Chapter 10. Holy Results of Heavenly Blessing: Diversity and Harmony of Gifts and Service

Chapter 10.
Holy Results of Heavenly Blessing: Diversity and Harmony of Gifts and Service Ephesians 4:7-16

"Saint Paul in his Epistles has written more fully and wisely of virtues and good works than all the philosophers."
—Luther

Ephesians 4:7. But to each one of us was given grace, according to the measure of the gift of our Christ; in perfect correspondence to His plan for each and for all, and as

Ephesians 4:8. His own sovereign endowment. Wherefore, (because the spiritual fact and the Scripture promise of it must tally,) it saith, the prophetic Oracle saith, as with a living voice,[1]Ascending on high, He led captive a captivity, a host of captives, and gave gifts to men, to mankind, τοῖςἀνθρώποις. Words whose phraseology lends itself, in the light of Christ, to an interpretation exactly appropriate to Him who, for our salvation, came so immeasurably far down, that He might then and

Ephesians 4:9. therefore mount so immeasurably high: Nowthe phrase, "He ascended," what is it, what does it mean, if not that He also descended,[2] aye, to the lower regions of the earth, to the subterranean Sepulchre, and to that hidden Separate State of which the Sepulchre is the

Ephesians 4:10. portal and the type?[3]The Descender, He, He and none other (αὐτός), and He because He descended, is also the Ascender, the Conqueror who went up, far above all the heavens, all the spheres and regions of blessed creature-life, to the Uncreated Glory itself, to the Throne, to the Majesty on high; that He might[4]fill all things, the Universe and its contents, τὰπάντα—fill them with the presence and the power of One who, being God over all, is now also the Son of Man, and

Ephesians 4:11. the Lamb that was slain.[5]And He, none other than He (αὐτός), this wonderful Descending and now Ascended Christ, in the virtue and the prerogative of His Sufferings and His Glory, forthwith "gave," as we have seen ( Ephesians 4:8), "gifts unto men." What were those gifts? In brief, they were a Spirit-filled Ministry, with a view to the development of a Spirit-filled Church, united in the Spirit to the Lord Himself. And He gave some men as apostles, some as prophets, prophets of the Christian order, some as evangelists, devoted expressly to the extension of the Church rather than to its internal edification,[6]some as shepherds and teachers—two sides of one work; men who were set over the local "flocks" of believers to be their leaders and instructors in the Lord. And these "gifts" were given not to terminate in the ministers themselves, but altogether for the sake of the Church at large. And they were given for the Church at large on purpose that the Ministry" might not absorb or monopolize ministration, but might promote its exercise through the whole Body. For what do we read as the aim and object of the giving? With

Ephesians 4:12. a view to the equipment, the adjustment, the adaptation and furnishing (καταρτισμόν), of the saints, of all the true members of the Head, for work of service, for active and fruitful enterprise and labour in their Lord’s Name and for His glory; all summed up in the parallel phrase, for the upbuilding of the Body of our (τοῦ) Christ; for the winning of new "members" to the living Organism, and for the deepening and developing of the cohesion of the whole, by all holy influences of word and work. A noble process, with a glorious goal! All was to be aimed at nothing short of the production of an ideal community of ideal members, each and all alike animated and sanctified by saving reliance on the Head

Ephesians 4:13. and sanctifying acquaintance with Him; till we attain (καταντήσωμεν), the whole number of us (οἱπάντες), to (εἰς) the unity of, the unity generated and conditioned by, our (τῆς) faith in and our (τῆς) true knowledge (ἐπιγνώσεως) of the Son of God, (in whom we too are the sons of the Eternal Father;) yes, (to put the same prospect in more concrete terms,) to a full-grown (τέλειον) man, a "man" in the sense not of humanity only (ἄνθρωπον) but of matured and strong humanity (ἄνδρα); even to the measure, the standard, of the stature of the fulness of Christ. For nothing short of this is to satisfy our hopes; the Christian is to grow, and the Church is to grow, in spiritual maturity, till the result is no less than "the fulness of Christ," the attained ideal of all that is meant by "Christ." And what is that? It is that which shall be when the glorious Head shall have for the vehicle of His action a mystical Body complete and perfected, faultless and immortally mature.[7]

