Ephesians 4:1-14
Over the last few weeks we have been looking at faith and Works through the eyes of Jesus’ brother, James. We’ve discovered that a faithful life will spontaneously, yet comfortably and gently, become a very productive life through whom the Lord’s perfect will can be channelled.
Now our man, Matthew, was a tax collector and therefore automatically despised by the Jews as not only collecting for the Romans who were oppressing them, but corrupt as well, pocketing unjustly levied taxes.
Yet the Lord chose him and caused him to come to faith and to write the most systematic of all the gospels. It has been instrumental in bring literally millions of people to faith though his account of the Sermon on the Mount alone!
This is faith spontaneously erupting into a very major work indeed!
Today we go back to Ephesians to look at how these works coming from individuals come together to unify and strengthen the Church. The Church for us is our parish.
About six weeks ago, we spent three weeks in Ephesians (but not today’s reading). If you’ll recall we begin our faith life sitting at the feet of Jesus, getting a firm foundation, like a building needs to firmly fit on its foundations.
Paul now moves into how to walk the walk of Christ whilst being upheld by this foundation, which is that God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing, according to the riches of his grace. We have already been raised up with Christ and sit with and in him in the throne room of God.
Now in the second half of the letter, Paul moves into the practical implications of this for our life together as church and our life as individual Christians. Our text today emphasizes the churchly dimension of our life together, that we walk together in unity and growth, in truth and love.
We don’t create the church’s unity or growth. Both of these are gifts of God. He unites us and causes his Church to grow.
The unity of the church has already been established by God, which is why Paul urges us to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (v.3). We don’t create the unity. We are called to maintain it because as Paul writes:
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (vv.4-6).
Yes, the one true God establishes the one true church. The triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Notice how Trinitarian this marvellous three-part statement of Paul’s is.
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling...” (v.4). Paul here refers to the work of the Holy Spirit, who has called us by the gospel, brought us into the body of Christ, and given us the hope of everlasting life.
“One Lord, one faith, one baptism...” This refers to our Lord Jesus Christ, the focus of our faith, and in whose name we Christians are baptized.
“One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” The heavenly Father, the maker of heaven and earth, the Father of whom the Son is begotten and from whom the Spirit proceeds.
And so the church’s essential unity has already been established by God. It is his gift and we want to maintain and manifest that unity as much as possible.
Because we are the Body of Christ, it is only out of unity that all Godly and good works come.
And Christ has given his church the gifts to do just that, but first let’s look at what vv. 8-10 mean:
‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
he gave gifts to his people.’
9 (When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10 He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.)
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” Jesus Christ is the one who has ascended into heaven, having won the victory for us on the cross.
By his death on the cross, Christ atoned for all our sins, our sins against God, which condemned us to death and made us the slaves of our own desires. But Jesus Christ, God’s Son, by his blood paid the price for all of our sins and the sins of all humanity.
Thus he defeated death and the devil. He descended into hell to proclaim his victory even there. Then he ascended into heaven, sitting down at the right hand of his Father and pouring out the Spirit on his church, for the church’s life and ministry, for the church’s unity and growth.
Christ gave gifts to his church for this purpose. And those gifts are people, as Paul lists, it is Jesus who gives the Church the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, the teachers and everyone else.
It is Jesus who gives us to each other as a gift.
He does this, as Paul writes in vv.12-13, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”
Isn’t that magnificent! That is some unity.
Christ is building his church and the church’s ministry involves the whole church, not just priests and ministers. But we are called to “equip the saints,” specifically, through the preaching and teaching and pastoring offices that we do.
So what kind of unity is it? it’s the unity of faith. And what sort of growth is it? It’s growth in the stature of the fullness of Christ. We must be united in the faith of Jesus Christ and nothing else.
Certainly not the so-called ‘faith’ of the world! No false unity or any other measure of growth even applies.
Now if God sees our growth in terms of growing more Christlike, then this is the kind of growth we seek. To grow in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ.
Dear friends God wants his church to experience unity and growth. He has provided everything necessary for that to happen. The unity he wants is the unity of the faith. The growth he seeks is growth in the stature of the fullness of Christ, the building up of the body of Christ.
Now all who believe are Saints, and we remember each other’s lives because of their faithful witness to us either when they were alive, or, in Matthew’s case, millennia after he was probably martyred in Ethiopia.
Our very lives become living works, building up the body of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. Let me pray...