Under Jesus (Defining Church #3)

This past week a professional football team made major news. The preseason had just ended, and the regular season was about to begin.

During the preseason, an NFL team is allowed eighty men on the roster. For the regular season, only fifty-three. So most teams use those four weeks of camps and games to evaluate all eighty and decide which twenty-seven have to go. Some of those cut get signed to a practice squad. A few get picked up elsewhere. And some of them simply go back to working a regular job, their hopes and dreams over.

Every team makes these cuts. But this one made headlines because of who they cut: their starting quarterback. A three-time Pro Bowler. A former league MVP. A first-round draft pick who had been a genuine star. Probably past his prime by now, but most people would agree he still had plenty to give.

And the head coach let him go in favor of a rookie they’d just drafted.

It surprised everyone except one analyst, who posted something to the effect of: He does what he does, right or wrong. The man is cold-blooded and will do what he thinks he has to do. Period.

In other words: it’s his team. He’s in charge. He gets to do what he wants.

Whose Team Is It?

This happens constantly. One personality dominates an organization — because they’ve been there longest, or because of their position, or simply because of the force of who they are — and the whole thing becomes theirs.

People call that football franchise the coach’s team. They call a basketball franchise its star player’s team. If I asked you whose team the Iowa Hawkeyes are, plenty of you would name the head coach, because he’s been there longest and he makes the decisions.

But it isn’t just sports. It happens in business. One founder stepped down as CEO of a giant retailer years ago and remains chairman, and it’s still his company in everyone’s mind. Say the name of a certain software company and people still picture the man who started it.

It happens in nonprofits and ministries. Say the name of a large relief organization and people see one face. Name a well-known family ministry and people picture its founder — who hasn’t been part of it for over a decade, and yet it’s still seen as his.

It happens with a college whose president has a larger-than-life personality. It happens in your workplace with your boss.

And it absolutely happens in the church world. Name a megachurch and people immediately attach a pastor’s name to it. But it isn’t a megachurch phenomenon. I suspect that right here in our own small town there are people who think of this congregation as the pastor’s church, because I’m the founder and I’m the one up front.

I don’t believe that’s God’s design. This isn’t supposed to be my church. It isn’t supposed to be any well-known pastor’s church. It isn’t even supposed to be one of our elders’ church.

This is Jesus’s church.

More Than a Theological Fact

As we continue defining what and who the church is, we’re going to see clearly that the church belongs to Jesus. But I don’t want you walking away with a tidy theological concept — yes, the church is Jesus’s, got it, we’re good.

I want you to see that this changes how we view church, how we do church, and how we live.

My hope and prayer is that as you recognize Jesus is over the church, you also recognize that if you follow him, you are the church — which means Jesus is head over you as well. And that ought to lead you to complete trust and surrender.

Where We’ve Been

We keep returning to Acts 2:42–47, where the earliest believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer; where awe came upon every soul; where they held all things in common, sold possessions and distributed the proceeds to anyone in need, met daily in the temple, broke bread in their homes with glad and generous hearts, praised God, had favor with the people — and the Lord added to their number daily.

Two weeks ago we saw the church is not a building and not merely an organization. It’s people — and not just any collection of people, but the redeemed people of God.

Last week we saw those redeemed people had been given a mission — to make disciples in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Today: because that mission came from Jesus, he is the head of the church.

Wasn’t Peter in Charge? Or Paul?

If you asked people who led the early church, I suspect many would say Peter — and it makes sense. Peter preached the sermon in Acts 2 where three thousand people came to Christ, so the church went from about a hundred and twenty followers to over three thousand overnight. Country church to megachurch in a single day. I can’t imagine the logistical nightmare of trying to care for everyone. Although I wouldn’t mind finding out.

Peter healed the lame beggar in Acts 3, which got him arrested and hauled before the Sanhedrin, where he told them about Christ. He handled the confrontation with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. When trouble arose again later in that chapter, he was the voice. He was the de facto vocal leader.

And as important a leader as Peter was, he was not the head of the church.

