Ephesians Study 10

Ephesians Study 10:

The Diversity That Builds Us Up

The Diversity That Builds Us Up – Ephesians 4:7-16

Introduction

Hello again to everyone who is joining me today. My name is Sarah Bradbury, and this is Garden to Glory: The Mystery of God.

You are listening to the tenth installment in our study on the book of Ephesians. In our last study, we discussed the unity of the church. We looked at how the work of Jesus moves us to get along with other believers, how the forgiveness that has been granted to us frees us to be forgiving to others, and how Christ’s example of leaving Heaven behind to die for us leads us to place the needs of others above our own.

We also discussed a few things that being united in Jesus does not mean. In our passage today, Paul emphasizes the idea that unity in Christ does not mean we are all exactly the same. There are differences in how we each function in the body even though Jesus is present and working in all these differences. There is unity in our diversity, and the source of that diversity is God.

Our passage today also has some challenging topics for us to wrestle with. We will be discussing the concept of spiritual gifts, and along the way, we will ask, “What are the gifts of the Spirit? Who receives them? What time period are they for? And who is responsible for completing God’s work and building up the church?”

So, let’s look at our passage for today. I will include a few verses from our last study to help us with the context.

Ephesians 4:4-16 says:

For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.

However, He has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. That is why the Scriptures say,

“When He ascended to the heights, He led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to His people.”

Notice that it says “He ascended.” This clearly means that Christ also descended to our lowly world. And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that He might fill the entire universe with Himself.

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do His work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of His body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

I have to be honest with you all; this is a challenging passage to understand and explain fully. There is just so much here! I will do my best to explain what I can, but I think it’s possible you might walk away from this particular study with more questions than answers. So, now that I’ve set the bar very low, let’s talk about these verses.

One of the themes in this passage is the idea of unity in diversity. We are all different, not only in our identity, but in our abilities. Not only that, but Paul tells us here that when Jesus ascended to Heaven, He gave believers special gifts. These gifts were plural. They were not the same gifts for every person; rather, they differed from each other.

This is why we read the word “However” at the beginning of verse seven. This word is acting as a transition to show that despite the unity we have in the church, Jesus also uniquely gifts His people. As we discussed in our last study, these unique abilities do not fight against the unity of the whole, but rather, they enhance the ability of everyone working together.

Paul’s Rabbit Trail

Then, as we continue reading this passage, we see what appears to be a bit of a rabbit trail from the Apostle Paul. How exactly did we go from unity to diversity in gifting to this apparent randomness about ascending and descending?

Although this seems pretty random, Paul’s point here is to emphasize that Jesus is at work in every place, in every thing, and on every level.

He has been and is present in Heaven. He came down to Earth. There is some question about whether this verse should actually be translated to mean that Jesus descended into “death” and not just to “Earth.” This translation holds to the truth of what Jesus did, and 1 Peter 3:18-22 references this descent more thoroughly than what we have in Ephesians 4.

Nonetheless, the point remains that there is no distinction big enough to separate anything from the power of Jesus. He is at work in all things and all places. Thus, the differing gifts given to the believers do not negate our unity in Jesus, who fills all things with Himself.

All of that seems fairly simple, but in this passage, Paul does something that only an apostle can get away with. He changes Scripture.

To make his point that Jesus gave gifts to believers when he ascended to Heaven, Paul shares a quote from the Old Testament: “When He ascended to the heights, He led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to His people.” That quote is from Psalm 68:18. The only problem is that my Bible does not say anything in that verse about God giving gifts.

I looked at several translations in case there were different interpretations of this verse, but they all conveyed the idea that God received gifts when He ascended instead of giving them. In fact, if you were to read Psalm 68 yourself, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to identify any of it as applying to Jesus’ ascension to Heaven at all.

Repeating Themes of God

Yet God has a tendency to repeat themes throughout history. He gives us firsthand examples and experiences that shadow His work in other times and places. Often, prophecies in the Old Testament have multiple fulfillments that show predictions given about one set of circumstances also apply to other future events as well. This is even when there are differences between those two sets of circumstances.

