To my way of thinking, this is one of the two hardest passages in Ephesians to preach. The other is the one I’m preaching on next month. I don’t mention that because I’m fishing for sympathy—I volunteered—but because there’s one point to be made about both of them; I’ll talk about that later. In general, though, the challenges are quite different. With Ephesians 5, the problem is the way the passage has been misused and abused through the centuries. That one, you might call the “No, Paul isn’t who you think he is and he isn’t saying what they’ve told you he’s saying” sermon. Here in Ephesians 4, the issue is with the text itself, and one you may have already seen: does Paul even know how to read? Compare the text of Psalm 68:18 with the way Paul quotes it, and you have reason to wonder.
To understand what’s going on here, we need to begin—as always—with the context.
As you might just possibly have noticed, one of the central concerns of Ephesians is the unity of the church, and the controlling metaphor Paul uses, here as elsewhere, is 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—even in the first part of this chapter—he has simply been asserting the unity of the body as an accomplished reality. Here, he begins to unpack that assertion, explaining how God is building the body of Christ. To that end, the first thing he wants to say is that we are God’s building materials.
Verse 7 is his thesis statement, if an odd one: “Grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” I’d like you to note a couple things about this verse. First, we’re accustomed in the church to thinking of grace in terms of mercy and salvation, but here, Paul is referring to abilities God has given each of us to participate in the work of the church. Why does he use that word instead of just calling them gifts? I think there are three reasons. One, we’ll talk about in a minute when I get to verse 8. Another, I believe, is to emphasize that the abilities and skills we possess are, just as much as our salvation, free gifts from God which we have done nothing to earn and for which we can take no credit whatsoever.
The third reason for using the word “grace” to begin verse 7 is that it allows him to use the word “gift” to do something different. This is the second aspect of this verse I’d like you to see: this grace, these abilities, are given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. In other words, people don’t all get the same grace: the diversity in unity in the church isn’t just racial, or ethnic, or economic, it’s a diversity of gifts. Everyone is differently equipped to play a different part and do different work, and everyone is needed to make the body 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 you 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.” As Paul quotes it, it says this: “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. I don’t think we can 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 just to suit himself would have enabled his Jewish opponents to hang him out to dry, so that doesn’t make a lot of sense either. So what gives?
There are three pieces of data which I believe, in combination, help us answer that question. The first—and I don’t want to take the time now to go into this, so you can ask me later if you want—is that Paul actually wasn’t the only one to change this verse in this way, and maybe not even the first to do so. The interpretation he was offering of Psalm 68:18 seems to have been one which other Jews would have recognized as defensible. 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 reflected in Psalm 68 as well, in verses 12 and 35. “Receiving gifts” as a result of a victory—i.e., seizing plunder—necessarily entailed giving gifts as well. The last piece is found in the way 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.”
As Paul applies Psalm 68 to his argument, 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 I think we hit the other reason Paul uses the word “grace” in verse 7: he’s not talking about our abilities as “spiritual gifts.” Note this well: when Paul uses the word “gift” in this passage, it doesn’t refer to skills or talents, and it isn’t 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, and God has given you to us.
In verses 9-10 we have a parenthetical comment from Paul supporting his application of Psalm 68:18 to Jesus; and then 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, there is a sense in which 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 establishment of the church which was only needed once, and there have never been any others like called by Christ in quite the same way. He hasn’t been here to do it. That said, second, there is a broader sense to the word as well, and in that sense, I do believe God still gives apostles to his church; and I believe he gives his church prophets as well. Third, I believe this is true in his church everywhere, not just where people lay claim to the label.
If that sounds strange to you, let me tell you I believe there’s a blanket term which includes all five of those people Paul lists: elder. And if that sounds strange, you need to understand where I’m coming from: in my tradition, we essentially 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, quite frankly, a perilous calling; but if we trust him, God is faithful to accomplish his purpose.
The latter three 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 have 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 that 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.
Now, when I say all these are elder responsibilities, there are probably some who are wondering what pastors are supposed to do. (There are probably others wondering if I have something against the elders here that I want to kill them with overwork. Quick answer: no.) I have two responses to that. One, the word “pastor” just means “shepherd.” It’s not a separate category. I point that out because, two, from where I stand, those of us who get called “pastor” or “minister” or “reverend” or “Father” are just 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 has given us to the church—is to equip all God’s people for the work of ministry, which is the work of building up the body of Christ. I want to note something here which is very important: that makes us support staff. I have a real problem with the phrase “servant leadership” because it implies that 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 giving them whatever tools they need 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 work of 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. Specifically, it means to be unified by faith in him and by knowing him. We might say we’re called to seek him first, even at the expense of our own agendas, even at the expense of what seems like our own best interest, even at the expense of allegiance to our own tribes—the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe perhaps most of all.
Second, maturity as a body means we reflect the character and the will of Jesus Christ. Full maturity would mean we were 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 as the preaching team was discussing when we met yesterday, these are the kinds of goals God sets for us 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 for us to leave behind immaturity, which he represents vividly as a small boat at sea in a howling storm, flung wildly around by the waves and 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 aren’t going to be carried away by every new idea that comes along, and we aren’t going to be driven off course or unsettled into seasickness by every conflict that develops.
On my read, great swaths of the Western church have chosen to trim 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. There are a great many churches that have been led astray—some of them 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 he 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, or 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 the fact that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing and whom he was doing it for, with no illusions as to our worthiness, that made his death on the cross an act of love. Had he been blind to all that, his sacrifice would have been worthless.
At the same time, truth without love decays. 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 combine true statements in such a way as to lead others to a false conclusion. Without love, truth hardens, growing cold and brittle, like a coal removed from the fire. To say God hates sin is to speak truth; to say it without love is to give the clear impression that he hates sinners, which is absolutely not true. Indeed, that idea is the negation of the gospel and a denial of his character, which puts even his hatred of sin in a false light.
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, 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 more thing which must be said about this—it’s a point to which I’ll return at greater length 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 only 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 lies the road to maturity.
Photo © 2010 Utilitiesman 2nd Class Vuong Ta. Public domain.
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