Ephesians
PART 8: EPHESIANS 4:1-10
PART 8: EPHESIANS 4:1-10
This morning we are going to begin a new chapter, Chapter 4, which marks a whole new section in the book of Ephesians. The first three chapters that we have already covered to this point are filled with a lot of important theology. Paul has taught us many wonderful truths -- who we are in Christ and all that is ours in Christ. That is why I entitled this series, “Unlocking Our Spiritual Bank Account.” As Christians, we need to know who we are positionally and what we possess spiritually. Chapter 4 sets out to apply all the things that we have learned up to this point through the first three chapters. The application is for each one of us individually. But it is also, I believe, corporately for us as HIS church.
Now, let me ask you a question because I want to get you all involved; to make this lesson practical and relevant in your own life. Our church is in the middle of a church growth campaign entitled “RE/NEW.” What is YOUR vision for our church over the next two years? No need to expound. Just give me short one or two sentence answers. What is your vision for our church over the next two years?
[Class responses included that the church will increase in numbers given the large population moving into our county; to be able to reach all the people that are moving here for Christ; that our youth program will be expanded to effectively reach that generation].
This is actually relevant to our lesson today and you will see why. The Apostle Paul had a vision for the church at Ephesus. He knew these people. He had ministered to them and he actually had a vision for them and he lays it out beginning in Chapter 4 and v 1. So, here we go…
READ Ephesians 4:1
I want to stop right there. So, while certainly Paul does have the believers at Ephesus of the First Century in mind (that is who he is actually thinking about), I believe that he is by extension, through the working of the Holy Spirit, talking to us here at First Baptist Rockwall. Paul is exhorting ALL of us believers, those of us who have been shown God’s grace through the miracle of salvation, which he has talked about. We were dead people made alive. What a miracle! Those of us who have received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (that is past tense – it has already been done) to walk worthy of our calling. Back in Chapter 1, Paul prayed that we would understand the hope of our calling, that we would fully grasp all that is ours positionally in Christ. And then he begins to lay all that out.
Now, we don’t often view our salvation as a calling. We think about people being called to the ministry and things like that. But we do not view salvation so much as a calling, do we? But it IS a calling because we have been called, we have been saved for a purpose. And that purpose is to glorify God by our good works and to carry out the Great Commission.
In Chapter 3, Paul prayed that we would “be strengthened with power through [the Holy Spirit in our] inner being” (Ephesians 3:16). We defined the inner being as being the parts of us that we do not see, that are non-physical, our soul and our spirit. Our soul is our mind, will and emotions. And our spirit is the part of us that connects with God. “That [we would] be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). That is something we cannot do in our own flesh. We must be empowered by the Holy Spirit if we are going to be filled with all the fullness of God.
I want to pause right here because this came up in our discussion last time. What does it mean to be filled with all the fulness of God? It sounds really good. It sounds like something I want, but what does it really mean? To simplify it in terms we can understand, it means to be completely submitted to and controlled by the Holy Spirit. It is a daily act of our will. When you get up in the morning, submit to His will. You know that there are going to be things you have to take care of throughout the day. You probably have a list in your mind. But you know you are going to need God’s help. You know you are going to need His wisdom. Maybe you are struggling with a person at work or somebody in your life and you need to interact with them. “God, give me the words to say.” So, all these things go through your mind. You do this daily. It is a daily act of your will.
I heard it illustrated this way: We Christians are like thimbles that have been filled to the brim – that whole thimble – with water from the ocean. That [little] thimble is full of the ocean water. Now, the ocean is not fully in the thimble because you could take a thousand of those thimbles and dip them in the ocean and you are not going to affect how much ocean is there, are you? You have not even put a dent in it. But the ocean water is in that thimble. The thimble contains the fullness of the ocean in the sense that it contains every ingredient that make up the ocean. They are in that thimble. All the essential characteristics of the ocean are in the thimble. So, when we talk about being filled with God it is not like all of God is in us. But the very essence of who He is inhabits us. And that my friends is an amazing thought.
That is Paul’s prayer for these Ephesian believers, that they will be filled with all the fullness of God. Then Paul says that we are to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called. OK Paul, how do we do this? Well, he tells us in v 2…
READ Ephesians 4:2
That sounds a lot like the fruit of the spirit, Galatians Chapter 5 – “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.” When you are filled with the Holy Spirit you would exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. So, I think that is really what he is getting at here. This fruit is displayed in the life of a Christian who is completely submitted to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Now, this verse also sounds a lot like the Beatitudes from Matthew Chapter 5 – “blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, and so forth.” These are attitudes that Jesus taught us. But then, He demonstrated them in His own life for us.
