Ephesians 4:12-16 "Growing Into Mature Christianity"

We have enjoyed a wonderful weekend in fun, fellowship as well as feeding  on the Word of God. Our theme and purpose for the annual Family weekend was simply to continue to  build good,  God glorifying relationships at Eastside, and this not just theoretically, but practically.  

With God’s help and by His grace, I believe that we  have seen our church propelled a little further along this road, which we have been called to travel together to  our heavenly  city.

Our thoughts on improving and developing our interpersonal relationships, rooted in loving unity,  have been  derived  from this fourth chapter of Paul to the Ephesians. Let me briefly remind you what we have seen there.

1.     Verses 1-6   begin with a call   'to walk in a manner worthy'  of our Christian calling.  The key attitudes with which we are to live before God, and with one another, is by way of humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (4:2).  

Our relationships  and our unity with one another are to be  based  on our relationship with the Triune God in  4: 4-6. Him we are called to imitate.  Now it is true  that this  unity is  something that we receive  by way of a gift from  God, but it is  also true  that it is   our duty to maintain this unity  by working  on our  relationships. This unity is precious because it  is rooted in the very nature  and image  of our Tri-une God, who  exists  in the context of an eternal happy  relationship  of God  the  Father, God the  Son and  God the Holy Spirit.   

The  relationship into which we entered when we became God’s children, is now reflected  in the way  in which we live with one another,  one body (the church), one hope, one faith, one baptism, one  God and Father of all…”.   

Our context is that of living in a fallen, broken world. Words like ‘unity’ and ‘relationships’ are therefore challenging words.  We find them difficult to  implement.  But with the help of our God we find grace to do this.

2.     For this reason 4:7-11 tells us about the help which God has given us for our life together. Paul speaks here about the foundational spiritual gifts which the ascended Lord Jesus Christ has given to His church. These foundational spiritual gifts are the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastor- teachers. They are given in order to promote God glorifying relationships in the body of Christ.  The apostles and the prophets  are those  that  were inspired by God the Holy Spirit  to write the Holy Scriptures  for us. 

3.     4: 12-16  then  defines the specific  task  of these foundational gifts, which   is “to equip  the saints  for  the work of the ministry, for building up  the  body of Christ, until we all attain  to the  unity of  the faith  and of the knowledge of the Son if God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the  fullness of Christ.”   Please note that, whilst  the foundational gifts  exist to equip the church,  the ministry of the church  was never given to a ‘professional class’  of people.  The ministry is given to every member of  the church. 

Illustratively then it is interesting that we see a significant number of our people involved in the Sunday morning ministry of our church. I may be well upward of 30 people that participate in serving us in one way or another on a Sunday morning.  The so called  ‘professionals’ (which they are not- most of them are dead anyway, at least the prophets and apostles)  remind us  "how to  be" the church and how  “to do church”, by drawing our attention to the Word of God.  

The  church is built  on  people  equipped by God. People exist in relationships- in a body of people, and if these  relationships do not work, then it is clear that the work of the church is hindered.  The work of God in the church is  hindered  by Satan who easily incites and tempts  members to sin. We see this in the last chapter of  this letter  to the Ephesians,  where the work of Satan, the sworn enemy of the  church, is explained.

4.     In 4: 17-32  we observe  how the  church may be alternatively hindered  and helped  in its life together. Paul  explains  what hinders  the progress of the church, and he teaches us to 'put off' these bad habits, replacing them with good, relationship- affirming and God glorifying habits. The  purpose of the so called  5 fold  foundational gifts is to help  the church  to mature  and grow  up  into Christ, with  each part working properly, making the church  body  to grow and to be built up in love.

