The Five-fold Gifts

The terms found in Ephesians 4:11 are often used to describe the different types of ministry work we Christians do today. And that’s exactly correct. But, these terms were not invented recently, nor were they invented by Christians. These terms were used by anyone living in the first century Roman empire. So, in order for us to understand how these words apply to us today, it is helpful to see how they applied to regular people living at the time of Jesus, 2000 years ago.

Greek was the common language of the Roman empire. Before the Romans were in power, the Greeks were in power. And once the Greeks were in power, many of the nations began to adopt Greek culture, gods, and language. Below are the terms as listed in Ephesians 4:11, and defined as people would have used them in Jesus’s time. One word that seems to stand alone is ‘prophet’. This word was used mainly in the Old Testament, and so it’s best to get its meaning from there.

1) Apostle: (Greek: apostles) Envoy, ambassador, or messenger commissioned to carry out the instructions of the commissioning agent. An apostle was sent by someone in authority to give instructions to a specific person or group of people. In relation to the Church, an apostle is one sent by King Jesus to give instructions to the churches on how to conduct themselves. An apostle’s life was somewhat expendable.

2) Prophet: (Hebrew: nâbîy’; Greek: prophētēs) One who speaks for God and knows God’s plans. One who God listens to. One who can declare the future. One who can destroy old worlds and create new worlds with his words. The word is first used in Genesis 20:7 (Abraham, the prophet, had to pray for Abimelech’s life – God would only listen to the prophet).

3) Evangelist: (Greek: euaggelistēs [yoo-ang-ghel-is-tace]. The word is very similar to the Greek for ‘gospel’: euaggelion [yoo-ang-ghel-ee-on]. The prefix “eu-” means joyful and this is connected to the Greek word ‘aggelos’ [ang-el-os], or ‘angel’ in English, which means messenger.) A herald who proclaims a gospel (joyful message).

4) Pastors: (Greek: poimēn) A shepherd. One who takes care of the believers under his care both spiritually and physically. One who works to keep his people in the Church as a shepherd keeps sheep in the flock. One who works to see his people grow in maturity and Christ-likeness.

5) Teacher: (Hebrew: bîyn; Greek: didaskalos) An instructor. One who teaches the word and commands of God. One who works to ensure that his people are hearing the truth and not led astray by deception. One who works to see his people grow in maturity and Christ-likeness.

• Note: Pastors and Teachers are actually one item in this list. In the Greek the two are put together, and an acceptable translation of Ephesians 4:11 could be this:

“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors/teachers…”

•Note: It’s important not to confuse an apostle with an evangelist. An evangelist proclaims a gospel to a general crowd of people, while an apostle delivers a king’s instructive message to a specific group of people so that they know what they’re supposed to do.

Consider this as an example (historically accurate or not):

In 30 BC Augustus Caesar defeated Mark Antony and became the new ruler of the Roman empire. Once this was done, the news (the good news – euaggelion) of his victory and rise to power had to be made known to all the people all over the empire. The euaggelion was proclaimed to the people by the euaggelistēs (the evangelists). The evangelists were heralds who went through the towns and villages crying out the gospel message: “Hear this message all you people! Augustus has defeated his enemies and now rules the Roman world! Those of you who supported Augustus in the war will be rewarded! Those of you who opposed him – now is the time to turn away from your support of the enemies of Augustus and submit to him!”

Once Augustus had secured his rule, he returned to the capital city of Rome and took his throne. From there he worked to expand the influence of the empire by setting up colonies of Roman people in the places he recently defeated. Once these colonies were established, he gave instructions to the colonists by sending apostolos (apostles) – messengers from the king.

King Jesus has done the same thing, but on a much greater scale. Jesus was the first evangelist for His own rule when He said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15) Jesus was calling the people to turn away from their allegiance to the enemy (to repent) and to turn to Him as their true king. Jesus proclaimed His gospel even before He died on the cross – He had no doubt of His own victory.

After Jesus rose from the dead, He ascended up to heaven and took His throne at the right hand of the Father. From there He will rule until all His enemies have been put under His feet. Jesus is now in His capital city ruling His empire. We, the Church, are establishing “colonies” for His empire by planting churches and starting up other Christian ministries all over the world.

