18.3 A Gift Not an Office
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Who or what will protect God’s people from me?
I just read an article that caused me to understand the whole reason why Augustine and all others make certain that the “correct” definition of God is imposed on all readers of the Bible before they read one word. The BIGGEST problem is Ephesians 3:19. I have been a naughty boy. I have stolen in and grabbed Ephesians 3:19 for myself when the watchers on the wall weren’t looking. Take any reasonably gifted human, convince him that he is filled with ALL of God, and you will have a devil set loose inside the Church.
Protecting the Church. You see, by the definitions in my layout of “ministry” in the last lesson, those definitions would make me an “apostle.” And I intend to include apostolic giftings – which Paul calls the foundation of the Church – in the next session.
You have seen it as many times as I, someone with a gift is anointed by God, and, presto, they now see themselves as superior, as the one “in charge.” Human “rule over” in any form is always a curse.
Consider 2 Corinthians. To understand it rightly, Paul is sharing with us how God protected the Church from Paul. God crippled Paul, and when Paul tried to get God to remove the disability, Jesus said, “My grace is all you need, Paul.”
Protecting the Individual. Who or what will protect me from God’s people?
Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone (John 6:15). – Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. – They have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them (1 Samuel 8:5b & 7b).
God crippled me specifically to protect you from me. Yet that same crippling works in the other direction as well, for when someone attempts to exalt me, I just quietly walk away unable to connect. And that fact has been proven out many times inside of overwhelming circumstances.
What Do You Do? I have included in the Bible Studies program a course called “Preparation for Service.” The primary question inside that course will be – What do you do when someone throws a spear at you?
I might be a “man of the word,” but word that is not real inside the grip and thrust of awfulness is no word from God. Whenever I see someone with any gift anointed by God throwing a spear back, I see someone who will always destroy God’s precious people with their “gift.” And when I see someone reeling in the pain and confusion of public humiliation, blaming no one, but justifying God even while protecting the spear thrower, I see someone with whom I would walk.
In Much Trembling. If God has not given you the gift of apostleship, it is certainly something you absolutely do not want. For such a gift includes levels of humiliation and affliction you have no need to know.
So then death is working in us [the ministry], but life in you (2 Corinthians 4:12). – I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling (1 Corinthians 2:3). – On this one will I look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word (Isaiah 66:2b).
And He said to them, “What do you want Me to do for you?” [Please, Lord, make us the top dogs in the Kingdom.] You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” [Sure, easy thing, Lord.] (Mark 10:36-28a).
Let It Not Be So. Here is Jesus’ absolute rule over all gifts of service in the Church. And He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ Let it not be so among you – I am among you as the One who serves (Luke 22:25-27 – condensed).
Every evil action ever committed in human history, especially by those who “exercise authority” is defended on the basis of being for your or someone else’s “good.” Every evil ruler considers himself to be a “benefactor.” Jesus said – Let it not be so among you.
Gift versus Office. The title of this lesson is “A Gift Not an Office.” Let me define both terms as I mean them here. A gift is a momentary action; an office is a fixed position. A gift is just what someone does, in the moment, for others; an office is what someone claims to “be” all the time. For us there is only ONE who IS – the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is what He is in and through every dear one who belongs to Him.
Anyone who would use a “gift” in order to “rule over” in any way one in whom Christ dwells is an absolute mental idiot, or, as Solomon would say, a FOOL, for they are abusing the King of the universe for momentary sensual self-exaltation.
Awfulness in the Church. No fool can ever be a ministry in the Church, the church is filled with fools attempting to be “ministry.” Let’s get this clear and plain. You’re going to rape Jesus’ Bride in His Presence? You’re going to rape Jesus Himself?
I have never received a gift from God more precious in every direction than being crippled in life-long humiliation. The many worst moments of my life are my greatest treasures of value granted to me by my Father.
Because the Church has always defined God by the devil, an arrogant God who sees Himself as superior and thus holds Himself aloof – they don’t want anyone to be filled with such a God. Yet those who are capable in Christian history, in order to protect God’s people from “God” make themselves the same.
Dog-at-the-Top. And in this top-down hierarchy of “rule,” what the gospel presents as giftings of ministry are turned into permanent offices of dog-at-the-top in one form or another. It doesn’t matter if it’s “apostles” above elders or Pope above bishops above priests. It doesn’t matter if its pastor above board or board above pastor. All of it comes out of Genesis 3:5 & 16 and none of it is God’s order for His Church.
In the next session, it is my hope to present the overwhelming joy of all the giftings of service moving reciprocally inside of Christian Community. In this lesson, I would split to pieces with mighty blows anyone considering such a thing.
Protection from You. Who will protect God’s precious people from you? You know full well all the many times you have used your own self-exalted religiosity to manipulate other believers in Jesus solely for momentary delusions of “righteous” superiority.
