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TOPIC: Ironside, Harry A. - In the Heavenlies (Ephesians) (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 04 - Chapter 4
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The Walk Worthy of Our Calling (Eph_4:1-6)
In chapters one to three we have been studying the doctrinal section of this letter to the Ephesians. We now take up the practical part, that which has to do with our lives as those who have been made members of Christ’s body through grace. Notice how tenderly the apostle wrote: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.”
Wherever grace rules in the soul, “I command” is changed to “I beseech.” You do not find the apostle lording his position over the faith of the people of God, but graciously, tenderly pleading with them, rather than sternly ordering their behavior. He spoke of himself in a way that certainly must have touched the heart of everyone who read this letter in its original setting. The Ephesians had come to know the Savior’s love through Paul, and the link between a preacher and those who have been brought to Christ as a result of his ministry is a very real one. Hearts are very closely bound together when they stand in that relationship. What must they have felt when they realized that the man of God to whom they owed so much was lying in a Roman prison, and he was there not because of any ill-doing on his part, but because of his faithful proclamation of the gospel mat meant so much to them? He was a prisoner of the Lord, and from his prison cell he wrote this letter, beseeching them to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they were called.
Our vocation is, of course, our calling. Paul referred to that which he had written before-the blessedness of the new life. In view of the fact that I have been redeemed to God by the precious blood of Christ; in view of the fact that I am a member now of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones; in view of the fact that I am a living stone built into that temple of God by the Holy Spirit, that temple in which He dwells, my behavior is to be ordered by God. I am to walk worthy of the calling I have received. Elsewhere we are told to walk worthy of God and of the Lord (see Col_1:10 and 1Th_2:12).
“With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.” I spent quite a little time over this verse. Every expression in it was a challenge to me, and I kept asking myself the question, “To what extent have I risen to the standard that is set here? I must present this to others as the divine standard for a Christian’s behavior. To what extent am I measuring up to it?” And the more I carefully examined every expression both in the English and in the original Greek, the more humiliated and ashamed before God I was as I realized how far short I have come from living out what we have here. Every word is important.
“With all lowliness.” That word is found only once elsewhere in the New Testament and that is in Php_2:3 : “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.” The original word means “modesty,” that is, an utter lack of self-assertiveness. Pride is so characteristic of us as fallen creatures. We who have nothing to be proud of are sometimes proud of our very crudity and ignorance.
A young minister arose in a conference and said, “I am against education. I don’t believe in education. I read no books except the Bible; I don’t profess to know nothing about literature or anything of that kind; I am just an ignorant man. But the Lord has taken me up, and is using me, and I am not at all interested in schools, or colleges or education. I am proud to be just what I am.” An old preacher arose and said, “Do I understand that our dear young brother is proud of his ignorance? If so, all I have to say is that he has a great deal to be proud of.” Most of us are that way; we are proud of the very thing of which we ought to be ashamed. We boast of our accomplishments and ability, even as children. One of the first things parents must learn in training their children is to curb that natural tendency to boastfulness. But as Christians, how completely we should be delivered from this. We have nothing that we have not received. Every blessing we have we owe to divine grace. With what modesty, then, should we behave ourselves!
The word meekness is found a number of times in the New Testament and it is used of our Lord Himself. The apostle said, “We beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2Co_10:1), and Christ said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (Mat_11:29). The root of the original word really means “humility,” a spirit that never takes personal offense. Somebody says something unkind about me. I flare up in a moment. Why? Because I am not meek. In Mark chapter 15 we read that “the chief priests accused [Jesus] of many things: but he answered nothing.” “When he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not” (1Pe_2:23). That is meekness.
The next word Paul used is longsuffering. This is a favorite word of the apostle, and we also find it used three times by the apostle Peter. It means literally, “to endure with unruffled temper.” Do you know very much about longsuffering? “Well,” you say, “I would not mind if what was said about me had been true, but when I know it isn’t true, I can’t stand it.” Therefore, the need of longsuffering. It is the flesh that talks like that, not the new nature but the old. Many years ago I had a friend whose name was George. Sometimes he would fly off and lose his temper. But he was always brought back to earth when someone looked at him quietly and said, “Is that old George or new George talking?” In a moment the tears would come. Even now, though he has been gone thirty years, I can hear him say, “That’s old George; new George would never behave that way. I must punish that old George. He has no right to behave like that.” Yes, the old nature is quick to take offense, quick to flare up if not properly appreciated, but the new nature just bows in meekness and lets the waves and billows pass over and is undisturbed by them.
The last word to consider in this verse is forbearing: “Forbearing one another in love.” This word occurs in only one other book of the New Testament and that is in Col_3:13 : “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” Literally, forbearance means “to put up with.”
Now taking all that into account I thought I would try to translate Eph_4:2 myself: “With all modesty and humbleness of spirit, with unruffled temper, lovingly putting up with all that is disagreeable in other people.” That is a literal rendering of the original. That describes the Spirit of Christ. As we meditate on it and think of all that is involved in it, how can we do other than hang our heads in shame and confess that in many things we offend. May we be so yielded to the control of the Holy Spirit of God that this Christlike character may indeed become real in our lives.
The apostle continued, “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph_4:3). Others have translated it, “Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Observe, he does not say, “Giving diligence to keep the unity of the body” We do not have anything to do with preserving the unity of the body. God is looking after that. He binds believers together in Christ, gives His Holy Spirit to dwell within, and links them one to another, and to their glorious Head in Heaven. The body of Christ is always complete as God looks at it.
People talk about heartless divisions that tear apart the body of Christ, but these divisions do not tear apart the body of Christ. The body of Christ is not composed of all the different sects and denominations. If you were to gather all the different Catholic sects together, all the different eastern orthodox sects together and all the Protestant sects together and unite them all in one big church, that would not be the body of Christ. That would contain a great many people who are in the body of Christ but it would also include a great many who are not. On the other hand, after you had gathered all these denominations together, there would still be a great many outside that would be members of the body of Christ. The church, which is His body, and the church, which some call the visible body of Christ, are not the same thing. The body of Christ consists only of those who are regenerated and born again by the Holy Spirit and joined to Christ in glory by the Spirit’s baptism. All the divisions in Christendom cannot split that body. But what have these various denominations done? They certainly have denied the unity of the Spirit. The apostle would have us recognize this unity that God Himself established, and so he said, “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
The Spirit unites us to the body that He has formed, and now He says, “I want you to recognize it.” When you meet with fellow believers, do you endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit, do you realize that you belong to them and they belong to you? “But,” you say, “they do not see things the way I do.” If they belong to Christ, they belong to you and you to them. We are to accept them in the uniting bond of peace.
Some years ago I was taken ill in the midst of a series of meetings at Minneapolis. After my fourth address I went out one Sunday noon to take dinner, and right after the meal I collapsed. When I regained consciousness I had a fever of one hundred and two degrees and was ill with typhoid. I was down for six weeks. As soon as I had strength enough to start home my friends helped me get to the train station. The porter on the train was very courteous. He made up a berth and put both mattresses on, and let me recline there all day long.
The first morning as I lay there with a lot of pillows behind me, I took out my Bible. (Of course you never start the day without at least a little portion from the Word of God; do you? You do? Well that is why you have so many bad days.) I was reading from the Word of God when a German lady came walking by, and she stopped and asked with a pronounced German accent, “What’s that? A Bible?” I said, “Yes.” “Well, you have your morning worship all by yourself? Wait,” she said, “I go get my Bible and we have it together.” She came back and settled herself on my couch and said, “Where are you reading?” A little later a tall gentleman came by, and stopped and in a Scandinavian accent asked, “Reading the Bible? Well, I think I’ll go get mine, too.” He came back with his Bible, and in a few minutes I was amazed at the people who crowded around.
They did the same thing every day, and we had a delightful time all the way to California. I would get my Bible, and then they would begin to come, and sometimes there would be as many as twenty-eight people with their Bibles. The conductor would go all through the cars and say, “The camp meeting is beginning in car number so-and-so. Any wanting to take advantage are invited.” Sometimes they would start a hymn; sometimes we would have a little prayer; and sometimes it would be only the Bible reading, and they would ask questions.
That fellowship continued until we reached Sacramento, where some of the cars were separated to go down the valley. So the people from the other cars came in to say goodbye, and this dear German sister came and said, “Oh, it has been just like a camp meeting all the way. It has fed my soul. I am going to Turlock, but I want to ask you, What denomination are you?” “Well,” I said, “I belong to the same denomination that David did.” “What was that? I didn’t know that David belonged to any,” she asked. “David said, ‘I am a companion of all them that fear Thee and keep Thy precepts,’” I answered. “Yah, yah,” she said; “that is a good church to belong to.”
I suppose if we had questioned those people, we would have found that we belonged to a dozen different sects. But we found we were all one in Christ. Oh, that we might endeavor “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” not in contentiousness, not in quarreling, but all alike seeking to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior.
In verses Eph_4:4-6 of Ephesians chapter 4 the apostle brings before us a sevenfold unity. Notice, “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” Seven different unities all linked up in one. These verses comprise one great confession, and yet it is easy to see that there are three distinct spheres indicated, becoming larger and larger. Verse 4 speaks of that unity which is absolutely vital, “There is one body.” That is the body of Christ, and as we have seen, that body is composed only of people who have been washed from their sins in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. They have been regenerated by the Word and by the Spirit, and thus made members of Christ. Then in the second place, “There is one Spirit,” and this is the one Holy Spirit by whose operation we have been baptized into the body of Christ. We read in 1Co_12:13, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” Third, we are given one hope-“Even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.” All believers have the same blessed hope, the hope of some day, some day soon, beholding the face of our Lord Jesus Christ and being transformed into His image. All real believers are included in this first sphere-one body, one Spirit, one hope of your calling.
