Gifts of Grace: Ephesians 4:7-16

The Church as the Bride of Christ and the Body of Christ

Two weeks ago, talking about the church as the bride of Christ, and if we are to think of ourselves as the bride whose husband is away and he's gone away to prepare this place for us, we need to work diligently until he returns, taking what he has given to us and multiplying it, magnifying him, just like that Proverbs 31 woman, that kind of bride.

Someone who is industrious, somebody who is building for the purpose of blessing her family and those around her. Christ is our king, he's our husband, he has created and redeemed the church through his own body and blood sacrificed.

And so, our allegiance to him is not given out of duty, but out of love and devotion. Today, we're going to look at another metaphor, the body of Christ, which is also compared to what the church is supposed to be.

And I think it's interesting that he uses the metaphors that he does use and the ones he doesn't use. He doesn't use pyramid with your pastor at the top or Josh at the top, you know, somebody like that.

He doesn't use a bus, maybe you've heard different preachers use a bus in comparison with the church. It's not a bus and if you don't have a seat, you need to get off the bus, the bus is going to run over you.

He doesn't use those metaphors. I just have to kind of pause and say, just from hearing Josh last week, what a wonderful job he did. Expositing this passage, the first part of chapter four, and it's a real privilege for me to sit under his teaching.

As I know, many of you feel that way, too. How great it is, as I think about having someone like Josh to partner with, that I can sit in the pew and I can hear the word of God and I can apply it to my life.

And I go, man, God, thank you for that. Thank you for putting us together. And as he was preaching on unity, one of the battlegrounds of the church that we're called to defend, he did a great job of honoring me by bringing to light and bringing clarity to what I brought two weeks ago.

Summing it up and kind of taking that and moving forward. And so I want to do that same thing today. I want to kind of take what Josh talked about last week and preach in the same way, taking what Paul says in Ephesians 4, 7 through 16, and just kind of adding that to because the train of thought continues here.

And so that's our purpose today. That's what we want to do. Let's do a little bit of review because we're kind of in the middle of Ephesians. Ephesians 1, Paul starts talking about right away to the church in Ephesus about all the spiritual blessings that they have in Christ, that they are chosen, that they are loved, that they're predestined, that they're adopted as sons, that they have salvation and redemption, forgiveness of their trespasses.

And God has lavished all of this upon them with grace by revealing the mystery of his will.

And that's the gospel.

And then he prays for them. He finishes chapter one with this prayer for them that they would know God more and more. And that prayer still applies today. We have this infinite God, right? And though we might know something about him, there's still more and more for us to learn and understand.

Chapter two, he begins to talk about how we're dead in our trespasses and sins, how God made us alive with Christ. And then he's making peace between Jews and Gentiles. And he's tearing down the wall of hostility.

And he's making them one man, one person, making them one temple that God is going to dwell in. He talks about them being like stones built in this temple on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

In chapter three, Paul explains the mystery of the gospel, how God is displaying to the rulers and authorities his manifold wisdom through the church. The church is his idea. The church is his answer for how he's going to redeem the world and those who are his.

And he almost throws it into the face of his enemies. This is my wise plan. You didn't see it coming and it's going to confound you and it's going to burn you. It's going to really bother you because it is going to be victorious.

Now, he says in verse chapter four, where Josh was last week, the practical dues that come out of Paul's instruction in the first three chapters. And the general principle that Paul gives is walk worthy of your calling.

You heard that last week. And do it with humility and gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain or preserve or guard the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Now, I drew a connection. I draw this connection of the spiritual conflict already starting to be. He's forming this idea of enemies. And this is our calling, because when he gets to chapter six, it's obvious he's talking about spiritual warfare.

So unity becomes one of these things, one of these places where we are to fight, where we are to stand, where we are to hold ground. And the devil and his evil forces are seeking to destroy that very thing, the unity of the church, because it's a constant reminder, again, of the manifold wisdom of God that he has used to triumph over them.

