If you were listening closely to our Scripture passages this morning, you may have a burning question: does Paul even know how to read? If you don’t, look back at Psalm 68:18, then look how Paul quotes it, and you’ll understand the question. To understand what’s going on here, we need to begin—as always—with the context. In his concern for the unity of the church, Paul reuses the metaphor from 1 Corinthians of the church as the body of Christ: a lot of parts that look very different and do very different things put together to work together as a single unit, with Jesus as the head. Up to this point, he’s simply asserted the unity of the body as an accomplished fact. Here, he unpacks that assertion, explaining how God is building the body of Christ. To that end, he starts by saying we are God’s building materials.
Verse 7 is his thesis statement: “Grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” Note a couple things about this verse. First, we typically think of grace in terms of mercy and salvation, but here Paul is referring to abilities God has given each of us to serve the work of the church. Why does he use the word grace instead of calling them gifts? Three reasons, I think. One, we’ll talk about when we get to verse 8. Two, he wants to emphasize that, just as much as our salvation, the abilities and skills we possess are free gifts from God we haven’t earned and can’t take credit for.
Three, using the word “grace” to begin verse 7 lets Paul use the word “gift” for something different. This is the second aspect of this verse we need to see: this grace, these abilities, are given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. In this sense, we don’t all get the same grace. The church’s diversity in unity isn’t just racial, ethnic, economic, it’s a diversity of gifts. We’re all differently equipped to play a different part and do different work, and we’re all needed for the body to function properly. To whatever degree anyone fails or refuses to do so, the body is unhealthy. I used to love using Shaquille O’Neal to illustrate this. No one ever wants to be the big toe—it’s not a glamorous job that attracts praise—but longtime basketball fans may remember the season Shaq missed the first thirteen games after surgery on his right big toe. It’s hard to walk without one, and even harder to run and jump and pivot, even if you aren’t 7-foot-1 and three-hundred-mumble pounds.
The evidence Paul uses in verse 8 to support his statement in verse 7 is Psalm 68:18, and as I said a moment ago, here we have a problem. In the psalm, this verse reads, “You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train, receiving gifts from people—even from the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.” In Paul’s quote, it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to people.” The change from second person to third person is understandable, given the context, but flipping the verb is a whole ’nother issue. We can’t really blame this on a reading comprehension issue, though, and Paul knew the Scriptures far too well for this to be a stupid mistake. A deliberate misquotation to suit himself would have let his Jewish opponents tee off on him, so that doesn’t make sense either. So what gives?
Three pieces of data help us answer that question. First—I don’t want to take a lot of time on this, but ask me later if you want—Paul wasn’t the only one to change this verse in this way, and maybe not even the first to do so. His use of Psalm 68:18 seems to have been defensible in Jewish interpretation of the day. Second, Psalm 68 is a “divine warrior” psalm celebrating God’s victories over his enemies, past and future, so we need to understand it in the context of ancient warfare. In the ancient world, victorious kings shared the spoils with their supporters. They plundered their enemies not just to enrich themselves but to reward and strengthen their friends. We see this practiced in Genesis 14, Judges 5, and 1 Samuel 30, and we see it in Psalm 68 in verses 12 and 35. “Receiving gifts” as a result of a victory—i.e., seizing plunder—meant giving gifts as well. Third, here’s how God talks about the Levites in Numbers, and particularly Numbers 18:6: “I have taken your brothers the Levites from among the people of Israel. They are a gift to you, given to the Lord, to do the service of the tent of meeting.”
To Paul, Psalm 68 tells us when Christ triumphed over sin and death, the spoils of his victory were people—people who were rightly his own—whom he took in order to give them to his church. Here we hit the other reason Paul uses the word “grace” in verse 7: he’s not talking about our abilities as “spiritual gifts.” When Paul uses the word “gift” in this passage, it doesn’t mean skills or talents given to individuals. The gifts here are people who are given to the church. You are not the recipient of the gift, you are the gift, given by God to us.
