(11-12) The offices of spiritual leadership in the church and their purpose.
And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,
a. He Himself: This means that Jesus established these offices. They are the work and appointment of Jesus, not men. Though pretenders may lay claim to them, the offices themselves are a Divine institution and not a human invention.
b. Gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers: Paul described four offices (not five, as in the commonly yet erroneously termed “five-fold ministry”).
i. Apostles, who are special ambassadors of God’s work, though not in the same authoritative sense of the first century apostles. Those first century apostles were used to provide a foundation (preserved as the New Testament) as described in Ephesians 2:20.
ii. Prophets, who speak forth words from God in complete consistency with the foundation of the Old and New Testaments. Sometimes they speak in a predictive sense, but not necessarily so, and they are always subject to the discernment and judgment of the church leadership (1 Corinthians 14:29). As with the apostles, modern prophets do not speak in the same authority as the first century prophets who brought God’s foundational word (Ephesians 2:20).
iii. Evangelists, who are specifically gifted to preach the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.
iv. Pastors and teachers (or, pastor-teachers; the ancient Greek clearly describes one office with two descriptive titles), who shepherds the flock of God primarily (though not exclusively) through teaching the Word of God. “Teaching is an essential part of the pastoral ministry; it is appropriate, therefore, that the two terms, pastors and teachers, should be joined together to denote one order of ministry.” (Bruce)
v. These gifts are given at the discretion of Jesus, working through the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:11). The importance of having “all four in operation” in any church body is up to Jesus who appoints the offices. The job of responsible church leadership is to not hinder or prevent such ministry, but never to “promote it into existence.”
c. For the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry: The purpose of these gifts of leadership is also clear. It is that saints (God’s people) might be equipped for the work of ministry (service), so that the body of Christ would be built up (expanded and strengthened).
i. Equipping also has the idea of “to put right.” This ancient Greek word was used to describe setting broken bones or mending nets. These ministries work together to produce strong, mended, fit Christians.
ii. God’s people do the real work of ministry. Leaders in the church have the first responsibility to equip people to serve and to direct their service as God leads.
iii. “The primary purpose of the Church isn’t to convert sinners to Christianity, but to perfect (complete and mature) the saints for the ministry and edification of the Body.” (Smith)
3. (13-16) The desired goal of God’s work through church leadership and equipped saints.
Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head; Christ; from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
a. Till we all come to the unity of the faith: This is the first goal of God’s work through the gifted offices and equipped saints. This is consistent with both the ultimate purpose of God (Ephesians 1:10) and the mystery of God revealed through Paul (Ephesians 3:6).
i. Again, by clearly stating that this is a unity of the faith, Paul did not command a structural or organizational unity, but a spiritual unity around a common faith.
b. And of the knowledge of the Son of God: When the gifted offices work right and the saints are properly equipped, Christian maturity increases and there is greater intimacy in the experience of God.
c. To a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: The gifted offices and equipped saints bring the saints to maturity, according to the measure of Jesus Himself. As years pass by, we should not only grow old in Jesus, but more mature in Him as well, as both individuals and as a corporate body.
d. We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine: The gifted offices and equipped saints result in stability, being firmly planted on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Ephesians 2:20).
i. Those who do not mature in this way are targets of deceivers, who are effective precisely because they operate with trickery and cunning craftiness – and they lie in wait to deceive. They are out there like landmines that the mature can avoid.
ii. The ancient Greek word for tossed to and fro is from the same words used to describe the stormy Sea of Galilee in Luke 8:24 (raging of the water). We can wrongly value movement over growth; mere movement is being tossed to and fro, but God wants us to grow up in all things.
iii. By the trickery of men: “The words… refer to the arts used by gamesters, who employ false dice that will always throw up one kind of number, which is that by which those who play with them cannot win.” (Clarke) Running after spiritual fads always leaves one a loser.
e. Speaking the truth in love: This speaks to not only how we are to relate to one another in God’s family, but also to how leaders and saints are to deal with deceivers. We should deal with them in love, but never budging from the truth.
f. May grow up in all things into Him who is the head: Another way maturity is described is as the growing up into Jesus, who is the head. Again, this defines the direction of maturity. We never grow “independent” of Jesus, we grow up into Him.
i. “A church that is only united in itself, but not united to Christ, is no living church at all. You may attain to the unity of the frost-bound earth in which men and women are frozen together with the cold proprieties of aristocracy, but it is not the unity of life.” (Spurgeon)
ii. Adam Clarke on grow up… into Him: “This is a continuance of a metaphor taken from the members of a human body receiving nourishment equally and growing up, each in its due proportion to other parts, and to the body in general.”
g. According to the effective working by which every part does its share: The evidence of maturity – that the leaders and the saints are all doing their job – is this effective working. This means every part and joint provides what it can supply in a coordinated effort. When this happens, it naturally causes the growth of the body (both in size and strength), but especially growth for building itself up in love.
i. Some people think of the church as a pyramid, with the pastor at the top. Others think of the church as a bus driven by the pastor, who takes his passive passengers where they should go. God wants us to see the church as a body, where every part does its share.
C. Putting off the old man, putting on the new man.
1. (17-19) The character of the old man.
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
a. Therefore: This makes the connection, not only with the glorious spiritual privileges laid out in Ephesians 1 through 3, but also with the high call of a unified, mature body as described in Ephesians 4:1-6. Because of this high calling, we should walk (live) in a different way than the world around us does.
i. There is a constant tendency for Christians to display to the world that we really aren’t so different after all. This is usually a misguided effort to gain the world’s “respect” or approval. This must be resisted at all costs, because the goal in itself is both undesirable and unachievable.
ii. This principle of compromise can be illustrated by the exchange between a liberal scholar theologian and a Christian professor. The liberal agreed, “I’ll call you a scholar if you’ll call me a Christian.” The trade isn’t worth it.
b. No longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk: The Gentile walk is characterized by the futility of their mind. In the end, their thinking is futile because their understanding is darkened – because they are alienated from the life of God.
i. This is not to say that man, in his rebellion against God, is not capable of mighty intellectual achievements. Instead it is to say that all such achievements fall short of true wisdom, because the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10).
ii. Futility: “The thought is not that unregenerate minds are empty. It is that they are filled with things that lead to nothing.” (Vaughan)
iii. As Christians, we have a proper way and place to walk. It is as if Jesus turned us around and put us in the right direction, and now we have to walk and progress in that direction.
c. Because of the blindness of their heart: Fundamentally, the ignorance and lack of understanding of man is a heart problem. It is shown not only in a foolish denial of God, but also in his moral failures (licentiousness, uncleanness, greediness).
i. The Gentiles Paul speaks of were either atheists or they believed in gods who were themselves immoral. Therefore in their denial of the true God, they denied any standard of morality that they must answer to.
ii. Past feeling has the idea of one’s skin becoming callous and no longer sensitive to pain. It is the logical result of the blindness of their heart. Blindness can also be understood here as hardening, and this ancient Greek word “is used medically to denote the callus formed when a bone has been fractured and reset. Such a callus is even harder than the bone itself.” (Wood)
iii. Licentiousness is sin that flaunts itself, throwing off all restraint and having no sense of shame or fear; uncleanness is a broad word, mostly with reference to sexual impropriety.
iv. Barclay elaborates on the Greek word aselgeia, translated licentiousness: “The great characteristic of aselgeia is this – the bad man usually tries to hide his sin; but the man who has aselgeia in his soul does not care how much he shocks public opinion so long as he can gratify his desires.” (Barclay)