Such is the grand maturity, the developed and full-grown "manhood," of the ideal Body, as it shall be. And it is to be always more and more approached and realized even now. Even now the purpose and the process are to issue in a noble relative strength and

Ephesians 4:14. fulness of holy character; that we may be no longer infants, "childish" in respect of ignorance and the weakness of ignorance, borne on billows and drifted about by every wind of the teaching which would beguile us, in, in the sphere and influence of, the dice-play, the unscrupulous religious cozenage, of men, (these mere men, who have no Christ, no God, behind them;) in their cunning, with a view to, to reach the ends of, the scheming of their (τῆς) deceit. For alas, there are those around you who not only do lead you astray, but mean to do it, laying deliberate traps, and arranging well-drawn methods, on purpose to guide you away from the Christ whom they do not love. The purpose of the great Giver’s plan is the opposite to this; it is, as we have seen, that you should not be exposed helpless

Ephesians 4:15. to these wiles, but, being followers of truth,[8]in love, not in bitterness and prejudice, but purely seeking the glory of God and the good of man, should grow, with an ever deepening and more vivifying contact, into Him, in all respects, as to your whole being and your whole life—into Him who is the Head, our (ὁ) Christ. The more you thus "grow into Him," with an ever closer cohesion of faith, and hope, and love, the nearer will your union with one another be, and the better the

Ephesians 4:16. whole condition of your organism; for out of Him,[9] with resources ever drawn from His fulness, all the Body, getting[10]adjusted together, and getting braced together, through every joint of, every nexus which is a channel for, the supply of life and power from the Head, according to His working, in the measure of each part, effects (ποιεῖται, a fuller word than ποιεῖ) the increase of the Body, its development alike in stature and in strength, to the upbuilding of itself, in love. For love is the inmost condition of the whole work—"the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," the sunshine in which the true life basks and grows.

Here is indeed a paragraph pregnant of truth and life. The comment shall take the form of detached remarks upon some of its greater contents.

I. What strikes us first is the citation from the Psalm, made to illuminate and enforce the thought that grace, in its oneness and its variety, is "the gift of Christ." The Apostle takes us back, for a prophetic verification, to Psalm lxviii., and shews us the Conqueror ascending, after battle, to the throne. He leads a host of captives with Him, helpless beneath His mighty hand, to vex His people no more. And He "gives gifts to men." Here, says St Paul, in effect, is Christ—Christ who went down first from His throne on the eternal hills to the plain, nay, to the dark valley of the conflict, and who thence returned, Incarnate and Glorified, to His heavenly seat again, and from that seat dispensed the gifts of Pentecost, and particularly now the gift of the Pentecostal, Ministry in the Pentecostal Church.

Two problems present themselves. The first is one of translation; for the Hebrew, as familiar to St Paul as the Authorized Version, or the Prayer Book Version, is to us, runs here: "Thou didst take gifts in man"; that is, "amongst men" The path to St Paul’s rendering (which is not that of the Septuagint) is smoothed by that of the Chaldee Targum, or Paraphrase, perhaps of the Apostle’s date: "Thou hast given to them gifts, even to the sons of men." And the key to these renderings may well lie in the. thought that the Conqueror took that He might give; He gave what He first had won. "In man," that is, among His human subjects, He distributed the spoils of victory. His bounty was not only bounty; it was conquest first. The other difficulty is a more general one. Does the sixty-eighth Psalm, as we read it, claim (so to speak) a Messianic reference? Are we to think that the Psalmist, David or whoever he was, foresaw the Lord, and sang of Him? I should for myself be very slow to answer that question. To say that he did not do so would be to say what we cannot possibly be sure of. Some sorts of modern criticism glide much too easily into theories of the composition of Scripture which practically eliminate all supernormal conditions from the consciousness of its writers. But literature, far outside the Bible, offers abundant evidence for the possibility of totally supernormal conditions in human minds, foreseeing and foretelling; the records of the "Second Sight" are full of such things. I cannot say but that the author of this wonderful Psalm really was lifted above the horizon of time, and saw Messiah, however far off, in His glory, in His victory, and then sung about Him in mysterious verse. But I am not careful to assert this. After all, his "first reference" may have been to some great event of his own time, some triumph of the old Israel, in relation to which he seemed to see, above the rejoicings on earth, above all the festal chorus of the Temple, with its minstrels and singers, and shouting people, the everlasting King Himself, Israel’s true Lord, leading His triumph in the skies. But all the while the Poet’s true Possessor and Inspirer would have had His view beyond the temporal horizon, and under the veil of the national story would have indicated in His own way the coming Triumph of Redemption. The "consciousness" of Psalmists and Prophets is a deeply interesting study, so far as it is possible. But it is secondary. The primary thing is the "consciousness" of their Inspirer. And our Lord Jesus, in His risen life