Others might say Paul. He came along later, but he wrote roughly two-thirds of the New Testament, planted a great many churches, and countless people entered the kingdom through his ministry. There are churches named after the man — you can find one in our own town.

He was not the head of the church either.

We could keep going. Augustine. Martin Luther. So many key leaders God has used in tremendous ways. Not one of them was the head of the church. That has always been and will always be Jesus.

Four Reasons

First, every other leader is temporary. Peter led for a good while — he’d walked with Jesus for years — but by Acts 15 you see James, the brother of Jesus, emerging as the lead voice while Peter’s role recedes. Move through church history and you find magnificent men who eventually stopped leading, whether through retirement or death.

Even I, as the founder of this church, am temporary. A day is coming when I will no longer be the pastor here, and I hope the ministry of this church resonates for years after that. All of us are temporary — except Jesus. He has been the head of his church and, as we’ll see, he still is.

Second, he’s the one who said he’d start it. In Matthew 16 Jesus makes the plan explicit. And you have to appreciate what that meant to his twelve disciples. They were good Jewish men, so the concept of gathering wasn’t foreign — they had synagogues. But the way Jesus talked about this was different. It was a new concept. They did not invent it. It came from him.

Third, Jesus gave the mission to the church — or as we saw last week, Jesus had a mission and created a church to accomplish it.

Fourth, and most plainly, the Scriptures simply say so. Colossians 1:18 states that he — Jesus — is the head of the body, the church.

Paul occasionally describes the church as a building and sometimes as a family, but his most frequent image is a body. Just as Jesus had a physical body on earth, now that he is physically in heaven he has a spiritual body here — and that body is the church. He is the head, and out of him flows the body, whose different parts do different things. Hands do what feet cannot; feet do what tongues cannot. That’s how a body works. Paul loved that image.

So Should I Be Fired?

Here’s a fair question. If Jesus is the head of the church, am I even necessary? Should we disband the elder team as redundant? Should we let the Sunday team go?

Thankfully, Paul explains this in Ephesians 4 — and helps us understand why even I am useful for a while.

A quick word on the structure of that letter. Chapter 1 opens with a deep, rich theological introduction steeped in the gospel. Chapter 2 gives an extended explanation of the gospel. Chapter 3 explains why Paul does what he does because of the gospel. So chapters 1 through 3 are all about Jesus — his life, death, and resurrection.

Then chapter 4 pivots: because of all that, here is how you should now live.

A Prisoner Writing About Freedom

Verse 1 begins: I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord…

Let’s pause. Last week we dipped into Colossians and saw Paul under house arrest in Rome, imprisoned because of the gospel. What struck us was that from prison — imprisoned for the gospel — he asked the Colossians to pray he’d have more opportunities to share the gospel. The most important thing in the world to Paul was that Jesus loved the world, died on a cross, and rose again, and that everyone needed to know it. He gave his life to that, even when it landed him in chains.

So here he is, still imprisoned, saying: therefore, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

If you follow Jesus, the gospel has opened your eyes and your heart. You now have a relationship with God. You’ve been called — or as Paul puts it, you now walk. And you’re to walk worthily. When you said yes to following Jesus, it wasn’t merely to secure heaven. It was for a changed life. You’re called to live differently than you used to.

Imagine a World Like This

And what does that look like? Verse 2: with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Stop and picture it. Imagine a world where people are genuinely humble. Where people are gentle. Where people are patient with your shortcomings. Where burdens get carried because of love.

Imagine what your family would look like. Imagine what a church would look like. Imagine what the world would look like.

This is exactly why we say the world desperately needs people who live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved.

One Body, One Lord, One Father Over All

Notice that having spent three chapters on the gospel and his own ministry, the moment Paul turns to how we should live, he cannot help but start talking about the church.

Verse 4: there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Some of us ought to memorize that phrase and meditate on it daily. God the Father is over all and through all and in all.

Then: grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Not according to the measure of what you’re worth. Not according to what you’ve accomplished. According to Christ’s gift.