READ Ephesians 4:3
Up to this point Paul has talked a lot about our unity as believers. Paul says we should be eager to maintain this unity that he has been talking about -- “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Now, as I understand it, you cannot maintain something that you don’t already have. I do not own your vehicle. I cannot maintain your vehicle. I can only maintain my own vehicle. So, the premise of v 3 is that Christian unity DOES exist in the church, at least to some degree. Positionally we, the church (believers in Jesus Christ) are unified because we are one in Christ. So then, it should be our goal, our desire, we should be eager -- to maintain that unity.
OK, Paul, how do we do this? Well, if you have read your Bible then you have read what Jesus told His disciples. There is a real key to all of this. Jesus said that we do this by loving our brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus taught this in John Chapter 13: “A new commandment I give to you [disciples, My followers], that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” And here is why this is so important… “By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). So, that is how we maintain our unity – by loving one another. You see at the end of v 2, “bearing with one another in love.” And then in John Chapter 17, Jesus prayed to the Father that we might “become perfectly ONE, so that the world may know that [the Father] sent [Jesus, the Son] and loved us [the church] even as He [the Father] loved Jesus” (John 17:23). So, our Christian unity, demonstrated by our love for one another, is our witness to the world. That is what Jesus was saying. Our “one-ness,” if you will, gives the world a reason to believe our message. It attracts them to us and attracts them to our message. They are not going to want a gospel of hate, are they? They want a gospel that gives them love, joy, peace, and so forth. That is what they are searching for.
READ Ephesians 4:4-6
[You see] this emphasis on unity again. Notice that Paul focuses on the Trinity here. He has the Holy Spirit in v 4, “one Spirit.” He has the Son in v 5, “one Lord,” the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in v 6, “one God and Father of all.” And then intertwined in all of this, with the Trinity, you have the unity of the church. He describes us as “one body.” And if you read Paul’s writings, he uses this analogy of the body a lot. We have a lot of different parts of our body that make up one body. One part is not more important than another. Believe me, my hip became very important to my body a month a half ago, right? [Note: I had hip replacement surgery] It still is a very important part. But it is not more important than my hand. It is just that I happened to have given it a little more attention [temporarily]. But all the parts are important.
So, you have the one body. And then it says we “were called to one hope.” That one hope, of course, is the hope of eternal life that we have. We have “one faith.” It is our faith in Jesus Christ alone is what leads to our salvation. And we have “one baptism,” our public confession of our faith after we come to Christ, in baptism. We declare to people who are watching that we are baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
At the very heart of church unity is what we have in common. Yes, we have our diverse group. We come from different backgrounds, different states, different countries, different races, and different political parties. We came to Christ the same way. No matter what your background, you come to Christ the same way. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have all received the same commission, which is to carry the gospel message locally, to our area, to our nation, to the world. The church’s primary purpose is to make disciples, to carry out the Great Commission.
[One class member pointed out that when Paul wrote Ephesians, the Roman world was polytheistic, believing in many gods. We too live in a world where people believe in many gods. Paul is making it clear that there is one God, one body and we are all one. This is a theme that ties the book of Ephesians together]
Now, the passage we are about to look at is hard to understand. I am going to take it apart a little bit. We are going to look at v 7 and 8 together. Then we will wrap it up with the parentheses in v 9 and 10.
READ Ephesians 4:7-8
What is all this about? The main point that we need to understand here is that it is Jesus who gives gifts to the church. What gifts are those? As you read on in Ephesians Chapter 4 you find out that these are spiritual gifts, which we will talk about next time. These gifts were given to us to be used, not for our own edification, but to help us in our purpose; to minister to people in the church and to carry the gospel. To build up the body of Christ.
V 8 is a quote from Psalm 68. It is a long psalm about God actively at work in the life of His covenant people Israel. God was with them as they left Egypt and they made their way out into the wilderness. He took them to Mount Sinai. There the Law was given. God revealed that He wanted to dwell with His people. He destroyed their enemies along the way. He cared for them. He led them by the cloud and the pillar of fire. He led His people to the Promised Land. He was the reason they were able to conquer what they did of the Promised Land. He wanted them to conquer it all. The temple was eventually built and God came to dwell in the ark in the Temple. The psalmist is viewing God as a victorious King returning from battle to Jerusalem to the acclaim of the people. That is how God is pictured in this psalm.
