Christ’s Finished Work: Gifts of Christ

24 February 2022 Leave a comment

The Fivefold Ministry

We have heard about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts but have we heard of the gifts of Christ (also called “ascension gifts”, “fivefold gifts”), and did you know that these gifts were part of Christ’s finished work? Receiving this truth would enable us to move ourselves towards Christian maturity and the fulness of the stature of Christ.

An intriguing scripture portion in Ephesians 4 explains this. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men” (Eph 4:7,8). The background is of course that of a victorious king returning to the capital to great acclaim, with captives defeated in the battlefield in chains trailing behind him. In celebration, he shares the spoils of war with the city, even though they did not fight the battles and did not deserve any reward at all. Yet the king graciously and generously gives gifts to them. Paul however was describing how Christ gave gifts to the world, particularly the church, after he had victoriously defeated Satan, sin, and death by his death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb. These must be significant gifts for they came out of the sacrifice of his life.  What are these gifts and what purpose do they serve?

The scripture goes on to explain what these gifts are: And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph4:11-13). These gifts are men and women with spiritual authority and various complementary gifts that can equip the church to do God’s will. These God-designed, holistic, complementary ministries, if welcomed in their fullness, and not partially, by the church, will bring about church effectiveness, growth, unity of faith and intimacy with God, maturity and the greater glory to God. 

The gifts of Christ are sometimes called fivefold ministry or fivefold offices, or fourfold (combining pastors and teachers into one) ministry gifts of Christ. The five are gifted people who have received grace to be used by God to bless and build the church in dimensions that complement each other to maximum impact. We need all of them.

Apostles

The apostles (“sent out ones”) are those who establish churches among unreached peoples. They evangelise the lost, equip the saints, establish the church and the doctrines, set up and equip leadership and move on to new territories. Apostles love the church and have a passion for establishing and multiplying local churches.

Prophets

The prophets forth-tell and foretell. He forth-tells in the sense of receiving God’s “now” word for God’s people and faithfully declares the fresh rhema message to them, often calling them to turn from modern forms of  idolatry to God himself. God may also grant them intimations of the future which they will deliver faithfully so the individual or church may take heed and prepare, or be encouraged, strengthened and comforted. In the last days, when the love of many will wane cold, this gift of Christ needs more recognition and acceptance. Prophets love the presence of God and are passionate about delivering the current word of the Lord to fire up the hearts of God’s people.

Evangelists

The evangelists spread everywhere the good news of Jesus Christ with convincing clarity and persuasive power to the lost. They are graced to move unsaved people to open their hearts to accept the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ. They love being with lost people and they are passionate preaching Christ and his salvation to them.

Pastors

Pastors are the shepherds (literal translation) of the church and their job is to feed the sheep, care, and watch for their souls. His number one task is to be a faithful example of faithful Christian living. He is the walking visual aid that inspires, encourages and comforts the congregation to be devoted and faithful to the Lord. He loves spending time with God’s people and is passionate about growing them in the love of God.

Teachers

Teachers love to inform, instruct, and explain the things of God using Scriptures. They love to make fundamental teachings of the Bible accessible, clear and applicable for God’s people, whatever their level of understanding. Faithfulness to the meaning of the text, and diligence to live out the truth are their bottom line. Teachers love spending time feeding on Scriptures and are passionate about communicating truth effectively.

Welcome Mat

The gifts of Christ are God’s gifted servants appointed to bring different nutrients to the body of Christ and together they impart a balanced, multi-faceted ministry the church needs for growth into the maturity and purity and beauty of the Bride of Christ, ready to be received by Christ the Bridegroom.

God is faithful and will provide these gifted people to the Body of Christ. It is for us to recognise who they are and roll out the welcome mat so the church can receive their complementary gifts with thanks, and grow in maturity.

This is the seventh in a twenty six series of A to Z of Christ’s Finished Work. Click HERE to access the earlier posts>

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Christ’s Finished Work: Forgiveness of Sins

11 February 2022 Leave a comment

The forgiveness of sins is certainly one of the most precious gifts resulting from Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension. It is so important it was included in the Apostle’s Creed next to other fundamental beliefs in the confession of our faith: “I believe in…the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body”.

Resolving the Problem of Sin

Few realize the full extent of the consequences of our breach of God’s laws. It drove apart our relationships with God, with one another, and with creation. Guilt, shame, cover-up and blame crept into our relationships. We saw this with Adam and Eve. It caused them to withdraw from God even as God in his mercy and grace searched for and reached out to them. In mercy and foresight, God justly punished them for their rebellion against his rule, but he had in mind a future redemption plan for the whole human race. 

