Gifts of Unity
Notes
Transcript
But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”
(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?
He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
Incline hearts to your testimonies, not to selfish gain.
Open eyes that we may behold wonderful things from your instruction
Unite hearts to fear your name; teach us your way
Satisfy in love this morning, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Introduction
Introduction
Why did Jesus come to earth? What was the purpose of him coming into this world as a virgin’s baby, living a perfect life, dying a substitutionary death, and rising again victoriously over the grave, and then ascending to heaven? Many of us would say that he came to save us from our sins and make us right with God and that is absolutely true. It’s not the whole story though.
The full reason for Christ’s descent to the earth is found in the first chapter of Ephesians. There we have Paul stating that yes, by Christ’s coming to earth, we are adopted, forgiven, and loved. But we are not the sole focus of God’s plan. He tells us in Ephesians 1:9-10, the mystery of his will.
making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ
as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
God’s purpose in sending his son to Earth was to unite all things in him—things in heaven and on earth. Now that word for “unite” is not the same word that Paul used in chapter four. In chapter four, Paul used a word that essentially means to be in a state of oneness. In chapter one, he used a word that means to sum up.
Let’s do a little math here to help us fully grasp what Paul was writing. Imagine Jesus was going to visit Mary and Martha and wanted to take a gift, and along the road he came across a fruit stand. He selected five apples, three figs, and two bunches of grapes and put them into a basket. What is that called when we add different parts together? It’s called a sum. So we could say ten pieces of fruit, or —better yet—we could say, we have one fruit basket.
That is why God sent Jesus. He is summing up all things—uniting all things in heaven and one earth—and putting them under the authority of Christ Jesus.
That is important for us to keep in mind as we continue on in Ephesians 4, because, as we shall see, Jesus gives gifts to each of us who make up his body. Those gifts are meant to maintain the oneness of the body. And so as we study this text, my hope is that by the end of this sermon, we will understand what Jesus wants from we who make up his body. To do that, I want us to take hold of three areas that Paul focuses on in his letter to the Ephesians. The first area that needs our attention has to do with the distribution of gifts. The second is the direction of gifts. Lastly, there is the duration of gifts.
The Distribution of Gifts
The Direction of Gifts
The Duration of Gifts
The Distribution of Gifts
The Distribution of Gifts
The first area that Paul focused on in this section of the text is that of the distribution of gifts. For the last few verses Paul was emphasizing the importance of unity. Now, starting in verse 7, he began to incorporate diversity into the letter. He won’t ignore unity; he simply added in diversity talk. He went from speaking about the body as a whole to speaking about grace to each person. Take a look at the first couple of verses in this section.
But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”
As Paul wrote about grace in verse 7, we need to understand that he is no longer referring to saving grace; instead, he is using it as a synonym for gift. And that grace—that gift—is in accordance with the measure that Christ has chosen.
Think about your favorite preacher. Maybe it’s John Piper or Charles Stanley or Alistair Begg or Matt Chandler or maybe it’s someone else. These men have become famous because they are rather gifted expositors of God’s Word. Each one is different in how he communicates, but each is or was gifted by God’s grace. Not every pastor or preacher that stands behind a pulpit is going to be a Piper or a Chandler and that’s okay. Christ did not gift every pastor with the same abilities.
Recently I had my wisdom teeth out and the surgeon who did it was more than capable of doing it. I was in and out in just a few minutes and with four less teeth than when I went in. Yet his personality was like that of Dr. House if you’ve ever seen the show. He wasn’t quite so rude, but he was a no-non-sense and had little time for bed-side manner. Of course, the question is, when I need to have my teeth extracted, and I had to make a choice, do I want a nice doctor or a doctor who knows what he’s doing? I want a doctor who knows what he is doing. The same can be said about a pastor on a lower scale. God has gifted pastors in all different ways. Some are great theologians, some are great communicators, some are great shepherds who spend lots of time with the sheep, and so on. Rarely are pastors great at all of those. Why? Because they have been given grace according to the measure (the amount) of Christ’s gift for them.
And to prove this thought, Paul brought in a passage of Scripture from Psalm 68. If you were to look at the verse in that Psalm though, you’d find that Paul changed up the wording a little bit. The verse itself says that he received gifts from men, not that he gave gifts to men. That’s not just a tweak in wordage; Paul wrote the exact opposite.
Let me explain with a passage in 1 Samuel 30. In this passage David and his men come back to find that their town had been ransacked and David’s wives had been taken prisoner. This was after a long journey home, and some of the men were absolutely exhausted. Two hundred of them asked permission to stay behind and he granted it to them so long as they watch the baggage. Off the other six hundred went to rescue the women and get their stuff. They ended up fighting the Amalekites and winning the battle, getting all their stuff, and the wives too. On top of that, they took the spoils from the Amalekites. Now notice how the writer put it:
David also captured all the flocks and herds, and the people drove the livestock before him, and said, “This is David’s spoil.”
