It’s declared by authors and educationalists the world over: it takes a village to raise a child. Yet while that may be true of raising a human … it’s not true of the born again Christian.
For all new believers and young believers, God has supplied a gathered people, made available, made mature and equipped by His Spirit, for everything the immature Christian is going to need to learn for the long road ahead.
In fact, for any and every Christian to survive and thrive while we wait his return, Jesus supplied His Church. Ephesians 4:11-16 …
11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
To grow, to thrive, to be equipped, to learn, to be defended and discipled into a mature, working member of Christ’s glorious body – it takes a Church!
Michael