Sunday School | Ecclesiology - Part 2

Alright, you guys. So we are, I don't know, three fourths the way through our series on Christian doctrine. Thanks, Dan. Dan is passing out a document right now that you if you were here last week, you received one of these, but we just have some extras in case you weren't here or if you wanted another copy because you lost the first one.

So what we've been talking about here, just starting last week, is what is the church? And we looked at the fact last week that the Bible, the New Testament uses a number of metaphors to describe what we are. So let's recap. What is the church, you guys? We are the church, first of all. And what are the metaphors that the New Testament uses to describe us?

We are sheep and shepherd. We didn't get to that one. We're gonna do that today. Bride. We are the bride of Christ. What else? We are the body of Christ, and he is the head. The body, the bride, we are the sheep of the shepherd. What else? Holy nation. We were just getting ready to get into that one. We're gonna talk a little bit more about that. What is it? The temple. So there's some sense in which we are a building. We are the temple, which is the place where God's spirit dwells. We are where he is. And then that temple metaphor kind of shifts into a building or a household, and into what ultimately? A family. So the church is like the body. Like a body, like a bride, like a temple, like a family, like a flock of sheep. Like a nation, a people, and there's at least one more that you guys that we haven't said. What is it? The branch. There's this notion of the olive shoot and the olive tree or the vine and the branches. All of these things are meant to depict something important about us.

So we're gonna pick it up where we were, which was looking at this notion that we are sometimes described as a people or a nation. Now your sheet, if you have it, is gonna take you to First Peter chapter two, but I don't want you to go there yet. First, flip back to Exodus 19. So anybody know, can you guess what's going on in Exodus chapter 19? Even if you don't look at it, can you guess?

It's real close to the 10 Commandments being given. The 10 Commandments are Exodus 20. So Exodus 19 is basically 10 Commandments Eve. It's right before the 10 Commandments. And when the 10 Commandments are about to be given, we get this law, it's coming. Look what happens in Exodus 19:3.

Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, this is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel, you yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations, you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites. — Exodus 19:3-6

Hear it again.

Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Though the whole earth is mine, you'll be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites. — Exodus 19:5-6

Now, with that in your ears, you can either look at the sheet or you can flip in your Bible at First Peter 2:9.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who has called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. — 1 Peter 2:9-10

When Peter writes this, would I have to expend any energy to persuade you that the basis of what he is saying is Exodus 19? It's obvious, right? Incredibly clear. So Exodus 19 says, out of all nations, you will be my treasured possession. You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. First Peter says, You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. Without question, First Peter 2:9 is an homage to Exodus 19.

But there is a massive difference. What's the difference? In Exodus 19, it is a conditional statement. If you obey me fully, then you will be my treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.

What's going on in First Peter? Do you see the if? It's not a conditional statement, it's a declarative statement. You are.

If versus you are, there's a universe of a difference between this. Now, here's a trick question. Does that mean that in First Peter, the condition has been removed? No. Say it. It has been met. It is not that God used to be particular and wound up tight and really type A, and now he's kind of slack jawed and like, whatever, everybody can come in. That's not the case at all. He's every bit as particular today as he ever was then. The condition has not been removed, the condition has been met.

If you obey me fully—good luck—you will be these things. But in the New Testament, the message to the church is you are a chosen people. You are all of these things that you never could have been on the basis of your own obedience. So when we recognize what is the church, it's necessarily the case that the church is a group of people that have experienced an enormous amount of grace and mercy, which is why it is so incredibly unbecoming if you ever meet a Christian, or a group of Christians, or a community of Christians whose fundamental orientation to the world is one of pride, arrogance, looking down our nose at all those unworthies. It's like, my goodness. Have you met us? Have you ever read the book? Do you know the nature of this thing?

What Peter says here at the end of that quote:

You were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

The whole point of this is not that you would declare the praises of yourself—that you're so great—but that you would declare the praises of the one who called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light. So when we say that we're a people, we're a nation, we're a royal priesthood, all those things woven into that, is that we are a people who have received mercy. We're the body that's close to the head, we are the bride that is beloved by the groom, but we are the people who do not deserve to exist, and yet mysteriously do. Make sense?

Israel and the Church

I'm not going to chase this rabbit today, but we will in two or three weeks. One other thing I want you to notice—this is very important, we'll chase it down later. I'll just give you a little appetite here for this. Who is Exodus 19 speaking to? The house of Jacob. And then he says it again in a second way. What's the next line right after that?