, as much at least as before He suffered, bore abundant witness to the fact that the Inspirer filled the Old Scriptures, the Psalms included, with "things concerning Himself" (Luke 24). "We feel free to recognize any ’first reference’ fairly provable; but also bound to believe that the Divine Author worked through the human author, so as to convey eternal and permanent truth through his imagery and words, and so as to make the whole terminate on Christ, whether the human author was aware of it or not."[11] II. We take note of some remarkable data presented to us here, for true views of the Christian Ministry.

We have, first, its Divine Institution. From the Apostle to the Pastor-Teacher, it is "the gift of Christ." Perfectly true then is that view of the Ministry (only it must be rightly applied) which sees in it, as to its essence, not an emergence from below, a mere product of the needs of the Church, developed in merely "natural" ways, but a gift from above. Let that thought both awe and animate the true Minister, and give the private Christian a due sense of honouring love towards the Pastorate. On the other hand we observe that the emphasis of the passage lies upon the truth that the ideal Ministry is a Ministry of spiritual power. We have here, of course, indications of grade and order; and the thought of the distribution and difference of functions is the main thought of the context. But the "gifts" are all alike in this, that they are given by the. just-ascended Lord; they are Pentecostal gifts. This calls attention supremely to the witnessing work of the Christian Ministry. That Ministry has many sides to its duties and commission; the "shepherd" must needs be in some sense the guardian, and the "teacher" the guide. But the Pentecostal "gift" was above all things a gift for witness’, "Ye shall receive power, by the coming of the Holy Ghost upon you, and ye shall be witnesses of Me" ( Acts 1:8). Again and again in the Acts the Apostles themselves appear as, above all things, witnesses. Such, to the end, is the Christian minister, in his true idea. His characteristic function is profoundly different from that of the Aaronic priest. Distinctively, (let me deliberately say it, with the New Testament open,) it is not "sacerdotal" at all. It is prophetic; it is the function of the Christ-given, Spirit-filled, witness to the Lord and His Word, before the Church and before the world.

We observe again, as another and most momentous side of the matter, that a Ministry so conditioned cannot possibly absorb into itself the spiritual functions of the Church. Rather, it will quicken and develope in the Church the sense and exercise of spiritual functions. The one purpose of the Ministry mentioned here by the Apostle, its one great raison d’être in his view here, is this. Note the translation of Ephesians 4:12 : "With a view to (πρός) the equipment of the saints for (εἰς) work of service." Who are "the saints"? Briefly, all believers. A saint, in the Epistles, is just the Christian as he should be; the disciple assumed to be true to Christ and ( Romans 8:9) possessed of His Holy Spirit. He may or may not bear public office in the Church. But is he a member, a limb, of it? Then he exists for "work of service"; he is to "yield himself unto God, and his members as instruments of righteousness unto Him." Whatever the details of practice, this is the principle. And the function of the true pastor and teacher is to help him, to equip him, for such a life; to do all he can to quicken the "saint’s" conscience in the work of the Lord, and to animate his zeal, and to welcome his activity, and in all wise and kindly ways to seek to make the most of it by guiding and combining it. In the modern Church countless illustrations of this truth happily exist. More and more, in many quarters, it is being recollected that "the laity," ὁλαός, the holy People, are the Church, for which the Ministry exists, and that the Christian layman, and woman, has an all-important place in "work of service"; not only in the "serving of tables," but in witnessing and teaching. But there is still grave need for a larger recognition of that fact, alike by the pastorate and the laity.

