Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Debelak
I glean that Nee is saying, the people, who are gifts given by God, in Ephesians 4 are gifts to the whole Body of Christ – while the “things” (such as prophesy) are gifts given by God to individuals for the local assembly. Is this right?
I just don’t see that dichotomy (between the “whole church” versus the “local church” in these passages). In 1 Corinthians 12, it says
“But the one and the same Spirit operates in all these things [the gifts mentioned], distributing to each one individual as He purposes. For even as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the body being many are one body, so also is the Christ.” (vv. 11-12).
From this, it seems that the gifts given to each member are for the whole body.
Similarly, in Ephesians 4, it is not obvious that only a select few are given as “apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds or teachers” to the whole church. In face, verse 7 says
“But to each one of us was given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.”
Sure, it could be said that the gifts in verse 11 are different and a specific subset whose specific purpose is “for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ” – but later in the chapter Paul says that “Out from whom all the Body, fitted and knit together through every joint of the supply, according to the operation in measure of each one part, causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love.” As such, each one part does the work of “building up the Body” and thus “each one part” is parallel to to the work of the gifted ones in verse 11 whose work is “unto the building up of the Body of Christ.”
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I think I get what you're saying and it's more or less a corollary to what I'm suggesting. The accurate translation of \ekklesia\ I think will yield additional light on this and related topics. The only way you get to a use of "assembly" in an allegedly universal aspect is to ignore the practical impact of all of these gifts and create an abstraction where none exists. The abstract idealism in turn becomes merely the foundation for darkness, degradation and denominationalism. Loosely dealing with the translation is not criminal but it makes understanding these other things much more difficult. Local assembly and universal Body.
The local assembly is the universal Body, as the Scripture states plainly, because the universal Body needs to have a real presence on the earth somewhere. But the simple inverse isn't the case because the universal Body includes all the believers everywhere and the local assembly is only these believers here. Yet, the local assembly is of far greater real consequence because God is not manifested everywhere; God is manifested HERE. And with reference to your observation, the gifts touch the local assemblies. They have no impact upon the Body except therein.
So, I don't think Nee's analysis holds up very well under close inspection and essentially for the very reason I'm continually suggesting at the moment - the "universal church" concept clouded his ability to perceive what it seems you locked onto immediately. I mean, surely he knew these surrounding verses as well, right? How could he miss that?
I feel there is a lot of fresh light like this just under this ancient veil...