But now the second sphere is a little bit wider. It does not necessarily include only those who are born again. It may include those who have made a profession that is not real. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” You see, there are those who say, “Lord, Lord,” who have never been born again. Jesus says that in the day of judgment many will come to Him and say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Mat_7:22-23). Take, for instance, that part of the world which we call “Christendom.” What do people write at the head of their letters? They write 1936 (this sermon was delivered in 1936). And what does that mean? It means, in the year of our lord 1936.1 suppose every racketeer and gangster in Chicago dates his letters that way. “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luk_6:46) There are lots of hypocrites in Christendom who call Him Lord, and yet show by their lives that they have never been born again.
Also in the second sphere is the one faith. This is not the faith by which we are saved, but the faith of the Christian church, “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jud_1:3). It is the one standard of truth that God has given to be proclaimed in the world, it is that which the apostle calls the faith. Faith in Christ is a personal confidence in Jesus, but the faith is the body of Christian doctrine.
Then there is baptism, the outward expression of allegiance to Christ. Some ask, “Do you think that baptism here is water baptism, or the baptism of the Spirit?” I say without a moment’s hesitation, “water baptism,” for we have seven unities. We have already had the baptism of the Spirit-“one body, one Spirit”-and we do not have the Spirit repeated here. If it were the baptism of the Spirit, you would have only a sixfold unity, but water baptism is the outward expression of allegiance to Christ. A man may profess to belong to Christ and be baptized, but that does not prove he is really born again. The mark of Christ has been put on some people and yet they have never truly received Him into their hearts. What a solemn thing this is! I wonder if any of you are in the wider circle. You have never been born again, you are not in the first circle but are among those who have made an insincere profession, therefore you are in the second circle. Can it be that the mark of Christ has been placed on you-that you have been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost-and yet you have never trusted Christ? What an awful thing for a lost one in the pit of eternal damnation to have to say, “I bore Christ’s mark on earth; I was baptized in recognition of His death and suffering, and yet here I am lost for all eternity because I did not trust that Savior who suffered for me.”
Notice the third circle. This is very much wider than the others, for it takes in God’s relationship to the entire creation. “One God,” and as such He is in relationship to all His creatures. “And Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” This is not the modern doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man, but it means that God is the Creator of all men. He is a distinct personality. This is not pantheism, not God as a principle, but God, a divine personality, and yet immanent in grace, not far from any one of us.
He is the living, transcendent God over all, pre-eminent, directing all things, pervading everything. He is “in you all.” That is the distinction between God’s attitude toward the world as a whole and toward those who have been born again-”in you all.” If you have accepted Christ, if you have trusted Him, God dwells in you. What a marvelous truth this is! He said, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them” (2Co_6:16). As we walk in this world we can realize that God is walking with us, and so we may well come back to the exhortation with which we began: “Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.”
Gifts from the Ascended Christ (Eph_4:7-13)
Our attention in these verses is especially drawn to the gifts that the ascended Christ has given His church for its upbuilding. First observe that there are gifts for all-”Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” Certain gifts are more outstanding and visible, but every member of the body of Christ has something that he may contribute to the blessing of the whole. No matter how feeble, how insignificant, how relatively unknown he may be, he has received something from the risen Lord for the help of all the rest.
Many parts of our physical bodies are unseen and function without any outward evidence of their working. Yet they are very important in connection with the healthy growing and maintaining of the body. In the same way every believer has his place to fill in the body of Christ. If he is not functioning according to the will of God, in some respect he affects the whole body negatively; but if he is using his gifts according to the will of God, he affects the entire body of Christ for good. These gifts come from the ascended Lord.
Verse Psa_68:8 is quoted from Psalm number 68: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive.” Just what is meant by that rather peculiar expression? It is a Hebraism, taken over literally from the Hebrew. Psa_68:18 reads: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men: yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” Some scholars attempt to explain this expression, “captivity captive,” by translating it “a multitude of captives.” But when we realize that this is simply a translation of an expression in the Psalm, we have to inquire whether the Hebrew text could be translated, “A multitude of captives.” I think any Hebrew scholar would acknowledge that it could not. And that is not the only place where this expression is found.
In Judges chapter 5 we read the same expression. Deborah is praising the Lord for the great victory over Canaan. In verse 12 we read, “Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.” What does the expression mean there? It could only mean one thing-“Lead captive him who held you captive.” That seems to be the meaning of Psa_68:18, and also of this quotation in the Epistle to the Ephesians.
In Isaiah chapter 14 we have a similar expression that would adequately interpret “captivity captive.” We read, “And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors” (Isa_14:2). This surely makes the meaning clear. In our present passage the teaching is this, that our Lord in His triumph over death led captive him who had the power of death up to that time, that He might deliver those “who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb_2:15). In other words, our mighty enemy, Satan, is now a conquered foe. He has been led captive at the chariot wheels of Christ, and our Lord has now ascended as man and taken His place on the throne of the Majesty in Heaven. There from His exalted seat in glory He gives these gifts to His church for its edification and blessing.
“Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.” We are reminded that He who has gone up higher than any other man ever went, once for our redemption went down lower than any other man has gone. I wonder if our souls really take in the fact that He is a man like ourselves, only glorified, sinless, and holy, sitting today on the throne of God. A man’s heart beats in His breast, and there are no sorrows that come to His people but what He enters sympathetically, compassionately, into them. Therefore, having “not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are,” we may “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb_4:15-16).
There’s a Man in the glory I know very well,
I have known Him for years, and His goodness can tell;
One day in His mercy He knocked at my door,
And asking admittance knocked many times o’er.
But when I went to Him and stood face to face
And listened a while to His story of grace,
How He suffered for sinners and put away sin,
I heartily, thankfully, welcomed Him in.
And now I have the assurance from the Word of God that that Man sits there at the Father’s right hand, ever living to make intercession for His needy people as they go through this world. Go to Him in the hour of trial, “tell not half the story, but the whole,” and be assured that He will listen sympathetically and undertake for you according to the riches of His grace. He always has taken it upon Himself to work for His people in a marvelous way.
“He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” These are the gifts that Christ Himself has given. In 1 Corinthians chapter 12 Paul listed various operations of the Holy Spirit through the church in the beginning of its early conflict with heathenism and Judaism. But in Ephesians the gifts are for the building and maintaining of the church. They were given by the risen Christ to enable the church to carry the message to a lost world, and to build up its individual members in the knowledge of Christ.
Our Lord chose apostles when He was here on earth, but said that in the glorious millennial age, they would sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. As the ascended Christ He has given apostles and prophets to His church, but they are given from Heaven. They included the same apostles that He chose on earth, but it was after they were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that they were seen as given to the church. The apostles and prophets laid the foundation. We read in Eph_2:20 : “And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” You do not lay a foundation for a building every few stories, but the foundation is built once for all and then the superstructure is erected. Long ago, nineteen hundred years ago, the apostles and prophets fulfilled their ministry. We are not looking for new apostles and prophets.
A young Mormon elder came to me at one time and asked, “What church do you belong to?” I knew at once what he had in mind, and so I replied, “I belong to the one true church that has apostles and prophets in it.”
“Oh,” he said, “then you must be a latter-day saint.”
“No, I am a former-day saint.”
“But ours is the only church that has apostles and prophets.”
“I do not think so. The church that I belong to is building on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and although they themselves have passed off the scene long ago they are still members of this church, for it does not exist only on earth. They are part of the host though they have passed from this world and are in the presence of God. They are still members of the church.”
“But we have apostles and prophets in our day.”
“But, you see,” I said, “the apostles and prophets were to lay the foundation, and if I understand the Word of God correctly, the temple of the living God-this wonderful church He is erecting-has been building for nineteen hundred years and it is now just about completed, and you do not put a foundation on the roof. It is away down, nineteen hundred stories below, and the temple has been rising on that foundation all through the years. We are now just putting the finishing touches on the roof. We are gathering in poor sinners, just one and another here and there. They are not coming in large numbers these days, but those that are coming are being added to the roof, and it will not be long until it will be complete and then we will all go to Heaven.”
The other gifts Paul listed are very obvious today. What is the evangelist? He is the bearer of glad tidings. The ministry of the evangelist is especially sent to the world outside of Christianity. If God gifts a man as an evangelist, He fills his heart with fervent love for a lost world and gives him the ability to proclaim the gospel in freshness and power. What a marvelous gift is that of the evangelist! We do not all have it in the way we should like to have it. It is a privilege to teach the Word and build up the saints, but when I think of the mighty men that God has qualified and sent out as evangelists to win the lost, I covet such a gift. If you are a young preacher and have the evangelistic gift, thank God for it, cherish it, do not despise it. Do not say, “I wish I could teach the Bible like certain men.” It is very good if God gifts you for that, but I would rather be used of God to win lost sinners to Christ than even to teach and instruct Christians.
Someone at one time reproved Duncan Matheson for preaching the gospel at a great conference of believers, and said, “You kept all these people sitting here for an hour listening to what they already know, when they came to hear a wonderful unfolding of new truth.”
“Why,” he said, “were there no sinners here today?”
“Oh, there may have been a few.”
“Very well, that is all right then. I did not make a mistake because if people are Christians, they will manage to wiggle awa’ to Heaven some way if they never learn another thing, but poor sinners will have to be saved or be in Hell.”
Never forget that. And if you are a lost sinner-Christless, hopeless-let me impress this on you: You must choose Christ or Hell, and to neglect the one is to choose the other. I wish I could proclaim that message in a way that dying men would hear, and hearing would believe and flee from the wrath to come. That is the special province of the evangelist. He goes out into the world and wins souls for Christ, and then the Spirit of God brings them into the church of God.
As we continue in Ephesians chapter 4 we read that He also gave the gift of pastors. The word means “shepherds.” A true pastor is a shepherd who has a heart for the sheep of Christ’s flock. Our Lord challenged Peter with the words, “Lovest thou me more than these?” After Peter earnestly confessed, “Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee,” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep…Feed my lambs.” With those words He constituted Peter a pastor of His flock. What a precious gift that is! The evangelist finds them as lost sheep wandering in the wilderness and brings them into the flock. Then the pastor seeks to lead them into the green pastures of God’s Word, to minister to them when they are sick, to be with them when they are dying, to point them to the cross in the hour when faith may be weak, to enter into their sorrows: that is the work of a real pastor. No theological seminary, no college or university can make a pastor. It is the Holy Spirit of God alone who gives a man a pastor’s heart, and fills him with yearning love for the people of God.
