance. We need to overturn this in a radical way, because it seems that we have not been able to shake off the dead weight that we brought with us. It seems that it is too strong, and the saints still remain very passive among us.

Notice that Paul is saying with meridian clarity what is expected of the Saints. What is that? That the saints do the work of the ministry and that they carry out the edification of Christ's body, so that all attain... We all attain to.

It is not true that only some have a ministry. There is a diversity of ministries, yes; but all have a ministry. The whole house of God has ministry, the whole house of God has a service.

I was reading one of Brother Watchman Nee's books; speaking about service in the house of God to the workers in a conference, he says this: "From now on, the number of those that compose the church among us will be determined by the number of priests." Because in the house of God there are not two classes of believers: those that serve God and those who don't. That is not the house of God; that is not Jesus Christ's church. In Jesus Christ's church, everyone is a priest; all have a service, therefore, all have to serve God.

So, dear brothers, I have to firstly apologize in the name of the ministers of the Word, if in this aspect we have had an over-emphasis, and the church has been too centered on the gifts of Ephesians 4:11, and we have still not been able to put the work of the ministry on the shoulders of all the saints. May the Lord grant us the grace to achieve, to reach, to mobilize, to prepare all the saints in the house of God, so that they get up to serve their Lord. Praise be to the Lord, Blessed is his name!

Among us it is not the saints who are doing the work of the ministry and the edification of Christ's body, at least not in the measure that God wants. Therefore, the objective of verse 13 will not be reached. Only some are attaining unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. But how interesting that the Lord's desire is that we all reach it, from the first to the last, from adults to the youngest within the house of God.

Perfecting the saints

If we are interpreting this correctly, the first task of an apostle is to perfect the saints. What is the main task of a prophet? To perfect the saints. What is the main task of an evangelist? To perfect the saints.

Now, you will notice that that sounds a strange way to respond to this, because when we say: What is the main task of an evangelist, we will answer: to preach the gospel. And that is exactly our problem, brothers: That while the task of evangelism is resting in what the evangelists are able to do, the task of the evangelization won't be completed.

What is the first responsibility of a pastor? What is the first responsibility of a teacher? To perfect the saints. And here we have another clear example: while the responsibility of shepherding, of advising, of visiting, of discipling, rests on the pastors and teachers, the task cannot be done; edification cannot be completed, and then we continue struggling time and again.

It is necessary to make a change, brothers, we must understand this anew. We who are ministers of the Word have to refocus our service. Our task is not to do everything. Our task is to lift the saints up, to equip the brothers. Do you know how the task of evangelization can be concluded so that the number of those redeemed is completed and the Lord Jesus Christ can return? The only way is when the church evangelizes, it is when each saint arises as an evangelist. When the church evangelizes, when the whole church rises up to serve, then it will be possible to finish the task.

What does a pastor have to do then, brothers? A pastor has to teach the brothers to take care of one another. It is not his task to take care of them all, because that is impossible. That is what our error has been: we have made such an effort as to try to take care of everyone, which we have done badly precisely because it is a task which surpasses us.

In a congregation of one hundred and fifty people, they cannot all be assisted, and although the elders take pains and serve in the best way that they can, the final result is that people are not attended to, there are those who are unhappy, and no matter how much the servants of the Lord make an effort; even working to the point of sacrificing their own families, the result is one of dissatisfaction, of frustration; because there is something that is wrong: Our task is not to do the whole work, our task is to teach to the saints to mutually care for one another.

The task of a pastor is to teach to others to shepherd. With the word and by example he begins to teach them and to show them all how to shepherd, in such a way that the whole church ends up shepherding and taking care of each other.

Brother, if you are understanding, you will realize that there is something revolutionary here, because it will imply that the saints must take up a responsibility that they have not taken up till now; and this is without stopping working, without stopping being a father, without stopping being a husband. We have to become God's priests, to begin to serve the Lord, and the end result will surely be that we won't have time to waste, to watch television, and many other things; but we will have a life filled with service to God, the work will be fulfilled and the Father will be able to send his Son Jesus Christ for a second time. Praised be the Lord!