So Josh has read our passage, and I'm going to break this passage up into four parts. So keep your Bibles open right there. The first part is verses 7 through 10, where Christ gives each believer, each member of the church, a gift.

OK, we're going to see that. Verse 11, he's going to—Christ also gives a gift to the church of leaders and teachers. In verses 12 through 14, he explains why Christ is doing this. What is the purpose?

To equip and to build the body. And then verses 15 and 16 is the result. The result is a healthy and growing body of Christ. So let's look at that first one. Verse 7 through 10, Christ gives each believer or member of the church a gift.

He starts with this, verse 7, but grace was given to each one. OK, so before, last week, Josh was talking about our oneness. We have one faith, one baptism, one Lord over all. Lots of one, how we're united.

From the beginning of verse 7, he says, but grace was given to each one. Introducing diversity among our unity. And it's not a diversity of—moving away from sameness, which is what our whole culture wants us to be.

It's just exactly the same. No distinction. All roles just kind of rolled up into one thing. But God, in his wisdom, is making us diverse, which is going to make us one. It's going to build up our unity.

He says, to each one was given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Now, this is kind of confusing. So are we given grace? And then, what is the gift of Christ that's there? In the Greek, you can read this as, but to each one of us was given a grace gift according to the measure from Christ.

Now, how do I get there? In the Greek, there's a little, small little word that is the definite or indefinite article. In English, it's the or a. We use it all the time to specify things that are like, this is the piece of paper, right?

I want you to see this piece of paper. But I could say, this is a piece of paper, meaning it's just—it's one of many, right? In the Greek, it doesn't do that. In the Greek, the article kind of points to specific things.

And in this line right here, the is added before grace. But to each one of us is given the grace, all right? But it's not really the. You don't really say it. I know this is confusing. But what it does is it points to gift.

It points to gift, the other noun that has an article as well. And so you put them together. But each one of us has been given a grace gift according to the measure from Christ. Christ being the source, okay?

So now I've kind of unraveled that there. The word for grace here is dorea, which is a general term for gift. I'm sorry. Grace is caris. The term for gift here is dorea, which is just a general sense of gift.

It points to something being undeserved. So it goes really great with grace, unmerited favor. We're given this grace we didn't deserve. We're given this gift we didn't deserve. And it reminds me of Ephesians 2 .8, which we all probably know.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is a gift of God so that no one can boast, right? This is not your own doing. It's a gift of God so that no one can boast. So I believe that Paul is using the same term here to do a transition, to remind us of the grace that we've been given in redemption, this gift of salvation.

And now he's going to kind of change it using pivot on that same word to talk about a different gift that we have. Now, when I was in middle school, there were two letters that I hated. I just hated these two letters.

They were the letters G and T put together. And some of my friends were GT. They were gifted and talented, right? And they would remind me of this fact often as they would talk about their GT classes and how they were gifted and, oh, you're not in that.

Yeah, I'm not in that. I was shocked as an adult how I ran across that again as I had children and ran into parents who would remind me and talk about how their kids were GT, gifted and talented. And as a way, they probably didn't mean it that way, but that's the way I felt.

I felt excluded. The wonderful news about the church is that God has given everyone a gift. Every one of us is given a gift. And that is the message that I want you to hear today is that you have a gift that God has given you.

If your heart has been regenerated, if you have new life in Christ, you're also given a gift. Now, what are these gifts? And how would I define spiritual gifts? A spiritual gift is a supernatural ability to believers, given to believers by the Holy Spirit upon conversion to bless the church and to build it up.

We'll talk about this a little bit more. Therefore, they're outward focused. A gift that you're given, a spiritual gift is not for you. It has been given so that you can bless the church.

We're going to see that later.

There are a diversity of gifts in the church. I mentioned that before. It's not about sameness. It's about things being different. The body has different parts. And sometimes these gifts relate to roles in the church.

Sometimes they don't. And they're given in different measures. So you may have the same gift as somebody else, but they may have a different measure than you do. Josh may have a different measure of a teaching gift than I do.

