VII.
Purified Identity and Ministry Identities
It
has pleased God to institute certain secondary "helping"
identities into His body of people. Also called ministries, the purpose
of these secondary identities is to help each member obtain
full and complete purity of his identity in Christ:
"He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some
to be pastors and teachers, to prepare
God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ
may be built up 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 (i.e., purified
identity)."
Eph. 4:11-13
Ministry
identities are given to help man in his infirmity to span the
gap between his weak humanity and his destined perfection. As
helps, they are temporary. This also means that they are not focal. Ministry
identities are a means to an end. They are held by men who
themselves are yet somewhere short of perfect and who yet
wrestle to overcome their own earth-based identities.
Therefore
it is important not to mistake helping identities for identity
in Christ. We must all press in to identity in Christ beyond
ministry identities. The greatest temptation and danger
concerning ministry identities is to use the titles of these
positions to reinforce
old sources of self-esteem.
When
this happens, descriptions like "pastor", "elder", “apostle",
etc. assume the spirit of
artificial religious identity. This is polluted identity at
its very worst, and is at present a great plague and cancer in
the body of Christ. Earth-based ego dressed in the garb of
ministry
identity
is second in evil only to the declaration by a man who would
say, "I am Jesus Christ.
Worship me."