In Paul’s day, they could picture this because they knew about the conquering Roman generals. They knew about all the conquests of Rome; how the Roman general would ride in with his army after conquering whoever. All of his soldiers would follow him. Behind them would be the prisoners that had been released from the enemy’s grasp. Then some of the captives and [the spoils of battle] behind them. This is the image Paul has in mind. Paul describes in a spiritual sense what Jesus has done for us, His church. As our King, He has won the victory. We, His subjects, praise and glorify Him for this victory that He has won. It has already been won for us! In turn, King Jesus gives us, His people, His church, gifts (just like a victorious king would give his subjects gifts that had been taken in battle). Psalm 68 presents God as a future conquering King and Paul sees Jesus as that King.
Here we see a picture depicting Christ’s ascension back to heaven [I showed a famous painting of Christ’s ascension in the PowerPoint presentation]. I don’t know if this is exactly what it looked like. That is an artist’s rendition of this. Jesus ascends back to the Father victorious in His mission of redemption. We read about this in the book of Acts. We, the church – we know this from scripture – follow Jesus into heaven. Many who are part of His church have already joined Him in heaven. My parents are there. I believe that. And you all can think of people in your life that you love that are [in heaven]. Many of us will eventually join Him there either by our physical death or by the Rapture.
As we get into v 9 and 10, and Paul does this a lot, he explains what he is trying to say by way of a parenthetical statement. So, looking back at Jesus’s ascension…
READ Ephesians 4:9-10
And that is where we are going to stop today – with these parentheses. So, Jesus could not have ascended, Paul says in v 9, unless He first descended. That makes sense, right? You cannot ascend unless you [first] descend. So then, how did Jesus descend? In what way did Jesus descend? Well, several ways. Paul does not go into a lot of detail, but I will for your benefit.
One way that He descended was that He came from the glory of heaven and became an embryo [in a woman’s womb], then a baby, a little boy and grew up to be a man. He was born physically as a human being. You think about His humble birth and this life that He had. Just think what Jesus gave up to leave the glory of heaven and come down here to us. Have you ever really thought about that? Here He is, [God the Son Himself] living for an eternity in the glory of heaven and He gives that up for a time and becomes human. That is an amazing thought, that Jesus would do that. But that is what He did. So that is one way He “descended.” As Paul says, “He humbled Himself” (Philippians 2:8).
But there is another way [that He descended] – in the humble lifestyle that He lived. He grew up and He walked among us. He experienced the ups and downs of living in a fallen world. There are a lot of joy that comes in life sometimes. But there is a lot of real sadness, depression and sorrow that comes as well; things that we experience on earth that are not experienced in heaven. For 33 years Jesus felt what it was like to be human. It is not always good. In fact, we saw as His life came to an end how horrible that was. He went through all of that because He loved us and He knew what He had to do. He was on a mission, right? He knew He had to do it.
Which leads to the third aspect of His “descension” – His death. He was treated as a common criminal, crucified on a cross, died a terrible, excruciating death, and was buried in a tomb. So, that is one aspect of it. If you read First Peter, he looks at another aspect of this descension. Not only was Jesus placed in the tomb, but Peter says (this is a mystery for us and gets debated in Christian circles what all this means) that He [Jesus] preached to the spirits in prison down in Sheol, the place of the dead (1 Peter 3:19). So, while Jesus was in the tomb, apparently this was going on. He descended down to the place of the dead and did some ministry there. It is a mystery what that was. But that is another way of looking at it. These are all ways that Jesus descended. Then, of course, He came out of the grave, was resurrected and several weeks later ascended back to heaven.
He did all this for us, v 10, “that He might fill all things.” I believe this is a reference back in Chapter 3 where Paul declared, “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). I think that is why that phrase is so important. What Jesus did accomplished this in our lives. If He does not do that, none of this could happen for us. We would not be here. We would not be in this room. This church would not be here.
Because of Jesus’s victory at the cross over sin, death and hell; because of Jesus’s glorious resurrection, His victory over the grave (praise the Lord), He earned the right to give gifts to His own children, to us. And next time we are going to look at what those gifts are.
Now, in closing, I asked you a question at the beginning of this lesson about what your vision is for this church. But I did not share mine, right? I saved it for now. My vision, my prayer for this church and for us in this class is that revival will break out; that we will completely (as individual believers and as a church body) submit ourselves to the prompting of the Holy Spirit! Whatever that looks like. It may be something different than what we thought. That people that are flocking to this part of Texas from all over the world literally, that those people out there would be attracted to First Baptist Rockwall, not because of our wonderful facilities and our amazing music, but because the loving Lord inhabits His people. And people will be attracted to that. That is my vision for our church just so you know. And I am praying for that.