What do we have to do, brothers? The saints need to be permanently exposed to these ministries. Not only to the apostles' ministry; they must also be exposed to the word of the prophets, and of the evangelists. How will we get the whole church to evangelize? We have to bring evangelists to minister to the saints. Look how strange a thing I am saying. Up till now, whenever we thought of an evangelist we imagined him preaching to the lost. Yet, in the light of what we are seeing here, then it would be good for an evangelist to be in each church, and minister to the saints, and perfect the saints, and pass on his burden and his passion and his tears to the saints. And then the whole church lit up by this Spirit - which is none other than Christ's Spirit - feeling what Christ feels for the lost, the church will get up to evangelize, filled with the love and the passion and the compassion of Christ for the lost. Blessed is the Lord!

How can we do this so that the whole church gets up to instruct the newest believers, to teach to the youngest believers? Let us expose the saints to the teachers, and then those teachers will pass over that measure from Christ's Spirit to the saints. The saints will understand the importance of teaching, of consoling the new believers, of putting down the foundation, of edifying the house, and then all the saints will be able to get up and to do exactly the same thing with the rest.

This is the strategy of the Lord. What a glorious strategy, how well thought out, how well designed by the Lord! In the house of God, all must get up to serve. Blessed is the name of the Lord!

Let us therefore think for a moment about verse 12, in these two "unto..."that correspond to the task of the saints. I want to insist on this point, brothers. May the Lord put it in our spirit. The saints do the work of the ministry and they carry out the edification of Christ's body. And while we fail to come to that point, we cannot be satisfied or at rest; because until the saints become those that are doing the work of the ministry, I repeat, the task won't be concluded.

The final restoration

Brothers, the second millennium finished, the XX century has past and the Lord didn't return; and we have entered into a third millennium, into the XXI century, and that means something is still to be done, something is lacking, waiting to be fulfilled. And I am convinced that what has to happen in the next years is that God will lift the saints up throughout the entire world; that the saints will be the last army of God that will arise here in the earth, and will complete the task, and that Christ will return. Hallelujah!

It is so clear when one looks at history and sees how God has gone on restoring one truth after another in the church. But I am convinced that in this decade, in this century, God has intended to restore this last part which is fundamental for the task to be completed, so that Christ's fullness can enter into the whole church, so that not only a few reach the measure that God has prepared, but rather that each saint reach the measure. To do this, the saints must get up.

The task of the ministers, of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers are to go to each town, to each church, to each village where the Lord leads us, and minister to the saints and to challenge the saints to get up to take on the responsibility of the evangelization of the city, to take on the task of edifying Christ's body, where each one with their gift, with their measure, can contribute to the total edification.

Brothers, only by getting the saints, everywhere, to fulfill their function, will the will of God be completed.

A task for Latin America

That which is coming in these days ahead is something glorious and beautiful. I see it by faith, especially for Latin America, those of us who are in this part of the world. God has put His eyes, not in men who up till now have been outstanding, but, I say again, in an army of saints, of brothers, of sisters, of young believers, of children; not only to evangelize our countries in Latin America, but to go to the whole world.

You will notice that in Europe, where there is a great spirit of xenophobia, where in general the Latin Americans are not well received; look how God is able to use the circumstances, even the sins of men, to open doors for the gospel. Those in Europe, weighed down by postmodernism and humanism, have denied the birthrate, and little by little have become an old continent, and that means that during the course of time, they have ceased putting hands to the work. And they now need and will need hands to the work even more over the coming years. And do you know where those young hands to the work are? In Latin America. And although they don't want to receive us, because of their necessity they will look for us, and the doors will open up for the Latin Americans.

And we have to be ready to go, because they will call us in the form of gasmen, or of plumbers, or of mechanics; but we need those gasmen to go filled with Christ. He will enter as a gasman, plumber or mechanic, but Christ, the Word and the gospel will enter with him. And it is happening.

So, when we speak of the saints and of lifting up the saints in our Latin American context, it has a very important meaning in this final hour. Here there is a great potential for the Lord. It seemed as if we were like dams that have contained water for a long time, but that haven't overflowed so that the floodgates open up allowing the river to flow. Brothers, the time has come.