And what did Christ do? He died on the cross for our sins. He gave everything. He loved us so much he laid down his entire life and pours it out on us. That is grace — undeserved gift, unmerited favor.

The Gift You Might Not Expect

Paul then quotes Psalm 68: when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and gave gifts to men. A psalmist a thousand years before Christ was already prophesying that the Messiah would ascend and distribute gifts.

Paul unpacks it in verses 9 and 10: in saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he also descended into the lower regions of the earth? God the Son came down from heaven, incarnated into human flesh, and descended to earth. Some read the “lower regions” as going further still — that after the cross, while his body lay in the tomb, he descended and took the keys of death and hell. Then he rose, and forty days later ascended far above the heavens, that he might fill all things.

So Jesus dies for our sins, rises, ascends — and gives gifts. Many of us would say he gave the gift of eternal life, and that’s true. Others would say the gift of God’s presence — also deeply true. Others would point to spiritual gifts, which is true as well.

But notice which gift Paul names in verse 11: he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.

God gave us leaders.

What Those Gifts Are

An apostle is one who leads the way into new territory. The office of the original twelve is closed in a formal sense, but I believe the apostolic spirit still lives — in overseas missionaries entering new cultures with this life-changing gospel, and in church planters.

Prophets. Most of us hear that word and think of predicting the future. But the bulk of biblical prophecy is what scholars call forth-telling rather than foretelling. It’s saying: here’s how you’re living, and it isn’t right. It brings correction. It guides you back. It’s a form of protection.

Evangelists are always sharing the good news, wanting people who don’t know Jesus to find and follow him. That’s a large part of why God started this church. He didn’t start it so we could gather Christians from other congregations into a comfortable club. He gave us a mission to make disciples.

So if you’re not a follower of Jesus, we’re genuinely glad you’re here. We started this church for you. We want you to know this life-changing gospel. We’re not going to twist your arm — the gospel is so beautiful and so true that we don’t have to oversell it. We’ll simply give it to you and let you decide whether it’s true. And if it is, we’ll ask you to give your life to Jesus, because it changes everything.

Then shepherds and teachers — many translations say pastors. There’s a mild debate over whether that’s one combined role or two. I’m the pastor here and I’m also usually the one teaching. But you could be an excellent teacher and a mediocre shepherd, or wonderfully caring and protective while not especially dynamic in front of a room. We won’t settle that today.

The point is this: God loves the church so much that Jesus doesn’t only give us forgiveness of sins. He also gives us leaders.

The Error We Keep Making

Here’s where we so often go wrong. We assume those leaders exist to do the ministry.

Look at verse 12. Jesus gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

“Saint” here doesn’t mean super-Christian, and it doesn’t mean someone who died and got elevated in a spiritual hierarchy. When Paul says saint, he means a follower of Jesus. If you have given your life to Christ, you are a saint.

I realize that after the week you’ve had — some of the decisions you made, some of the thoughts you had — you might not choose that word for yourself. That’s fine. God chooses it. He sees that he has forgiven you. He sees who you will be, and what you’ll be like in his heavenly realm at the end of time. You are a saint, and he wants to equip you for the work of the ministry.

So leaders exist to launch you into what God has called you to do. Which is exactly why we hold volunteer gatherings — not so we can recruit warm bodies for our own plans, but so you can take what God has put in you and give it.

And notice the purpose in the rest of verse 12: for the building up of the body of Christ. It isn’t about drawing attention to yourself. You do the ministry to bless others and build up the body. If you follow Jesus, you’re part of the redeemed people of God, which means your life is now to look like Christ’s — who gave his life for others. So you give your life to help others, and the body gets built up.

Until We All Grow Up

Verse 13 says we do this until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature adulthood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

That’s quite a sentence, and it isn’t especially smooth in the translation I’m using. Let me put it plainly: we all need to become like Jesus. To live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved. These leaders are here temporarily to help you become more like him, so you’ll go out and live with humility, gentleness, patience, and love.