Our evangelists continue to go out and proclaim the good news of our King’s rise to power, and to warn anyone who would choose to oppose Him. Our apostles continue to deliver orders from the throne room of Jesus to instruct the churches on how to worship, serve one another, build, expand, and make new disciples. Our pastors and teachers continue to care for their flocks and teach them all the truth of our Lord Jesus. And finally, our prophets continue to speak words of guidance based on God’s word, and to speak more words which would tear down anything holding us back.

Which of these gifts do you believe you are called into? It’ll most likely be more than one. Paul was first an evangelist then an apostle. Timothy was both an apostle and a pastor/teacher. You’ll probably walk in different gifts at different times in your life. Which are you most passionate about now?

Whatever you choose to do, don’t forget the instructions Paul the apostle wrote:

…(these five gifts are) for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 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; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:12-16)

* All scripture quoted from the NKJV.

Bible Theology Basics

Here are some excellent articles by James Jordan regarding the basics of bible theology. This is not systematic theology. This is looking at the bible and letting it teach us directly what it is saying. Although the word ‘basic’ is used, you might be surprised at what you’ll learn from reading these articles.

There are eight articles to be read in succession. Here are the links…

Biblical Theology Basics #1

Biblical Theology Basics #2

Biblical Theology Basics #3

Biblical Theology Basics #4

Biblical Theology Basics #5

Biblical Theology Basics #6

Biblical Theology Basics #7

Biblical Theology Basics #8

Don’t Put the Symbol Before the Horse

In Genesis, the creation account talks about the passage of days before the sun was created. There was a light time and a dark time: a full day.

Now, when God did create the sun, He did not then spin the earth, wait to see how long it took to spin once, and then decide to make a day 24 hours long. God determined that a day would be 24 hours long before He made the first day. The sun and the rotation of the earth were set to conform to what God had already determined. We need to be sure we don’t get that backward.

It is the same with biblical symbolism. Biblical symbols are not like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates. Forest wanted to describe life, so he chose an object close at hand and used it. The object he chose was not created to be a symbol for life, but it was able to be used as such with some imagination. Biblical symbols, however, are specifically created to represent something else that already exists.

An example is marriage. When God wanted to describe the relationship between Christ and the Church, He did not say, “The relationship between Christ and the Church is like marriage,” in a ‘Forest Gump box of chocolates’ kind of way. No, God created marriage because the concept of the relationship between Christ and the Church already existed, and marriage is an image of that pre-existing reality. This is the first reason why Christians oppose gay marriage. Jesus isn’t marrying another Jesus, therefore men don’t marry men — the created symbol has to follow what it’s imaging of the Creator.

When a man is opposed to the idea of a woman being a pastor, it is not because he is a male chauvinist. Rather, it is because he believes that gender matters. Gender is symbolic; not in a ‘box of chocolates’ kind of way, but in a ‘something pre-exists about God and this is an image of that’ kind of way. A man standing before his congregation is a symbol of Christ standing before His bride. A man protecting his church is a symbol of Christ protecting His wife. A woman can not do that; not because she isn’t smart enough, or talented enough, but because she doesn’t fit the symbol. The ‘Beauty and the Beast’ story would quickly lose its appeal if the beauty decided to switch roles with the beast — the symbols wouldn’t match.

Bread and wine exist because they image pre-existing things about God. Baptism, circumcision, the temple, birds, trees, clouds, stars, and even people themselves are symbols following after something which was real before any of them ever existed. Biblical symbols are directly connected to that which they image. Gump’s box of chocolates is not.

Symbols matter. They are not interchangeable. God sets them in place, and we benefit when we follow them and use them as He intended.

Power Religion (aka 666)

In Deuteronomy 17 God gave instructions to the Israelites about their future king. God said that the king must never multiply horses for himself, not multiply wives for himself, and not multiply gold for himself.

To not multiply wives and gold means God did not want the heart of the king to be drawn away from God.

