Building and Being Built

“… Building yourselves up in your most holy faith …” (Jude 20).

According to the New Testament, each Christian is a dwelling place of God, and their responsibility is to build themselves up into a temple worthy of divine habitation. How is this accomplished?

The Foundation

The first thing about any structure is the foundation. Paul was adamant that the only foundation upon which a person could be built up into holy character is Jesus Christ. “No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). He is the basis of all our certainty. He is the anchor for all our hopes. The structure of our character should rest on Him, solid and unshakable.

Self-Edification

Once we have connected ourselves to the Foundation through a personal act of faith, we are in a position to draw all power from Him, and to see in Him all the characteristics that make Him the pattern for building our lives. Then it’s time to build.

Building requires continuous, enduring work. You can’t build a house in half an hour. There must be persistent, continuous, lifelong effort if we are to be built up and shaped into His likeness. There should be an orderly progression, which is the natural result of new life in Christ. Progress must be made despite strong opposition, both from without and from within our own treacherous selves.

Is the notion of progress part of your working belief? Are you growing, fighting, running, building yourselves up more and more in your holy faith? I wonder how many of us have ever spent a quiet hour trying to set clearly before ourselves what we want to make of ourselves and how we mean to go about it. If a person works as their own architect and has a very hazy idea of what they mean to build, they won’t build anything worth the trouble.

Friend, if you’re going to build, have a plan, and let the plan be the likeness of Jesus Christ! And then, with the exercise of continuous faith which connects you to the foundation, plus continuous dedication, and through the power of the Spirit, you will be built “into a dwelling place for God” (Ephesians 2:22).

Mutual Edification

There’s nothing that will make a person more like Christ, than throwing themselves into the service of their fellow believers. “Building up the body of Christ” is a duty that no Christian can neglect (Ephesians 4:12).

The building that results from mutual edification is represented in Scripture not as the combination of many little shrines (each individual), but as one great temple for the Lord (Ephesians 2:21). That temple grows in two ways, both of which include responsibilities for us as believers. First, it grows by the addition of new stones. And so every Christian must seek to gather into the fold those who are wandering far away, so they can be set upon the sure foundation. It also grows also by the individual increase of each member in Christ-like characteristics. Let us work earnestly for the advancement of our brothers and sisters, and for the unity of God’s Church.

Divine Edification

When the Apostle Paul spoke to the elders of the church of Ephesus, he said that God was able “to build you up” (Acts 20:32). When he wrote to the Corinthians, he said, “You are God’s … building” (1 Corinthians 3:9). And so, far above all our effort, we turn our attention to the divine master builder, God Himself.

We have to base all our efforts on this deeper truth: it is God who builds us into a temple suitable for Himself, and then comes to dwell in the temple He has built. So let us keep our hearts and minds expectant of and open to the Spirit’s influences. Let us be sure that we are using all the power that God gives us. His work doesn’t replace mine. My work is to make use of His. The two thoughts are not contradictory. Paul said, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:12-13).

If God is the builder, then boundless hope should be ours. If we only had our own resources to fall back on, no one could look at their own character, after all their efforts to improve it, without being struck by a sense of despair. But with God as the architect and the builder, we are entitled to cherish endless hope and quiet confidence that we, even we, will be built up into a dwelling place of God through the Spirit.

—Alexander Maclaren, adapted