This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel. — Exodus 19

Unmistakably, Exodus 19 is written to Israel. First Peter 2 unmistakably is written to the church. One is to Israel, the other is to the church. This should raise in your mind a question that I'm not going to answer today, but I want you to puzzle on, and that is when defining the church—what is the church? It'll be important that we define the church in the context of the question, what is Israel, and what is the relationship between Israel and the church?

This question has been answered in a number of different ways, and right now, curiously, there's an awful lot happening, in particular among young men, about the nature of Israel today. We're going to use this opportunity, not today, but in a few weeks, to talk through what is the biblical understanding of the relationship between Israel and the church. In the meantime, you could try to come up with an answer to that yourself, and then I'll show you what I really think—what the scriptures teach us, how we should see this.

A number of different theories have been put forth, some of them better and some of them worse than others, but you might noodle on that. There's a lot of nonsense being said about that right now, and I think that we should try to understand biblically what the actual answer is.

Branches of a Vine

So we're a people, a nation—all about the fact that we've received mercy. Here's the next one. We are the branches of a vine. We are the branches of a tree.

I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. — John 15:5

This is exactly like what we've seen in all these other metaphors—that whatever else is true about brides and bodies and temples and we'll see this about sheep as well—what we are to understand about being the church is that whatever we are, we are in relation to Him. Whatever we are, we are because we are connected to Him. Every one of these metaphors that He gives is itself a contingent image. It is a metaphor that depicts dependence, connection, vital engagement with. Branches of a vine, you cut them off, they die.

And we—this is similar to the other thing we just looked at about Israel—whatever the church is, we are branches of this tree that don't deserve to be here, right? In Romans 11, Paul says this:

Some of the branches, that is unbelieving Jews, have been broken off, and you, Gentiles, a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root. Do not boast over those branches. — Romans 11

There's something here, again, continuing this theme that what we are is vitally connected to Him, but in particular for the Gentiles among us. Are any of you Gentiles? Some of you are Gentiles? Any of you Gentiles here, do you realize you have no right to any of this? You're a wild branch. You got grafted in. Nobody deserves anything. It is grace from top to bottom. But having been grafted in, oh my goodness, you get to share in the nourishing sap. The church should understand itself as a bunch of undeserving people that have somehow been grafted into the people of God. Adopted in. That's right. And they cannot be rejected. You have been brought into the family. And when you adopt someone into your family, everything you have becomes theirs. It's all ours, but we just didn't deserve it. It's a gift.

The Flock of Sheep

So we're a people of a nation, we are the branches of a tree. And then finally, we are the flock of sheep that belongs to a shepherd. Listen to how Jesus says this:

I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me just as the father knows me and I know the father. I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice. And there shall be one flock and one shepherd. — John 10

Do you know who he was talking to in the beginning of that line and then who he's talking about at the end? He's talking about the Jews in the beginning, and then he's talking about these other sheep that he's got to go pick up. That's you. We are the other sheep, but we're not a separate flock. He's very clear about this. There shall be one flock and one shepherd. We'll unpack this shortly.

Or in Acts 20:

Keep watch over yourselves and all of the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. — Acts 20:28

And then Peter's gonna put it like this:

Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers, not because you must, but because you are willing as God wants you to be. Not greedy for money, but eager to serve. Not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. — 1 Peter 5

Now, we've talked about the implications of each one of these images, right? The love that a husband has for his bride, the connection of a vine to a branch. What is the chief and primary implication of the fact that y'all are a flock of sheep? What is it? Stupid. You're stupid. Do you know that? That's the whole point of the sheep thing. Sheep are dumb. Have you seen the video where some sheep has his head in a crevasse, and the shepherd pulls him out, frees him from his misery, and within five minutes he runs and dives right back in. You're like, you are so stupid. The primary metaphor for the church is that sheep is not flattering, right?

And he tells the pastor, Peter is saying, listen, serve the sheep, care for the sheep. Any shepherd has dealt with sheep, and they know that sheep are dirty, sheep are smelly. There's all these stories about how bad it is to have to deal with sheep. And let me tell you, they're all true. You guys are an absolute nightmare to work with. Just a total disaster. No, just kidding, right? This is who we are. One to another, we require constant grace, constant care.

And the bad news about the shepherds, the under shepherds of this particular flock—you know what we are? Sheep. It's sheep all the way down. Your shepherds are sheep until we get to the great shepherd who oversees us all.

These are the images of the church. So we are the body of Christ, with Christ as our head. We are the bride of Christ. We are the temple of God. We are the household, which is sometimes described more as a family than a building. We are the people or a nation that didn't deserve even to exist. We are the branches of the vine or the tree. We are a flock of sheep with all the incumbent implications thereof.