To not multiply horses means that God never intended Israel to be a conquering empire. They were to be a nation of priests to the Gentile nations. The surrounding Gentile nations were to protect Israel. God’s people always had a “Gentile sponsor” — someone to support and protect them. For Abraham it was Melchizedek, for Joseph’s family (the Hebrews) it was Egypt, for Moses and the people (now called Israel) it was Jethro, For David and Solomon it was Hiram of Tyre, and for the post-exile Jews it was Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome (the four beasts of Daniel 7 called up out of the Gentile sea to protect God’s people). Each time a beast went bad, God replaced it.

The Roman beast protected God’s people (now called Christians) all throughout the book of Acts. It was only the apostate Jews who wanted to destroy the Church, and the Romans always protected the Church. But after the events of Acts, the Roman beast went bad and turned on the Church — so God killed it.

The first century apostate Jews worshipped the religion of power. They wanted their Messiah to come with a sword and establish a Jewish empire. Jesus offered a religion of righteousness and self-sacrifice, but the apostate Jews rebelled against that and said, “We have no king but Caesar!” The Jewish leadership caused the people to worship the Roman beast — power religion.

We read about this in Revelation 13. The Land Beast (the Herods and the High Priesthood — two horns) caused all the people on the land (Israel) to worship the Sea Beast (the power of the Roman empire). The Land Beast caused all the people to put the mark of the Sea Beast on their foreheads — 666. That’s in direct contrast to the mark of God put on the foreheads of the faithful Jews in Revelation 7. No one could buy or sell without the mark. Buying and selling refers to worship, which is why Jesus says, “I counsel you to buy from Me gold…” (Revelation 3:18).

Solomon, at the peak of his career, did exactly as God intended for Israel. He built the temple and people from the surrounding nations came to Israel to see the glory of God and to learn from the kingdom of priests. But, Solomon went bad and began to worship power religion. We can read of his downfall in 1 Kings.

In 1 Kings chapters 10 & 11 we read that Solomon multiplied for himself horses, wives, and gold — exactly what he was not supposed to do as king. And we know he became a harsh king because when his son, Rehoboam, took power, the people asked for a more lenient rule (1 Kings 12).

When we read about Solomon multiplying gold (1 Kings 10:14), the bible says that he had 666 talents of gold coming to him each year. There’s more to that number than just this, but anyone “with understanding” reading the book of Revelation in the first century would have seen that the number 666 directly tied the Jewish worship of power religion to the fall of Solomon and his worship of power religion.

There is no need to go outside the bible to understand the number 666 or any of the other symbols in Revelation. 666 does not refer to Barak Obama, George W Bush, three W’s, or any of that stuff. It can all be understood by looking back into the Old Testament.

*This explanation of 666 is derived from James B Jordan’s teaching on the book of Revelation, which you can buy here.

House Leprosy

In Leviticus 14:33-57, we learn of house leprosy. This condition called leprosy is not to be thought of as what we would call leprosy today. In the bible the condition, when applied to people, meant that a white spot had appeared on the skin, and in regards to a house, reddish and greenish spots had appeared on the walls.

The instructions for what the priest had to do were these:

1) Remove everything from the house and quarantine the house for seven days. Then, on the seventh day the priest would come back to inspect the house.

2) If the leprosy was still there and had spread, the priest would order all the infected stones to be removed and all the plaster to be scraped off the walls, and all of that to be taken outside of the city. Then new stones would be put in place of the old and the whole house re-plastered.

3) If the infection returned, the priest would order for the house to be torn down completely and taken out of the city to an unclean place.

This is exactly what Jesus did with the temple.

1) In John 2:13-25 Jesus visited the temple in His early ministry. He turned over the tables and said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” He inspected the house and found leprosy.

2) Near the end of Jesus’s ministry He came back for a second inspection. Again, Jesus drove out those who were selling and cleansed the temple. He said, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a robbers’ den.”

3) In AD 70 Jesus came back again, found the infection still remained, and destroyed the temple.

Today the Church is the temple of God, and Jesus is continuously separating the sheep from the goats, continuously inspecting His Church, blessing the faithful and purging the wicked.