This pattern is also shown when we look at Old Testament stories that clearly foreshadow Jesus. When we read the story about Joseph being betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, and eventually finding himself in a position to save the lives of his family and the people of the land where he was a slave, we see Jesus.

When we read about Jonah being buried in the belly of a fish for three days and then rising out of that darkness to preach God’s mercy and salvation to the wicked people of Nineveh, we see Jesus.

It’s not that these accounts didn’t apply to the specific people and circumstances they were originally written about. But in reading them with the full scope of history and the knowledge of what God has done and is doing in the world, we find new and deeper meaning in all these stories. We see that Jesus fills all things and that Joseph, Jonah, and all of Israel’s battles help us see the deeper meaning and working of God.

Combining the Old and New

In Matthew 13:52, we read Jesus’ description of how teaching Scripture will change because of His inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. He says:

“Every teacher of religious law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a homeowner who brings from his storeroom new gems of truth as well as old.”

We see examples of this in the teaching of Jesus. While He was on Earth, Jesus frequently referenced the Old Testament in His ministry. He spoke of the law and often changed the people’s understanding of what it was telling them.

Sometimes this took the form of expanding commands to the motives of their hearts instead of simply their outward actions. While enforcing this kind of heart attitude on someone else would be impossible for mere humans, if people were to follow these commands, it would be far more limiting to our actions than the original laws.

Other times, Jesus highlighted the purposes behind laws in a way that would lead others to break the law in the manner it was typically enforced. This was especially true regarding the observance of the Sabbath, which was a commanded day of rest each week.

Nevertheless, despite accusations to the contrary, Jesus did not break the Old Testament law, but rather, He fulfilled it. This is the conundrum we have with all of Scripture. It seems at times to be clear and precise, but in reality, understanding Scripture takes wisdom and leading from the Holy Spirit.

Why We Need Teachers

The Bible can be confusing! It was written at different times by different people in different cultures with specific circumstances that differ greatly from our own. This makes it challenging to understand and even more challenging to apply. Even Jesus’ early followers who walked with Him in person found this to be the case.

In Luke 24:44-48, we read of an encounter Jesus had with his followers shortly after He was raised from the dead. It states:

Then He said, “When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about Me in the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And He said, “Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day. It was also written that this message would be proclaimed in the authority of His name to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem: ‘There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.’ You are witnesses of all these things.”

If all these things were written so clearly, why was it that these believers didn’t understand what Scripture said until Jesus opened their minds?

Even after this event, we see believers in the New Testament struggling with the idea that Gentiles are part of the people of God without following Jewish law. But it says right there that forgiveness of sins is for all who repent! How is it so clear and yet so hard to understand? This is the reason why the church needs people to teach.

Ephesians 4:11-16 says:

Earlier in verse seven of Ephesians 4, we read that Jesus gave each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. For a moment, I will put aside the question of whether these gifts are given to us today or only to believers of that time period. But when we read that the gifts given to the church are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, we have another question to answer. Is every believer gifted to be some kind of teacher?

Are We All Meant to Be Teachers?

Paul clearly said that gifts were given to every believer, but the only gifts Paul listed here are ones related to teaching in some capacity.

Yet James 3:1 says:

Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly.

The exact definitions of all the teaching roles in Ephesians 4:11 are hard to nail down. The New Testament does not give us a complete list of job responsibilities for each of these positions. In fact, even though we know Paul was an apostle, he often just refers to himself as a servant of God. This is the same title he uses to describe other believers who work along side him in a wide variety of roles. However, what we do know about all of these titles is that they all involve teaching in some form to people. So when we read in James that not many people should be teachers, we can clearly see that not every believer has been gifted to have one of these roles.

I highly doubt that Paul intended to imply that all believers are meant to be teachers of some kind. In fact, he goes on to say that the church as a whole needed to be taught in order to reach unity in their faith and in the knowledge of Jesus. If most of the church needed to be taught, then most of the church weren’t teachers!

This fact, along with several lists of spiritual gifts in other New Testament passages, tells us that what Paul gives us here is not meant to be a complete list of all the possible gifts that a believer of this time could receive. All believers were given gifts, but they were not all teaching gifts.

