EPHESIANS 4:7-13 - The Gifts of the Victor

Introduction

One of my favorite young reader books is Madeline L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time. It’s the story of 14-year old Meg Murry, who goes on an interstellar adventure with her little brother Charles Wallace and her friend Calvin to rescue her father, who is being held captive by an evil darkness called IT. (Do yourself a favor and read the book, don’t watch the Disney remake with Oprah Winfrey...)

As the story unfolds, the children find themselves on the planet Camazotz, where Meg’s father is being held. As they walk through the town in search of Mr. Murry, they are unnerved by how eerily uniform everything is:

Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. (L’Engle, M. (2010). A wrinkle in time: (Newbery Medal Winner). Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). p. 115)

After a few minutes, they noticed that everything was happening in perfect unison:

As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers. (ibid., p. 115)

There is a reason that Madeline L’Engle used that kind of utter, lockstep uniformity as a symbol for the evil her protagonists faced—there is something deep within us that recoils at that kind of tyrannical sameness and rigid authoritarianism it represents. (In the story, the inhabitants of the town were terrified at the consequences of stepping out of that perfect uniformity in even the slightest degree).

The world around us is fond of applying this kind of evil character to Christianity, isn’t it? It’s a cult, it’s brain-washing, it’s an utterly inflexible institution that will kick you out if you deviate in the slightest degree from the “right” way of behaving or thinking.

And to be fair, there are churches where that kind of thing does happen. But clearly, that is not what Christian unity is supposed to look like—God’s blueprint for living calls His people to live in unity with one another in Christ (as we saw last week), but what makes our unity in Christ with one another different from the ugly unity of brainwashing, cult-like behavior? There is a great deal of unity on display at a North Korean military rally, after all, but that’s not the kind of unity that God calls us to.

Here in Ephesians 4, Paul is describing what real Christian unity looks like—Chapters 1-3 lay out the theological basis for our union with God and with each other through Christ, and here in Chapter 4 Paul is practically applying that theology to the way we live with one another. Last week we saw in verses 1-6 that a walk worthy of Christ is a walk in faithful unity with His people in humility, gentleness, patience and forbearance. Here in our text this morning, Paul shows us how Christ has equipped us for true unity with one another that does not descend into the ugliness of brainwashed cultic behavior—a unity that does not turn sour as it excludes anyone who does not toe the line with exact precision.

Here is the way I aim to present these verses to you this morning—if we want to build our fellowship here at Bethel Baptist according to God’s blueprint for living, we must understand that

Christ’s ASCENSION in VICTORY equips us with GIFTS for godly UNITY

Notice how Paul shifts his focus between verse 6 and verse 7 of Ephesians 4:

Ephesians 4:6–7 LSB

one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

See the shift? From emphasizing how we are all one in Christ, Paul goes on to describe how each individual has been gifted by Christ:

Ephesians 4:7–8 LSB

But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, “When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, And He gave gifts to men.”

So let’s consider first of all this morning

I. The TRIUMPHof the ASCENDED Christ (Ephesians 4:7-10)

If your Bible uses special formatting to indicate Old Testament quotations, you’ll notice that most of Verse 8 is a quotation from Psalm 68:18:

Psalm 68:18 LSB

You have ascended on high, You have led captive Your captives; You have received gifts among men, Even among the rebellious also, that Yah—God—may dwell there.

A couple of things to note here—first of all, Psalm 68 is a song about YHWH’s victory over all of Israel’s enemies; it is a song about God victoriously ascending Mount Zion in order to dwell in Jerusalem in triumph over all of His people’s enemies. It was traditionally connected with the Feast of Weeks (Leviticus 23), which was celebrated by the Jews of Paul’s day in remembrance of Moses receiving the Law from YHWH. But for Christians, the Feast of Weeks is remembered for something else entirely—what is another name for the Feast of Weeks? It is a feast that comes fifty days after Passover—the Greek word for “fiftieth” is… Pentecost!

Can you see the connection that Paul is making here? Just as God’s people under the Old Covenant received from Moses the Law by which they were to live, so God’s New Covenant people received from the ascended Christ the gifts by which we live united in Him. Paul draws out at least three truths about the gifts Christ gave His people when He ascended to Heaven to sit in power and authority at the right hand of His Father. First of all, these gifts He has given were

Won by His VICTORY over His ENEMIES (v. 8; cp. Col. 2:15)

Ephesians 4:8 LSB

Therefore it says, “When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, And He gave gifts to men.”

The image here is of a victorious general returning from battle, bringing his prisoners of war and the spoils of battle home to his people. Paul says in Colossians 2:15 that in His victory parade, Christ made a public spectacle of Satan and all his demonic hordes:

Colossians 2:15 LSB

Having disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them in Him.

