Your Responsibility to Minister

By his triumphant work of descending, Christ then ascends triumphantly and takes his people, as it were, to glory. And out of that triumph, end of verse 8, he gave gifts to men, he gave gifts to men. As the triumphant consequence, the triumphant conqueror distributed the spoils of his victory to his people. He gave gifts to his people. After his ascension, you know, when the Lord went back, he began to give thanks. The first gift he gave was the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus actually said, the Holy Spirit cannot come until I have ascended.

Remember that? When I go back to the Father, I will send the Holy Spirit, John 7, John 14. And we know, of course, it’s reiterated in the second chapter of Acts, the Holy Spirit actually comes. With the sending of the Holy Spirit to the Church, come the gifts, the gifts. So what verses 9 and 10 are doing is simply sort of expositing that quote from the Psalm in verse 8. He descended into the lower parts, referring to the earth. He then ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.

And he therefore triumphed, he therefore won the victory and then disperses to the Church, which he has now won, those gifts that they need to minister to one another and to make Christ in the world to draw men to himself. Divestiture before investiture, incarnation before glorification. So Christ came down and went up so that he might give gifts to his Church. Then in particular, this is such a great passage, we have the first and most notable gifts identified for us in verse 11. And he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers or pastor teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry.

The Lord goes back to heaven, far above the heaven that we can see, fills eternity with his glory, having accomplished his work and now sends the Holy Spirit and then sends gifts to the Church. The first wave of gifts to the Church are the gifted men, the apostles, the prophets, chronologically followed by the evangelists and pastor teachers, whose task it is to then equip all the saints for the use of all the gifts. So foundational. He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastor teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry to the building up of the body of Christ.

To build the house, oikodomeo, we get the word domestic and oikos is the word for house, to build the house. Pulling this all together, the sacrificial work of Christ, his humiliation, his condescension, his suffering, his sacrificial death, his sin-bearing, is to rescue sinners who belong to God by God’s divine eternal decree, to rescue them from the hellish grip of Satan, sin, death and damnation, to pay for them the supreme price to win the captives, to lead them back to the one to whom they belong by sovereign choice. This was the cost then of our gifts.

It cost Christ his eternal glory. It cost him his life. It cost him at the cross. It cost him in that sacrifice in which he felt the full fury of the wrath of God against all the sins of all who would ever believe. That’s the price. So think about that when you think about your responsibility to minister in the life of the church. Think about the source of your gift. It comes from God himself. Think about the cost of your gift. Christ paid the supreme price and we’ve done everything we could through the years to grasp the massive nature of that sacrifice of sin bearing on our behalf.

I am compelled then to use my gifts as one who is called to be a pastor-slash-teacher and to help develop the gifts of all the people in the church, to use my gift to that end because of the price that was paid for that gift, as well as the source of it. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of your responsibility to minister. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.