But at the end of the day, what is the church? We are. We are the church. We are the people of God. And so for the next several weeks, we're gonna stay here with all these metaphors in the back of your mind. I want to chase through what the heck are we—all of our connection to Him, how desperately we need Him.

Now, if that's what we are, what are we to do? There are two primary passages that we like to use to define the mission of the church, the function of the church, the doing of the church. If that's who we are—for the bride, for the body, the sheep, for the vines, all that—what do we do? Where would you go in Scripture to get our marching orders? Matthew 28. What do we call that one, Joe?

The Great Commission and the Great Commandment

The Great Commission. There's a Great Commission in Matthew 28, and what's the other passage akin to this? It's not the great, it's the Great Commission and the great something else. The great commandment, Matthew 22. All these show up in multiple Gospels. We tend to go to Matthew for both.

So what is the great commandment in Matthew 22? What is the greatest commandment? Jesus was asked the question, and His response is:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. — Deuteronomy 6

And then without taking a breath, He says, "And the second is like it." He was asked for one, but He gives two.

Love your neighbor as yourself. — Leviticus 19

This is fundamentally our task. Whatever else is true, the highest—I don't know if you think of it in these terms, but your highest moral obligation is to love God. Do you know that's a moral act, and the refusal to do that is an immoral act? It is the highest law.

The chief law, the primary marching order of the church, is not the Great Commission. The Great Commission is a means to that end. The primary purpose of the church is to love God. It is to worship Him. It is to adore Him. It is to nurture within ourselves a treasuring of Him, because He is the ultimate worthy thing.

Your primary purpose in the world—this is true for the church, and it is true for the Son. It is true for rabbits. It is true for everything and anything—is to glorify God. Everything that exists exists to shine a light, to behold, to display the majesty and the grandeur of God.

The chief and highest end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

If you said, "What does the church do?" The first thing, the number one thing, the most central thing—we love God. We worship God. We honor God. We glorify Him.

Now, I know you just went to Matthew 28:22 as your primary passages, but we just looked at 1 Peter 2:9:

You are a chosen people of the royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. — 1 Peter 2:9

And that glorifies God. Absolutely. In fact, we can go to Matthew 22. We can go a lot of places for this, but the passage we were just at, 1 Peter 2:9—you are chosen people, a royal priesthood, all this—so that you may declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness and into His wonderful light.

What that's gonna do, and maybe we'll come back to this—I'll show this in a second—but what Peter is saying is the heart of evangelism is praise. When you are doing evangelism, which is gonna tie in with the Great Commission in a second, you are declaring the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. You are talking about Him in such a way that other people might want to come to know Him too.

So our first and our highest goal, first and our highest mission, is to love God. But you can't say that and stop there, because Jesus doesn't stop there. And the second is like it. To love your neighbor as yourself. He was asked for one, but He gave two, because they're inseparable.

We are meant to love God and to love each other. So the church is supposed to be a place where if you walk in these doors, you should notice that we are unreasonably fond of Jesus. This should be—if somebody comes to Holy Spirit, they listen to the way we sing, they listen to the way we treat each other, they listen to the way we talk about the Scriptures—you should be like, "Man, these guys are like super into Jesus. It's weird." Like, that is what should be our thing.

Whenever we're reading the Bible, if we're studying the Scriptures, if the point of it is not—once again—behold His majesty, consider His supremacy, honor Him in His lowliness. If that's not happening here every week, we are deficient. If you come to this church and you're like, "Man, those people love themselves. Those people love whatever their little hobby horse is," then something has gone off the rails. Our highest end is to adore Him, to make much of Him, to glorify Him, and to enjoy Him.

Secondly, what a church is supposed to be is a place where people experience love. We love one another, we're kind to one another, we move toward one another. When one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers, right? We seek to honor one another. When relationships are torn, we work it out. We speak truth to each other, even if it's painful, and we say it with a desire to heal, not with a desire to break.

The Great Commandment and the Great Commission

One Peter 2:9 is the one about being a body or a nation. First, the Great Commandment—the church is a place where the Great Commandment is obeyed. Second, the Great Commission, right?

How many of you have that memorized? Have you heard it a thousand times? If you get involved with Campus Crusade, they will beat it into your skull. Matthew 28—Jesus says, "How does it begin? Go." That's kind of how it ends. Before that:

"All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. And lo, I will be with you always, even to the very end of the age." — Matthew 28

So what do we do chiefly? We love God, and we love people. But how do we do it? By obeying the Great Commission to make disciples. Because the most loving thing that you can possibly do for another human being is introduce them to Jesus.