And not only did Christ’s ascension to Heaven cast down His enemies, but He also ascended in order to give gifts to men” (v. 8b). It’s interesting to note that Psalm 68:18 (where Paul is quoting from) says that when YHWH ascended he “received gifts among men”; as Paul applies it to Christ he says that He gave gifts to men. The idea seems to be here that the victor has brought gifts to men—Psalm 68 emphasizes how the victor obtained the gifts he was giving to his people, Paul’s rendition emphasizes how the Victor distributed those gifts. This receiving gifts and giving them comes out in Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2:32-33

Acts 2:32–33 LSB

“This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this which you both see and hear.

The gifts that Christ gave His people when He ascended were won by His victory over His enemies, and in Verse 9 Paul goes on to say that these gifts were

Won by His EMBRACE of SUFFERING (v. 9; cp. Heb. 5:8-9)

Paul goes on to exposit Psalm 68:18 by the logical step that, if Christ ascended to Heaven, He must necessarily have had to descend from Heaven first!

Ephesians 4:9 LSB

(Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth?

Commentators differ on what Paul has in mind here—some think this refers to Christ’s descent into the grave, some go so far as to identify this with Peter’s cryptic statement 1 1 Peter 3:18 about Christ descending to “preach to the spirits in prison”; others take a broader view that this refers to Christ’s entire earthly life of humiliation and suffering that He lived in the flesh.

The writer of Hebrews seems to take up this same thought in Hebrews 5:8-9

Hebrews 5:8–9 LSB

Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation,

By His perfect obedience in His suffering, Christ won for us the reward for His obedience—the gifts of His grace that are ours by the Holy Spirit that He promised.

The gifts of the ascended Christ were won by His victory over His enemies, by His embrace of suffering, and Paul says in verse 10 that these gifts were

Won by His RESURRECTION out of the GRAVE (v. 10; cp. Romans 1:4)

Ephesians 4:10 LSB

He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.

The Savior Who is bestowing these gifts on His people is the One Who has not only risen from the grave, but kept rising—until He has ascended above any other authority or power in heaven or on earth. In his introduction to Romans, Paul describes Jesus’ resurrection from the grave as the event whereby His authority over all things was demonstrated:

Romans 1:4 LSB

who was designated as the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,

These gifts were won for you by the One Who rose in victory over death! These gifts were won for you by the One Who did not just ascend from the grave, but continued to ascend far beyond every other authority and power in heaven or on earth, Who now reigns in unassailable power and might!

The gifts that the victorious Christ gives to His people were won by His victory over His enemies, by His embrace of suffering, and by His resurrection from the grave. He is the source of all of these gifts, and He means for us to grow and flourish together as a body by means of these gifts.

But these gifts are not meant to create a mindless, cult-like uniformity—God’s blueprint for His church does not require that His people “check their brains at the door” when they enter the sanctuary, or (worse yet) all sit back and passively allow a handful of members to carry out all of the ministries themselves. Consider with me for a few moments

II. The DIVERSITY of the GIFTS of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-12)

Ephesians 4:11–12 LSB

And He Himself gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ,

Now, there are some heretical teachers today who will claim that this is a description of a so-called “fivefold ministry” that we must seek to put into practice today. That God is calling and appointing special “Apostles and prophets” that are meant to have the same authority and power as the original Apostles in the early days of the New Testament church, and that those “apostles and prophets” must be strictly and unquestioningly obeyed by everyone else.

A fullly-formed rebuttal of that false teaching isn’t our purpose here this morning, but let me lay out briefly why these verses are not describing some new revival of apostolic authority in the church. First of all, consider the context of these verses within Ephesians itself—Paul uses the phrase “apostles and prophets” in two other places—both of which are referring to the foundational teachings of Christ’s apostles in the years immediately following His ascension.

Ephesians 2:20 LSB

having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone,

And Ephesians 3:5

Ephesians 3:5 LSB

which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it was now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit:

Paul links these two gifts of apostle and prophet together throughout Ephesians as having a unique foundational role in the life of the Church. Once their teachings had been recorded and compiled in the documents and letters of the New Testament, the foundation was laid, and there was no more need for further apostolic authority. To say that these offices have been renewed or resurrected for today is to say that the Scriptures are no longer the authority, but the words of these so-called “New Apostles” are authoritative.

The victorious Christ has given His Church the foundational gifts of the Apostles and the prophets (who confirmed the words of the apostles—1 Corinthians 14:37 “If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord’s commandment.”)