Verses 9-10 are a parenthetical comment supporting Paul’s application of Psalm 68:18 to Jesus. In verse 11 he focuses his argument on those whom Christ has given to his people “to do the service of the tent of meeting”—or, in this context, to do the work of leadership. Let me say a few things about this list before we move on to consider its purpose. First, in one sense, apostles and apostolic leadership no longer exist in this world. Jesus specifically called and commissioned his closest disciples before his death and resurrection, and then he called and commissioned Paul in a spiritual encounter on the Damascus road. They played a role in the birth of the church which was only needed once, and there have never been any others called by Christ in quite the same way. That said, second, there’s also a broader sense in which God does still give apostles to his church; and I believe he gives his church prophets as well. Third, I think this is true in his church everywhere, not just where people lay claim to the label.
If that sounds strange to you, there’s a blanket term which includes all five of those people Paul lists: elder. If that sounds strange, remember that as Presbyterians we acknowledge two offices in the church—elder and deacon—and the jobs Paul names here are elder responsibilities. Let me run through these and show you what I mean.
An apostle is a herald authorized by God to carry his message and speak on his behalf. The apostolic ministry is primarily that of church-planting—what we might call missionary church-planting, taking the gospel to those who’ve never heard it. The prophetic ministry is primarily that of preaching. We associate it with having visions and making predictions, but that was the lesser part of the work of the biblical prophets; their main responsibility was to stand and faithfully declare, as God guided them and on the basis of the Scripture, “Thus says the Lord.” That’s the task to which those of us who preach are called, every time we step into the pulpit. We can only do it to the best of our understanding and ability, we mostly do it without the direct guidance from God the canonical prophets had, and it must be clear to everyone that the authority is all God’s and none of it ours. This work calls for complete humility and transparency when we’re not sure what God is saying, because he speaks through that uncertainty, too. It is a perilous calling; but if we trust him, God is faithful to accomplish his purpose.
The latter three jobs are more familiar to us, of course. The ministry of the evangelist overlaps with the first two—it’s the work of preaching the gospel, sharing the good news with those who haven’t heard it and reminding those who’ve lost sight of it, inside the church as well as outside it. The shepherd’s calling is to lead, defend, and care for the flock, seeing to it they find good food and pure water, and that those who would feed on them are driven off. Teachers within the church help us understand the word of God more deeply and more clearly and encourage us to live according to what we know to be true.
When I say all these are elder responsibilities, there are probably some who are wondering what pastors are supposed to do. (Others may wondering if I have something against the elders here that I want to kill them with overwork. Quick answer: no.) Two things to note. One, the word “pastor” means “shepherd.” Two, those of us who get called “pastor” or “minister” or “reverend” or “Father” are elders. We’re specialized elders, with a particular set of responsibilities—my official title as a Presbyterian minister is “teaching elder”—but at the root, we’re the same thing. We’re just equipped differently to help share the load.
The responsibility for all us elders—the purpose for which Jesus gave us to the church—is to equip God’s people for the work of ministry, which is the work of building up the body of Christ. Note well: that makes us support staff. I don’t like the phrase “servant leadership” because it implies there are other kinds of leadership. There aren’t. Leadership is service by definition, in its essence. Leadership is not the work. Leaders exist to enable and empower others to do the work, including providing the necessary tools for the task before them. No organization ever existed to serve its leaders. Leaders exist to serve the organization and its people.
The goal set before us, the purpose of all this body-building, is maturity, which Paul defines in two categories. One is maturity as a body, which means two things. First, it means to be unified in Jesus Christ—not in political beliefs, not in socio-economic status, not in cultural compatibility, not in preferences in style of worship and music, but in Jesus Christ alone. It means to be unified by faith in him and by knowing him. We’re called to seek him first, before our own agendas, even against our own best interest, even ahead of allegiance to our own tribes—the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe perhaps most of all.