The next gift mentioned is that of the teacher. What is the difference between the pastor and the teacher? In 1Co_12:8 we read, “For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit.” We may say that the pastor has in a peculiar sense die word of wisdom, the teacher the word of knowledge. It is the special province of the teacher to explain the truth of God’s Word in a clear, orderly way so that people may grasp it and profit by it, that they may understand the divine plan and thus apply the truth to their own needs. And it is the responsibility of the pastor to press the truth home to the conscience in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Do you ever remember a time in your life when you were going through some special trial and perplexity? Perhaps you said, “I need to go to church,” and you went with a heavy burden. During the meeting someone stood up to expound the Word of God, and you were edified. He took a certain portion of Scripture and made it clear and beautiful, and it did you good, but as you left the place you said, “Well, his message didn’t touch my case at all. I have no more answers to my problem than I had when I came in. I am glad I came though, for I was blessed. I will always understand that portion of Scripture better than I have in the past.” But you went away with the same burden with which you came. On another occasion you returned to church, and again someone read a portion of Scripture. As he began to expound it you said, “Why, he seems to know exactly what I am going through. He seems to understand exactly what my problem is. That is just what I need.” And as the Word was unfolded, your soul was stirred and your heart blessed. You went away praising the Lord for giving such gifts to His people, and thanking Him that through the explanation of His Word your perplexity was removed. You were listening to the teacher in the first case, and in the second to the pastor. One had the word of knowledge and the other the word of wisdom. What is wisdom? It is knowledge applied to meeting a distinct and definite case.
Look at verse Eph_4:12. Why did Christ give apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers? “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” The punctuation in the King James version of this verse would lead us to assume that the purpose was threefold-the perfecting of the saints, the work of the ministry, and the edifying of the body of Christ. And to what would that conclusion lead you? That the work of perfecting the saints and the work of the ministry and the edifying of the body belongs entirely to those who have been set apart in a special way as pastors and teachers and evangelists. That is the conclusion many have come to, and people are quite content to depend on the man in the pulpit and say, “Don’t we commission him to do the work of the ministry? Isn’t he to do the work of building up the body of Christ?” But there are no punctuation marks in the original text; they have simply been put there by editors. I am going to take the liberty of removing the commas in verse Eph_4:12. Go back to verse Eph_4:11 - “He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ.” Do you see any difference? It is not that the pastors and teachers are a kind of close corporation whose business it is to do all these things. But when God gifts a man as a preacher or a teacher he is to exercise that gift for the developing of the saints in order that they might do the work of the ministry and thus build up the body of Christ. This is an altogether different thing.
A dear young fellow came to me and said, “Are any of your sermons copyrighted?”
“No, indeed they are not,” I said.
“I am glad to hear it, because I heard you a week ago and went out and preached your sermon at a mission. I wondered whether I had any right to do it.”
I said, “If something gripped your soul that you can pass on to somebody else and make it a blessing to them, I thank God for it. If you get a convert, you will be the father and I will be the grandfather.”
I read in Moody’s life story that years ago he would go on Sunday morning to hear the different preachers of the day, and then in the afternoon and evening he would be out in the missions and on the street corners preaching the sermons he had heard. He would come back and say to one of these ministers, “Doctor, I preached your sermon five times last week, and won about forty souls.” The preacher would look at him in a strange way, for he had probably not seen a soul saved for weeks or months. Our risen Lord gives some the gift of apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and some teachers, but it is in order that all may profit thereby, for all the saints are to carry on the work of the ministry for the building up of the body of Christ. Do not be content to come to the meetings and just be a spiritual sponge. Fill up, and then let the Lord do some squeezing. Give it out to somebody else, and then you will be carrying out the true principle of New Testament ministry.
How long will this go on? “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph_4:13). What does that mean? It means that this work will continue until the entire church will be gathered home to Heaven, and Christ will be fully displayed in every one of us. What is the fullness of Christ? We read in Eph_1:23 : “the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” Christ is the Head in glory, we are the members of His body and constitute His completeness as the one new man. When at last we have gone home to Heaven, our day of toiling over, and we are in all perfection like Himself, then this kind of ministry will be ended. There will be no need for the ministry of the pastor, the teacher, or the evangelist in Heaven, for there we will all praise the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. No one will need to teach others for all will know Him from the least to the greatest.
Manifesting the Truth in Love (Eph_4:14-16)
I never knew until I became the father of children how much is involved in the words that occur in a well-known hymn, “No infant’s changing pleasure / Is like my wandering mind.” How children’s minds jump from one thing to another! How hard it is for them to concentrate! And many of God’s children are just the same. Often when one is trying to explain a truth to believers, he is embarrassed by the questions that are asked showing that his students have not been concentrating and therefore have not grasped the truth. As a result people are never truly established in the faith. It is in order to save us from this thing that God has set in His church those who are responsible to instruct and build up His saints, that they should not be like little children tossed back and forth, like leaves carried about by the wind or, using the figure the apostle had in mind, like little sailboats on the water, blown from their course and tossed by every changing wind.
Christians who are grounded in the truth of God are a blessing. But so many people always seem to be running after some new teaching, never seeming to have any discrimination. Let me give you an absurd case. Years ago as I sat in my office in Oakland there came in through the bookroom a man whose very appearance betokened a heretic. He was tall and gaunt, had long flowing hair coming down over his shoulders, and a long unkempt beard. He came up to where I sat writing. I did not want to be interrupted, for I felt that he was going to waste my time with some useless religious argument. He said, “I gather, sir, from the books I have seen in the window that you are a truth-seeker, and I thought I would come in and have a chat with you.”
“You are mistaken,” I said; “I am not a truth-seeker at all.”
“Oh, you aren’t? May I ask why you are not?”
“Why, because, sir, I have found Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and therefore my seeking is at an end. Once I was a truth-seeker, but now I am a truth-finder, for I know Christ.”
“Well, but are there not many things that you still need to know?”
“Oh, yes; there are a great many things that I need to know, but I have found the great Teacher, and I am not going around seeking truth any longer. He instructs me through His Word.”
“Well, as for me, I am always seeking; I go anywhere and everywhere that I think I can learn more.”
“Yes,” I said, “I was reading of you in my Bible the other day.”
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say about me?”
“It said, ‘Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth’“ (2Ti_3:7).
“Why, that has no reference to me,” he said.
“Pardon me, but you said that you are always seeking and if a man is always seeking, he is never finding. But, you see, those of us who know Christ have found the Truth.”
Then he began to tell me some of his weird gospel.
What a lot of folks there are like him in some degree, just running from one thing to another and never getting anywhere. The apostle said, “Hold fast the form of sound words” (2Ti_1:13), and you get sound words in the Book of God and nowhere else.
In our text we read, “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Eph_4:14). This verse speaks of men who have selfish purposes to serve, and want to make disciples in order to profit from them. When men come to you with strange and new ideas, ask for a “Thus saith the Lord.” Ask them to give chapter and verse in the Bible for the strange doctrines they bring you. If Christians would only do this, they would not be running after these modern religious fads. God’s own Word has stood the test of nineteen hundred years, and you can depend on it. You can live on it and as you feed on the precious truth revealed in its pages you will grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
But now, although we want to insist on a good confession, we need to also insist on a godly, Spirit-filled life. So in verse Eph_4:15 we read, “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” It is an important thing to stand for the fundamentals, but as we seek to bear witness to the great fundamental truths, let us never forget that the greatest fundamental of all is love.
Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing (1Co_13:2-3).
It is a very interesting fact that in the original text there is only one Greek word for the three English words, speaking the truth. In the original it is a present participle formed from the word truth, and if we turn it into literal English we would have to translate it in a rather awkward way-“truthing”-“But truthing in love.” Perhaps a better rendering than “speaking the truth in love,” and more suited to our ears, would be “manifesting the truth in love.” In other words, it is not just the testimony of the lips, declaring that certain things are divine truth, but it is the life displaying the truth. I have heard people say of certain ones, “Yes, yes; he seems to say all the right things, but I don’t see much evidence of divine love in his life.” And then I have heard people sometimes bear witness of others in this way: “I believe what Mr. so-and-so says because he lives it out from day to day.”
A young man was asked the question, “What have you found to be the best translation of the New Testament?” Without a moment’s hesitation he answered, “My mother’s.” His friends said, “Your mother’s? I didn’t know she was a scholar. Did she translate the New Testament?” The young man quickly replied, “My mother was not a scholar, she could not read a word of Greek, but she translated the New Testament into her beautiful life, and that made more of an impression on me than anything else I have ever known.” That is what you and I are called to do, to manifest the truth in our lives.
We are ever to be “truthing in love.” The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and we are to reveal this love in all our dealings with others. Even, “When truth compels us to contend, / What love with all our strife should blend.” The Christian is never entitled to act in an un-Christlike way, no matter what the provocation. As we thus live in the power of the truth of God and are dominated by the love of Christ, we are growing up into Him, daily becoming more like Himself. Are people seeing more of Christ in you from day to day?
I remember years ago a young preacher came to the city of Toronto, where I was born and where I lived until I was ten years old. Though I was only about eight years old at the time, I recall being taken by my mother to hear this preacher, for she insisted that I must go and hear the gospel every Sunday night. She used to say, “It is far more important that my children hear the gospel than that they have sleep, or anything else. They must know Christ from childhood up.” Of course in Canada our gospel meeting used to begin at 6:30 in the evening, and children could attend and still be home and in bed in good time. Before I was ten years old I got to be quite a “sermon taster,” as the Scots used to say. I loved to come home and get on a chair and imitate the preachers, trying to give the intonations of their deep Scottish voices or those from Northern Ireland, for all the preachers I heard in those days had the old country brogue.
