By Kevin Lockett
Most - if not all - of us have experienced driving or riding from a city street, onto an onramp, and then onto a highway. But have you ever wondered how that onramp was made? No? Neither had I, until I stumbled upon a random YouTube video about mechanically stabilized earth. Apparently, the onramps we're all so familiar with are made of a very cheap, common material: dirt. But not regular dirt. Any old pile of dirt would crumble under the weight of concrete, asphalt, vehicles, and weather. Every grain of dirt would be a potential point of failure with infinite opportunities for fatal disasters. However, by integrating horizontal reinforcing layers in the dirt, a pile that would easily collapse becomes strong and durable. These thin mesh reinforcing layers absorb force and interrupt points of failure. They take what would be an unstable pile of dirt and make it stable infrastructure.
I couldn't help but think about mechanically stabilized earth while reading Ephesians 4:11-14. In this passage, Paul talks about how God has provided for the church's stability. Like an engineer constructs an onramp to be stable under stress, God has designed the church to be stable in a hostile world.
In Ephesians, Paul reminds believers of God’s mighty work of salvation through Christ. He explains that God has seated us in heavenly places with Christ. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ. We've been created in Christ for good works, brought near to God, and given a calling.
We are saved in and through Christ, and we can live as the people God called us to be because of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-14 gives us a glimpse at who God wants us to be and how we become those people. Let’s work backwards so we can unpack Paul's thought process.
In verse 14, we see Jesus’s desire: that we would grow into a mature body of believers who can withstand false teaching. Specifically, this verse envisions us no longer being “small children” who are “tossed” and “blown around” by “human cunning” and “techniques of deceit.” Like an engineer wants the onramp he or she is building to be stable, Jesus wants his church to be stable.
How can we experience this stability? Verse 13 tells us that growing in maturity looks like reaching “unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son.” We are mature and stable when we have the right kind of unity. Like a pile of dirt needs the right reinforcement to be a functional onramp, we must unify around the right truth to be a stable, mature church. We’re not called to unity for unity’s sake. Being united in ignorance isn’t stability, it’s instability masquerading as maturity. Instead, we’re called to unity in two areas: the faith and the knowledge of Christ. Stability comes when we grow united in our knowledge of and commitment to the truth of the gospel: who Jesus is and what He has done for us. This is what Paul calls "growing into maturity." Like the reinforcing layers in mechanically stabilized earth, the truth of the gospel makes otherwise unstable people stable.
How can we grow in the faith and the knowledge of Christ? How do we grow into maturity? Through what Paul in verse 12 calls “building up the body." This is accomplished through “the work of the ministry.” Who does this work? The saints. That’s you, me, and every believer! When we serve, we’re being used by God to build his body into maturity. If you’re contributing to God’s people growing in the knowledge of His son, you’re participating in God’s stabilizing work. God has included you as a participant in His body-building work.
But God hasn’t included you and then left you alone to figure out how to do the work. He’s equipping you. He has seen to it that you are empowered to do the work of the ministry. How? Jesus has "given some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers" to equip YOU for the work of the ministry. Think about what God has made available to you. He has laid a foundation of faith through apostles and prophets, divinely inspiring them to pen the words of scripture (Ephesians 2:20, 3:4-5). He's given us the local church, graced with pastors and teachers who God has appointed and gifted to teach and shepherd us (Hebrews 13:17, 1 Peter 5:2).
Jesus has provided exactly what we need to be equipped to do the stabilizing work to which we are called. Just like an engineer takes ordinary, cheap earth, collects it together, and fortifies it so it can be stable under stress, God - the master engineer of his church - has collected fallen and sin-stained people, brought us into his family, and fortified us so that we, too, can be stable under stress. To God be the glory!
