One Body, One Faith: God and the Work of Teaching One Another

Christian Ministries of the Apostolic Faith Church — Erie, Pennsylvania "Pursuing Excellence until Excellence is Achieved"

God Never Called One Believer Alone

When God set out to redeem the world, He did not gather a scattering of individuals who would each go their own way. Our Preamble states it plainly: it is the express purpose of God "to call out of the world, a body of people to be saved making them a holy nation; a peculiar people unto Himself by the Gospel of His Son Jesus Christ" (I Pet. 2:9-10).

A body. A nation. A people.

That word body is not decoration. The New Testament Scriptures call the Church the body of Christ, "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, JESUS CHRIST himself being the chief cornerstone" (Eph. 2:20-22; I Cor. 3:11). A body is not a crowd of strangers standing near one another. A body is joined. What happens to one member is felt by the rest.

This is why salvation and community cannot be separated in Apostolic teaching. When three thousand souls were added on the Day of Pentecost, Scripture does not record that they went home and privately considered what they had heard. It records that "they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers" (Acts 2:42). Doctrine and fellowship stand side by side in the same verse. The teaching produced the community, and the community carried the teaching.

What We Are Commissioned to Teach

Before He ascended, JESUS CHRIST gave His Apostles a charge that still governs everything this church does: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (St. Matt. 28:19-20).

Notice that the Commission is not simply tell. It is teach — and then teach them to observe. The goal is not that our neighbors would merely hear about God, but that they would come into the same doctrine and the same practice that the Apostles received and delivered.

Our Constitution and Bylaws affirm that the New Testament Scriptures contain the Apostle's Doctrine, "the doctrine that God gave His Son to give to his Apostles so that the body of Christ would be unified as one body and in one faith through their word" (Jn. 17:6-23; Acts 1:1-2). This is the standard. When we teach our fellow man, we are not offering opinion, personal philosophy, or the spirit of the age. We are handing on what was handed to us. The Holy Bible is the end of all controversy (Rom. 3:4), and the New Testament Scriptures are our final rule and authority in all operations of this church.

That fixed standard is a mercy, not a restriction. It means the new believer in Erie receives the same Gospel the Apostles preached in Jerusalem. It means no teacher among us has the liberty to invent a different word.

Teaching Is Distributed Through the Whole Body

Our Preamble closes by declaring that this church will "endeavor to fulfill what God has ordained in Ephesians 4:11-16." That passage deserves careful reading, because it tells us exactly how God intended teaching to move through a congregation:

"And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." (Eph. 4:11-13)

God set gifted ministry in the Church — but read why. The offices exist for the perfecting of the saints, so that the saints themselves may do the work of the ministry. The pulpit is not the terminus of teaching. It is the equipping station.

Paul continues: the body grows when it is "fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part" (Eph. 4:16). Every part. The mother instructing her children. The seasoned saint sitting with a young convert after service. The Sunday School teacher. The brother who quietly answers a coworker's question about why he lives the way he does. None of these are lesser ministries. They are the joints supplying what the body needs.

Paul told Timothy, "the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also" (II Tim. 2:2). Four generations of teaching are contained in one verse. That is God's design for how truth travels — not broadcast once from a platform, but passed hand to hand through a community that keeps it intact.

How the Community Teaches

Scripture gives us living pictures of this, and they are worth imitating.

Some are taught because someone was willing to sit down beside them. The Ethiopian eunuch was reading Isaiah in his chariot and could not understand it. Philip asked whether he understood, and the man answered, "How can I, except some man should guide me?" (Acts 8:31). He then invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Much of the teaching that changes a life happens at that range — one person, one open Bible, one honest question.

Some are taught more perfectly by ordinary saints. Apollos was eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures, yet Aquila and Priscilla "took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly" (Acts 18:26). Two tentmakers instructed a gifted preacher — and did it privately, without embarrassing him publicly. That is both doctrinal fidelity and Christian courtesy at once.

Some are taught by those a little further along the road. Titus 2 charges the aged men to be sound in faith, in charity, in patience, and the aged women to be "teachers of good things" who instruct the younger women (Tit. 2:1-5). God did not intend for each generation to start over. He intended for the older to hand the younger something already proven.

Some are taught by watching. JESUS CHRIST said, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (St. John 13:35). Our conduct toward each other is a sermon our neighbors read before they ever hear us preach. A congregation that bears one another's burdens (Gal. 6:2), that restores the fallen in the spirit of meekness (Gal. 6:1), that does not forsake the assembling of itself together but provokes one another unto love and to good works (Heb. 10:24-25) — that congregation is teaching every day, whether or not anyone opens a text.

Truth and Love Are Not in Competition

Ephesians 4 warns that we are not to remain children, "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine." The remedy Paul gives is precise: "speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ" (Eph. 4:14-15).

Some are tempted to keep the truth and lose the love — teaching correctly while wounding needlessly. Others are tempted to keep the love and surrender the truth — sparing feelings by softening what God has said. Neither produces growth. Scripture binds the two together in a single phrase, and so must we.

Peter instructs us to be "ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you" — and then immediately adds, "with meekness and fear" (I Pet. 3:15). Paul directs that our speech be "good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers" (Eph. 4:29). Colossians tells us to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly "in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another" (Col. 3:16). The manner of teaching is part of the teaching.

The Work Before Us

Our neighbors in Erie are surrounded by voices. Very few of them are being handed the Apostle's Doctrine. That is the assignment God has given this body — not to a professional class within it, but to all of us, according to the measure of every part.

So ask the Lord where your part lies. It may be a Bible study you should attend faithfully so you can one day lead one. It may be a young believer who needs someone to sit beside them the way Philip sat beside the eunuch. It may be a family member who has watched you longer than you realize.

We were called out as a people, not as isolated souls. We keep what we were given by giving it away, and the body grows up into Him in all things.

Christian Ministries of the Apostolic Faith Church is affiliated with the Pentecostal Churches of the Apostolic Faith, Inc., and the NYPANE Council — 3rd, 10th, and 24th Episcopal Districts. Pastor: Diocesan Bishop Frankie L. Quinn.