There certainly was once a time when pious men of strict Church opinions dreaded the least approach to such work of service. A veteran Christian, a layman of high position and culture, told me lately that fifty years ago he asked an Oxford friend what he thought of his (the narrator’s) work among his poor neighbours as a voluntary Scripture-reader. Might he read the Bible to an old cottager? Yes, certainly. Might he, if she said she did not understand, explain it to her? No, certainly not; that would be usurping the work of the priesthood. Did Priscilla then ( Acts 18:26) usurp it? Assuredly not, in St Luke’s opinion; she was doing "work of service" as a member of the Church of God.

Meanwhile, let this passage remind us that the ideal of the matter is that "the saints" should indeed do "work of service," and contribute their labour and witness to "the upbuilding of the body of Christ"; but that they should not therefore slight order, cohesion, and the loving guidance of the spiritual Ministry. I am very far from saying that there is no place in the Lord’s work for the "free lance" worker; lives upon which His blessing manifestly abides are evidence enough to the contrary. But I do say that this is the anomaly, not the rule; Scripture and reason alike assure us of this. "Prophet, evangelist, pastor-teacher," are, in the rule of the Master’s will, necessary to "the saints" for their "work of service"; as on the other hand "the saints" are utterly indispensable to the full work of the Christian minister.

How easy, in view of these remarks, to suggest problems of difficulty, and cases of impossibility, on either side! Yes, but the principles abide, and their silent influence, under the Lord and the Spirit, will be of infinite value in the Church Visible, with all its confusions and distresses. Solvetur ambulando cum Deo.

III. The passage gives us some invaluable messages upon Christian maturity. The Apostle glides from the topic of work—the work of the spiritual Ministry and the work of the believing Church—to that of character, the character of the Community. To be sure, the character of the individual is not forgotten; it is impossible to read Ephesians 4:13-15 and not to feel that what is true of the Body must be true also of the member; for no community can be really mature and stable in spirit and tone unless it consists, prevalently at least, of mature and stable individuals. But the main thought is of the Body. And St Paul, we see, views the Christian Body as one which is to be always growing towards an ideal whose great features are an adult and well-grounded fidelity to the revealed Gospel, such as to resist and throw off the assaults of subtle error, while yet maintaining a spirit of love, full of the love of God.

There is a point of view from which the Christian character cannot be too child-like—at the Master’s feet. But there are points from which alike the man and the Church must avoid to the utmost the childish in thought and faith. For the Lord’s work and witness, there is an urgent need of the mature, the intelligent, the man-like, if the cause of Christ is to be adequately maintained and advanced in "this naughty world." St Paul evidently strove to cultivate this spirit (the opposite of conceit and self-importance) in his converts. "I speak as to thoughtful persons; judge you what I say" ( 1 Corinthians 10:15); such are his words to the Corinthian community, over a matter of profound doctrinal and practical moment. Alike towards the "pastor-teacher" within, and towards the advocate of "another Gospel" from without, he would have their attitude to be that of men; men conscious of their maturity, aware of their reasons and their convictions, while at the same time sobered and humbled by an adult sense of their responsibility and their imperfections.

I do not forget that the bright ideal of ver. 13 cannot be fully realized till the pilgrim Church steps into the world of glory. There only, most assuredly, will be actually attained "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ"; bright, magnificent, blessed hope! Yet the context here bears mainly not upon eternity but upon time. It deals mainly with a period when errors and dangers are still around, and when the Body is still in process of "upbuilding." Its reference, then, is to an "adultness" rather relative than absolute. It animates us with the thought of a manhood in Christ attainable now, while yet from another aspect it is only a step to the full and immortal manhood of heaven. iv. Lastly, here as everywhere, we find all that is said of Ministry, and of Saints, and of Body, and of corporate Life, ruled and glorified by what is said of Jesus Christ. Ephesians 4:15-16, take us altogether to Him. The remarkable imagery of Ephesians 4:16 does this in a way peculiar to itself. For it puts before us the Body, in its multiplicity of articulation; yet it suggests the thought that each limb lives by a contact with the Head, immediate and personal. The material figure bursts, as it were, and gives way, and leaves to us the view of an organism such that the limb does not live, ultimately, by its contact with other limbs, however full of life, but by having its own "joint of supply," its own individual point of contact with the Head. So it grows, and thrives, and works. And He is also the secret of growth and energy for all its fellow-limbs. Therefore, because of Him, as the inmost Secret, there is cohesion, continuity, harmony, in the whole organism.