One thing ONLY makes any of us real – and that is a Man laying down His life for us. Here is all ministry in the Church – and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. When we say that we enter through the cross, we don’t mean, “Great, now I can do anything I danged well please.” We mean that all the proportion of our lives is governed, flows out from, the two axis lines of that cross.
The Two Axis Lines. And thus all giftings of service, and that includes everything from changing diapers to running a construction job to preaching up a storm to making decisions for the community, ALL service is governed by two things.
The first axis line is that this one with whom I am connecting is Christ Jesus Himself, as well as His most precious Beloved. My only role is to take the hand of this one and to place that hand into the hand of Jesus, even while I retire into the shadows unnoticed and unneeded. And the second axis line is that I carry ALL who belong to Jesus fully in my heart, arms stretched wide, yet leaving ALL and each entirely free of me.
And the rule over all is “For Father’s sake.”
Achievement and Recognition. It is only when all thought or consideration of “office” is removed from our minds and practice can the real beauty of God’s intentions for the flow of reciprocal service, one to the other, be known among us.
Yet here is the problem. Every one of us wants to “advance” in some way. And every one of us wants to be recognized and valued by others in our advancement. The reason we are like this is that we are like God. And thus we see the many levels of “graduation” built into the educational process, both in secular education and in learning the revelation of God. Achievement and recognition are vital to how we are constructed – in the likeness of God.
Perverting Graduation. To deny someone either places of achievement or recognition of achievement is brutal disrespect; it is robbery of the worst sort. It is to deny God.
Christianity in this world has offered only two forms of “graduation,” both of which are entirely perverted. The primary form of graduation allowed by the serpentine gospel is death. Thus they say, “Brother So and so has gone to his ‘reward.’” Yet everyone knows instinctively that physical death is evil. Then, the only other form of graduation is to attain to a church ministry “office” and thus to proceed up this ladder, not of achievement, but of “achievement over.”
My Own Experience. And so it was in the fellowship of communities of which I was a part. In practical actuality, there were three levels of “achievement,” first to be an “elder,” second to be a “traveling ministry,” and third to be a “father ministry.” The one advantage in this system was that all ministries were corporate; that is, there was never any “one-man ministry.”
Since being an “elder,” then, was an all-inclusive office, the only “graduation” any young person could aspire to was to someday become an elder. And those that had no such abilities were simply out of luck. And it is CRITICAL for me to use my own experience as our example. For how else did God bring me to any present understanding than by the path He walked with me?
Unfixable Damage. This great tearing, then, between being completely “NOT an elder” to being completely “an elder,” was one of the huge imbalances in my experience through those years for which I sought an answer that never came. Then I walked for a season as an elder in that fellowship, and in doing so I learned a staggering truth, one of immensely vital importance for the Church of Jesus Christ from here forward.
Only one kind of person was truly damaged before God in that fellowship – and that is anyone who was an elder. The very “office” of being an elder wrought inside the majority a twisted concept of “anointed superiority” over those “fleshy non-elders” that I suspect most cannot recover from the ruin of self-righteousness in this present time.
Creating a False Image. Creating an “office” of ministry is also the creation of an “image” to which the one who fills that office must pretend. For instance, prison guards, fulfilling their role of inhumaneness against the inmates, become more hardened into a false self than the murderers and thieves they are guarding.
A “pastor” must pretend to be a pastor at all times; an “apostle” must pretend to be an apostle at all times. At no point do they allow themselves to be humans, and thus everyone sees them in that pretending way. All they could ever be are con men, the blind leading the blind; they can never be real. Ministry as “office” can only ever be “I, not Christ,” polluting even the genuine gift. I have seen this psychological reality prove itself out so many times, as I’m sure you have as well.
Protecting Me from Me. Yes, I am fully capable of destroying you with my so-called “gift,” or with any gift for that matter. Yet from such delusion none would become more destroyed than me.
Yet here’s the thing, the root of all hurting of others is one thing only – SHAME, the lashing out of shame. As I have shared, during my time in Christian community under more than 100 different elders over the years, only three treated me as an equal with them in all ways, in natural work as well as in the Lord. It was my memory of those three that kept my mental sanity as I left that fellowship. Yet now, as I think this through, there is one thing none of those three possessed. They had no shame at all.
Sink into Jesus. And since they knew no shame inside, neither did they EVER impose shame on me.
And there is only one thing I know of that removes shame from me, one precious thing. Enduo – to sink into the Lord Jesus AS all that I am. “Jesus, this awfulness is You, sharing Your travail with me. Jesus, you are carrying all my crippled humiliation entirely inside Yourself.”
And thus we come to the one thing that must govern all gifts of service in the Body of Christ. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. – He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Or we could say it this way – through the Veil, which is HIS flesh.