This one particular evening I listened to a young Irish preacher-a fine, tall, handsome young man. A little group came home with us after the meeting to spend an hour or so in singing around the old-fashioned cabinet organ. Someone asked the question, “How did you like the young preacher from Ireland?” One replied, “It did me good to hear the old tongue again. It was just grand.” Another said, “I thought he had a wonderful delivery; you could hear him so plainly.” Another, “He seemed to me to be most eloquent.” Another, “How well he knew his Bible. He opened up the truth in a beautiful way.” A lady sitting quietly was asked, “And what did you think of him?” “Well, you know,” she replied, “there was something about his behavior that appealed to me. He seemed the most like Jesus of any preacher I have ever listened to.” How we all might wish to have that kind of recognition-to be like Jesus. Some of us, as we try to preach His Word, are made very conscious of the fact that we are so unlike Him. There is so much about us that would never have been seen in Him. Never a night goes by but that we have to bow our knees before God and acknowledge our shortcomings. But as we walk with Him, as we seek to “truth” in love, we grow up into Him, and so we become more like Him as the days go by.
It is a beautiful thing to grow old gracefully, to exhibit more of Jesus from day to day. Our blessed Head is the One from whom we draw all our supplies for spiritual upbuilding. We read, “From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (Eph_4:16). Paul used the figure of the human body, and every part, every separate organ, every joint and sinew, every gland, working together for the growth of the whole body. That is the ideal picture of the Christian church and of Christian fellowship.
Have you ever read “Hebich’s Tub”? It tells the story of a quaint Dutch preacher in the East Indies. Many years ago he was conducting religious services for a group of British army officers. He was characterized by a shrewd, keen humor and taught the truth by using the most amazing illustrations. He happened to know that there were certain little dissensions among the group, and so on one occasion he took for his text, “That which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part.” He looked at his audience, and then with his eyes half-shut, using the illustration of a barrel, he said, “Did you effer see a tob? What iss it that makes a good tob? If you haff a good bottom to it, iss that a tob? No. If you haff a good side, iss that a tob? No. If you haff good hoops around it, iss that a good tob? No. But if you haff good boards for the bottom and fitly choined together, and then the good boards for the sides all fitly choined together, and then the good hoops and all of these things fitly choined together, you haff a tob. And it is the same with the Christian church. You haff got to haff every believer in his place, and all fitly choined together by the power of the Holy Spirit. You may haff choined the boards together, but if there iss a little pebble in between two of the staves, you do not haff a tob that will hold water. If the staves haff shrunk and drawn apart, it is useless. And if I am a Christian and haff some selfishness in me, if through selfishness or envy I do not haff real Christian fellowship, or if little things come in, I am useless. If the Colonel’s lady has some unkind feeling toward the Major’s lady and they come to church and join in prayer and in singing hymns and listen to the sermon, yet they are not fitly choined together, you don’t have real Christian fellowship.” How many little things there are that come in to hinder and keep believers from functioning as they ought!
“Fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth.” You have to contribute your share and I have to contribute mine, all for the good of the whole. And then what is the result? “According to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” May God give every one of us a deeper sense of our individual responsibility to live the truth in love for the blessing of all.
The Walk of the New Man (Eph_4:17-24)
“This I say therefore”-we may well ask, “Wherefore?” In view of all that Paul had written in the earlier part of this Epistle, he admonished his readers, “henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk.” Since, as Christians we have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy, and have been redeemed through His blood, and have been made members of His body, led by the Spirit, united to a risen Christ in glory, our lives are to be different from those around us. Christians are people called out from the world. A very common saying is, “When in Rome, do as the Romans,” but that does not apply to the Christian. No matter where you find him, he is to walk as a heavenly man, as one whose interests are really in another world, as a stranger and a foreigner to this world. He is called to refrain from everything that would in any way tarnish his pilgrim character.
“Walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.” The word translated “vanity” here does not mean what it does ordinarily-that is, “pride.” The original word rather means something like a mirage, an illusion, that which is imagined but not actually true. Unsaved men have illusions of the minds, they see mirages of all kinds and imagine them to be real, but they are not. They believe all sorts of theories, intellectual ideas, and such like, and would even judge God’s Word by their theories instead of judging their theories by the test of God’s Word. These poor Christless men, whatever their talents, culture, or education, have never been born of God, therefore their understanding is darkened, and they are incapable of understanding divine things. The Christian ought to be aware of this danger, and not walk in the delusions of the fleshly mind.
“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God” (1Co_2:14). I wish our Christian young people would realize that. Many of them who are attending our colleges and universities are placed under the instruction of brilliant but unconverted professors who use their position to undermine faith in the Word of God. I wish these Christian young men and women could realize that the natural man, no matter what his intellectual qualifications, does not understand the things of God; they are foolishness to him because they are spiritually discerned (1Co_2:14). Without a new life and a new nature there can be no real comprehension of divine things, and so the greatest of this world’s scholars is an ignoramus when it comes to the things of God, until he has been regenerated.
Paul described the Gentile world of his day: “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph_4:18). In other words, they have no divine life. Some say there is a divine spark in every man, but that is not true. “He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Until Christ is received by faith, until people have accepted Him as their own Savior and Lord, there is no life whatever except, of course, this material, natural life. Paul continued his description, “Being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them.” They are wise in the things of this world, but utterly ignorant in the things of God “because of the blindness of their heart.” The word blindness is better translated “hardness,” and yet that does not give the thought sufficiently. It means a heart that is under the influence of an anesthetic. A person may be alive and quivering with pain, but when he is put under the influence of an anesthetic he is not awake to his true condition. Men and women have come under the influence of the awful deadening power of sin and their hearts are hardened. They are blinded, and they do not understand their own condition, the condition of their country, or of the world around them. Sin has a terrible, hardening, blinding, deadening, effect on people.
Notice the awfully graphic picture of the ancient world and the world today. “Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Eph_4:19). “Being past feeling,” might be translated, “being beyond pain.” Do you remember how pained you were the first time you committed some sin that pricked your conscience? The hour of temptation came, and you hesitated and said, “Shall I commit this sin or not?” Conscience was roused and you did not see how you could go on and indulge in that evil, unholy thing. But perhaps lured on by godless friends who mocked your conscientious scruples, you said, “Oh, I’ll try anything once,” and you took the fatal step-you committed that sin and polluted your soul by it. But you remember the pain that came afterward, you remember as you walked home, or possibly it was in your own home, you could not bear the thought of facing those nearest and dearest to you. Perhaps you were not so much concerned about the fact that God had seen you, but you were concerned about what others might think of you. The temptation came a second time and again you plunged into the sin, more recklessly this time, and afterward the pain was less. And so on and on and on, and now you continue in that sin, in that evil course, and there is scarcely ever the least evidence of a sensitive conscience. We read of people whose conscience is seared as with a hot iron. In Eph_4:19 we have the description of an unsaved man going contrary to every divine direction until he is beyond pain. That is what sin does for people. Oh, what a mercy when the Spirit of God comes in and awakens one to see something of the terribleness of his sin in the sight of a holy God. Then the Spirit leads the repentant sinner to Christ, and out of the depths of an anguished heart he cries, “What must I do to be saved? God be merciful to me, the sinner.” There had been such crises in the lives of these Ephesians. Many of us have known what this means, and now these words of instruction come to us, as to them, regarding the manner of life that should characterize us.
We are not to be as we once were and as those still are who, having lost their sensitivity to pain, have given themselves over to lustful desires and all kinds of unholy thoughts resulting in unclean works. What a mercy that this is in the past for many of us. Am I speaking to anyone who is still living in these things? Does your heart sometimes cry out with a desire for purity, for holiness, for goodness? Do you sometimes say:
Tell me what to do to be pure
In the sight of all-seeing eyes.
Tell me, is there no thorough cure,
No escape from the sins I despise?
Will the Savior only pass by,
Only show me how faulty I’ve been?
Will He not attend to my cry?
May I not this moment be clean?
Oh yes; there is cleansing for you. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isa_1:18). God has made His invitation so clear. The heart of the sinner may be made pure. There is a possibility that the dark red stains of sin may all be washed away, for it is written, “The blood of Jesus Christ [God’s] Son cleanseth us from all sin.” And one cleansed by the blood should be characterized by an altogether different life from that which is common to the unsaved.
The apostle continued, “But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph_4:20-21). I want you to notice particularly the way he used the divine titles. We know that Jesus is Christ and Christ is Jesus. We do not for one moment consent to the wretched theory that a good many hold today, popularized by Christian Science, which tries to draw a distinction between Jesus and Christ. According to that system, Jesus was simply a man, the natural born son of Mary, but Christ was a divine Spirit that came and took possession of Jesus at His baptism in the Jordan. That is an old gnostic heresy condemned by every right-minded Christian. Jesus is the Christ. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” But although that is true, this is also true-Jesus was His human name here on earth; He never had that name until He came to earth. Scripture says, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins” (Mat_1:21). But He was Christ from all eternity. In the eighth chapter of Proverbs, wisdom is personified, and we read, “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was” (Eph_4:22-23). The Hebrew term set up is the same word for anointed: “I was the anointed One from everlasting.” When Christ was baptized in the Jordan, the Spirit of God descended on Him confirming that He was the anointed One, the Christ from eternity. And when God raised Him from the dead, we read He made that same Jesus to be both Lord and Christ (Act_2:36). He is the Anointed now as the risen and glorified One.
Paul was thinking of Christ as the risen One, sitting at the right hand of God, and we learn of Him as we take time to truly look at Him. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2Co_3:18). But what does Paul mean by “the truth is in Jesus”? He means that when He was on earth as the lowly man called Jesus He was the demonstration of the truth. That is why He could say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Suppose I want to know the truth about what God expects from man, where do I find it? In Adam? Oh, no. In Adam I see a man who listened to his wife, after she listened to the devil, and did what she told him to do. Adam was a man without a backbone, a man utterly untrustworthy. As we review human history, we see that all humanity is just a reproduction of that first man. But if I want the truth concerning man and his relationship with God, I find that it is written, “There is…one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” As we read God’s Word and notice Christ’s attitude and behavior when He was on earth, we see all that man should be for God. He is the full standard of humanity.