In fact, if you were to look at every list of spiritual gifts in the New Testament, you would notice that none of them match up completely. This tells me that these lists were never meant to be exhaustive. They were simply meant to give examples, and different passages focus on different gifts in order to emphasize other points being made.

If you believe that spiritual gifts are still happening today, you might want to consider that the options for what your spiritual gifting is might be broader than what you can find on a spiritual gift test.

How To Build the Church

That issue aside, there is a reason that Paul chose to emphasize the teaching gifts in this particular passage. As Paul is talking about the unity of the church, he recognizes some obstacles to that unity.

He says that teachers are needed to equip God’s people to do His work and build up the church. Interestingly enough, the people of God have been given gifts to equip them to build up the church, and they still need teachers to equip them to build up the church.

This tells us that spiritual guidance is required to gain the full ability to use any gift to its greatest advantage in the body of Christ. None of us are meant to be used in isolation from each other. Instead, it is when we all work together that we can accomplish the greatest results, or as Paul says at the end of Ephesians 4:16:

As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

Paul tells us that all believers do the work of the church and build up the body of Christ, not just the pastors and teachers. However, by emphasizing the responsibility of those in teaching positions to equip the believers, Paul is telling us that the people who have been given the gifts of teaching have the most direct responsibility in equipping individuals to do the work of the church.

Have We Reached Unity?

This brings me to the hard part of our passage. Does all of this “gifting” talk apply to us today? In Ephesians 4:13-16, Paul says:

This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

So, I guess the real question is, “Has the church come to such unity in faith and knowledge of God’s Son that the church is mature in the Lord and measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ?” I mean, the answer has got to be “no,” right?

Or to ask different questions: Is the church today immature like children? Are we tossed around by every wind of new teaching? Are the people of God tricked with clever lies that sound like the truth?

If we look at every church, every denomination, and every person who goes by the name “Christian,” we’d have to answer “yes” to these questions. There are churches today following winds and waves of teaching. There is immaturity in the body of Christ, and we do see people claiming the name of Jesus while falling for lies that we may even struggle to call “clever.”

On the surface, it would seem that this gifting of the Spirit must still exist because the church has not yet become mature enough for these gifts to have ceased… or has it?

When I attempt to analyze whether or not the church has met the standard Paul set out here, I can’t help but notice that he uses the words “we all” when talking about who this maturity involves.

If Paul is talking to specific believers at a specific point in history, wouldn’t this imply that the maturity he is referencing will be attained by these specific people?

If we decide that Paul’s reference to “we all” is really just his way of speaking about believers at any time or the church as a whole, then we still have another problem interpreting this passage.

Paul is indicating that these teachers are pushing the church as a whole into the direction of increasing knowledge and unity that results in increasing levels of maturity. If we look at the history of the church between Paul’s time and ours, do we see this incremental increase in Christian unity? Do we see fewer waves of doctrinal differences? Do we see fewer people believing clever lies?

You may have your own conclusions, but when I look at church history, I see increasing divisions. There have been more denominations forming, more cults spinning off of the Bible, and more megachurch pastors making false promises while stealing money from those who need it.

I do not see an incremental increase of unity, knowledge, and maturity of the church as a whole, although I do see an immense increase in the number of believers worldwide. With that increase, we also have had an increase in the number of believers that have this maturity. I have no way of knowing if the percentage of mature believers to immature believers is going up or down, but I can see enough to know that “we all” do not fit in the “mature” category. It doesn’t seem like we are moving in the direction of reaching this goal apart from Jesus coming back.

I suspect that every true believer in Jesus is, in fact, increasing in their personal knowledge and maturity even if that progress fluctuates in effectiveness. However, I cannot say the same thing for the church as a whole. It is especially difficult to see this progress of unity and maturation when we continually add new believers who will inevitably begin their walk of faith with less knowledge and maturity.

How can we reach this goal when the church is perpetually growing? The march of time also means that those most likely to have reached this maturity are also most likely to die and leave this world to be with Jesus. The sheer problem of exchanging old believers with new ones would certainly make it seem like we will never have the whole church reach maturity.

