In The Trellis and the Vine, Colin Marshall and Tony Payne offer a great explanation of and exhortation to do the “will of the Lord.” This includes building up God’s church with love by the means that God has blessed every individual believer with, the Holy Spirit.
We [disciples of Christ] are not all the same. Not everyone is a ‘teacher’ or a ‘prophet’, and the way we bring encouragement and edification to the gathering will vary according to God’s gifting. But everyone should be pursuing the same goal, which is to edify the congregation in love; and this edification takes place through speech (intelligible speech, that is), whether a word of exhortation, a hymn, a revelation, a tongue-with-interpretation, or a prophecy.
We may all build (edify) in different ways, but we are all builders. We do not all have the same function, we are all urged to abound in “the work of the Lord, knwing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58). Interestingly, Paul uses exactly the same phrase just a few verses later to describe his own ministry and Timothy’s: “When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am” (1 Cor 16:10).
Simply by virtue of being a disciple of Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit of the new covenant, all Christians have the privilege, joy and responsibility of being involved in the work God is doing in our world, the “work of the Lord”. And the fundamental way we do this is by speaking the truth of God to other people in dependence on the Holy Spirit.
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Collin Marshall, The Trellis and the Vine (Matthias Media, 2009), 48-49. (Purchase Kindle version here.)