That shouldn't make me jealous. But that is just, we have to understand, that's the measure that we've been given. There are some gifts that are more visible than others. But they are not inborn talents.

They're not skills or aptitudes. Kristen just sent me a TikTok reel on Bethel Church and explaining how they had a class for teaching you how to have the gift of prophecy. And it was just, I mean, that alone was, I was just kind of rolling my eyes.

But then they began to say, you know, all you have to do is just say whatever comes into your head. And if nothing comes into your head, just make something up. And I was just like, what? You know, one, I mean, there's so many problems with that already, right?

The scripture tells us not to despise prophecy. But I feel like they were despising prophecy and making it despicable. You read in Jeremiah where he makes a prophetic warning against those people who are prophesying out of their own dreams, out of their own mind.

And God says, that's not from me. And then Jeremiah 29, 11, for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They're not what they're saying. So I think we need to be careful, also because those people get stoned when they get it wrong.

So you need to be careful. If you don't have that gift, don't exercise that and make something up. But Paul gives us a list of spiritual gifts in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 and 1 Peter 4, 10. We find things like administration, the gift of apostoling.

And we'll talk about that or being an apostle, not being an apostle, but apostoling as a gift, the gift of discernment, the gift of evangelism, the gift of exhortation or encouragement, the gift of faith, the gift of giving and generosity, the gift of helps, the gift of hospitality, the gift of knowledge, the gift of leadership, mercy, prophecy, serving, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues, teaching, wisdom, healing.

So this is the list that we're given. Often I hear people make up gifts like the gift of auto mechanics, which is not a gift, not a spiritual gift. I need an auto mechanic, so if you know one, please talk to me afterwards and let me know.

But that's not a gift of the spirit. No matter how bad we need it, we can't just say, well, you have the gift of technology. It's not there. I would call that a gift of service, gift of helps. But Christ is giving these diverse gifts in varying measure to promote spiritual unity and maturity because everyone is essential.

If it's diverse and we all have different gifts, we need each other, every one of us. And you have value because you're needed. And he puts you in the church so that you can bless one another. The next section is interesting.

Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led captives, a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. Now, Paul is using a very obscure and difficult reference back to Psalm 68, 18, where it says, and I will read this, look at what you have there in Ephesians.

In Psalms, it says, you ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the Lord may dwell there. Okay, so this is a psalm, Psalm 68 is a psalm of triumph and victory.

And God is being described as having descended, come down to Sinai. And then even more, he descended to be with his people, to travel with them through the wilderness and then defeat his enemies in Canaan and then ascend to Zion.

Okay, so that's what Psalm 68 is about. And as he conquers his enemies, the Canaanites, he receives tribute from them because he's a conqueror, right? Now, there's a difference between gave and received there.

And some people blame Paul and say that he's misquoting the Old Testament. But I believe that Paul is not making a literal quote here. I believe that he knows that you're going to see the difference. And he's making a point here.

I love how B .B. Warfield says the Old Testament is a beautifully furnished room that is dimly lit and that it is illuminated by the light of Christ in the New Testament, not replacing the things that are there, but revealing the things that have been there all along.

That's how the Old Testament and the New Testament work together. And so I believe that Paul is doing that very same thing right here. He's referring back to the historic exploits of the Lord for his people.

And he's saying Jesus is the same God. He's doing it again. This is pointing to the divinity of Christ being God. And Christ on the cross, victorious, receives faith from captives. Let me say that again.

Christ on the cross, victorious, winning salvation for us, receives faith, not tribute, from rebellious people. He receives faith from captives, and then he gives them gifts because he's not only a conqueror of sin and death and the devil, but he is a savior of men.

Verse 9 and 10 kind of parenthetically make sure that we're tracking with him. He takes the language of ascending and descending, and he further applies it to Christ in saying he ascended. What does it mean?

But that he also descended into the lower regions of the earth, the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is the one who ascended far above the heavens that he might fill all things. Okay, so what is this lower regions of the earth?