Perhaps the level of unity Paul is speaking about here is simply not going to be attained until Jesus comes back to the world. That is certainly a possibility, but I think there is another scenario that makes more sense, at least to my strange mind.

The Obstacles of the Past

To understand exactly what level of unity and knowledge Paul is striving for the church to attain here, I think it’s helpful for us to first think through the situation that the church was in at the time Paul wrote Ephesians.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was written around AD 62. That is approximately 30 years after Jesus died. The church was just beginning; they were still trying to nail down what it even meant to be a believer.

There are 27 books included in the New Testament section of the Bibles we carry today. Of those 27 books, only about nine of them were written prior to the book of Ephesians. (None of our dates for when books of the Bible were written are exact. So, it’s possible that number is off a bit.)

Nevertheless, the point remains. Most of the New Testament scriptures that we base the entirety of our faith and practice on today didn’t even exist at the time Paul wrote these words to the Ephesians. Also, a large portion of the books that did exist were actually written by Paul himself.

In the early church, the average believer couldn’t just pick up a Bible and turn to a certain page to see what it had to say about one subject or another. Quoting numerous New Testament passages in order to teach a well-rounded understanding of a topic, like I have been doing in this series on Ephesians, was simply not an option for a teacher in this time period.

This is the situation in which God gave the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. A believer in these early days had to evaluate all teaching based on the Old Testament scriptures and the oral stories that those who had walked with Jesus had passed on to them.

As we read earlier in Matthew 13, teachers of religious law who became followers of Jesus would have to take treasures from both the old and the new ways. This meant that the things being taught at this time were often brand new to the people who were listening.

Not only this, but the apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers who had been gifted by God to teach these things often didn’t understand everything themselves yet.

In Acts 10, there is a description of a vision that God gave to the Apostle Peter. Three times God showed Peter a vision of animals that he was commanded to eat. Peter refused because eating these animals was against Jewish laws. They were deemed unclean, but he was told, “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.”

This direct revelation given to an apostle is an obvious sign of God. This vision eventually allowed Peter to come to the understanding that God has made all believers clean – including Gentile believers – and it was no longer required or appropriate for him to distance himself from Gentiles.

Yet in the beginning of Acts 10:17, we read Peter’s initial reaction to this direct revelation:

Peter was very perplexed. What could the vision mean?

Later in the chapter, Peter did determine the meaning. It says in Acts 10:28-29:

Peter told them, “You know it is against our laws for a Jewish man to enter a Gentile home like this or to associate with you. But God has shown me that I should no longer think of anyone as impure or unclean. So I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. Now tell me why you sent for me.”

Even with this knowledge, Peter later succumbed to peer pressure from some of his fellow Jews and avoided eating with Gentile believers in the presence of these specific Jews. The Apostle Paul himself confronted and condemned Peter for this.

It’s no wonder that the church at this time was prone to falling for clever lies and being tossed around by different waves of doctrine! How they were supposed to live and interact with God and each other was still being established.

All of us need teachers to explain new concepts, but the unique predicament of the early church was that the new concepts were new to everyone at the same time. Of course the church needed teachers, and these teachers couldn’t just go to seminary and benefit from thousands of years of teachers that came before them. They had to be empowered to do things that no one else had done before.

The Unique Authority of Apostles

I mentioned earlier that only an apostle could get away with changing Scripture. There is good reason for that! No pastor or teacher today can claim the type of teaching authority that was present in the New Testament church. The teaching positions Paul is referring to in Ephesians were special. The teaching needed at this time required spiritual insight that was not available to be learned in any way other than God’s special gifting.

During the New Testament period, many letters were written and passed around among the various churches. Some of those letters have made it into the Bible we hold today; some of them did not. There was some disagreement along the way about which books belonged in Scripture and which did not, but the main difference between the pastors and teachers we have today and the pastors and teachers of Paul’s day is the authority they appealed to.

Apostles appealed to the fact that they knew Jesus in person and that He chose them to preach. The early prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers appealed to their obvious gifting from the Holy Spirit.

