“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” (Eph. 4:15-16 NIV). The words of Jesus produce growth.
It is an amazing truth that we are actually part of the body of Jesus Christ, the Saviour. He is the head, the one who is in charge, and we are all parts of him, people who he is coordinating all around the world as one whole. But the main point today is that it is from Jesus and the words of Jesus that growth comes. Our connection to Christ is the channel of our spiritual growth. And, dare we say, if our connection is weak our spiritual growth will be weak.
And Jesus is causing us to grow up to be his “mature body”. Verse 13 says that God’s goal is to grow us into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” We are his body and his reflection. He is spiritually forming us in his image. II Cor. 3:18 says “we are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory,” (ESV). So we are both a part of the body and a reflected image of Christ himself.
So how does Jesus make his body grow? He supplies nutrition to the “whole body”. If we want our mortal bodies to live and grow we have to give it food. The food goes into our stomach and through some complicated processes the food becomes nutrition that spreads to every part of our body and causes it to grow.
“If we will receive this food from Jesus we will become mature disciples; if not, we won’t.”
Likewise, Jesus continually feeds us with his Spirit and his word. The words of Jesus are essential to our process of spiritual formation. If we will receive this food from Jesus we will become mature disciples; if not, we won’t. This is where the metaphor of a body has its limits. Every part of our body receive nourishment from food we eat; but in the body of Christ each part chooses whether it receives nourishment from Jesus. Each of us chooses our level of discipleship.
So our responsibility is to receive the words of Jesus and walk in his Spirit. In fact our passage begins with believers “speaking the truth in love” to another. So each of us is supposed to be speaking Jesus’ words of truth to one another so that each of us also receives our food: Jesus’ words. This produces spiritual growth; the very next phrase in the passage is “we will grow”.
This spotlights the critical importance of you and I being intentional about speaking the words of Jesus to each other, or words grounded in Jesus’ teachings. Our words are a vital link to spiritual growth. When we speak Jesus’ words we are actually feeding the listener; we are preparing and serving a meal for them. It is a spiritual meal that strengthens their whole spiritual self. Thus, it is one of the most important principles of spiritual growth, in other words, of spiritual theology.
Learning this should be a top priority in our discipleship training; it is part of the definition of a disciple. So let us not fear being too religious, but rather let us commit ourselves to speaking the words of Jesus (we have many of them) to each other. Our spiritual growth will take a leap forward when we do.
How often do you absorb the words of Jesus or speak them to others?