Verse 14: so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. (Hold onto that one — we’re coming back to it.)

Verse 15: rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head — into Christ — from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

A Jesus-Centered Church

So often we attend church for what we can get out of it. We choose a church based on what we like about it. Paul says no — the church is entirely about Jesus. It finds everything from him and through him.

If we were a team, we’d be Jesus’s team. If we were a business, we’d be Jesus’s business. We’re a church, and we are Jesus’s church.

This is why we describe ourselves as a Jesus-centered church. I was initially concerned about that language, worried people would think we deny the Trinity. Exactly the opposite is true — our theology is thoroughly Trinitarian. We believe in one God revealed in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But we say we’re a Jesus-centered church helping people lead Jesus-centered lives precisely because of passages like Ephesians 4. It’s all about Jesus. It all flows from him. He’s the head. He started it. He gave the mission. Everything finds its fulfillment in him.

And I believe the more you focus on Christ, the more you come to see and appreciate the Father. Jesus said that whoever has seen him has seen the Father — so by looking at Jesus we actually see the Father, and I think we worship the Father more purely and accurately for it.

Nor do we forget the Holy Spirit. Looking at Jesus, we remember that it was the Spirit who raised him from the dead, and that the same power that raised Christ now dwells in us — which gives us a far better sense of who the Spirit is and what he wants to do in and through us.

Which Means We Have to Trust Him

If Jesus is the head of the church, then he’s the head coach of the whole enterprise. Which means if he decides to cut the starting quarterback, we have to trust that he knows what he’s doing.

As a fairly new church — seven and a half years old — we’ve had to trust God through a great deal. Some of you were with us in the early days when we genuinely wondered whether anyone would show up. We believed God had called us to this mission, and then Sunday would arrive and we’d wonder. We had to trust that God would provide the leaders and volunteers to help us make disciples. We had to trust him for a place to meet. We’ve had to trust him financially.

And though we’re no longer an infant church, we still have to trust him. Almost every church is having to right now, in the middle of this pandemic. It is genuinely hard to lead through this. Every decision feels like it will disappoint someone. So we keep coming back to the only question that matters: what can we do to help the greatest number of people connect with Christ?

We still have to trust him financially too. In his providence God put this building on our radar long before a pandemic existed. We brought it to our partners, who voted unanimously in February of 2020 to take it on. A month later we couldn’t meet at all, which delayed everything. Add a two-month sabbatical on top of that, and a great deal fell on many of you. We had to trust God through all of it.

I suspect we’ll have to trust him next year, and in five years, and in ten, and every year after. And I think that’s actually the best possible place for us to be — because Jesus is our head, and as we trust him, he does what he needs to do for his glory, our joy, and the blessing of our community.

What Trust Costs Elsewhere

But what we’ve walked through is small compared to what some churches face.

Right now there are churches that cannot meet at all, because they exist in closed countries — under Islamic governments, communist regimes, or atheistic states where the name of Jesus is considered threatening. If a group tried to gather the way we do, authorities would break in. People would be arrested. Many would be beaten. Some would be killed.

An organization that tracks global persecution reports that in 2021 so far, over 4,700 Christians have been killed for their faith. Nearly 4,500 churches or Christian-related buildings have been attacked. More than 4,200 believers have been detained without trial, arrested, sentenced, or imprisoned. And more than 340 million Christians currently live where they experience high levels of persecution.

And as I joked last week — that’s not a cashier declining to say “Merry Christmas.” That’s actual persecution.

One of Those 340 Million

One of those believers is a thirty-one-year-old man in Iran who grew up Muslim. I don’t know his whole story, but somewhere along the way he came to realize that Jesus is real — that there is one God revealed in three persons, that God the Son came to earth, died on the cross for his sins, and rose again, and was now calling him to follow.

He gave his life to that. And the secret police figured out he was no longer a Muslim. They raided his home, found a Bible and Christian literature on his laptop, and in 2019 arrested and detained him. He was released as the trial got underway. The pandemic threw the process into disarray. But this year he was convicted, and in July he began a ten-month sentence — for owning a Bible. For being a Christian.

