Ephesians 4

Ephesians 4:1-16

Section 4. (Ephesians 4:1-16.)Practical results as to the Church. We come now, according to the order of that which we find all through Scripture, to the practical results of all this. Truths such as we have been considering must surely be of the most practical character. All doctrine, in fact, is. The precept resulting must be, of necessity, lower than the doctrine itself. The cause is more than the effect and in this case cannot even be measured fully by the effect.

1. We have, first of all here, the unities which the apostle would have us mark. There are seven unities, the number which, as we well know, speaks of a perfection, which is peculiarly that of God. He reminds us, first of all, that as to himself, it is the prisoner in the Lord who is speaking. Well may he who has shown us the power of the truth upon himself in the very place which it has given him amongst men, exhort us to “walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called.” The “calling” includes all the blessing that we have been looking at. It is this which God’s voice is drawing us on with, a Voice which has power in it also to accomplish its will; but what then is the suited answer to it on our part? “All lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love.” The necessary effect of having to do with God is that it puts us into that low place before Him, the place of one with whom, therefore, the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity is able to dwell.

To be with God, we must be in the sense of what God is, before Him in the consciousness of creature nothingness, yet not discouraged or distressed by that, but, on the contrary, realizing only the more the sweetness of the wonderful condescension of God toward us. We are in a world of suffering, where sin has caused suffering, and where even in one another the sin still remaining makes us suffer also; suffering from one another thus calling forth in us, as God would have it, only the more fully those Christian graces which find but opportunity for full display where there is such demand upon them.

The lowliness which is the primal thought here, becomes in us meekness, and then, with reference to others, longsuffering and the bearing with one another, not as simply accepting, as it were, what we cannot escape from, but “in love.” We have to “use diligence,” therefore, to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace.” We have not to form this unity, as is clear. The Spirit dwelling in us all has formed it, but we have to keep it “in the bond of peace.” Nor is it the unity of the body of which he is speaking. That is not ours even to keep, but the Spirit is that which animates the body and makes it work together for common blessing. Thus it is not a unity in form merely, as the unity of the body might be. It is the unity characterized by what the Spirit Himself is, and to keep it may involve also sometimes what might seem to be in contrast, rather, with the unity of the body. The members of the body cannot in that character be cut off from Christ, but yet looking at things as they are here, the figure for us may be rather that of the human body such as we know it in the place of sin and death, and where one member may have, even, to be cut off for the good of the whole.

The unity of the Spirit is a holy unity. Separation from evil is an essential characteristic of it, and here it may carry us beyond what the mere thought of one body would seem to necessitate.

The unity of the Spirit is living unity, and we need to use diligence to keep it. How many things there are in fact that are contrary to it in a world like this! The specification of these unities follows. “One body and one Spirit” are linked together with the “one hope of our calling” in which we have been called. Here we have, as has been often said, the innermost of three circles that we find here. The “one body and one Spirit” give us, one may say, the deepest character of unity, to which the “hope of our calling” of necessity contributes. The energy which carries us forward is the energy which works for edification and blessing now. We have then the circle of profession, not meaning by that at all to imply mere profession, while yet it leaves room for it. Here we have “one Lord,” Christ in the authority which belongs to Him; “one faith,” that is to say, one creed, the common range of truth which belongs to us all; “one baptism,” which is not, as we see at once, the baptism of the Spirit, for that would link with the first circle rather than with the second one.

Moreover, baptism spoken of in this way, simply by itself, always seems to mean what we ordinarily call that: the baptism of the Spirit has to be expressed by this addition. The language here is used, in fact, analogically, the baptism of water being analogous with that which is a deeper thing; but in the apostle’s words here it is simply the baptism of water, which connects, as we have seen, throughout with the kingdom, and therefore with the Lord. It is that in which the Lord is owned. It is that which brings into the sphere of discipleship and thus is linked with the “one, faith,” which is the disciples, creed. All is perfectly fitted together, therefore, here. We have finally one unity which is wider, “one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all and in us all.” If we take what we have been learning of late, we might say that this “one God and Father” introduces us into a circle which includes the angels themselves also, and so we have the “over all” and “through all,” and then in distinction, if this indeed be the reading (which is somewhat in question) “in us all;” it may be however, “in all.” Here we have the wide extent of creation plainly before us. He is God of all this. He is the Father of all His creatures, and though sin has indeed come in and marred, for the time, the blessedness of it, yet grace, as we know, has come in too, and more than given us back all the reality of what we have here. Evil, therefore, is not thought of in this connection. It is the glorious presence of One whom everything serves, who pervades everything, whom, therefore, we can find everywhere, if this be the truth of the third clause. Here again, then, we find the blessed triune God: Father, Son and Spirit, all in connection with us, and ourselves in distinct blessing in relation to each Person. 2. Here, then, are the relationships, but we have now to see Christ Himself working for the maintenance and manifestation of what belongs to these relationships. There is grace given to every one of us, “according to the measure of the gift of Christ;” that is, all is in His hand as Lord of all, to measure out to every one what is appointed to him, what gives him his special place. The apostle refers us back to the sixty-eighth psalm, to show us Christ ascended on high, having “led captivity captive,” that is, having led captive all the power of Satan, “captivity” put for the one who produces it. It is not enough for Him to deliver His redeemed, however. He must enrich them also.

