“until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God – a mature person, attaining to the measure of Christ’s full stature.” Ephesians 4:13 NET https://bible.com/bible/107/eph.4.13.NET
Leadership in the church, the work of the pastor, teacher, evangelist, apostle, and prophet is to help the church arrive at the unity of faith, knowledge of Jesus, and perfection of moral character. They are to do this work in cooperation with our effort at becoming these things, unified in our faith, knowledgeable of Christ, and perfect in our moral character. This chapter lists the goal of their work in the verse today and explains our part in completing that goal in the remainder of the chapter. Unity of faith is not uniformity of faith expression. This means we are free to sing different songs but to the same Lord. We are free to offer different prayers but to the same God. We tolerate different expressions of love for God, allowing them without arguing while holding each other to love for the same God in Jesus the Savior. Likewise, we are to pursue this Savior through His word, His means of teaching all of us Who He is and what He requires from us. All of us who claim to be Christians must become eager and active students of God’s word to encourage each other in our faith from His word. Knowledge comes from God’s word. Its passionate pursuit marks the Christian genuinely eager to be united with all of his brothers. Finally, this knowledge results in obedience to God, which creates our moral character. As Jesus perfectly obeyed the Father, we, too, His brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of God, adopted by the blood of Jesus, are to obey the Father perfectly. Our goal when we meet is to encourage each other to live a life of love and good deeds as defined by the Scripture so that the world will see them and praise our Father in heaven. The Christian life is a cooperative effort of church leadership, fellow disciples, and our best effort to work together at glorifying Jesus until the whole world acknowledges Him as Savior and Lord.
