Do The Job Jesus Gives You (Ephesians 4:7-16, Part 2) Series

Last week, we started working through Ephesians 4:7-16. We didn't get far, only up through verse 12. It's a difficult passage, and I guess I talked a lot.

This morning, I want to start by quickly retracing Paul's argument, and then hopping back in at verse 13.

Verse 7 reads like this:

Now to each one of us was given this grace/ministry according to the measure of Christ's gift.

The idea here is simple. Jesus gives each of us a ministry, as he pleased. This ministry may have nothing to do with our own natural abilities or interests. Or it may. That's up to Jesus. But the important thing is, Jesus gave each of us a ministry.

Verses 8-10 are a quotation of Psalm 68:18, followed by an explanation.

Therefore , it says,

"Rising into the height, he captured captives,

he gave gifts to people."

Now the "he rose"-- what/who is (it) except that he also descended to the lower part of the earth?

The one descending-- he is also the one ascending above all the heavens,

in order that he might fill/fulfill all things.

Almost everything in here is debated, but the main point goes something like this: only Jesus descended and ascended, so the psalm must be talking about him. And if the psalm is talking about him, then the end result is this: Jesus gives gifts to people.

What gifts did he give? Verse 11 tells us:

And he gave, on the one hand, apostles,

on the other hand prophets,

on the other hand evangelists,

on the other hand pastors and teachers

Some of you are going to be tempted to read this and say, Jesus is giving people the spiritual gift of evangelism, or teaching, or prophecy. But the idea here is that Jesus gives these people to the church as a gift to the church.

Jesus gives gifts to people. Jesus gives apostles to the church.

Why did Jesus give apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors as gifts to the church?

Verse 12 tells us:

for the fixing/equipping of the holy ones

(1) for the work of service/ministry,

(2) for the building of Christ's body,

Each of us is given a specific ministry for the church. We are the holy ones. Leaders fix and equip us, so that we can do the work of ministry, and so that we can build Christ's body-- the church. Leaders are like mechanics, or doctors. If we are unable to serve because we are caught in sin, they can correct us in love, and restore us in love. If we don't know the basics of what it means to follow Jesus, and what God's big plan is for us and the world, our teachers can help us. They fix us, and equip us, so that we can serve and do the ministry Jesus gave us to do.

In verse 13, Paul gives us the end goals:

until we all reach

(1) for (e??) the unity of faith and the knowledge of the son of God,

(2) for (e??) the perfect/mature man,

(3) for (e??) the measure of the maturity of Christ's fullness,

There are three end goals to all of this. Here again, Paul basically numbers them by repeating the preposition at the start of each one.

(1) The first purpose is to reach, as a whole, as a church, the unity of faith and the knowledge of the son of God. If you notice that for #1, there's one preposition-- one "for"-- given for both of these. What that tells us that the two ideas are closely related. In Ephesians 2:14, we read that Jesus is our peace. He is the one who tore down the wall separating Jew from Gentile, and made peace between all people, and between all people and God.

If we know what Jesus has done for us, and if we see how important peace is to God, we will strive to live in peace with each other. So when leaders fix us, and when we serve, this is the goal we are working toward. What we want is this: to live in peace with each other, in the knowledge of what Jesus did on the cross for us to bring us together.

The second goal is this: "until we all reach the perfect man." The word for "man" here is the word for an adult man. The goal then is that we all grow up, and become perfect, mature adults. In Matthew 5:48, Jesus said, "Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect. Our Father is absolutely perfect. Our goal is to be like our Father. Your goal can't be, "I know I will always sin." You don't get to set the bar low. God's goal is that we will be perfect. And we keep striving together, as a church, to grow toward God's high bar. We need to stop saying we will always sin--or at least, say it far less often. We need to stop letting this comfort us. Our goal, is that all of us, as a body, become perfect.