And the only reason that I bring this up and talk about it a little bit, teach on it, is because weird false teachers take something like this, and then they make it something crazy that is not biblical.

You have three options here for what the lower parts, lower regions of the earth means. Either, first, it means that Christ has descended to earth. He is being incarnated. That's the first option. The second option is that after he was crucified, that he was buried into the ground.

He descended below the earth into the ground and was buried. Or, the third option is that he went to hell. Now, this is where it gets, it goes into crazy places. Where do we get that? Where do we get that Christ descended into hell?

Well, there's passages in 1 Peter that talk about Christ proclaiming to imprisoned spirits, 1 Peter 4, 6, as the gospel is preached to those who are now dead. Did Christ go to hell? The Apostles' Creed says he descended into hell.

But that translation that we speak to one another, that we recite sometimes, is from a single manuscript in 690, or no, I'm sorry, 390 A .D., and the translation is off there from the Greek. That word hell is actually beneath.

He descended into the beneath. So we don't have a definite he went to hell. Although it really makes a great preaching point to say, Jesus went to hell so you don't have to. I mean, that'll preach. But I can't use that.

Joyce Myers used that, and she says that Jesus suffered in hell and suffered your torment there. And then in hell he was born again and became three-quarters the first born-again man, which is just so wrong.

And yet they get that from this passage here. So I want to clear that up. Christ, I think going to Philippians 2 .6 actually helps us. Let the word interpret the word. In Philippians 2 .6 we see that when Christ, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.

And when he empties himself, he is not becoming less God. He's not subtracting his divinity. He is adding humanity. He still remains God, just more complex God. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

He descends. This is him descending to earth to accomplish your salvation on the cross. And then he ascends, and it says, Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

We also see this in Daniel 7 as the Son of Man, one who is as the Son of Man, is presented before the Ancient of Days and to him is given power and authority and a kingdom that will not end. Or Psalm 10 where God says to his Lord, to Christ, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool.

But what Paul is wanting us to see in this is that Christ accomplishing our salvation on the cross, saving us by grace through faith, forgiving our trespasses and sins, making a peace with God and satisfying his wrath and justice, making us blameless before him and adopting us to himself.

That is what we've been given because of the cross. But he also gives us a gift of grace. And I want you to think about that when you think about your salvation. And he gives us this gift of grace not to make us proud.

It's because it's not about self-promotion. It's a gift of grace, unmerited favor for you and for me, giving us a place in the body, a task and a role of value to bless one another. This not only does he give each believer or member in the church a gift, verse 11 continues, and Christ gives the gift of leaders and teachers to the church.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets and the evangelists, these shepherds and the teachers. And so the word here at the very beginning, and creates an addition or an expansion on his previous thought.

He's saying he's given individual gifts. Each one has a gift. And he's going to give apostles, prophets, evangelists and shepherds and teachers. Now, some churches see this as the four or five-fold ministry of the church.

Perhaps if you've ever been in a charismatic church or in a four-square church, they talk about the four-fold ministry of the Holy Spirit, giving these gifts to the church, that they are necessary and active for church government.

Again, here's another passage that we have to give some explanation to because people take it into weird and crazy places. For example, the New Apostolic Reformation, places like Bethel, and though their music is really catchy, I really can't support anything that comes out of their church for this reason here.

They teach that the apostles are present now and that they have the same authority as the New Testament apostles. And this is really dangerous because these apostles that are walking around today have the authority to speak for God and interpret and even more change Scripture.

Now, I know that Paul says this, but let me really tell you what he's talking about here. And they can change it, and they have. In fact, if you have the Passion Translation of the Bible, somebody gave that to you for Christmas, get rid of it because it is not the Word of God.

They have changed it to build up this position that they have apostles. Now, I said earlier that there's a gift of apostling. What would that be? And if you read this and you interpret this and you say that these are gifts that are given, that you would see someone with a gift of apostleship would be somebody who is sent out, someone who begins a new work, a new ministry, or a new church in the kingdom.