Second, maturity as a body means reflecting the character and will of Jesus Christ. Full maturity would mean being his body on earth as perfectly as his physical body was, speaking the Father’s words and doing the Father’s will as perfectly as he did. Obviously, this is purely an aspirational goal; we will never see it in our lifetimes; but God sets these goals to keep us aiming as high as possible. Lower the goal to something rational, and we’d still rationalize undershooting it. It’s how we operate. We can rationalize anything, given half a chance.
The other category is maturity as individuals, which Paul addresses from both a negative and a positive direction. First, the goal is to leave behind immaturity, which he pictures vividly as a small boat at sea in a howling storm, flung wildly about by the waves, blown helplessly this way and that by the wind. As one commentator says, spiritually immature people are “unstable, lacking in direction, vacillating, and open to manipulation.” If we’re unified by knowing Jesus and putting our faith in him, we won’t be carried away by every new idea that comes along, or be driven off course or unsettled into seasickness by every conflict that develops.
Great swaths of the Western church have trimmed their sails to the prevailing societal winds, believing Christian faith needs to conform to the direction in which one part or another of the culture is heading. That’s immaturity. Many churches have been led astray—some into great riches and cultural prominence—by cunning, deceitful manipulators. That too is immaturity. Maturity is to be close enough to Jesus and full enough of his truth that we are both able to recognize falsehood when we see it and willing to accept the cost of rejecting it.
Paul defines this maturity in positive terms as “growing up in every way into Christ who is our head.” Again, the source of our growth is Jesus; and look how Paul defines the channel of Christian growth: “speaking the truth in love.” This is a twofold contrast to those referenced in verse 14 who lead the immature astray, and it’s clearly intended to rule out the sort of scheming and deception he describes there. False teachers and false leaders can manipulate people into their churches, campaigns, political parties, whatever, by means of cunning and dishonesty, telling people whatever they want to hear and playing on their emotions to draw them in, but those who follow Jesus are not permitted that option.
There’s more than that here, though. This is one of the most luminous statements in Scripture, capturing the way Christ calls us to live in one single, balanced phrase. We are to speak the truth in love as a way of life, compromising neither and setting neither above the other, and for good reason: neither can exist in its pure state without the other.
That might sound hard to believe—our culture sees little or no connection between the two—but it’s so. Love without truth decays, because true love seeks only what’s best for the beloved. Truth often seems too hard, too painful, too inconvenient, too risky, or too unpleasant to speak, but when it’s taken out, the heart of love is gone. What’s left in its place is something which is seeking its own perceived benefit. We may believe we’re trying to spare the other person pain, but we’re really just trying to spare ourselves. That way lies the decline of love into the self-serving sentimentality which declares, “Love is blind.” No, love has its eyes wide open because love is founded on truth. It’s because Jesus knew exactly what he was doing and whom he was doing it for, with no illusions as to our worthiness, that his death on the cross was an act of love. Had he been blind to all that, his sacrifice would have been worthless.
Truth without love hardens, growing cold and brittle, like a coal removed from the fire. It’s not just the words we say that make our statements true or false, it’s how we say them and in what spirit. That’s why good liars can lie by speaking the literal truth. To say God hates sin is to speak truth. To say it without love is to tell people God hates sinners, which is absolutely not true. That idea is the negation of the gospel and a denial of his character.
God is truth and God is love, and neither truth nor love has any meaning or reality apart from him. To sever one from the other is to sever both from their source, leaving only something akin to cut flowers: they may retain their beauty at first, and they can be kept alive for a little while, but their death is inevitable. To have either truth or love, we must have both.
There’s one other point to make here, which I’ll go into more next month: when Paul calls us to be speaking the truth in love, we need to read this as Scripture addressed to us, not to anyone else. What I mean is this: Paul isn’t telling me what I have the right to demand of those around me, he’s telling me how God wants me to live toward those around me; and the same is true for each of you. This is not something we have the right to shape into an accusation against those with whom we disagree, or those who make us mad; it’s a call to self-examination. Truth and love are not tools which we can use to our own purposes, they are graces to which we can only submit. In that submission is the road to maturity.
Photo © 2010 Utilitiesman 2nd Class Vuong Ta. Public domain.