The forgiveness of sins resolves the key issues that block us from having an intimate and loving fellowship with God, with one another and a proper care of creation. This cancellation of the punishment that we deserved for our sins absolves us from guilt and grants us peace with God and oneself; frees us from shame and gives us dignity; makes cover-up unnecessary and promotes authenticity; and stops the blame-game and encourages us to take responsibility.

When sin is committed, the natural tendency is for us to try to atone for it by being good and doing good deeds. We want our good deeds to outweigh our bad deeds or at least balance out the deficit, so that we stand a chance before God at the judgement, or have a better reincarnation in the next life. This leads to uncertainty right to the very end of one’s life, no matter how much good deeds or philanthropy one does.  For example, for a bad deed like slander or lust after a married person, how much and what type of good deeds must one do to atone for each transgression. No one knows. And during the final tally, can we be assured that what good we have done outweighs the bad we have committed? Uncertainty at the day of judgment is fatal because it is final and there is no way to try to increase the shortfall in good deeds. 

For Christians, we have the free gift of forgiveness of sins when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence” (Ephesians 1:7,8). The forgiveness of sins is free for believers but for the sinless Christ it meant paying the great price of an unjust death on the cross, and taking upon himself the punishment that is due for the sins committed by all peoples past, present and future. That cruel death was not deserved by the sinless Jesus Christ, but in a divine mystery, is God’s way of making atonement for the sins of the whole world. The forgiveness we could not deserve or earn by being good and doing noble and charitable things, was earned and deserved by Jesus on the cross and made available as a free gift to all who would repent and believe in Christ’s finished work.

Repentance and Confession of Sins

Repentance is a change of mind and heart leading to a change in one’s attitudes and action. We have to be willing to change our mind about what sin and holiness is, about who God is, about trying to earn forgiveness of sins, and how we are to live our lives. This repentance process is accompanied in varying degrees with sorrow, tears, crisis of belief, conviction, confession, and struggles and this journey continues beyond initiation and baptism.

Forgiveness of sins does not depend on a complete confession of specific sins. This would make our salvation insecure and undermine assurance and joy. Even after being Christians, we constantly fall short of God’s glory and fail to walk in God’s ways. In thought, in speech and action, we daily fall short. Furthermore we are often unaware of our failings and the sins we commit and the good we omit in our daily life. Thus if our salvation is dependent upon a perfectly complete confession of specific sins, we would all be doomed should the Lord take us home suddenly. Even if we had time to prepare, how would we know we have confessed all our sins. Christ’s finished work perfectly atoned for all the sins of the whole world and must necessarily include past, present and future sins. Believing this is the basis of our assurance that God will not hold our sins against us should we suddenly be taken home before we had a chance to confess our sins.

Confession of sins is simply nodding before the Lord that you have wronged him, or people in thought, speech or action. Being specific helps us to know ourselves better about where we tend to be vulnerable to temptations. It replaces the sense of unworthiness and unconscious withdrawal from God, with assurance and peace and joy (1 John 1: 9). It also releases spiritual energy in us that so that we want to change in order to please Him (Philippians 2:13). 

Go and Sin No More

Forgiveness is a precious gift that enables us to live godly and follow Christ faithfully. Faith in the finished work of Christ liberates me from the fear of judgment in the future, of rejection in the present, and the condemnation of the devil about my past. Because my sins (past, present and future) have all been atoned for by Christ, I feel assured and certain about facing Him on the day of judgment and being with Him forever. I am no longer haunted by past sins no matter how shameful and evil they were. I live my Christian life fruitfully, with assurance and without condemnation because I know that even when I fail or fall, underneath is the embracing, comprehensive, and fail-safe net of God’s forgiveness of my sins past, present and future. “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered”(Psalm 32:1).

This blogpost is the 6th part is a series of 26 parts about the A to Z of Christ’s Finished Work. To read the other blogposts you can click on the below titles:

Access

Blessings

Church

Deliverance

Eternal Life

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Christ’s Finished Work: Eternal Life

22 November 2021 2 Comments

Did you know that eternal life has two dimensions? We often find it referred to in terms of duration or quantity of life. This is certainly one dimension. Eternal life is conscious, perpetual, unending, forever existence with God in eternity. It is life in Christ beyond death. We Christians believe after we die we enter an intermediate state where we are conscious of Christ’s presence (2 Cor 5:8), to await the second coming of Christ, when the dead will be bodily raised to life (John 11:25-26). For those who are still alive when Jesus comes again, their bodies will be changed in the twinkling of an eye (1 Cor 15:51,52; 1 Thess 4:17). Christians would be spared the judgment for Christ took our judgment on himself on the cross, but we will enter into our eternal reward, and dwell with God in the new heaven and new earth. This is our Christian hope, the eternal hope.