If I want to know the truth about God, where do I find it? Do I go to the universities of this world? No; they do not know anything about God. They cannot tell me anything about Him. But where shall I go? To the moderni
In chapters one to three we have been studying the doctrinal section of this letter to the Ephesians. We now take up the practical part, that which has to do with our lives as those who have been made members of Christ’s body through grace. Notice how tenderly the apostle wrote: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.”
Wherever grace rules in the soul, “I command” is changed to “I beseech.” You do not find the apostle lording his position over the faith of the people of God, but graciously, tenderly pleading with them, rather than sternly ordering their behavior. He spoke of himself in a way that certainly must have touched the heart of everyone who read this letter in its original setting. The Ephesians had come to know the Savior’s love through Paul, and the link between a preacher and those who have been brought to Christ as a result of his ministry is a very real one. Hearts are very closely bound together when they stand in that relationship. What must they have felt when they realized that the man of God to whom they owed so much was lying in a Roman prison, and he was there not because of any ill-doing on his part, but because of his faithful proclamation of the gospel mat meant so much to them? He was a prisoner of the Lord, and from his prison cell he wrote this letter, beseeching them to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they were called.
Our vocation is, of course, our calling. Paul referred to that which he had written before-the blessedness of the new life. In view of the fact that I have been redeemed to God by the precious blood of Christ; in view of the fact that I am a member now of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones; in view of the fact that I am a living stone built into that temple of God by the Holy Spirit, that temple in which He dwells, my behavior is to be ordered by God. I am to walk worthy of the calling I have received. Elsewhere we are told to walk worthy of God and of the Lord (see Col_1:10 and 1Th_2:12).
“With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.” I spent quite a little time over this verse. Every expression in it was a challenge to me, and I kept asking myself the question, “To what extent have I risen to the standard that is set here? I must present this to others as the divine standard for a Christian’s behavior. To what extent am I measuring up to it?” And the more I carefully examined every expression both in the English and in the original Greek, the more humiliated and ashamed before God I was as I realized how far short I have come from living out what we have here. Every word is important.
“With all lowliness.” That word is found only once elsewhere in the New Testament and that is in Php_2:3 : “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.” The original word means “modesty,” that is, an utter lack of self-assertiveness. Pride is so characteristic of us as fallen creatures. We who have nothing to be proud of are sometimes proud of our very crudity and ignorance.
A young minister arose in a conference and said, “I am against education. I don’t believe in education. I read no books except the Bible; I don’t profess to know nothing about literature or anything of that kind; I am just an ignorant man. But the Lord has taken me up, and is using me, and I am not at all interested in schools, or colleges or education. I am proud to be just what I am.” An old preacher arose and said, “Do I understand that our dear young brother is proud of his ignorance? If so, all I have to say is that he has a great deal to be proud of.” Most of us are that way; we are proud of the very thing of which we ought to be ashamed. We boast of our accomplishments and ability, even as children. One of the first things parents must learn in training their children is to curb that natural tendency to boastfulness. But as Christians, how completely we should be delivered from this. We have nothing that we have not received. Every blessing we have we owe to divine grace. With what modesty, then, should we behave ourselves!
The word meekness is found a number of times in the New Testament and it is used of our Lord Himself. The apostle said, “We beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2Co_10:1), and Christ said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (Mat_11:29). The root of the original word really means “humility,” a spirit that never takes personal offense. Somebody says something unkind about me. I flare up in a moment. Why? Because I am not meek. In Mark chapter 15 we read that “the chief priests accused [Jesus] of many things: but he answered nothing.” “When he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not” (1Pe_2:23). That is meekness.
The next word Paul used is longsuffering. This is a favorite word of the apostle, and we also find it used three times by the apostle Peter. It means literally, “to endure with unruffled temper.” Do you know very much about longsuffering? “Well,” you say, “I would not mind if what was said about me had been true, but when I know it isn’t true, I can’t stand it.” Therefore, the need of longsuffering. It is the flesh that talks like that, not the new nature but the old. Many years ago I had a friend whose name was George. Sometimes he would fly off and lose his temper. But he was always brought back to earth when someone looked at him quietly and said, “Is that old George or new George talking?” In a moment the tears would come. Even now, though he has been gone thirty years, I can hear him say, “That’s old George; new George would never behave that way. I must punish that old George. He has no right to behave like that.” Yes, the old nature is quick to take offense, quick to flare up if not properly appreciated, but the new nature just bows in meekness and lets the waves and billows pass over and is undisturbed by them.
The last word to consider in this verse is forbearing: “Forbearing one another in love.” This word occurs in only one other book of the New Testament and that is in Col_3:13 : “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” Literally, forbearance means “to put up with.”
Now taking all that into account I thought I would try to translate Eph_4:2 myself: “With all modesty and humbleness of spirit, with unruffled temper, lovingly putting up with all that is disagreeable in other people.” That is a literal rendering of the original. That describes the Spirit of Christ. As we meditate on it and think of all that is involved in it, how can we do other than hang our heads in shame and confess that in many things we offend. May we be so yielded to the control of the Holy Spirit of God that this Christlike character may indeed become real in our lives.
The apostle continued, “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph_4:3). Others have translated it, “Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Observe, he does not say, “Giving diligence to keep the unity of the body” We do not have anything to do with preserving the unity of the body. God is looking after that. He binds believers together in Christ, gives His Holy Spirit to dwell within, and links them one to another, and to their glorious Head in Heaven. The body of Christ is always complete as God looks at it.
People talk about heartless divisions that tear apart the body of Christ, but these divisions do not tear apart the body of Christ. The body of Christ is not composed of all the different sects and denominations. If you were to gather all the different Catholic sects together, all the different eastern orthodox sects together and all the Protestant sects together and unite them all in one big church, that would not be the body of Christ. That would contain a great many people who are in the body of Christ but it would also include a great many who are not. On the other hand, after you had gathered all these denominations together, there would still be a great many outside that would be members of the body of Christ. The church, which is His body, and the church, which some call the visible body of Christ, are not the same thing. The body of Christ consists only of those who are regenerated and born again by the Holy Spirit and joined to Christ in glory by the Spirit’s baptism. All the divisions in Christendom cannot split that body. But what have these various denominations done? They certainly have denied the unity of the Spirit. The apostle would have us recognize this unity that God Himself established, and so he said, “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
The Spirit unites us to the body that He has formed, and now He says, “I want you to recognize it.” When you meet with fellow believers, do you endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit, do you realize that you belong to them and they belong to you? “But,” you say, “they do not see things the way I do.” If they belong to Christ, they belong to you and you to them. We are to accept them in the uniting bond of peace.
Some years ago I was taken ill in the midst of a series of meetings at Minneapolis. After my fourth address I went out one Sunday noon to take dinner, and right after the meal I collapsed. When I regained consciousness I had a fever of one hundred and two degrees and was ill with typhoid. I was down for six weeks. As soon as I had strength enough to start home my friends helped me get to the train station. The porter on the train was very courteous. He made up a berth and put both mattresses on, and let me recline there all day long.
The first morning as I lay there with a lot of pillows behind me, I took out my Bible. (Of course you never start the day without at least a little portion from the Word of God; do you? You do? Well that is why you have so many bad days.) I was reading from the Word of God when a German lady came walking by, and she stopped and asked with a pronounced German accent, “What’s that? A Bible?” I said, “Yes.” “Well, you have your morning worship all by yourself? Wait,” she said, “I go get my Bible and we have it together.” She came back and settled herself on my couch and said, “Where are you reading?” A little later a tall gentleman came by, and stopped and in a Scandinavian accent asked, “Reading the Bible? Well, I think I’ll go get mine, too.” He came back with his Bible, and in a few minutes I was amazed at the people who crowded around.
They did the same thing every day, and we had a delightful time all the way to California. I would get my Bible, and then they would begin to come, and sometimes there would be as many as twenty-eight people with their Bibles. The conductor would go all through the cars and say, “The camp meeting is beginning in car number so-and-so. Any wanting to take advantage are invited.” Sometimes they would start a hymn; sometimes we would have a little prayer; and sometimes it would be only the Bible reading, and they would ask questions.
That fellowship continued until we reached Sacramento, where some of the cars were separated to go down the valley. So the people from the other cars came in to say goodbye, and this dear German sister came and said, “Oh, it has been just like a camp meeting all the way. It has fed my soul. I am going to Turlock, but I want to ask you, What denomination are you?” “Well,” I said, “I belong to the same denomination that David did.” “What was that? I didn’t know that David belonged to any,” she asked. “David said, ‘I am a companion of all them that fear Thee and keep Thy precepts,’” I answered. “Yah, yah,” she said; “that is a good church to belong to.”
I suppose if we had questioned those people, we would have found that we belonged to a dozen different sects. But we found we were all one in Christ. Oh, that we might endeavor “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” not in contentiousness, not in quarreling, but all alike seeking to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior.
In verses Eph_4:4-6 of Ephesians chapter 4 the apostle brings before us a sevenfold unity. Notice, “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” Seven different unities all linked up in one. These verses comprise one great confession, and yet it is easy to see that there are three distinct spheres indicated, becoming larger and larger. Verse 4 speaks of that unity which is absolutely vital, “There is one body.” That is the body of Christ, and as we have seen, that body is composed only of people who have been washed from their sins in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. They have been regenerated by the Word and by the Spirit, and thus made members of Christ. Then in the second place, “There is one Spirit,” and this is the one Holy Spirit by whose operation we have been baptized into the body of Christ. We read in 1Co_12:13, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” Third, we are given one hope-“Even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.” All believers have the same blessed hope, the hope of some day, some day soon, beholding the face of our Lord Jesus Christ and being transformed into His image. All real believers are included in this first sphere-one body, one Spirit, one hope of your calling.
But now the second sphere is a little bit wider. It does not necessarily include only those who are born again. It may include those who have made a profession that is not real. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” You see, there are those who say, “Lord, Lord,” who have never been born again. Jesus says that in the day of judgment many will come to Him and say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Mat_7:22-23). Take, for instance, that part of the world which we call “Christendom.” What do people write at the head of their letters? They write 1936 (this sermon was delivered in 1936). And what does that mean? It means, in the year of our lord 1936.1 suppose every racketeer and gangster in Chicago dates his letters that way. “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luk_6:46) There are lots of hypocrites in Christendom who call Him Lord, and yet show by their lives that they have never been born again.