In this case, David did not fight this battle alone. Six hundred men fought the battle and surely six hundred men actually gathered the spoils and gave them to David, their captain. And wouldn’t you know it, he didn’t keep it for himself. The six-hundred men who went with him did not think it right to give the two-hundred men who stayed behind part of the loot, but David would hear nothing of it.
But David said, “You shall not do so, my brothers, with what the Lord has given us. He has preserved us and given into our hand the band that came against us.
Who would listen to you in this matter? For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike.”
You see, David received the gifts—the bounty—from his conquest, but he did not receive it just to keep it for himself. He received it in order to give it and he chose to distribute the gifts evenly.
In Psalm 68, God is the Victor. He was the one receiving the gifts from men, but God is in no need of anything. He received the gifts to distribute the gifts. So Paul made the connection to Christ. It is Christ who is the Victor over the demonic forces and Christ gave the gifts according to his grace. He is the one who decides how much gifting a person has in an area. We may wish we were as good at hosting as someone else in our church, but Christ did not choose to make it so. We may wish we could organize as so and so, but Christ distributed us with different amounts of administrative giftings. That’s okay.
What Paul made abundantly clear in these verses, though, is that Christ has given each one of us grace according to the measure of his gift. As you’ve probably heard before, it is unity, not uniformity. That’s true. We are not all doing the same thing the same way, but we are all doing what we do for the same reason and the same person.
The Direction of Gifts
The Direction of Gifts
Not only does Christ distribute gifts as he sees fit; he also directs them toward a purpose.
(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?
He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)
In the original Psalm that Paul was quoting, God is said to be on Mt. Sinai. The text never actually says that he came down to Mt. Sinai; it only says that he ascended on high. But clearly, if God is the subject who is ascending from Mt. Sinai, the implication is that he had already descended in the first place. Paul made that same inference with Jesus. Jesus was on high—a euphemism for heaven—and descended to the lower regions. The question among scholars is what did Paul mean by lower regions? Was he making reference to earth in general—having come down from heaven—as many modern translations seem to indicate or did he mean death—being buried in a tomb and entering hades—as many in the early church and most of Christian history understood it?
If Paul was referencing back to the first chapter, as it seems he was doing, then I think that he was referring to the tomb and entering hades. Had Paul not put in that last clause—”that he might fill all things”—I probably would not have thought he was intending earth in general. But because it is there, it seems evident that he was re-emphasizing all that he said in 1:20-23. In those verses, if you look back, you’ll see that Paul mentioned Christ’s death and that he was resurrected and was placed at the right had of God in the heavenly places far above the demonic powers—those whom David describes as having been taken captive. He never mentioned earth in general, but only the death of Christ and moved quickly on to his ascension, focusing on what happens through his body as he sits on high: he fills all in all.
So again, look again at the stated purpose of Christ’s ascension. It’s right there in verse 10: “that he might fill all things.” That’s the stated direction that our gifts move toward. It’s no different than what Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:23 “which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” We are the fullness of Christ in this world. Because of the brokenness of the world, they cannot see Jesus. They see us. We are his fulness. The body acts on behalf of the head. To what end? That he would fill all in all—in other words, that his glory would fill the world so that they could see that he is uniting all things under his feet. So when you hear me say the words “fill all in all” or “fill all things” or you read them in Paul’s writing think Christ’s glory over his worldwide kingdom.
How do we do this? That’s what Paul was getting to. Remember we first must understand who we are before what we do. Identity first, activity second. So in chapter 1, Paul sets us up to understand that we are Christ’s body—his fullness here on earth. Now in chapter four, he tells us that as his body, our aim—the direction that we point—is to make sure that he fills all things. How do we help Christ to fill all things? By using the gifts we have been given.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
My goal today is not to talk about these various types of offices that Paul mentioned. I will let Pastor Drew do that next week. My goal is to show you what these giftings were meant to do and even in this goal, I am staying on the surface intentionally. They were meant to give the members of the church the tools they need to do the work for which they’ve been called—specifically speaking, the building up of the body of Christ—in essence making Christ fill all things. That’s the point of every spiritual gift, not just these four mentioned. You can go to any place that Paul mentions gifts and you’ll find a similar purpose.
Church family, the Bible mentions eighteen spiritual gifts, but in all the listings, none are identical or exhaustive. This tells us that these were only examples of the spiritual giftings; they’re not check lists. What I find is that many Christians are more concerned about what the gifts are than what the gifts are for. We like some gifts and some we don’t. We argue on whether certain gifts still exist or not. We want to know for sure what ours are and how strong we are in them. I’ve been there. I’ve taken a number of spiritual gift inventories and I’ve given a number of them out to congregation members. I get it: how can we work in our spiritual gift if we don’t know what that gift is? The same way the church did it for nearly 1900 years before those inventories became popular. Just serve your church and they will become evident. Even if we don't know what our gift is, others will see it in us and will gravitate toward us when they need it. If our gift is hospitality, we'll find people coming when they need to feel like they belong. If our gift is wisdom, we'll find familiar faces, as well as strangers sometimes, coming more and more to ask advice. If our gift is encouragement, we will find that we are surrounded by those who are hurting. We need only serve with the desire to build up the body and the Spirit will take care of the rest.