Just think of it like this. In a thousand years, you'll probably all be dead by then. So in a thousand years in the world to come, when you look back on your fifty or sixty or eighty year block of time, what do you think you will think was the most important thing that ever happened to you? From that vantage point, looking back to these years, what will have been the most crucial thing that ever happened?

Without question, not everyone will know the date, but everyone in the world to come will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the most significant thing that ever happened to them was not winning the World Series, was not summiting Mount Everest, was not meeting the girl of your dreams. It was unquestioningly coming to know the Savior.

And if that is true for you, then what is the greatest thing that can ever happen to another human being? Unquestioningly, it is that. And if the greatest thing that can ever happen to a living person is that they come to know the Savior, then what is the greatest act of love and kindness that you can ever show to another human being?

In some way, you introduce them, you influence them, you persuade them. With patience, you deal with their questions. Whatever it is, you are in some way contributing to this end that is the end. If we are to love the Lord our God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength with a heart of evangelism and His praise, and if we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, I promise you the most important thing that you will ever want to be true in your life is that your sins are forgiven and you're invited into eternal life. Then the greatest act of love that you can possibly show to another person is to help them come to know the Savior.

What is the church? We are people who love God. We are people who love others. And what is our task? It is to fulfill the Great Commission by making disciples. Make sense?

Now, this commission did not originate in Matthew 28. There are actually a number of ways that we could see the rooting of Matthew 28 in the last paragraph of 2 Chronicles 36, but chiefly, I think the primary root for this thing is actually all the way back in Genesis 1. Does anybody know? In fact, turn back to this. I want you to see how absolutely foundational the Great Commission is. The mission of the church is not some, "Hey, here's an idea, go do this." This was the start of everything.

Genesis 1:26-28

There are certain passages of Scripture that get a name. The Great Commission gets a name. The Great Commandment gets a name.

This thing, Genesis 1:26-28, it has a name. It's one of the little special passages. Do you know what we call this? The Creation Mandate. That's exactly right.

So if you go to Genesis 1:28, the creation mandate, I want you to hear what we're supposed to do. Let's read it:

And God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them. And he said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves along the ground.'" — Genesis 1:26-28

This is the fundamental command that is given to humanity at the beginning of time. What are you going to do? It's chiefly two things. What are the two things that you extract here out of verse 28? Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. That's all one. And what's the second? Subdue it. Rule over it.

Now I want you to think about these two things. First thing, when he says fill the earth, what are we supposed to fill it with? Babies. Make babies. We make babies. Now, what's a baby? The image of God. This is central. When God made man in his image, and then he said, go make more of yourselves, necessarily what he's saying is, fill the earth with things that look like me. Does this make sense? Fill the earth with things that look like me. We are all supposed to be little statues running around on this planet reflecting God. We bear His image. We point to Him. We tell everyone and everything, "You wanna know what God is like? He's like this." Which should make most of us be like, "Oh gosh. Do I really wanna say that?" Right? But that is the job. You are mirrors. You are images. The world is supposed to be filled with things that look like him.

Number two, what are we supposed to do? Subdue it. Rule over it. So there's an idea that when God made the world, it was perfect. That's false. It was good, but it wasn't perfect. There wasn't anywhere to sit. There were no paintbrushes. There were no trombones. It was good, but it was imperfect. Somebody's gonna have to dig up some rocks and melt them and make an iron thing. You can saw down a tree, you can build a house. We've got some work to do. There's weeds in the garden.

So what we gotta do is take this chaotic world that he's made that is good, and we're supposed to turn it. We're supposed to turn the woods into a city. We're supposed to go build something. We're supposed to make it to be how he wants it to be, and it's not like that yet. You with me? So there's two things: Number one, fill the world with things that look like me. And number two, make everything the way I want it to be. Bring all of creation into a state of obedience.

The Great Commission and the Creation Mandate

The Great Commission is merely a particularization of this. In Genesis 1, we are supposed to fill the earth with things that look like Him. Look at Matthew 28:18-20:

Jesus came and told his disciples, "I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you." — Matthew 28:18-20

In Matthew 28 verse 19, what are we supposed to fill the earth with? Disciples. You know what disciples are? They are things that look like him. In the same way, fill the earth with human beings that look like me.