Also in the second sphere is the one faith. This is not the faith by which we are saved, but the faith of the Christian church, “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jud_1:3). It is the one standard of truth that God has given to be proclaimed in the world, it is that which the apostle calls the faith. Faith in Christ is a personal confidence in Jesus, but the faith is the body of Christian doctrine.
Then there is baptism, the outward expression of allegiance to Christ. Some ask, “Do you think that baptism here is water baptism, or the baptism of the Spirit?” I say without a moment’s hesitation, “water baptism,” for we have seven unities. We have already had the baptism of the Spirit-“one body, one Spirit”-and we do not have the Spirit repeated here. If it were the baptism of the Spirit, you would have only a sixfold unity, but water baptism is the outward expression of allegiance to Christ. A man may profess to belong to Christ and be baptized, but that does not prove he is really born again. The mark of Christ has been put on some people and yet they have never truly received Him into their hearts. What a solemn thing this is! I wonder if any of you are in the wider circle. You have never been born again, you are not in the first circle but are among those who have made an insincere profession, therefore you are in the second circle. Can it be that the mark of Christ has been placed on you-that you have been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost-and yet you have never trusted Christ? What an awful thing for a lost one in the pit of eternal damnation to have to say, “I bore Christ’s mark on earth; I was baptized in recognition of His death and suffering, and yet here I am lost for all eternity because I did not trust that Savior who suffered for me.”
Notice the third circle. This is very much wider than the others, for it takes in God’s relationship to the entire creation. “One God,” and as such He is in relationship to all His creatures. “And Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” This is not the modern doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man, but it means that God is the Creator of all men. He is a distinct personality. This is not pantheism, not God as a principle, but God, a divine personality, and yet immanent in grace, not far from any one of us.
He is the living, transcendent God over all, pre-eminent, directing all things, pervading everything. He is “in you all.” That is the distinction between God’s attitude toward the world as a whole and toward those who have been born again-”in you all.” If you have accepted Christ, if you have trusted Him, God dwells in you. What a marvelous truth this is! He said, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them” (2Co_6:16). As we walk in this world we can realize that God is walking with us, and so we may well come back to the exhortation with which we began: “Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.”
Gifts from the Ascended Christ (Eph_4:7-13)
Our attention in these verses is especially drawn to the gifts that the ascended Christ has given His church for its upbuilding. First observe that there are gifts for all-”Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” Certain gifts are more outstanding and visible, but every member of the body of Christ has something that he may contribute to the blessing of the whole. No matter how feeble, how insignificant, how relatively unknown he may be, he has received something from the risen Lord for the help of all the rest.
Many parts of our physical bodies are unseen and function without any outward evidence of their working. Yet they are very important in connection with the healthy growing and maintaining of the body. In the same way every believer has his place to fill in the body of Christ. If he is not functioning according to the will of God, in some respect he affects the whole body negatively; but if he is using his gifts according to the will of God, he affects the entire body of Christ for good. These gifts come from the ascended Lord.
Verse Psa_68:8 is quoted from Psalm number 68: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive.” Just what is meant by that rather peculiar expression? It is a Hebraism, taken over literally from the Hebrew. Psa_68:18 reads: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men: yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” Some scholars attempt to explain this expression, “captivity captive,” by translating it “a multitude of captives.” But when we realize that this is simply a translation of an expression in the Psalm, we have to inquire whether the Hebrew text could be translated, “A multitude of captives.” I think any Hebrew scholar would acknowledge that it could not. And that is not the only place where this expression is found.
In Judges chapter 5 we read the same expression. Deborah is praising the Lord for the great victory over Canaan. In verse 12 we read, “Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.” What does the expression mean there? It could only mean one thing-“Lead captive him who held you captive.” That seems to be the meaning of Psa_68:18, and also of this quotation in the Epistle to the Ephesians.
In Isaiah chapter 14 we have a similar expression that would adequately interpret “captivity captive.” We read, “And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors” (Isa_14:2). This surely makes the meaning clear. In our present passage the teaching is this, that our Lord in His triumph over death led captive him who had the power of death up to that time, that He might deliver those “who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb_2:15). In other words, our mighty enemy, Satan, is now a conquered foe. He has been led captive at the chariot wheels of Christ, and our Lord has now ascended as man and taken His place on the throne of the Majesty in Heaven. There from His exalted seat in glory He gives these gifts to His church for its edification and blessing.
“Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.” We are reminded that He who has gone up higher than any other man ever went, once for our redemption went down lower than any other man has gone. I wonder if our souls really take in the fact that He is a man like ourselves, only glorified, sinless, and holy, sitting today on the throne of God. A man’s heart beats in His breast, and there are no sorrows that come to His people but what He enters sympathetically, compassionately, into them. Therefore, having “not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are,” we may “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb_4:15-16).
There’s a Man in the glory I know very well,
I have known Him for years, and His goodness can tell;
One day in His mercy He knocked at my door,
And asking admittance knocked many times o’er.
But when I went to Him and stood face to face
And listened a while to His story of grace,
How He suffered for sinners and put away sin,
I heartily, thankfully, welcomed Him in.
And now I have the assurance from the Word of God that that Man sits there at the Father’s right hand, ever living to make intercession for His needy people as they go through this world. Go to Him in the hour of trial, “tell not half the story, but the whole,” and be assured that He will listen sympathetically and undertake for you according to the riches of His grace. He always has taken it upon Himself to work for His people in a marvelous way.
“He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” These are the gifts that Christ Himself has given. In 1 Corinthians chapter 12 Paul listed various operations of the Holy Spirit through the church in the beginning of its early conflict with heathenism and Judaism. But in Ephesians the gifts are for the building and maintaining of the church. They were given by the risen Christ to enable the church to carry the message to a lost world, and to build up its individual members in the knowledge of Christ.
Our Lord chose apostles when He was here on earth, but said that in the glorious millennial age, they would sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. As the ascended Christ He has given apostles and prophets to His church, but they are given from Heaven. They included the same apostles that He chose on earth, but it was after they were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that they were seen as given to the church. The apostles and prophets laid the foundation. We read in Eph_2:20 : “And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” You do not lay a foundation for a building every few stories, but the foundation is built once for all and then the superstructure is erected. Long ago, nineteen hundred years ago, the apostles and prophets fulfilled their ministry. We are not looking for new apostles and prophets.
A young Mormon elder came to me at one time and asked, “What church do you belong to?” I knew at once what he had in mind, and so I replied, “I belong to the one true church that has apostles and prophets in it.”
“Oh,” he said, “then you must be a latter-day saint.”
“No, I am a former-day saint.”
“But ours is the only church that has apostles and prophets.”
“I do not think so. The church that I belong to is building on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and although they themselves have passed off the scene long ago they are still members of this church, for it does not exist only on earth. They are part of the host though they have passed from this world and are in the presence of God. They are still members of the church.”
“But we have apostles and prophets in our day.”
“But, you see,” I said, “the apostles and prophets were to lay the foundation, and if I understand the Word of God correctly, the temple of the living God-this wonderful church He is erecting-has been building for nineteen hundred years and it is now just about completed, and you do not put a foundation on the roof. It is away down, nineteen hundred stories below, and the temple has been rising on that foundation all through the years. We are now just putting the finishing touches on the roof. We are gathering in poor sinners, just one and another here and there. They are not coming in large numbers these days, but those that are coming are being added to the roof, and it will not be long until it will be complete and then we will all go to Heaven.”
The other gifts Paul listed are very obvious today. What is the evangelist? He is the bearer of glad tidings. The ministry of the evangelist is especially sent to the world outside of Christianity. If God gifts a man as an evangelist, He fills his heart with fervent love for a lost world and gives him the ability to proclaim the gospel in freshness and power. What a marvelous gift is that of the evangelist! We do not all have it in the way we should like to have it. It is a privilege to teach the Word and build up the saints, but when I think of the mighty men that God has qualified and sent out as evangelists to win the lost, I covet such a gift. If you are a young preacher and have the evangelistic gift, thank God for it, cherish it, do not despise it. Do not say, “I wish I could teach the Bible like certain men.” It is very good if God gifts you for that, but I would rather be used of God to win lost sinners to Christ than even to teach and instruct Christians.
Someone at one time reproved Duncan Matheson for preaching the gospel at a great conference of believers, and said, “You kept all these people sitting here for an hour listening to what they already know, when they came to hear a wonderful unfolding of new truth.”
“Why,” he said, “were there no sinners here today?”
“Oh, there may have been a few.”
“Very well, that is all right then. I did not make a mistake because if people are Christians, they will manage to wiggle awa’ to Heaven some way if they never learn another thing, but poor sinners will have to be saved or be in Hell.”
Never forget that. And if you are a lost sinner-Christless, hopeless-let me impress this on you: You must choose Christ or Hell, and to neglect the one is to choose the other. I wish I could proclaim that message in a way that dying men would hear, and hearing would believe and flee from the wrath to come. That is the special province of the evangelist. He goes out into the world and wins souls for Christ, and then the Spirit of God brings them into the church of God.
As we continue in Ephesians chapter 4 we read that He also gave the gift of pastors. The word means “shepherds.” A true pastor is a shepherd who has a heart for the sheep of Christ’s flock. Our Lord challenged Peter with the words, “Lovest thou me more than these?” After Peter earnestly confessed, “Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee,” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep…Feed my lambs.” With those words He constituted Peter a pastor of His flock. What a precious gift that is! The evangelist finds them as lost sheep wandering in the wilderness and brings them into the flock. Then the pastor seeks to lead them into the green pastures of God’s Word, to minister to them when they are sick, to be with them when they are dying, to point them to the cross in the hour when faith may be weak, to enter into their sorrows: that is the work of a real pastor. No theological seminary, no college or university can make a pastor. It is the Holy Spirit of God alone who gives a man a pastor’s heart, and fills him with yearning love for the people of God.
