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This look at Ephesians 4:11-13 is my part in examining those questions and trying to find answers to them. I would love any reader’s thoughts and feedback and additions and critique.

(11) Christ adventured to bestow on local churches:

1. those who are His delegated commissioners and messengers who are sent out by Him with miraculous powers on His mission to establish new works for Him on this earth;
2. as well as those who He has enabled to see His plans for the future and to clearly and eloquently speak His mind into specific situations;
3. and those He as enabled to preach the Gospel to those who have not heard the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ;
4. and those to whom He has given His heart for that local body of believers to care for them as shepherds care for their sheep;
5. and those He as enabled with knowledge and insight and understanding of both His Word and those in the congregation and the ability to instruct the body of Christ with that knowledge.

(12) Christ has given these to the church in order to:

1. completely furnish His chosen people for the toil and labor of serving and assisting others in ministry;
2. And for the planning, designing and construction of the infrastructure and all that is necessary for the Body of Christ to exist and function.

(13) All of this needs to continue until:

1. all of us reach the point where we all have attained unanimity and oneness in our commons faith;
2. and where we all fully know, recognize, and discern the Son of God;
3. and until we have together become as a man who has completely matured in his mind and moral character; a point of spiritual maturity where we are all properly aged in all that it means to be mature in Christ.

(14) We need to be spiritually mature, so that from this time forward, we will no longer insist on being immature like little children who can’t speak for themselves or aren’t allow to speak because they are immature and simple-minded. people who are like little children fluctuate back and forth like the tides of the sea and are like wayfarers who are carried here and there by winds of doctrine and teaching that blow in from the four corners of the earth and from every which direction of religious beliefs. They are carried away by religious illusionists who create erroneous doctrines that look true. And by those who develop invalid arguments that are ingenuously designed in their methodology with the hope of deceiving people and in their fraudulence to lead people away from what is orthodox and from living righteous lives that result from a reverence for God.

(15) Instead of being deceiving illusionists, those who Christ as given to the local church as apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers, and pastors are to each live genuinely with self-sacrificing love and affection and are to teach what is true and not concealing any of the truth so that everyone in the Body will increase in their spiritual maturity and relationship with Christ.

Christ is the head of the body which is the church. In His body everything is closely-joined and fitted together and knit together with each connecting ligament (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers) contributing its own part and support and working to the highest efficient that each is designed for. As each part performs its part with self-sacrificing love and affection, the body’s infrastructure grows according to its design and purpose.