The Second Dimension

However, there is a second dimension to eternal life – the here and now dimension!  The apostle John speaks of eternal life as a present possession of all who believe in Christ: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). This eternal life has to do with quality of life not quantity of life, with abundance of life not duration of life. According to John’s gospel, it is a life of acquaintance and friendship with God: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John17:3). This knowledge is an experiential knowledge of personal relationship, friendship and living interaction with the true and living God, not mere theories about who God is.

It is the kingdom life of the age to come brought forward when Jesus came preaching and inaugurated the kingdom. He brought the life of the age to come, for people to taste it in the here and now, as administered by the Holy Spirit. Another way to describe it is “God’s kind of life”. As the seed, so the fruit. God’s life is a seed that brings forth his kind of god-like life and character.

By Faith in Christ’s Finished Work

This precious possession can only be gained by faith alone. It is a gift of God that we cannot deserve or earn (Rom 6:23). We receive it by placing our faith completely in Christ to save us and give us eternal life (John 10:27,28).

The first Adam was placed in the garden and put to the test. He was to obey God and access would then be given to the tree of life. He did not. Instead, he disobeyed God so he was blocked from access to the “eternal life”. Christ is the second Adam and was sent to do what the first failed to do: perfect obedience. By obeying the Father, even unto death on the Cross, Christ won back access to the “eternal life” and now gives it to all who believes him (Phil 2:8; Rom 5:18,19). Thus it is the finished work of Christ that restored to man the access to the life that Adam forfeited, and the cross of Calvary is indeed a “Tree of Life”, for all who believe in Christ’s finished work receives eternal life in the here and now, and which continues beyond physical death (John 11:25,26). 

The implication for us is that we need to learn to draw deep from the wells of eternal life. The more we deepen our friendship and experiential knowledge of God, we more we will taste and see that eternal life is precious in the here and now, a foretaste of the life to come.

Lord, thank you for your obedience to the cross that brought us eternal life. We want to draw near to you and know you more. We want to know what you feel, what you think about different situations, and what you want of your church and of our lives. Help us to live day by day, with an awareness that you want love our company and want to be a part of our everyday mundane life. Amen.

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Christ’s Finished Work – Deliverance

2 November 2021 Leave a comment

Deliverance, in charismatic and Pentecostal circles, refer to the ministry that sets people free from demonic oppression and activity in their lives. Deliverance in this narrow sense is definitely one of the benefits of receiving Christ’s finished work. It is quite clear from Colossians 1:13 that God has delivered us from the kingdom of darkness under Satan’s rule, to the kingdom of light, under the lordship of Christ.  “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son”. In the next chapter verse 15, apostle Paul gave the basis of this deliverance as the finished work of Christ: “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Satan was defeated by Christ through his death and resurrection, and we Christians are no longer under his dominion or power.

Other attacks of the devil

Deliverance is not merely being set free from the demonic oppression. We also do not have to be afraid when we go through trials and temptations because the devil has no power over us. During such times, as in the case of the Christians apostle Peter wrote to, the devil prowls around persecuted Christians like a hunter after its prey, seeking to devour them, but if they dug in, endured suffering and persecution, and resisted the efforts of Satan to coerce them to give up our faith, they will be victorious (1 Peter 5:5-9 compare with 1 Cor 10:13).

Deliverance includes overcoming Satan’s fiery attacks on our mind and body. Jesus was attacked in his mind, appetite and desires during his forty days fast, and it was his faith in God that delivered him from the devil’s lies. In the same way, deliverance for all Christians can come through putting on the whole armour of God and fighting the fight of faith, and victory is possible only because of Christ, who is our shield, sword, belt, breastplate, helmet, and shoes (Eph 6:12-17).

Other kinds of deliverance

By extension, deliverance includes our deliverance from the coming wrath of God on the day of judgment (1Thess 1:10), from the power of sin in our life (Rom 7.23), from the power and influence of a world-system that does not bow to Christ (Gal 1:4), and from earthly enemies and persecutors(2 Tim 4:18).

The Old Testament has a more physical idea of deliverance and the main one was God’s rescue and deliverance of the people of Israel out of danger, death and bondage to slavery in Egypt in the Red Sea miracle. Of course this event pointed to Christ’s salvation of people who are slaves to sin, death and the devil. However, the physical and practical aspects of deliverance is for us as well.