The task of the apostles is not only for them to complete the commission as those being sent; the task is to send the whole church. The task of the prophets is not only to prophesy to them, but to make the whole church a people of prophets. And so forth. Blessed is the name of the Lord! We will take the saints and the work of the ministry onward. We together will take the ministry of reconciliation forwards.

The work of the ministry

Let us look in 2 Corinthians 5:18. I don't suggest that this is the only aspect of the work of the ministry, but I believe that it maybe the most important aspect. Those that speak here are, of course, apostles, but it is clear that this service is not only for them. It begins in them, but it doesn't end in them; it must end up in all the saints. It says: "But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation."

The two are related; the work of the ministry, in the singular and the ministry of reconciliation. This which, in the first stage, is a prerogative of the apostolic ministry, has to be passed over to all the saints, it has to be put on the shoulders of the whole church, so that all the believers are those who say: "the ministry of reconciliation has been given to us." May we all say: "We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us: we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God." Hallelujah! The task of the whole church: to preach Christ Jesus.

We have discovered that when we want to mobilize the church, all those that have already spent years -forgive this expression - "warming pews", find it difficult to break this system, and it requires a lot of effort to change their mentality and to transform them into evangelizing agents. It would seem that we were already too accustomed to listening to sermons and preachers, and yet it is hard to implant God's passion and vision in the heart again.

But, dear brothers, with the new believers, it is totally different. We have to make the change in such a way that the new believers begin to work differently. And we, the Lord willing, will not be so hardened and sleepy that we cannot wake up to this glorious truth.

This book by brother Nee showed me something very interesting. At the beginning I thought that perhaps he was too radical in this, but, do you know what he had to do to mobilize the church and bring this vision in, so that all the saints took on the burden for the lost? He changed the Sunday meeting into an evangelistic meeting. He said: "The only day in which all the saints have the whole day free, in which they don't work, the day on which they are willing to do the work of God, is Sunday." So he said: "We are going to make the most of it as it is the best day", and it became a day of evangelization. He committed the sacrilege of dismantling the holy meeting on Sundays (where the saints come to listen to a sermon, among the hundreds that we hear), and took the church out, took the people to the squares or to villages, and commissioned them two by two, or three by three, or by families.

And I said: Is it necessary to do something so drastic, so radical? And time has gone by, and it seemed that in our case -among the oldest in the church- that we need something like that in order to be shaken and transformed. I'm not saying that that is what we will have to do, but I give it as an example of somebody who had to do it, and that that work, that vision, the church in China maintains it up to today. Under persecution, they continue evangelizing in each place. Each region in China has children of God in its cities, and the saints in those cities, in each city of China, have the responsibility of evangelizing its people.

What thousands of evangelists couldn't do, even though there were thousands to send, the saints are doing it. And that is the pattern, that is the biblical mission, and that is what we have to reach.

The edification of Christ's body

And concerning the edification of Christ's body, brothers, there is a very beautiful expression in the New Testament: "one another." Can you find it? Have you read it somewhere, here and there in the texts? This expression, "one another", appears a hundred times in the New Testament. Of those hundred that appear, sixty speak of the relationship that should exist between the saints.

Some of them are repeated several times, for example "love one another" appears seventeen times. If we only mention each one once, we have twenty-seven different expressions where the word "one another" is used. And when it says "one another," who has to fulfill that? It would seem, according to the old outline, that if it says "pray one for another" we should understand that the pastors must pray for the saints. But that is not the case. "one for another" means 'Everyone for everyone'.

Twenty-seven different expressions appear using the term "one to another." "Pray for one another... using hospitality one to another … in honor preferring one another." Hallelujah! How wonderful Christ's body is when it is seen in this way! What glory there is in the church, where each one is contributing to the edification of Christ's body! "Wash one another's feet... Be at peace among yourselves... forgiving one another... forbearing one another... be ye kind one to another."

The edification of Christ's body, brothers, is carried out by the saints, by means of these "one another's." So, beloved brother, your responsibilities in the house of God are those twenty-seven "one another's." They are your responsibility, they are your service; they are your contribution to the edification of Christ's body. To carry out the ministry of reconciliation is your ministry, it is your responsibility, and in that way, we all will reach unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. Blessed is the name of the Lord!

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