COMMENTARY

Don Atkin

A DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE

When our nation’s first leaders penned The Declaration of Independence, it was aimed specifically toward secession from England to form a sovereign nation.

This is not to be confused with the spirit of independence that reigns over a vast majority of today’s American people and system.

The many wiles of the devil include coming alongside a good thing to pervert it to a bad thing. Independence has been perverted from a governmental position to a prevailing attitude.

Christians - authentic disciples of Jesus Christ - are not independent. We are very dependent upon God. Without Him, we can do nothing. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

We are also interdependent upon one another. We need one another!

(Jesus) Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,

for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,

till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

- Ephesians 4:11-13

We are (plural) all coming to a (singular) perfect man. That requires interdependence!

(We) speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head - Christ - from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share . . .

- Ephesians 4:15-16