If He has ascended up on high, it is to give gifts to men; but the apostle reminds us here that the One who ascended is seen by this to be One who has descended. We could not rightly speak of ascension with regard to Him, if He had not done so. He was at the highest point of all. If He is now gone up, it is because, in grace, He left the place which was truly His. He has descended, in fact, into the lower parts of the earth. But here then, is a wonderful cause of blessing for us.

The very One who descended is the One who has now gone up. Thus He fills all things. There is not a place between the depth of the cross and the height of the glory which He has not occupied. There is not a place in which we can be in which we cannot find Him for us; and, with the perfect knowledge which he has of all, the perfect knowledge, therefore, of our necessities, He has given gifts. He means to have us up with Himself where He is, and He knows how low He has to reach down after us. It is in this way, then, that He has given “some apostles, and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.” Apostles and prophets come first, as we have already seen, and lay the foundation. Evangelists go out to bring in others and thus enlarge the building. Pastors and teachers care for that which is within, “for the perfecting of the saints.” It is evident that not every gift is named here. It may be that every gift which He gives could scarcely be named; but that we have the special classes after this manner: evangelists, those preceding the pastors and teachers, as their work necessitates; while apostles and. prophets stand, in some sense, apart from one another, in a way that is easily recognized; apostles representing more the authority of God, while the prophets speak of communications from Him. The pastors and teachers again are more closely united than any of the rest, a connection which is very obvious, for the pastor has to do with what in Corinthians is called “the word of wisdom,” as the teacher has to do with the “word of knowledge.” Yet these things tend to unite together; for the “word of wisdom” is but the power to apply to existing things the “word of knowledge,” and love which has the Lord’s people at heart will tend always to develop the “word of knowledge” in this way. It is evident that the pastor has more the people before him, while the teacher occupies himself more with the truth; but the end is still, and in all these cases, “the perfecting of the saints.” That is the first thing, and it is strongly individual.

It is not yet said “for the edifying of the body of Christ,” although we come to that directly, but the “perfecting of the saints,” -the individuals come first. God would not have us lose the individual in the general mass.

He would not have us think of the body, as it were, apart from the members. Thus the individual saint is the first thing that is contemplated here. But then, let us notice, this “perfecting of the saints” is “to the work of the ministry.” We are not to look at these things as if they were simply put side by side with one another, as if the “perfecting of the saints” was the same thing as “the work of the ministry.” That is not the idea. The “perfecting of the saints,” if the saints are members of the body of Christ, would be clearly to put every member in his place, and that place must be a place of ministry, for that is the function of each member of the body clearly. We have it directly after, here; but the very thought of a member of the body gives us a relationship of responsibility to the body at large, a relationship which each member has, in a, way, peculiar to himself From the very fact of what divine grace has fitted him for, he has a duty with regard to the whole to minister in that way to the whole. Thus the saints are not perfected, except as the result is the work of the ministry on their part, and this is parallel to the edifying of the body of Christ.

That is what it involves. The body of Christ is built up by the action of these members, which, while they retain their individuality, (or there would be no peculiar ministry of any, as is clear, and no part edifying the whole), yet work for the common blessing.

The whole is built up by that, as he says directly “which every part supplies.” This is the work which is needed to be done in the meantime, “until,” as he says, “we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Thus he has carried us back to that thought of the “one new man” which he has given us before this -Christ and His body together. It is manifest that the body needs indeed, how much! to grow up, if it is to grow to the “measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” That “fulness of Christ” is here the Church itself, of course; for that, we have learned, is the “fulness of Him that filleth all in all,” but it is the Church as a body fitted to the Head and therefore having arrived at its completion. Till then, the gifts are necessary here, and till then the “perfecting of the saints” must go on. And notice, the “unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,” these two consist almost of the same thing. We are built up from the Head and by that which is imparted to us by the Head. We are built up by that which we find in Christ.

