`edifying the Body of Christ' rather than worldwide evangelization.  The gospel

for the unsaved is still the gospel as revealed in Romans.  The epistle to the

Ephesians assumes that the reader has reached the inner teaching of Romans 5 to

8, `dead to sins'.

We have seen that the re-adjusting of the saints had a twofold goal:

Unto a work of ministry.

Unto a building up of the Body of Christ.

Work is valueless apart from dispensational truth.  Labour expended upon

the Body of Christ with undispensational Scriptures does not build up, but

destroys.  The scattered and divided state of the professing church today is

largely the result of the attempt to combine dispensations that differ.  The

reader may be engaged in `a work of ministry', but it is worth while to stop and

consider its relation to the various phases of God's purpose.  Some of God's

children are engaged in phases of earthly Kingdom truth.  They sometimes condemn

us because we see something different.  We do not condemn them, however, but

readily admit that there are other circles of ministry, still open today, than

that of the One Body.  The failure is most manifest when one, who professedly

belongs to the One Body and seeks to minister in that sphere, for reasons of

usefulness and through the claims of others, descends to an unwholesome blend of

Body, Bride, and earthly Kingdom, which cannot but produce a hybrid following.

What is true of the particular case of ministry is true in a wider sense, as the

parallel of Colossians 1:10 shows:

`That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful

in every good work'.

Instead of looking upon dispensational truth as a phase of things that can

be taken up as a kind of hobby, or left as the case may be, we should look upon

it as lying at the base and root of all our actions, doctrine and ministry.

The goal of this re-adjustment and ministry is the building up of the Body

of Christ.  Do we appreciate the emphatic place that Scripture gives to that

ministry which `builds up'?  In Ephesians 4:16 we find it as the great goal of

joint service:

`Unto the edifying (building up) of itself in love'.

And again in verse 29:

`Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is

good to the use of edifying (or building up)'.

Look at 1 Corinthians 8:1:

`Knowledge puffeth up, but charity (love) edifieth'.

This truth is expanded after the chapter of love (13), and in its two

forms comes seven times in chapter 14 (verses 3-5,12,17 and 26):

`He that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification ... He that speaketh

in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth

the church ... that the church may receive edifying'.