And certainly that takes a certain gifting. I had one person question me about my resume and how God has moved us from place to place, from church to church. And he said, well, you know, you really haven't stayed in one place for very long.

Like that was a bad thing. And I told him, I said, you know what? I would have loved to put down some roots somewhere. I would have loved to build equity in my home and to build wealth that way, staying in one place.

I would have loved to have clung to my friends that I had.

And just built those lifelong friends.

I would have loved to have my kids grow up in the same community.

And not move them around.

But that's not what God had for me. And that's not what God had for Paul. And as he says, he's an apostle. He saw Christ. But as one untimely born, right? He's kind of out of season. I wasn't like the other apostles.

I'm unique.

And he kind of is saying, I'm the last one that's there. Now, along with that, the sign gifts, just since we're talking about spiritual gifts, there are some spiritual gifts that are, there's healing, there's miracles, there's different, there's tongues, there's all these kind of supernatural type gifts that are in the scriptures.

They're listed in the list, but are they still around? And I would say if there are no apostles, those apostolistic or apostolic, apostolic. Thank you. Apostolic gifts are gone too, right? And how would I say that?

If you go to Acts chapter four, Acts chapter five, you see them commenting about the wondrous and miraculous gifts that the apostles are doing. If you go to second Corinthians, I'm just gonna flip there, chapter 12, verses 11.

Okay, verse 12, 12, 12. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works. He's specifically talking about the signs and wonders that the apostles did.

And for me, that's convincing for me that those signs are probably not something that I'm going to have. Those gifts are not something that I'm gonna have. Now, also the same thing with the role of prophet, right?

There were Old Testament prophets, right? And they had a certain role. Are those still around today? And I would say, no. I don't think that those prophets, Old Testament prophets are there. But the gift of prophecy, I do believe exists.

It's important that we define these though, okay? Because they're different. So how would I define the role of a prophet today? I would say that a prophet is one who can properly declare and apply the word of God to our modern culture.

Calling people to return to Christ. They call to society and they say, hear the word of the Lord. And I would say modern prophets are like, Josh and I discussed, Doug Wilson would be one. This other Truella guy that you guys have me listening to.

I feel like he's a prophet, man. I listen to him and I go, man, he's just calling to culture to change. Then he's given evangelists, shepherds and teachers. And this kind of all kind of goes to the evangelist, of course, someone who can proclaim the word and with power and people respond to the gospel and come to Christ.

Shepherds and teachers, almost the same thing there, almost synonymous. And I would say that those are pastors or teachers. The point here is that Jesus is giving leadership to the church to teach and equip, to unify and mature believers.

Why?

Because we need leadership. We need shepherds and teachers in his absence until he comes again. And we see ourselves as under shepherds, submitting ourselves to the authority of our head, of Christ. It's not that we're leading and just figuring out where we want to go.

But Christ is giving us our marching orders to take care of his church. These include historic teachers in the faith, Luther, Calvin, the Puritans, including Jonathan Edwards. Man, we can learn from them.

In more modern times, R .C. Sproul is just, I'd learn a lot from him. But let's move on. Let's see, seven through 10, Christ gives each believer or member of the church a gift. Verse 11, Christ gives the gifts of leadership and teachers to the church.

Verses 12 through 14, Christ gives gifts for a purpose, for equipping and building. To equip the saints for the work of ministry, or the word there is service, ministry or service, for the building up of the body of Christ until we attain to the unity of faith and to the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Why?

Why does he give us the gifts? I've already said this. Leaders are given to equip you, the body, for the work of ministry, showing you how you plug in, how you fit in the body, how you use your grace gift to build up the body of Christ.

That's our job. And the end result is this. So picture this, right? Picture the church as it exists, with division. Picture it attaining the unity of the faith. How is that going to happen? With a full knowledge.

That word there is epigenosis in the Greek, so they put epi on the front of it to say it's not just knowledge, which is genosis, it is a full knowledge of Christ. Growing like a person grows to maturity, to manhood or to womanhood.