The Head develops the body, however little that may be in accordance with the figure, but Christians grow up in Christ, that is clear; and we see of how much importance the faith is of which he speaks. What knowledge of the Son of God could we have apart from the faith? The truth which God has communicated to us lies at the very foundation of everything, therefore, for our souls; only it must be truth that the Spirit of God ministers to us, and which, therefore, we learn not in the mere common way in which we may learn any other knowledge, but as subject to and taught of Him. The effect will be that we shall be no longer babes; we shall not be “tossed and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” Plenty of all that there is, and will be, and God would use it to exercise His people in the truth, that they may learn the value of that which they have, not that they may be carried away from it; and yet how apt apparently are we to be carried away! How we need to be warned with regard to this! How many systems of deception are there in the world, compared with that one truth which certainly must be somewhere, and which is the only thing that can be truth, for there is but one truth. If the babes are characterized by such instability, alas, how many remain babes, one would think, almost to the last! How common a thing it is to see those whom we thought well grounded in truth which they have enjoyed, delighted in, and yet who are carried off by the very first blast of error! How solemn a reminder it is of the need that we have to make progress in the truth that we have, if we are to hold it fast!

We may learn it as a creed without ever having learned it really. We may rejoice in it in many respects and yet, for all that, without getting it so for our souls that it becomes a vital necessity for us.

To lose it, is as it were to lose life itself; nay, it is to lose what is dearer than life; it is, at least in that measure, to lose Christ Himself. On the contrary, he says here “holding the truth in love,” we are to “grow up to Him in all things who is the Head.” How much, as already said, how much advance, then, have we all to make, how much have we to learn, how eager ought we to be over our lesson-book, how the gaps that are in God’s word now for us ought to fill up! If all of it be just what God would have us acquainted with, if He has not given us too much, if the whole of it is necessary to form in us fully and properly the mind of Christ, what shall we do if we neglect the continually seeking to lay hold more of that which is indeed infinite in its character, but which God would have us in some sense embrace as a whole? If we are to be developed as a whole, developed harmoniously, we must go on to this. It is from Christ, then, that the whole body is to be built up, -every part helping in this, every part ministering to every other part, (how we suffer, therefore, from the dislocation of saints from one another which we find today) and each part needing to be developed according to its measure also. How much we need then to care for one another and to think of one another, even to think rightly concerning ourselves!

If the whole body is to be built up, we need all, clearly, to work for this, and in the measure of every part the body builds itself up. Let us notice that.

Gifts of every kind have their place, but then there are no giftless parts. The body as a whole builds itself up. The gifts exclude no action of any part of the body, but, on the contrary, are meant to induce the fullest activity on the part of every member. All that we have, we have to serve with; all that we have is responsibility as well as privilege. And let us notice that this building up can only be in love. That is the spirit of it all. That is the only possible spirit which will beget true ministry, and love always will. How is it possible, if we love others, to see them in the need in which they are and not seek to minister to that need?

And how little shall we allow any thought of our insufficiency to prevent us realizing the sufficiency of Him who is fitting us all together to accomplish in us the true character of one who ministers, which is only His character who is the Minister to us all! How can we be in any right fellowship with Him without being ministers after the pattern of His gracious ministry?

Ephesians 4:17-5

Division 4. (Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:1-21.)Ways that suit this. The fourth division brings us, as always, to the ways that suit what has been already before us. We find, however, simply what is individual here. The Church as such, the relationship of the members to one another, and what would result from that relationship does not come before us.

1. In the first place, we have the truth “as it is in Jesus” and “the new man created in righteousness and holiness of truth.” The apostle appeals to them, that now, God having separated them from all that they were in nature away from Himself, they must now walk not as other Gentiles walk but according to the truth in Jesus. He draws a strong picture of that old Gentile walk. It was “in the vanity of their minds,” he says, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in them because of the blindness of their heart." How solemn a picture of the darkness of the natural condition, and ignorance which is moral; by which, therefore, everything is distorted. On the other hand, as he will presently say to us, the holiness which belongs to us is holiness of truth. We are delivered from the shadows, brought into the reality of things. So that holiness is never less than treating things, in fact, as they are. Faith is not an enthusiastic view of life or of anything. It is simply the true view gained by God being before the soul, the light having arisen upon it. Christ was now the Object before them. They had heard Him and “been instructed in Him, as the truth is in Jesus.” He does not say, as the truth is in Christ.