In Matthew 28, it's like, "Yeah, yeah, okay. We got a lot of human beings, but now we need to go reshape them a little bit because they've broken. The image has been marred." So what we are doing is revisiting this command to fill the earth with things that look like him. The making of disciples is chiefly the making of things that look like him. And then what are we supposed to tell those disciples in verse 20? Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. Where does that find its root in the creation mandate? The earth. In both cases, what he's wanted forever is always the same thing.

Number one, everywhere we go, there are things that look like him. And everywhere we go, the world is just the way he wants it to be. What he gave us in the garden, he has simply forgiven us on the mountain. And that is what the church's job is to do. We're to love the Lord our God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are to fill the world with things that look like Him. And we are to bring His will to bear in every area of life.

That's the job. Good enough? So we're a bride, we're a body, we're a flock, we're a branch, and this is what we do. Now, very briefly, I got five minutes. I'm gonna hit this quick. How do we do it? This is Ephesians four. So go to Ephesians four. In Ephesians four, verse 11 and following, Paul gives us the primary way that it gets done. Okay? Look at this:

It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, 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, attending to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. — Ephesians 4:11-13

What this means is that God's plan for the church is that there would be certain types of persons. He gives us what we sometimes call the five-fold office, and I want you to think of it as a continuum, okay? He says there are some that are apostles. When you see apostle, think missionary. The word apostolos simply means sent ones. These are the Gonzo guys that just want to go somewhere else, like David Fuller, if you guys know David Fuller. Like, let's just be weird, go someplace, do something else. Then you got the prophets. They're not quite as travel-y as the apostles are, but they are the weirdest people in the body of Christ. Amen, Mike Massey? Mike's a prophet. Okay? Some to be evangelists. This is still also like the going. We're moving towards the non-Christian world. And then there are the pastors and the teachers. The pastors and the teachers are less adventurous. They're less taking new spaces. They're like, hey, how about instead of everybody going everywhere and doing a crappy job, how about if we stay right here and get it right? Okay?

So you've got the teachers that are like, they're the dorks. They're me. They're like, let's just get it right. And then you got the apostles who are like, yeah, write schm-ite. Let's get it done. Let's go into the blank spaces. And what Paul is saying is he's given to the church the whole range. We should have people that are just itchy, they just want to go, we gotta get it done. And we should have people that are like, let's do a good job, right? We've got this whole range from apostles to prophets to evangelists to pastors and teachers.

The Purpose of Church Leadership

But notice this, because this is really important if you're gonna understand what the church is. The church is not the people with these stupid white collars on, k? The church is not me. The church is us. And the purpose of these handful of weirdos up front is verse 12. Why do we have these five things? To prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.

The purpose of any church, any church that you're in that is not fundamentally developing you to share the gospel, developing you to love broken people, developing you to seek roles of service, developing you to not be audience members but teammates has biffed it. The purpose of the church is that a handful of people would prepare a truckload of people to do the work. You should be in a place where you're not just receiving in a Bible study, but you're leading a Bible study. You're not just experiencing mercy, but you are extending mercy. You're not just learning, but you're teaching. You're not just receiving, but you're giving.

The whole point of this is that we would be a community that prepares God's people for works of service to a particular end, namely, that the body of Christ may be built up. And you can see in that two things. Number one, the body that's already the body is healthy. The body that's already the body is flourishing and growing and living in grace and being transformed. And we're building up the body in the sense that we are enlarging it. We're inviting new members into it, because we're always doing discipleship, and we're always doing evangelism.

And we will do this. How long will we do this? We will be preparing people for works of service so that the works of service are building up the body 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. This is the job. This is what we are doing. And it doesn't appear that we're that close to being done. If the goal is that we're all mature, that we attain to the full measure, we've got a little bit of time yet to go. Right?

This is what we're doing. We are the bride, the body, the sheep, the people, the temple, the family. All of these things. To the end of loving God, loving our neighbor, filling the earth with his disciples, bringing his will to bear in all things, as together we are all on the field doing the job. In this particular church, it is the job of a small number of us to help prepare you to not be audience members, but vitally engaged in the mission.

And if we're doing that well, then we are living out not just Matthew 22 and Matthew 28, but Ephesians 4, yay, even Genesis 1. That's what the church is.

Alright. That's all. Good enough?

Next Week: Spiritual Gifts

Alright. Next week, I think we will talk about spiritual gifts. We'll talk about in particular, where do you fit into that whole thing. So if you feel like pre-reading on that, these passages would be great places to kind of read, and we'll talk about those together:

Ephesians 4 1 Peter 4 Romans 12 1 Corinthians 12

Cool. That's all.