After all, the supreme requisite for life and labour is personal and immediate union with the Lord.

Wonderful picture—a Church, a Body, indeed! It is alive all over. Everywhere there is "work of service," promoted in every limb by those limbs whose function is in any special sense that of leadership. Everywhere there is a steady growth of adult intelligence and purpose. Everywhere there is the pulse of love, as the whole Organism feels the vital warmth of the eternal Love. And the secret of the whole is the blessed Head, "into" whom the limbs "grow" with ever-deepening contact, and from whom they draw all His fulness for all their need.

"To know, to do, the Head’s commands, For this the Body lives and grows;

All speed of feet and skill of hands Is for Him spent, and from Him flows."

^[1]It seems better to explainλέγειthus than by "Hesaith," as in A.V.—For an example of the many passages in which, in Scripture, Scripture is almost personified, cp.Galatians 3:8: "The Scripture,foreseeing..., preachedbefore the Gospel unto Abraham."

^[2]Probably the word "first,"πρῶτον, of the Received Text is to be omitted. It is most likely an early explanatory note.

^[3]Some have interpretedτὰκατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆςto mean merelythe earth,considered as a region lower than the heavens; "the lower parts, consisting of the earth." So Bp Pearson. But the reference to the Grave seems both more suitable to the context and more congenial to the phrase. Cp.Psalms 63:9: "They shall go into the lower parts of the earth." And see the grand spiritually-parallel passage,Philippians 2, where the Saviour’s Exaltation follows upon His "obedience even to the length ofdeath."

^[4]Lit. "may,"πληρώσῃ: but usage favours our rendering.

^[5]"There is no reference here to a diffused and ubiquitous corporeity, but to a pervading and energizing omnipresence.... Christ is perfect God, and perfect and glorified Man; as the former He is present everywhere; as the latter He can be presentanywhere" (Bp Ellicott).

^[6]"This passage would lead us to think of the Evangelists as standing between the [apostles and prophets, pastors and teachers;] sent forth, as missionary preachers of the Gospel, by the first, and as such preparing the way for the labours of the second" (Smith’sDiet. Bibl,s.v.Evangelist).This would fairly describe, from one point of view, what appears to have been the function of the "evangelist"Timothy(2 Timothy 4:5).

^[7]"Cp. the phrases, ’fulness of the Gentiles’ (Romans 11:25), and ’fulness of the time’ (Galatians 4:4). The phrase here appears to be analogous:the total, at length attained, of what is meant by Christ.And ’Christ’ in this passage (so full of the idea of the oneness, in and with the Lord, of His mystical Body) is, in effect, Christ and His Church... as in1 Corinthians 12:12, ’as the body is one, and hath many limbs, so alsois Christ.’The Lord the Son becomes in accomplished fact all that He wills, and is willed, to be, only when He is the Head of a perfected mystical Body which lives by His sacred Life and is His incorporate ’limbs.’... So He and they are guardedly and reverently spoken of as One Christ; with full reservation, from other Scriptures, of the truth of the undying personality of each individual ’limb’ of the glorious Head, and of His divine Personality." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[8]Ἀληθεύοντες: Alford renders the word as above. It certainly means more than "truth-sweating,"though of course it includes it. It surely points,in this context,to "theTruth"of the Gospel and the Christian’s devotion to it.

^[9]I change the relative (ἐξ οὗ) here into the demonstrative, to relieve the length of the sentence as paraphrased.

^[10]Observe the present participles here.

^[11]Note in theCambridge Bible.