The next gift mentioned is that of the teacher. What is the difference between the pastor and the teacher? In 1Co_12:8 we read, “For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit.” We may say that the pastor has in a peculiar sense die word of wisdom, the teacher the word of knowledge. It is the special province of the teacher to explain the truth of God’s Word in a clear, orderly way so that people may grasp it and profit by it, that they may understand the divine plan and thus apply the truth to their own needs. And it is the responsibility of the pastor to press the truth home to the conscience in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Do you ever remember a time in your life when you were going through some special trial and perplexity? Perhaps you said, “I need to go to church,” and you went with a heavy burden. During the meeting someone stood up to expound the Word of God, and you were edified. He took a certain portion of Scripture and made it clear and beautiful, and it did you good, but as you left the place you said, “Well, his message didn’t touch my case at all. I have no more answers to my problem than I had when I came in. I am glad I came though, for I was blessed. I will always understand that portion of Scripture better than I have in the past.” But you went away with the same burden with which you came. On another occasion you returned to church, and again someone read a portion of Scripture. As he began to expound it you said, “Why, he seems to know exactly what I am going through. He seems to understand exactly what my problem is. That is just what I need.” And as the Word was unfolded, your soul was stirred and your heart blessed. You went away praising the Lord for giving such gifts to His people, and thanking Him that through the explanation of His Word your perplexity was removed. You were listening to the teacher in the first case, and in the second to the pastor. One had the word of knowledge and the other the word of wisdom. What is wisdom? It is knowledge applied to meeting a distinct and definite case.
Look at verse Eph_4:12. Why did Christ give apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers? “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” The punctuation in the King James version of this verse would lead us to assume that the purpose was threefold-the perfecting of the saints, the work of the ministry, and the edifying of the body of Christ. And to what would that conclusion lead you? That the work of perfecting the saints and the work of the ministry and the edifying of the body belongs entirely to those who have been set apart in a special way as pastors and teachers and evangelists. That is the conclusion many have come to, and people are quite content to depend on the man in the pulpit and say, “Don’t we commission him to do the work of the ministry? Isn’t he to do the work of building up the body of Christ?” But there are no punctuation marks in the original text; they have simply been put there by editors. I am going to take the liberty of removing the commas in verse Eph_4:12. Go back to verse Eph_4:11 - “He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ.” Do you see any difference? It is not that the pastors and teachers are a kind of close corporation whose business it is to do all these things. But when God gifts a man as a preacher or a teacher he is to exercise that gift for the developing of the saints in order that they might do the work of the ministry and thus build up the body of Christ. This is an altogether different thing.
A dear young fellow came to me and said, “Are any of your sermons copyrighted?”
“No, indeed they are not,” I said.
“I am glad to hear it, because I heard you a week ago and went out and preached your sermon at a mission. I wondered whether I had any right to do it.”
I said, “If something gripped your soul that you can pass on to somebody else and make it a blessing to them, I thank God for it. If you get a convert, you will be the father and I will be the grandfather.”
I read in Moody’s life story that years ago he would go on Sunday morning to hear the different preachers of the day, and then in the afternoon and evening he would be out in the missions and on the street corners preaching the sermons he had heard. He would come back and say to one of these ministers, “Doctor, I preached your sermon five times last week, and won about forty souls.” The preacher would look at him in a strange way, for he had probably not seen a soul saved for weeks or months. Our risen Lord gives some the gift of apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and some teachers, but it is in order that all may profit thereby, for all the saints are to carry on the work of the ministry for the building up of the body of Christ. Do not be content to come to the meetings and just be a spiritual sponge. Fill up, and then let the Lord do some squeezing. Give it out to somebody else, and then you will be carrying out the true principle of New Testament ministry.
How long will this go on? “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph_4:13). What does that mean? It means that this work will continue until the entire church will be gathered home to Heaven, and Christ will be fully displayed in every one of us. What is the fullness of Christ? We read in Eph_1:23 : “the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” Christ is the Head in glory, we are the members of His body and constitute His completeness as the one new man. When at last we have gone home to Heaven, our day of toiling over, and we are in all perfection like Himself, then this kind of ministry will be ended. There will be no need for the ministry of the pastor, the teacher, or the evangelist in Heaven, for there we will all praise the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. No one will need to teach others for all will know Him from the least to the greatest.
Manifesting the Truth in Love (Eph_4:14-16)
I never knew until I became the father of children how much is involved in the words that occur in a well-known hymn, “No infant’s changing pleasure / Is like my wandering mind.” How children’s minds jump from one thing to another! How hard it is for them to concentrate! And many of God’s children are just the same. Often when one is trying to explain a truth to believers, he is embarrassed by the questions that are asked showing that his students have not been concentrating and therefore have not grasped the truth. As a result people are never truly established in the faith. It is in order to save us from this thing that God has set in His church those who are responsible to instruct and build up His saints, that they should not be like little children tossed back and forth, like leaves carried about by the wind or, using the figure the apostle had in mind, like little sailboats on the water, blown from their course and tossed by every changing wind.
Christians who are grounded in the truth of God are a blessing. But so many people always seem to be running after some new teaching, never seeming to have any discrimination. Let me give you an absurd case. Years ago as I sat in my office in Oakland there came in through the bookroom a man whose very appearance betokened a heretic. He was tall and gaunt, had long flowing hair coming down over his shoulders, and a long unkempt beard. He came up to where I sat writing. I did not want to be interrupted, for I felt that he was going to waste my time with some useless religious argument. He said, “I gather, sir, from the books I have seen in the window that you are a truth-seeker, and I thought I would come in and have a chat with you.”
“You are mistaken,” I said; “I am not a truth-seeker at all.”
“Oh, you aren’t? May I ask why you are not?”
“Why, because, sir, I have found Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and therefore my seeking is at an end. Once I was a truth-seeker, but now I am a truth-finder, for I know Christ.”
“Well, but are there not many things that you still need to know?”
“Oh, yes; there are a great many things that I need to know, but I have found the great Teacher, and I am not going around seeking truth any longer. He instructs me through His Word.”
“Well, as for me, I am always seeking; I go anywhere and everywhere that I think I can learn more.”
“Yes,” I said, “I was reading of you in my Bible the other day.”
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say about me?”
“It said, ‘Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth’“ (2Ti_3:7).
“Why, that has no reference to me,” he said.
“Pardon me, but you said that you are always seeking and if a man is always seeking, he is never finding. But, you see, those of us who know Christ have found the Truth.”
Then he began to tell me some of his weird gospel.
What a lot of folks there are like him in some degree, just running from one thing to another and never getting anywhere. The apostle said, “Hold fast the form of sound words” (2Ti_1:13), and you get sound words in the Book of God and nowhere else.
In our text we read, “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Eph_4:14). This verse speaks of men who have selfish purposes to serve, and want to make disciples in order to profit from them. When men come to you with strange and new ideas, ask for a “Thus saith the Lord.” Ask them to give chapter and verse in the Bible for the strange doctrines they bring you. If Christians would only do this, they would not be running after these modern religious fads. God’s own Word has stood the test of nineteen hundred years, and you can depend on it. You can live on it and as you feed on the precious truth revealed in its pages you will grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
But now, although we want to insist on a good confession, we need to also insist on a godly, Spirit-filled life. So in verse Eph_4:15 we read, “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” It is an important thing to stand for the fundamentals, but as we seek to bear witness to the great fundamental truths, let us never forget that the greatest fundamental of all is love.
Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing (1Co_13:2-3).
It is a very interesting fact that in the original text there is only one Greek word for the three English words, speaking the truth. In the original it is a present participle formed from the word truth, and if we turn it into literal English we would have to translate it in a rather awkward way-“truthing”-“But truthing in love.” Perhaps a better rendering than “speaking the truth in love,” and more suited to our ears, would be “manifesting the truth in love.” In other words, it is not just the testimony of the lips, declaring that certain things are divine truth, but it is the life displaying the truth. I have heard people say of certain ones, “Yes, yes; he seems to say all the right things, but I don’t see much evidence of divine love in his life.” And then I have heard people sometimes bear witness of others in this way: “I believe what Mr. so-and-so says because he lives it out from day to day.”
A young man was asked the question, “What have you found to be the best translation of the New Testament?” Without a moment’s hesitation he answered, “My mother’s.” His friends said, “Your mother’s? I didn’t know she was a scholar. Did she translate the New Testament?” The young man quickly replied, “My mother was not a scholar, she could not read a word of Greek, but she translated the New Testament into her beautiful life, and that made more of an impression on me than anything else I have ever known.” That is what you and I are called to do, to manifest the truth in our lives.
We are ever to be “truthing in love.” The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and we are to reveal this love in all our dealings with others. Even, “When truth compels us to contend, / What love with all our strife should blend.” The Christian is never entitled to act in an un-Christlike way, no matter what the provocation. As we thus live in the power of the truth of God and are dominated by the love of Christ, we are growing up into Him, daily becoming more like Himself. Are people seeing more of Christ in you from day to day?
I remember years ago a young preacher came to the city of Toronto, where I was born and where I lived until I was ten years old. Though I was only about eight years old at the time, I recall being taken by my mother to hear this preacher, for she insisted that I must go and hear the gospel every Sunday night. She used to say, “It is far more important that my children hear the gospel than that they have sleep, or anything else. They must know Christ from childhood up.” Of course in Canada our gospel meeting used to begin at 6:30 in the evening, and children could attend and still be home and in bed in good time. Before I was ten years old I got to be quite a “sermon taster,” as the Scots used to say. I loved to come home and get on a chair and imitate the preachers, trying to give the intonations of their deep Scottish voices or those from Northern Ireland, for all the preachers I heard in those days had the old country brogue.