Today, we appeal to things like seminary completion or the recognition of a church body to appoint a teacher. If you are a real rebel like me, you can decide to teach based solely on the fact that you are pointing to Scripture and that your logic seems to hold up!

Any one of these routes comes back to the same source of spiritual authority: the Bible. The early apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers of Paul’s day built up the church to the point in which the full doctrine of Scripture was established.

All of the New Testament was written between approximately 50-100 AD. It was a few hundred years later when the church decided what books should or should not be included in the Bibles we hold today. Nonetheless, the ability to appeal to scriptural authority was established in the approximate lifetimes of the first readers of Ephesians.

So, when we read our passage in Ephesians 4, can we say that the church – with the completion of Scripture – has the full knowledge of God’s Son that allows us to speak the truth in love, to continue growing more like Christ, and to move forward with building up the body that is Christ’s church? I think so.

Let’s read Ephesians 4:11-16 again:

I believe that the gifts of the Spirit we see in Scripture were a temporary blessing God gave the early believers. I believe these gifts were necessary to establish the church for all of time. I personally do not believe that these gifts continue today. Many people, though not all, would agree that the obvious miraculous gifts were only for the first generation of believers after Jesus. However, many of those same people would contend that gifts like teaching, preaching, pastoring, administration, etc. are still being given today.

Personally, I see a difference in the origin of the abilities that people have today and the origin of these gifts in the early church.

Teachers today have been taught much more thoroughly than the teachers of the past. Also, if we are just looking at personal skills, many people who are not believers and therefore do not have the Spirit can still be excellent teachers, speakers, and organizers. I think these gifts had to be uniquely different to be recognized as a sign that someone had the Holy Spirit.

That being said, God is the source of every gift and ability that humans possess. Our natural talents and abilities are not an accident, and the Spirit leading us toward love for God and others can also lead us to develop skills that can be used to build up the church.

Whether you decide that special gifts are still given as a result of receiving the Spirit or if you hold to a more general acknowledgement that God ordains skill levels in all people everywhere, the basic principles still apply. God will build up His church through His people.

So, what can we takeaway from this passage today?

1. Jesus fills all things, even us.

Jesus ascended to Heaven and descended to the realm of death. He fills all things with Himself, and we are one body with Him. This means that there is nothing we have that isn’t from Him. There is nothing in all the world that isn’t sustained by Him. There is nothing in all of existence that will not by used for His purposes.

Romans 11:36 says:

For everything comes from Him and exists by His power and is intended for His glory. All glory to Him forever! Amen.

2. The primary responsibility of pastors and teachers is to equip believers to do the work of ministry.

Although I believe the authority a pastor or teacher wields in teaching has shifted from a spiritual gifting to an appeal to scripture, the goal of teaching anyone about Jesus remains the same. Believers in the body of Christ are the hands and feet that do the work of God in the world.

This work is not limited to someone with a title and recognized position in the church. It isn’t limited to teaching the Bible in a formal setting. The work of building up the church and making God known in the world is the responsibility of all believers everywhere.

If you are a pastor or a teacher, you are not part of an exclusive club within the body of Christ. You are functioning as a specific part made to empower and inform other believers to do their work. Help them. Teach them. Mentor them. Listen to them. They are your teammates in the world, not your underlings.

3. Since there is one body, one Spirit, and one Lord, everything we have should be used for the good of all.

Every talent, ability, and earthly blessing we have has been given to us by God. This passage in Ephesians shows us more than just the reason for Spiritual gifts of teaching. It shows us the principle that everything we have should be used to build up the body of Christ.

We belong to each other. The blessings of one person are not solely for that person’s benefit. We are made to work together for the good of us all, and when we do, the entire body of Christ flourishes.

So, as I leave you today, I will share this desire I have for you all. May God fill you with the knowledge of Jesus so that you will be mature in the Lord. May you speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, and may you fulfill the special role God has made just for you so that you can help others grow in God’s love.

To help you meditate on the principles we have discussed today, I have made a short Spotify playlist that you can find here.