The Duration of Gifts
The Duration of Gifts
Christ has distributed gifts to us and has given us a direction in which to aim our gifts. But he has also given a timeframe in which our gifts will be used—a duration.
until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
Attain is not a word that we use everyday, so let’s use the word “arrive” instead. The gifts last until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. Paul’s point is that we use our gifts until we as Christ’s body is fully-matured—a mature manhood, but that is only measured by Christ’s fullness, not some earthly standard.
When Paul mentioned the unity of the faith, he’s referring back to verse 5, when he mentioned that there is “one faith.” The faith is not simply that we all believe in Jesus, but what we believe about Jesus. Hence, he wrote, “the knowledge of the Son of God.”
So when will that be? Haven’t we already come to a consensus about Jesus?
By the second century, the church was already developing the Apostle’s Creed. To be a Christian meant that, at minimum, you believed what the Apostle’s Creed said.
Then of course the Bible was officially recognized as canon in 397 AD. Before then, most local churches had understood the same books we have today to be part of the canon. It was at Carthage that the churches united in their recognition. They didn’t write the Bible; they didn’t even develop it. They recognized it’s authority and canonicity by the uniting movement of the Spirit. To know who the Son of God is, one must have a completed canon and we’ve had that for over 1600 years! So when do the gifts end?
Ultimately, when Christ returns. You see, until then we are constantly building up and building out the body of Christ. Think about a child growing from infanthood to adulthood. They are getting taller, wider, stronger, and wiser. So it is with the church. As we fill all in all on behalf of Christ, more and more people are joining. But that means that there is more brokenness being healed, slowly over time. People are coming to know Jesus from nations all over the world. Some are coming out of paganism. Others out of atheism. Still others are coming out of some other religious background. All are bringing their baggage. I know that none of us brought any baggage when we became Christians, but everyone else does. Of course we have our baggage! And our brokenness! All the brokenness and all the baggage from new believers and older ones as well, means that we are constantly having to strive to maintain the unity of the faith which means then that we must constantly direct our gifts toward that unity.
The gifts last until Christ returns. They last until we see him face to face, when we know him fully even as we are fully known. Until the the gifts are no longer necessary to build and maintain the unity of the Church.
So, as long as the body of Christ is still growing, the gifts of Christ will keep flowing.
Beloved, may I ask how you are using your gifts? Are you using them to help make the church stronger? wiser? healthier? That’s why Jesus gave them in the first place.
Yes, the duration seems never ending. And it may not end in our lifetimes. But blessing the local church with your gift has ripple effects throughout the universal church as well. How you bless other believers who are not part of this church, has far-reaching impacts for the kingdom in ways you’ll never know this side of heaven. Each time we use our gifts to move us forward to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, we are making known the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places and every name that is named here on earth.
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we close out the text this morning, know that there is so much more in these verse that I didn’t get to this morning. In fact, Pastor Drew is going to pick up at verse 11 next week and go over some of those points I wasn’t able to get to. But we have seen three areas that Paul focused on when it comes to the gifts that Jesus gives. There is the distribution that is according to grace. There is the direction of his filling that we are to aim. There is the duration that lasts until the church arrives at maturity.
And it all culminates in bringing wholeness—unity—back to creation. Our gifts are used unto that end. They are not gifts that we are to use for our own advancement. They aren’t gifts that are to be hidden in some false humility. These are gifts that are to be used for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom—the building of of Christ’s church—the growing in strength, wisdom, and maturity of the one new man with Christ as our head.
No two people will exactly match in their giftings. Christ gives to each according to his grace. Don’t try to be someone else. Certainly, you can learn from someone who has the same type of gift, but you’ll never be them and you ought not want to be. You know that baggage that everyone else has, but you and I don’t. Well, Jesus likes to use our baggage as we use our gifts. He uses our personalities, our experiences, and our pains and joins them with his gift of grace and makes us unique in the body to bless in ways others can’t. Hence, there is diversity in the unity. Each one is given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift for the building of the one new man into maturity.
Beloved, don’t underestimate your place in the body. Christ has given you a gift. Use it. Not just for your own joy, though I’m sure you’ll feel joyful when you’re serving, but for the strengthening of your brothers and sisters, the unity of the Church, and the glory of Christ who is filling all in all. The world needs to see Him. And they will—when they see you graciously serving as you have been gifted.
Prayer
Heavenly Father,
Open our eyes to see your glory that comes from using our gifts for your kingdom. Give us the heart and mind of a servant that we may serve one another in love even if we don’t have a label for the gift we are using. May we strive to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and may the people of St. Charles see the gifts of unity used at Highland View Baptist Church and glorify you all the more.
