It is when you put Jesus at His rightful place in your life and ministry that you will find your rightful place in this life and in ministry. In the kingdom system, the position of the five-fold ministry gifts is like that of the twelve apostles when Jesus was physically on earth. All believers are posited as the rest of Jesus’ disciples, when Jesus was physically on earth.
The religious order is to see the five-fold ministry gifts as standing in Jesus’ ‘vacated’ physical place on earth; with all believers being equated to both the twelve apostles and other disciples of Jesus. This is not the spiritual arrangement in the kingdom system of Jesus.
In the kingdom system of ministry, the five-fold ministry gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers are in the status of the twelve apostles of Jesus, when He was physically with them on earth. So, current believers are to be equated to the other disciples of Jesus, i.e. apart from the twelve apostles.
Jesus is in His Own Class, and should not be put in the same bracket with the five-fold ministry gifts. As I mentioned earlier, the church of Corinth mistakenly did that, and the apostle Paul had to correct it. And he did that in the very beginning of his first letter to them, because it was a violation of kingdom order – 1 Cor.1:12.
The church of Corinth seemed to have broken all the kingdom-order of God.
“Now I say this, that, each of you says, ‘I am of Paul’ or ‘I am of Apollos,’ or ‘I am of Cephas,’ or ‘I am of Christ’. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Apostle Paul went on in the spirit of correcting this ‘equating’ of himself with Jesus. He referred to his comportment when he first preached the gospel to the people of Corinth. To him, by the way he presented himself the church of Corinth should not have perceived him as being in the same bracket with Jesus – 1 Cor.2:1-5,
“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling… that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men (or Paul) but in the power of God (or the Cross of Jesus).”
It is possible for people today to still see the five-fold ministry gifts as representing an ‘absent’ Jesus; for them to put men of God into the same bracket with Jesus. Actually, Jesus should not be seen as ‘absent’ in the church now. Jesus wants to be so much with us as when He was with His twelve Apostles on earth – Matt. 28:20.
He will manifest Himself to all who obey His kingdom-words out of love for His Person, and not because of any other benefit from His kingdom-words – Jn. 14:21. Jesus wants to be as real to us as when He was physically on earth.