Christ gave His people the gift of apostles and prophets who established the foundation of the Church. He also gave His people evangelists, who are gifted to take the Good News declared by the apostles and prophets and deliver it to the world. Pastors (also called elders or overseers) are gifted to feed and defend and nurture God’s people, while teachers have been given the grace of Christ to help His people grow in their understanding of His Word. (In many ways, pastors and teachers have overlapping roles in the church, which is why some commentators combine the two into one “pastor-teacher” gift.)

Notice something about all of these gifts—they all center on the work of the victorious Christ! The Apostles testified to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and authenticated their message with apostolic signs and miracles, the prophets testified to the truth of the apostles’ teachings about Christ, the evangelists then take the message of the Gospel of Christ’s victory over death and forgiveness of sin to the world, and pastors and teachers feed and teach and protect and sacrifice for the sake of Christ’s people.

In verse 12 we have two reasons for the gifts that Christ gave—

Ephesians 4:12 LSB

for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ,

Notice first that Christ gave these gifts

To EQUIP the body to SERVE (v. 12a)

These magnificent gifts of the grace of the victorious Christ have been given to us so that we might be equipped to serve one another and the world. This Book represents the gift of the Victor to us; we have the foundational teachings of the Apostles and prophets preserved for us in the all-sufficient Scriptures that He has preserved and kept for us by His power and authority.

And He has particularly equipped and gifted some of His children to be remarkably effective in opening and applying those Scriptures to our lives—pastors and teachers who serve the Body by teaching us how to read and understand them, and by calling us to a faithful response and application of them.

And He has also equipped and and gifted by His grace some of His children to serve by sharing this Good News with those who have not heard in a remarkably effective way—enabling them by His grace

Acts 26:18 LSB

to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in [Christ].’

The victorious Christ has given these gifts to equip the body to serve, and

To BUILD up the body to THRIVE (v. 12b)

When these gifts of the victorious Christ are put into practice by His people, the result is a body that thrives and grows and is built up. Not as a monolithic, lockstep cult that demands utter submission and machine-like conformity, but as a living body that thrives through the diverse working of all of its members using the strengths and gifts and empowerment they have been given.

But consider here that the focus of these gifts (and, in fact all of the gifts that Christ gives His people) are always outward focused. It is a mistake and a pitiful waste of these gifts to use them in pursuit of your own personal benefit or gain with no regard for the body that they are given for. You see this on the extreme end with the heretics who call themselves “Apostles” who insist that they be obeyed and deferred to (and who manage to be generously compensated for their position as well!).

But you also see it with pastors and teachers and evangelists who use their gifts to make a name for themselves, to seek a platform to be well-known and respected, who are always jetting around the country and around the world for their great evangelism tours or hitting the conference circuit, meaning that their own church has to do without their gifts for twenty weeks out of the year (if, in fact, they even belong to a church!) Beloved, these things ought not to be.

These gifts are meant to be used in the context of a local church. They may have some benefit for the wider Body of Christ, but nowhere in Ephesians or the wider New Testament does the Apostle Paul ever exhort pastors or evangelists or teachers to focus anywhere but their own congregation. But as each one uses their gifts in their own local assembly, the result is that the wider Body of Christ is strengthened and built up and equipped, and the gifts given by the victorious ascended Savior will do their work to bring us all together

Ephesians 4:13 LSB

until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ,

Christ’s ascension in victory equips us with gifts for godly unity in the church. The first thing that follows from this is that neglecting these gifts will inevitably lead to disunity in the church—in fact, neglect of these graces from our risen Savior will eventually lead to the dissolution of a church. Where the gift of the Apostles’ and prophets’ sure foundation of the written, all-sufficient Word is neglected and personal preferences and private opinions about faith are allowed to have their head, a church’s unity will splinter and fray into quarrels and fights over the very definition of a church or a Christian. Godly unity comes when a congregation is united in its delighted obedience to God’s Word.

But how does a church grow in that delighted obedience? It grows through the ministry of pastors and teachers who faithfully seek to equip its members to know the Scriptures, to delight in Christ as He is revealed there, to fight sin and strive for holiness, to grow in understanding of God’s Word. When those gifts are neglected—when members look at pastors and elders and teachers in the church and say, “Well, that’s what they get paid for...”, then the church begins to look like an NFL football game—twenty thousand people in the stands in desperate need of exercise, watching twenty two men on the field in desperate need of rest!

When we take the attitude that there are leaders and followers in a church, we are in danger of neglecting the gifts the ascended Christ has given us for godly unity. Even in the outside world, one of the most poisonous utterances that can come out of someone’s mouth is to say, “That’s not my job...!” How much more within the Body of Christ should we look at the gifts He has given to His people not as an excuse not to minister, but as an opportunity to be equipped to minister!