The truth “in Jesus” is the practical walk, such as His walk was. He says “Jesus,” therefore, because he is thinking, not of a place that we have in Him or of the results of His work for us, but simply His example, and Jesus is the name belonging to Him as here in the world, but it was die Christ that they had learned. It is as we see Him in the world that we realize what He is. Christ, as such, is an Object of faith, as we may say, while as Jesus He has come into the sphere of practical life, lived before our eyes. We see the truth in Him. “As long as I am in the world,” He says, “I am the Light of the world.” Consequently, everything takes its true shape in connection with Him; but it is thus, in fact, that we know Christ, -Christ is His official title. It is that which speaks of Him as the Doer of the blessed work which He has accomplished for us.

It is thus that we must learn Him first, before we are competent to realize in any measure His life in the world. Having learned the value of His work for us, we must then remember that we are to walk as He walked. We must look back to that walk of His. It is in putting these things together that our practical ways become what God would have them. After the quails, the Manna. The quails, the life given up, must be the first, for us. We must know Him as the Victim and the Saviour, and this is what introduces us to Him as the Manna, the Bread from heaven. It is thus alone we are able to walk in His company, and all that we have learned of His work is to make us more completely His in our ways down here. As a consequence, the truth for us is that we “have put off according to the former conversation, the old man which corrupts itself according to the deceitful lusts.” We have renounced this. It is always said, if we speak of the “old man,” that we have put it off, and of the “new man,” therefore, that we have put it on. The one has come in the place of the other. The two are not existent side by side.

The man that we were, the man away from God, the man walking after the imaginations of his own heart, that is the man that we have renounced. He has come to an end for us at the cross, whose judgment we have seen there. Our own wills and ways are judged. We have been renewed in the spirit of our mind; we have “put on the new man,” the man of the new creation, created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth. It is the man, therefore, who belongs to another scene than any this world can furnish. It is a scene in which Christ is the centre and indeed, in one sense, everything.

The epistle to the Colossians gives us this character of the new man; that is, that he is one for whom there is “neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.” Plainly those are the differences which obtain upon earth, in a fallen world. The new man has lost sight of these.

He is “renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him,” where Christ is all and in all. Here in Ephesians, we have, rather, the effect of this. The character manifested is “righteousness and holiness of truth,” but “holiness” is not here the word which stands for separation from evil. It is that, rather, which speaks of piety towards God, which puts Him in His place, the place which is necessarily His, which He can never be absent from, except as the darkness of mind resulting from the condition of the soul may be unable to see Him. 2. Thus, all falsehood is put off. We “speak truth every one with his neighbor.” Here indeed is a glance at a motive which comes from our relationship to one another in the Church. We are “members one of another.” The eye must not deal falsely with the foot or hand; but for the members to defraud one another is to deal untruly with themselves. If we are angry, we must take care that sin does not come in upon the heels of it. There is an anger which we read of in the Lord’s case. “He looked round about upon them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.” If we nurse even such anger it will be sure to degenerate.

We are, therefore, not to let the sun set upon our wrath, nor to give room, in this way, to the devil. In a world in which sin is, we can have no heart for God if we do not feel it, nay, if we are not aroused by it; but if the personal element is allowed, there will soon be a wrath which is not of God.

Now for him that stole, he is to steal no more, but that negative character is not enough for him. “Rather let him toil, working with his hands that which is honest, that he may have to distribute to him that needeth.” No corrupt word is to be allowed out of the mouth, but again “that which is good” in the way of positive ministry, “that it may give grace to those that hear it.” Then we are not to “grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom we have been sealed to the day of redemption.” Notice how there is brought in here the motive derived from the grace which has come in to deliver and bring us through the peril of the way. The sealing, as we have seen elsewhere, implies our security. We are not threatened with the Holy Spirit leaving us if we grieve Him. He has come to abide, but on that very account, we must not grieve the gracious Visitor. How the word speaks of His personal interest in us, the One who has come to make good Christ’s interest in His own. This bears, of course, upon every other matter here.

Again, “bitterness, heat of passion, wrath, clamor, injurious language” have all to be removed from us, with all malice," and the opposite character is to be maintained: “Kindness, compassion, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ,” as it should read, “hath forgiven us.” It is not “God for Christ’s sake,” which would seem to intimate as if God acted in it simply for Another, whereas “God in Christ” speaks of the way in which He forgives, what He has done, in fact, for us, that He might be able to forgive us, and this brings out His whole heart as well as what righteousness has necessitated. We are thus to be “imitators of God as dear children,” those who express and commend their Father’s character, and we are to walk in love, after the pattern of that love which Christ had to us when He gave Himself up for us “an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor.” It is the burnt offering, of which the apostle is reminding us here, that offering which speaks of the perfect obedience of One who came here to do the will of God, nothing else.

