Other than your family, who are some of the most important relationships in your life right now?
Depending on what’s going on in our life, different people become more important to us at different times and different ways. For example, if you’ve ever cared for a loved one who was chronically or terminally ill, then your relationship with certain doctors and nurses deepened and became more meaningful. Or if you’re a parent, the relationship with your child changes as the two of you age and experience different things. Before you know it, the child is caring for the parent! All of that to say that the people who are most important to us in our lives can vary, and often are tied to a specific purpose.
In some ways, the same is true for those people in our lives who, like us, are Christians. The nature of our relationship with such people is that they help us in our walk with Jesus, and vice versa, because nothing or no one matters more to either of us than Him. This is why small groups are so important. Regardless of what we’re going through, a small group meeting regularly insures that we are keeping our relationship with Jesus front and center. As God would have it, relationships with others in a relationship with God are crucial for our relationship with God.
So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. 20 Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. 21 We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. 22 Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.
Ephesians 2:19-22 NLT
Paul use three metaphors to describe what it means to be a Christian. What are they, and what is significant about each of them?
All three of Paul’s metaphors speak to the importance of our relationship to other Christians. In verse 19, he states that Christians are “citizens with the saints.” In the same way that one might identify with others from the same country or state, so Paul says Christians relate to one another.
The second metaphor in verse 19 is a little more intense: we are “members of God’s household.” That means that Biblically, we’re a family.
Verses 20-22 really drive it home. The sentence starts off with the Greek word epoikodomeo, which literally means “together we are built.” We are literally building this house with each other as Christ has cemented us together.
That’s why we do lifegroups in the first place. We are emulating those early believers who knew the value of cultivating love between believers as Christ commanded. Do you feel like your lifegroup is your family? Why or why not?
What makes this relationship (in lifegroups) different from other relationships outside our groups?
Church and small group relationships are not dependent on circumstances, experiences, race, gender, or any other natural factor. While these things might separate people in other situations, our differences in church and church small groups only serve to highlight the greatness of what we have in common.
HAVE A VOLUNTEER READ EPHESIANS 4:12-16.
Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-16 NLT
14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
What is Christ’s intention in giving spiritual gifts to His people?
In what ways are we each gift important to the life and growth of other Christians (vv. 15-16)?
Using the gifts God has equipped us with, we should help each other grow in Christ—speaking the truth in love and supporting each other. For ministry to be effective we need the gifts of others and others need us to use our gifts. That’s the beauty of the church body God created. Each person is gifted to benefit those around them. Strength is created within the body when each part works in conjunction with the others.
How can being a faithful member of a small group help bring about the unity this passage emphasizes and protects from the chaos mentioned in v. 14?
How have you seen Christian community suffer when certain parts are too weak or missing? On the other hand, how have you seen it thrive when everyone is using their gifts and serving one another?
What steps can you take to minimize unresolved differences in your community?
How can we help each other understand our individual functions within the body of Christ? What opportunities are you aware of at our church that would give people in our group the opportunities to exercise their specific gifts?
Next month, we’ll be starting our new book study. Your lifegroup leader has all the details. You will want to talk through what that will look like a little bit.