The prison he was sent to is among the most notorious in the world for human rights violations. It was built to hold two hundred inmates and currently holds over seven hundred. They receive roughly a quarter of the food they should. The water is shut off for about four hours every day. Conditions are horrifically unsanitary.

That is where our brother in Christ was taken.

And knowing exactly what was coming, he recorded a video beforehand. In it he said: I thank God for considering me worthy of enduring this persecution because of him.

How Do You Get There?

How do you know you’re about to be thrown into that — that you’ll be beaten simply for proclaiming the name of Jesus — and say thank you, God?

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve matured a great deal in my faith, and I don’t know that I’m there yet. I don’t believe I’d deny Jesus. He was pressured to become an informant and expose other Christians, and he refused; I’d like to think I’d refuse too. But could I say I thank God I get to be persecuted? I don’t know.

How do you get there? Because I want to be there, and I want you to be there.

Here’s how. Trust.

He knows that when he gave his life to Christ, he joined the redeemed people of God. And because he’s part of that people, he is under the headship of Jesus — not merely as part of the global church, but individually. So if his God says, I want you to go through this, his answer is: all right. I’ll go through it. And thank you.

Maybe he’s thinking there are men in that prison who will hear the gospel from him and come to know Jesus. Maybe something in his story will travel far enough that a church in a small Iowa town will hear it and be drawn closer to Christ.

I’m Still Too Much Like Verse 14

Remember verse 14 — the one we skipped. Paul says we’re no longer to be children tossed to and fro by waves, carried about by every wind of doctrine.

He’s talking about doctrine, worldview, culture. And we absolutely do get knocked around by worldviews — by the culture, the media, our entertainment, all telling us what to believe. Early in my life I got knocked around plenty. Well, that sounds reasonable. Okay, maybe it’s actually this. I just bounced.

The longer I’ve followed Christ, the more settled I’ve become there. I’m not nearly as prone to buy in.

But I’m still too easily tossed around by my emotions. Still tossed by the waves of my circumstances. Knocked sideways by a physical ailment or a strained relationship. There are too many things in my life that still throw me.

How do you get steady? How do you find that peace, that rock-solid anchor that lets you say, “I thank God for this”?

Paul answered it one verse earlier. It happens when we attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, when we mature to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

In other words: the way through every wind of culture and every circumstance is Jesus. And to become like Jesus, you have to keep looking at Jesus. Keep studying the gospel. Keep working out what it meant for him to go to the cross for our sin and rise again — and what that means for your life now.

What Do You Need to Trust Him With?

So yes — I hope you walk away with the theological truth that Jesus is the head of the church. But it also means that if you follow Jesus, you are part of that church, and therefore Jesus is your head.

So what do you need to trust him with?

Is there something you’ve been withholding? Something from your past you’ve been holding against God? Something coming in the future that you can’t see clearly, and you’re living in fear of it?

Trust Jesus. Lay all of it out before him.

As you take the bread, remember that it represents his body, broken for you. As you take the cup, remember his blood, shed for the forgiveness of your sins. And when you see what he did for you — when you see how much he loves you — let that help you trust him.

I don’t know why he allowed what happened in your life. I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I don’t know why that physical ailment or that strained relationship persists. I’m not here to explain those things away. I’m here to say you can trust him. You can trust him because he is good. You can trust him because he loves you. And you can trust that he is at work even when you cannot see it.

Father, minister to us. Whatever people are carrying, help them hand it over. For anyone who has never given their life to you, let today be their spiritual birthday — let them receive your offer of grace, realize the cross was for them, and make the first thing they entrust to you be themselves.

And for those already part of the redeemed people of God — whatever fear, worry, or pain they’re gripping, whatever happened in their past — let today be a day of releasing, of surrender, of trust, until they can genuinely say: God, I thank you for Jesus. I thank you for what you’re doing. And I trust you, because you are my Savior and the head of the church and the head of my life. In his name, amen.