The meaning of deliverance in the Old Testament was defined by the experiences of people in trouble and this includes sickness (Ps 107:20), fears (Ps 91:3), troubles (Ps 50:15), persecutors (Jer 1:7,8) and enemies (2 Sam22:1), and most relevant to us in these days of Covid-19 pandemic – deliverance from plagues (Ps 91:3). Israelites have experienced countless deliverances in their lives and so describe their God as the Deliverer (2 Samuel 22:2; Ps 40:17). We Christians can experience all these too, because it is in God’s nature to deliver and rescue and save his children. Christ’s finished work is an expression of God the Deliverer, and we should not limit our expectation of deliverance to spiritual blessings only, but to include the practical day to day occasions when we need his intervention and rescues.

(This is part 4 of a series: “A to Z of Christ’s Finished Work”)

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Christ’s Finished Work: Church

22 October 2021 Leave a comment

The church as we know her is a mixed bag of good, bad and quirky, comprising all kinds of denominations and independent churches of slightly or greatly varying beliefs and practices. Yet like the animals in Noah’s ark, many do co-exist in harmony, though some cannot get along, and most do not love each other. The church is marked historically by her failures to truly represent and obey her Lord; by her disagreements, division, and many other imperfections. The history of the church does not make for pleasant reading. Certain chapters can be disturbing.

The Church is Bought with Jesus’ Blood

Nevertheless, the church as we know it is the Beloved of God. It is deeply loved and greatly favoured by God. The reason for this is the finished work of Christ. The church is the people of God, past present and future, and they have been redeemed at a great price, the precious blood, the death of Christ our Lord. Acts 20:28 makes this crystal clear: “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood”. And apostle Peter echoes, “For you (the church) know that is was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19). The ancient imagery used here is one of purchasing slaves from their owners in a slave market. Silver and gold was used to buy them over to new ownership. However this currency are inadequate for spiritual redemption. Only the blood of Christ – the finished work of Christ is sufficient. When such an infinite price is paid for redemption, what is redeemed must be infinitely valuable and loved by the new Lord. Despite the church’s imperfections, our Lord loves it with great length and breadth, depth and height. 

The church was redeemed to be a blessing not a blunder, a gift not a gaffe that embarrasses her Creator. She was not a mistake but a masterpiece created in Christ Jesus for good. She may now seem old, frail, and failed, yet she is filled with divine possibilities and potential. In fact, she is ever partaking of the divine nature of the love and holiness of God. She fails, but thankfully, she fails forward. God is her patient and long-suffering Sanctifier and Lover. It is in this unwavering love of God that her faith is rooted, and her hope deeply anchored.

Adam’s Rib is the Church

An interesting biblical image of the formation of the church is that of God taking out a rib from Adam’s side to form Eve. St Jerome preached, “Adam’s rib fashioned into a woman signifies Christ and his Church”. Just as the woman was made from man, so the church has her origin in Christ. We can see the deep sleep of Adam as a foreshadowing of Christ’s death, from which God obtained the divine material with which the church was built. Do not forget it was precious blood shed by a pierced, suffering Christ that formed the church, even the church as we know it today, in all its imperfections. Always appreciate and give thanks for the church, God’s gift to mankind, formed at such a great cost.

Love the Church As Christ Loves Her

God loves the church, and so should we who are children of God. I love my church, not the church as an abstract idea, but the local church, the “extended family” that gathers at Lorong 27A, Geylang, with all its strengths and weaknesses, successes and failings, gifts and lack. This community has been my family, my bomb-shelter, my clinic, my friends, my help, my school, my sandpaper, my sharpener. This is God’s design: that the church, broken as it is, becomes the instrument and space that shapes and forms,  wounds and heals us – and little by little (“from one degree of glory to another” 2 Cor 3:18) we are being transformed into the likeness of Christ. 

Too many Christians make use of the church to draw benefits for themselves and their families instead of doing what Christ did: Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. We consume the services of the church; and complain like customers when the “products” and “services” are not up to our expectations. Sadly, many Christians have become consumers and not lovers. We who are followers of Christ will find ourselves loving the church and indeed giving ourselves to serve, encourage, and intercede for all the saints with all perseverance and supplication (Eph 6.18).

Father, help us to see we are not called to judge the church, but to love her and to give ourselves to her in intercession, encouragement and participation. May the church you love become a glorious church, ready as a Bride for the coming King. Amen.

(This is part 3 of a series: “A to Z of Christ’s Finished Work”)

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