Growing in Love

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.  From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Ephesians 4:15-16) The first half of Ephesians 4 is a beautiful passage for understanding how we grow as disciples.   In the opening verses we're told of how we have been united together in the body of faith through God's work.  In verse 7, we are told that each of us has received gifts.  In verse 11, we're told that Christ has also given leaders and teachers of various sorts to equip us for good works.  Finally, we are told that Christ himself remains the head of his Church.  All of these are gifts that come to us from God along that vertical axis.   In response to this overflowing stream of gifts from Jesus Christ—we are urged to live worthily in response.  We're invited to keep the unity we've been given.  We're invited to receive the gifts and put them to use.  We're invited to grow and help each other to grow as we build each other up through the use of these gifts we've been given.  God is at work, we are at work.  We are growing and helping others to grow, even as they help us to grow.  It is one big interdependent, organic mess.  It's a body.  With Christ as its head.   How does this body grow up into all this good work of mutuality and maturity?  Love is the way.  The body grows and builds itself up in love as it works.  And the members of the body speak the truth in love as they grow.  Work and communication, all done in the way of love.  This is how a body moves and grows.   Of course, there are times when bodies turn against themselves.  We often categorize diseases of this sort as autoimmune diseases—where the immune system begins to attack its own body.  This happens in the church as well.  At no point is the body of Christ in more danger of death than when it attacks and fights within itself.  A house divided against itself cannot stand.  A body can't either.   Sometimes our conceptions of "truth" drawn from this and other passages that name the word "truth" have fueled such autoimmune diseases in the body.  But here in Ephesians 4, as in other places in the scriptures, truth is set against lies and deceit.  The 9th commandment regarding false testimony (of the courtroom, eye-witness account variety) is background to this conception of truth.  Truth here is not a particular set of correct statements of belief so much as it is an honest description from the redeemed of the Lord as they tell their story (Ps 107:2) of what he has done.  When we tell this kind of truth, in love, it builds up. The way of love always offers a healing way for the body to continue growing.  It offers the needed path of humility into things like confession, forgiveness, and a renewed honesty.  It offers the context for truth to be told as encouragement for building up.  And love offers a context in which we can all do our work, together, in faith—both in our service to one another, but also—as the body of Christ—for the sake of the world.