Till we all come...

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 4.13

Our growth and our equipping has a purpose. We have a target we are, or should be striving to achieve. The saints are equipped to do the ministry till we achieve certain goals.

Those goals?

The unity of the faith

The knowledge of the Son of God

To perfection

To the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ

All of these goals have to do with a growing process. Paul even says that we minister ‘till we ALL come to..’ the things we listed above. That means that we never get to quit and we never get to stop striving to build each other up. The words just before this list explain the necessity of edifying the body of Christ.

So we strive together for unity, to know God, to mature, and to measure up to the fullness of Christ.

There are a lot of things we can focus on trying accomplish. The first is obvious. We have a ministry of reconciliation to draw men to Christ.

But we can't deny that we have a responsibility to each other to build each other up. That is our focus, not tearing each other down.  We need to understand that our focus is not us - but each other. When we do that we all continue to grow and grow and grow and grow.

We need to look for every opportunity we can to build each other up and help each other grow.

I wonder where that falls on most of our priority lists.