Lesson 15 – God Equips His Saints
Read Ephesians 4:1-16 - https://www.bible.com/bible/59/eph.4.esv

God gave us these gifts, these abilities to do things for a purpose. What is that purpose? We begin to read that purpose in verse 12. “To equip the saints for the work of ministry” is the first reason. What does it mean to equip the saints? Who are the saints?

Who the saints are is a question answered in many Scriptures. Psalm 16:3 tells us there are saints on the earth – they are alive even today. Romans 1:7 tells us that the “beloved of God” are called saints. That’s you and me, each of us who are God’s children. Do we feel or act like saints all the time? No, but being a saint doesn’t depend on that, it only depends on God who has placed His righteousness on us like a covering – that holy covering is what makes us saints.

What does it mean to “equip” the saints? Each of us who have become followers of Jesus, part of the household of God, are in the process of learning from the moment we are saved until we die. Just because we have been given that covering of righteousness doesn’t mean we know how to live like a saint. The process of learning to live like that is called “sanctification” in the Bible. It means to be set apart. We must learn how to be set apart for God, how we are to live in His righteousness, how to walk worthy of our calling while we still walk in a world full of sin and wickedness that we don’t want to have influence over us.

My dad raised hogs when we were young. We had to sometimes walk with the hogs in those pens to feed them or do whatever needed doing. Hogs love to wallow in the mud, and believe me, they have powerful stench to them. If we’d let them rub up against us, we’d get that stench from them – or worse, they’d push us down into that mud! We had to learn how to walk among them to do our job without getting all that filth on us.

That’s what we as Christians need to learn to do as well, as we walk in the world. We must learn to do what God needs us to do, but do it without getting all that worldly filth on us in the process. Just as dad taught us how to do that with the hogs, we as Christians need to teach each other what we’ve learned as well.

For all of us who are now God’s children, there are no coincidences in our lives. God says He has a plan, and He carries it out with us who are willing to do His work – Isaiah 46:10. Everything God allows into our lives He can also use to help someone else, through us, if we’re willing to let Him teach us. And most of the time God’s teaching us comes through someone else who is willing to be used of God. We learn how to be patient by watching someone else be patient, when we would have been too impatient. We learn to witness to someone by watching another tell someone about Jesus. We learn how to apply God’s word to our lives by listening to our pastor. Are we learning?
*The beloved of God are called _____
*What does “sanctification” mean?
*Are there coincidences in our lives?