The offering was to God for men, and in the remembrance of this we are to walk in love, which we have learnt in Him. 3. The character and effect of the light into which we are brought is now urged upon us. There are things which are not even to be named by those who would act in character according to their name. Saints are thus set apart to God, and those who are His must be separate from the breath of defilement; nay, there are things which are less gross than these which are still not convenient, not fitting to the character of those who should walk seriously as before God, for life is serious, and as those, also, who realize the goodness of God and walk, therefore, in the spirit of praise which becomes those who recognize this. He warns us distinctly here, that no one characterized by such things as he names has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God. Men might deceive them with vain words, they might prate of Christian liberty and what not, but “on account of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience.” He is speaking, of course, of the world, and not of Christians.

He does not threaten Christians with the wrath of God. It is not the way in which the Spirit of God works upon us.

At the same time, that this wrath does come upon the children of disobedience, necessarily gives intense solemnity to it. Christians, therefore, must not be in any sense partakers with them. There must be the fullest possible separation. Men could do in the darkness what they cannot do in the light, and therefore the sins of Christians have, in fact, a worse character than those even of the men around them. We were once darkness, we are now “light in the Lord.” The title again brings in the thought of His authority over us. We have learned to recognize this and to walk as children of the light, because “the fruit of the light” (so it should read) “is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.” How blessed and cheering the light is!

And such is the path which God has ordained for us and which the light increases to the perfect day. We prove herein by practical ways what is acceptable to the Lord.

We are not to have “fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,” but to reprove them. The very moderation here of his words is striking. He does not say works fruitful in evil. It should be enough to say “unfruitful” for us. “What fruit had ye then,” asks the apostle, “in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” What we want is not merely a correct walk, but what God Himself shall find fruit in. Our character, therefore, as manifested in our ways, is to reprove these unfruitful works beneath which is also a secret depth of evil which it would be a shame even to speak of; but the light makes everything manifest. The Christian, alas, may sleep in the light itself, wherefore he says: “Awake thou that sleepest and arise from among the dead and Christ shall give thee light.” To sleep among the dead, how terrible a thing!

But the Christian abides, as we see here, always in the light. He may forget it, he may be untrue to it, but the light is there, and the light for him is in the face of Christ.

There is no other test for anything but how it looks in His presence. We are to walk carefully, therefore. We are in a world which requires this. We must have the wisdom which is the application of the truth to all the circumstances of the way, and we must redeem the opportunity, the season; for the power of evil is such that unless we are careful, ready to lay hold of every opportunity for God, we shall find ourselves soon unable to make head against the power of Satan which is in the world around today. We are not to be foolish, therefore, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Then comes a beautiful word.

We are not to be “drunk with wine,” not carried away from our sober senses, “in which is excess,” but to “be filled with the Spirit.” Here there is no excess. Yet, when the Spirit came at Pentecost, men said, in their perplexity, “These are filled with new wine;” and indeed the power of the Spirit carries us so outside of the things which are natural to men and in which the heart is, that those whom the Spirit actuates will be counted to have lost their sober senses; but the power of it is manifest in the way in which the truth enjoyed makes music in the heart, -as he says here: “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Notice that he puts it upon us to be thus tilled.

He does not even bid us pray for it. He will not allow us to think, as it were, that our dullness can be anything except the result of the way in which we straiten and limit the Spirit that God has given us. The spring will necessarily spring up and overflow. It would have to be kept down, as it were by force, if it did not do this, and it is the power of other things entering in which hinders thus the blessed Spirit in giving us that which is the proper effect of the blessed truth He ministers. With this, how naturally and necessarily goes the spirit of thankfulness! “Giving thanks at all times,” he says, “for all things to Him who is God and Father, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He could give thanks at all times. He goes out with a hymn to His agony in the garden. For us, how simple, where there is nothing of this sort really awaiting us, no darkness such as He was in, nothing but the blessed light itself, how easy it should be for us to give thanks! “Submitting yourselves one to another,” he says finally, “in the fear of Christ;” an unusual expression, as one might expect the fear of the Lord, or the fear of God, but the “fear of Christ” may have its suited place here, for there is a fear which springs out of the very consciousness of the love which His Name expresses.