This one particular evening I listened to a young Irish preacher-a fine, tall, handsome young man. A little group came home with us after the meeting to spend an hour or so in singing around the old-fashioned cabinet organ. Someone asked the question, “How did you like the young preacher from Ireland?” One replied, “It did me good to hear the old tongue again. It was just grand.” Another said, “I thought he had a wonderful delivery; you could hear him so plainly.” Another, “He seemed to me to be most eloquent.” Another, “How well he knew his Bible. He opened up the truth in a beautiful way.” A lady sitting quietly was asked, “And what did you think of him?” “Well, you know,” she replied, “there was something about his behavior that appealed to me. He seemed the most like Jesus of any preacher I have ever listened to.” How we all might wish to have that kind of recognition-to be like Jesus. Some of us, as we try to preach His Word, are made very conscious of the fact that we are so unlike Him. There is so much about us that would never have been seen in Him. Never a night goes by but that we have to bow our knees before God and acknowledge our shortcomings. But as we walk with Him, as we seek to “truth” in love, we grow up into Him, and so we become more like Him as the days go by.
It is a beautiful thing to grow old gracefully, to exhibit more of Jesus from day to day. Our blessed Head is the One from whom we draw all our supplies for spiritual upbuilding. We read, “From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (Eph_4:16). Paul used the figure of the human body, and every part, every separate organ, every joint and sinew, every gland, working together for the growth of the whole body. That is the ideal picture of the Christian church and of Christian fellowship.
Have you ever read “Hebich’s Tub”? It tells the story of a quaint Dutch preacher in the East Indies. Many years ago he was conducting religious services for a group of British army officers. He was characterized by a shrewd, keen humor and taught the truth by using the most amazing illustrations. He happened to know that there were certain little dissensions among the group, and so on one occasion he took for his text, “That which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part.” He looked at his audience, and then with his eyes half-shut, using the illustration of a barrel, he said, “Did you effer see a tob? What iss it that makes a good tob? If you haff a good bottom to it, iss that a tob? No. If you haff a good side, iss that a tob? No. If you haff good hoops around it, iss that a good tob? No. But if you haff good boards for the bottom and fitly choined together, and then the good boards for the sides all fitly choined together, and then the good hoops and all of these things fitly choined together, you haff a tob. And it is the same with the Christian church. You haff got to haff every believer in his place, and all fitly choined together by the power of the Holy Spirit. You may haff choined the boards together, but if there iss a little pebble in between two of the staves, you do not haff a tob that will hold water. If the staves haff shrunk and drawn apart, it is useless. And if I am a Christian and haff some selfishness in me, if through selfishness or envy I do not haff real Christian fellowship, or if little things come in, I am useless. If the Colonel’s lady has some unkind feeling toward the Major’s lady and they come to church and join in prayer and in singing hymns and listen to the sermon, yet they are not fitly choined together, you don’t have real Christian fellowship.” How many little things there are that come in to hinder and keep believers from functioning as they ought!
“Fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth.” You have to contribute your share and I have to contribute mine, all for the good of the whole. And then what is the result? “According to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” May God give every one of us a deeper sense of our individual responsibility to live the truth in love for the blessing of all.
The Walk of the New Man (Eph_4:17-24)
“This I say therefore”-we may well ask, “Wherefore?” In view of all that Paul had written in the earlier part of this Epistle, he admonished his readers, “henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk.” Since, as Christians we have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy, and have been redeemed through His blood, and have been made members of His body, led by the Spirit, united to a risen Christ in glory, our lives are to be different from those around us. Christians are people called out from the world. A very common saying is, “When in Rome, do as the Romans,” but that does not apply to the Christian. No matter where you find him, he is to walk as a heavenly man, as one whose interests are really in another world, as a stranger and a foreigner to this world. He is called to refrain from everything that would in any way tarnish his pilgrim character.
“Walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.” The word translated “vanity” here does not mean what it does ordinarily-that is, “pride.” The original word rather means something like a mirage, an illusion, that which is imagined but not actually true. Unsaved men have illusions of the minds, they see mirages of all kinds and imagine them to be real, but they are not. They believe all sorts of theories, intellectual ideas, and such like, and would even judge God’s Word by their theories instead of judging their theories by the test of God’s Word. These poor Christless men, whatever their talents, culture, or education, have never been born of God, therefore their understanding is darkened, and they are incapable of understanding divine things. The Christian ought to be aware of this danger, and not walk in the delusions of the fleshly mind.
“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God” (1Co_2:14). I wish our Christian young people would realize that. Many of them who are attending our colleges and universities are placed under the instruction of brilliant but unconverted professors who use their position to undermine faith in the Word of God. I wish these Christian young men and women could realize that the natural man, no matter what his intellectual qualifications, does not understand the things of God; they are foolishness to him because they are spiritually discerned (1Co_2:14). Without a new life and a new nature there can be no real comprehension of divine things, and so the greatest of this world’s scholars is an ignoramus when it comes to the things of God, until he has been regenerated.
Paul described the Gentile world of his day: “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph_4:18). In other words, they have no divine life. Some say there is a divine spark in every man, but that is not true. “He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Until Christ is received by faith, until people have accepted Him as their own Savior and Lord, there is no life whatever except, of course, this material, natural life. Paul continued his description, “Being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them.” They are wise in the things of this world, but utterly ignorant in the things of God “because of the blindness of their heart.” The word blindness is better translated “hardness,” and yet that does not give the thought sufficiently. It means a heart that is under the influence of an anesthetic. A person may be alive and quivering with pain, but when he is put under the influence of an anesthetic he is not awake to his true condition. Men and women have come under the influence of the awful deadening power of sin and their hearts are hardened. They are blinded, and they do not understand their own condition, the condition of their country, or of the world around them. Sin has a terrible, hardening, blinding, deadening, effect on people.
Notice the awfully graphic picture of the ancient world and the world today. “Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Eph_4:19). “Being past feeling,” might be translated, “being beyond pain.” Do you remember how pained you were the first time you committed some sin that pricked your conscience? The hour of temptation came, and you hesitated and said, “Shall I commit this sin or not?” Conscience was roused and you did not see how you could go on and indulge in that evil, unholy thing. But perhaps lured on by godless friends who mocked your conscientious scruples, you said, “Oh, I’ll try anything once,” and you took the fatal step-you committed that sin and polluted your soul by it. But you remember the pain that came afterward, you remember as you walked home, or possibly it was in your own home, you could not bear the thought of facing those nearest and dearest to you. Perhaps you were not so much concerned about the fact that God had seen you, but you were concerned about what others might think of you. The temptation came a second time and again you plunged into the sin, more recklessly this time, and afterward the pain was less. And so on and on and on, and now you continue in that sin, in that evil course, and there is scarcely ever the least evidence of a sensitive conscience. We read of people whose conscience is seared as with a hot iron. In Eph_4:19 we have the description of an unsaved man going contrary to every divine direction until he is beyond pain. That is what sin does for people. Oh, what a mercy when the Spirit of God comes in and awakens one to see something of the terribleness of his sin in the sight of a holy God. Then the Spirit leads the repentant sinner to Christ, and out of the depths of an anguished heart he cries, “What must I do to be saved? God be merciful to me, the sinner.” There had been such crises in the lives of these Ephesians. Many of us have known what this means, and now these words of instruction come to us, as to them, regarding the manner of life that should characterize us.
We are not to be as we once were and as those still are who, having lost their sensitivity to pain, have given themselves over to lustful desires and all kinds of unholy thoughts resulting in unclean works. What a mercy that this is in the past for many of us. Am I speaking to anyone who is still living in these things? Does your heart sometimes cry out with a desire for purity, for holiness, for goodness? Do you sometimes say:
Tell me what to do to be pure
In the sight of all-seeing eyes.
Tell me, is there no thorough cure,
No escape from the sins I despise?
Will the Savior only pass by,
Only show me how faulty I’ve been?
Will He not attend to my cry?
May I not this moment be clean?
Oh yes; there is cleansing for you. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isa_1:18). God has made His invitation so clear. The heart of the sinner may be made pure. There is a possibility that the dark red stains of sin may all be washed away, for it is written, “The blood of Jesus Christ [God’s] Son cleanseth us from all sin.” And one cleansed by the blood should be characterized by an altogether different life from that which is common to the unsaved.
The apostle continued, “But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph_4:20-21). I want you to notice particularly the way he used the divine titles. We know that Jesus is Christ and Christ is Jesus. We do not for one moment consent to the wretched theory that a good many hold today, popularized by Christian Science, which tries to draw a distinction between Jesus and Christ. According to that system, Jesus was simply a man, the natural born son of Mary, but Christ was a divine Spirit that came and took possession of Jesus at His baptism in the Jordan. That is an old gnostic heresy condemned by every right-minded Christian. Jesus is the Christ. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” But although that is true, this is also true-Jesus was His human name here on earth; He never had that name until He came to earth. Scripture says, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins” (Mat_1:21). But He was Christ from all eternity. In the eighth chapter of Proverbs, wisdom is personified, and we read, “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was” (Eph_4:22-23). The Hebrew term set up is the same word for anointed: “I was the anointed One from everlasting.” When Christ was baptized in the Jordan, the Spirit of God descended on Him confirming that He was the anointed One, the Christ from eternity. And when God raised Him from the dead, we read He made that same Jesus to be both Lord and Christ (Act_2:36). He is the Anointed now as the risen and glorified One.
Paul was thinking of Christ as the risen One, sitting at the right hand of God, and we learn of Him as we take time to truly look at Him. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2Co_3:18). But what does Paul mean by “the truth is in Jesus”? He means that when He was on earth as the lowly man called Jesus He was the demonstration of the truth. That is why He could say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Suppose I want to know the truth about what God expects from man, where do I find it? In Adam? Oh, no. In Adam I see a man who listened to his wife, after she listened to the devil, and did what she told him to do. Adam was a man without a backbone, a man utterly untrustworthy. As we review human history, we see that all humanity is just a reproduction of that first man. But if I want the truth concerning man and his relationship with God, I find that it is written, “There is…one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” As we read God’s Word and notice Christ’s attitude and behavior when He was on earth, we see all that man should be for God. He is the full standard of humanity.
If I want to know the truth about God, where do I find it? Do I go to the universities of this world? No; they do not know anything about God. They cannot tell me anything about Him. But where shall I go? To the moderni