The word in the Greek for stature is talking about adulthood, talking about being a man who is of military age or a woman who is ready to be married. That's the picture. And it's contrasted with children.

We're not to be like children. He doesn't want his church to be childish. We're to have a childlike faith. But as it comes to these matters and in this context, I believe he's talking about spiritual gifts here that we're not to be childish, that we're to grow up and to be mature in this.

In 1 Corinthians 13, he says, When I was a child, I spoke like a child,.

I thought like a child,.

I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. What was he talking about? Spiritual gifts. So I believe that there are deceivers, that there are enemies of God who exploit our ignorance about our gifts, who try and get in and trick us to give up our unity and to fight against each other, to be jealous of one another.

Children are gullible. They are easily fooled and we're not to be like children. To combat these enemies, the church must mature, it must grow to the full measure and stature of the fullness of Christ.

I don't even know what that looks like. I don't think that that even exists in the church yet, but that's the desire of Paul is that we would grow that strongly, that firmly in our faith. The last section, 15 and 16.

So Christ gives each believer, each member a gift in the church. Christ gives the church the gift of leaders and teachers. Christ gives it for a reason, for a purpose to equip and to build up the body.

And then here in 15 and 16, we see a healthy and growing body of Christ. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body is joined and held together by every joint, which it is equipped.

When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. First word, rather. Rather than what? Rather than what these deceivers and these enemies of God are telling you.

Rather than operating like the world, rather than taking advantage of one another, being proud and self-exalting, being jealous, being divided, making comparisons, the church operates in unity. And he gives us four ways right here.

He says speaking the truth in love. That's the first one. Now, when I usually hear that in a church setting, brother, I'm going to speak the truth in love.

To you right now.

I kind of flinch or, you know, get ready to dodge because that usually means I'm about to communicate my truth without any love, right? Because I'm a truth teller. That's my gift, right? Words are powerful.

Words can build up and words can tear down. Especially when they're applied without sensitivity, when they're applied carelessly. The Greek word here is aletha, right? And Paul uses it in a participle here.

That whole word speaking the truth is one word. It's truthing. Truthing in love. What does he mean? He means we embody truth. We are truth to one another in love. And this means that we are to be grounded in the truth, but we are to relate to one another using truth with all gentleness and love.

When you speak to your wife, what does love require of your words? When you speak to your children, what restrictions does love put on your words? It's the same within the body of Christ. When we speak to one another, love constrains us and it empowers our words.

This is Christ's means of self-correcting his body. We were driving here this morning and Kristen, I'm just driving along, I'm thinking about the sermon and stuff like that, and Kristen spoke the truth in love to me.

She said, you're about to get a ticket. And I looked down and I was like, ooh, yes I am. Now I could have reacted to that, said, oh, you know, and been hateful and been angry, maybe attacked her personally, feeling like that was a personal attack against me.

But she spoke it in love and it was truth. I love this quote from Bodhi Bachman. He says, you and I are sinners. Moreover, we are self-deceived. We do not see ourselves accurately. Every one of us thinks of ourselves more highly than we ought.

So we are in desperate need of brothers and sisters who will tell us the truth. More importantly, we need to be the kind of people who acknowledge that truth. So speaking the truth in love is not just delivering truth, but it's also receiving truth as well.

I just really like that. The second thing, not just speaking the truth in love, he says growing up into every way, into him who is the head. There is a direction that we are growing. It is towards the head.

It is seeking the direction of our head, which is Christ. The head gives direction to the body. The head is not a function that any one of us has. Not me, not Josh, not Chad, not Jake. It's Christ who is our head.

And the body must grow in submission and dependence so that we can function properly. If we don't have a head as a body, it's a scary thing. It's a Halloween thing. Plus, a headless body is dead. It doesn't work.

The third thing, not only has he said to speak the truth in love, this is how we operate, we're growing up into him who is the head, but the whole body holds itself together by the joint, by the contact, this point of contact.

Lanny asked me that this week. He goes, what do you think that is?