God has given His church certain believers who are remarkably gifted at evangelism—who can communicate the message of the Gospel with clarity, ease and effective result. I remember one of the most gifted evangelists I ever knew; we were sitting together in the church parsonage in Jersey City one Saturday afternoon when the phone rang. The caller wanted to know something very basic—something like what time the church services were the next day—and for the next twenty minutes I sat there listening as he effortlessly and naturally moved the conversation toward the Gospel, and by the end of the call he was guiding the caller in a prayer of salvation! As he hung up the phone, he caught the amazement on my face and kind of shrugged, as if to say, “Yeah, that’s a typical phone call for me...”

Now here’s the thing—if I had said to myself, “Wow—I guess I’m letting him answer the phone from now on!”, I would have been wasting the gift of Christ to me! Because God’s Word here tells us that the right response is, “Show me how you did that!!”

Because this is why the ascended Christ has given these gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to His Church—to equip them for ministry! The pastor’s job is not to grow a big church; his job is to equip you to grow the church! The Sunday School teacher or Youth Group leader’s job is not to study the Bible for you and let you copy their notes—their job is to teach you how to study. This is where true unity comes from—not mindlessly acting in lockstep with everyone else, but each growing and maturing and being equipped to serve to and with each other to build up the body of Christ.

So unwrap these gifts—take full advantage of the ministry of faithful pastors, teachers and evangelists—our Sunday School hour each week is committed to equipping you with knowledge of God’s Word. It’s a one hour earlier here, and it will not be a waste of your time. Ladies’ Bible study, Men’s Prayer Breakfast, Young Adult Fellowship, Youth Group—these ministries exist to build you up in your faith, to prepare you to share the Gospel, to answer questions and equip you to serve.

Every one of you has with you right now—either physically or electronically—a copy of God’s perfectly preserved record of the teachings of the apostles and prophets. Do you know what a gift you have right there on your phone or on your lap? Possession of this Book is a death sentence in dozens of countries around the world—and there are millions of your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who are gladly risking death or imprisonment for just a chance to have even a glimpse of it. But how many of you have swiped that Book off your screen in the last twenty minutes in order to check Instagram?

Pray that God would open your eyes to see how precious this gift is. I want you to consider that you have far more time for Bible reading than you think you do. The book of Ephesians, for instance, takes twenty-four minutes to read end-to-end—about the length of an average sitcom on TV! the Book of 2 John takes 2 1/2 minutes—about the length of a TikTok video. Treasure all of those moments you have throughout the day to hear the very living Word of God speak to you; you will be utterly amazed at how often something you read in one of those short moments will speak powerfully and profitably to your life, and how your delight in it and desire for it will grow the more you read it!

What does God’s Word reveal to you this morning? If you look at your life and see no growth in unity with believers, if you have no desire to deepen your knowledge of God’s Word and no delight in the gifts He has given His people; if you chafe at the notion that faithful pastors and teachers have a role to build you up in the faith, if the work of evangelism seems pointless to you or if you believe it is inappropriate to bother others with your religious opinions, then let me suggest that these gifts we have been studying today are being presented to you now!

Through the foundation laid by the Apostles and prophets we have an utterly reliable, perfectly preserved and supremely authoritative Word—and that Word declares to you that Jesus Christ descended from the heights of His glory in Heaven to live here on this earth as a Man doing the one thing that you could never do on your own—live a life entirely obedient to God. Where you have failed, He succeeded; where you have sinned and fallen short He perfectly obeyed.

His obedience was so perfect that He even submitted Himself to the most horrifying death ever devised by depraved minds—death on a Cross. He suffered and died in complete innocence so that He might pay the price for your sin against God; the sin that earned you not only a horrifying death but an eternity cast out from His presence in Hell. But the Good News—the News declared by the Apostles and prophets and declared to you by faithful evangelists—is that Jesus Christ did not stay in that grave but ascended from death and up to His throne above all earthly powers, where He sits at the right hand of God with all authority and power. And He calls you today to submit to Him, repenting of your sins and trusting in His sinless life, innocent death and powerful resurrection for your salvation.

He has purchased your pardon; He promises you a New Birth by which your old life will pass away and you will be reborn to love and serve and delight in Him along with His saints in grasping the height and breadth and length and depth of His love throughout this life and for eternity in the next. This Word has come to you now, and now is the acceptable time; now is the Day of salvation—come, and welcome!, to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Hebrews 13:20–21 LSB

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

What are some ways that the world around us mischaracterizes the kind of unity found within a church? How do these verses present a better alternative to that “cult-like” uniformity?

What are the main gifts that Christ gave to His church according to Ephesians 4:11-12? What is the purpose of those gifts (see verse 12).

How does the depiction of gifts won by Christ's victory differ from a perspective that views church leadership as authoritative to be followed without question?

What practical steps can you take to take greater advantage of the gifts Christ has given the church this week?