It is therefore with this in mind that we return to our focus text  in  verses 12-16. Notice that this text speaks about the  unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God (4:12). It speaks  about  becoming mature by growing in the likeness of our Lord Jesus (4:13). It speaks  about the importance of outgrowing our  childishness (4:14)  through  a loving reflection and communication of the truth as we grow  in the image  of our Lord Jesus Christ (4:15). As we help one another to get to know the Lord Jesus, we are equipped to be the body of Christ, and as  we,  as individual parts of the body work together properly, we experience a true growth in biblical love. (4:16) 

Now we understand that all this happens against the background of living in an imperfect, sin-riddled world.  This is the result of the fall in Genesis 3. The greatest challenges that we face in this world are broken relationships at all levels of society: family, church and state. These broken relationships began immediately after the fall. As we drifted from God, so we drifted from one another. It became even worse than that. Cain killed his brother Abel. We  do not only  drift from one another,  but  we try to get rid of one another.   The Bible  reads just like our newspaper headlines – murder, betrayal, intrigue. 

However, in the midst of this  mess, God  declares His gospel. By the Gospel He is re- building  a people, a body called the church. She is  His treasured possession,  the bride of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  But the church is, as we said, called out of this broken world,  with its poor communication skills and  poor conflict resolution  skills.  

Here in the church we have to learn new attitudes, such as  humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love (4:2). 

Here we have to learn a new way of thinking under God (4:3-6). 

Here we have to be instructed by  God’s Word  in the hands of gifted people (4:7-11) whose duty it is to  communicate  the Word of God as accurately  as possible, so that His church might  be  equipped, built up, unified, mature ... and therefore growing  and  reflecting the image of God in Christ.

The reason why we constantly misunderstand each other, and the reason why there is so much conflict in the world (and sadly, even in the church) is that we are not  rooted in  a lack of common understanding of who  God is, and therefore of  who we are.  This alienation from our  true roots as  God’s created beings, has caused havoc  in the world, and sadly also in the church. 

And why?  

Those  foundational  gifts responsible  for communicating the Word of God accurately, now particularly the pastor- teacher group,   have often  not  taken time and care  to communicate  the apostolic and prophetic Word carefully and prayerfully. This is the Word  given into their hands , which alone is given to heal and mend broken souls.  

Sadly many  of  God’s shepherds  have  become social workers, office managers, administrators, CEO’s and  the like (and all these functions are important in their own right), but  in so doing they have not taken  their calling to dispense  the Word of God  to the flock seriously.  Thus , in the words of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel  “they have healed the wounds of God’s people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no  peace” (Jer. 6:14, Ezek. 13:10).  

And so the flock of God in many cases has  been scattered and divided by the false  teachings  and the communications of spiritual wolves (cf. Acts 20). They have   been left to their own devices, to their own corruptions and their own imaginations, and so their churches  have by and by  crumbled and died. Many  former evangelical buildings  have  been taken over by false religions and cults. The confused  flock is  described in verse 14 : “…tossed to and fro  by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes…”.  

Bad  attitudes, poor communication habits and conflicts  are the results,  and these  are   described  in  4:17-31. 

Now that  all sounds very negative. But, I want to assure you that the purpose of the  entire text is not negative at all. 

The Lord  Jesus is here in Paul's theology and writing.  He is here to help us to rebuild our broken  lives and world  with  His gracious Word, truthful Word, loving Word.  Although there are hard things  here, the text is actually is entirely positive. It is rooted in the redeeming work of our Lord Jesus who came to fix broken sinners,  and to restore broken relationships. Ephesians 2 is a prime example in terms of how Jesus came to fix the broken relationship between  Jew and gentile. 

He is  here to teach us how to relate properly to one another. 

He is here to help us to speak properly to one another, and to help us  to  deal with  our many conflict situations. In ‘learning Christ’ (4:20)   we learn to  put off the old self (4:22) and put on the  new self (4:24). 

If anyone  is  willing  to listen to the Word of God today  - the Word which is the word of the apostles and prophets,   there is great hope. 

I  trust that  our pastoral team  will not be  false shepherds  to you.  We want to be  those  that  equip you, the saints of God,   for the work of  ministry, for building up the body  of Christ, until we all attain the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the  measure of the stature  of the fullness of Christ.

The ultimate goal of all that we  want to be and do  as a church is  to show the glory of our Lord Jesus  Christ  to the world around us.  So, the goal of our unity is not  to make us look good – but to make HIM look good!  But there is a wonderful  spin off in this. WE flourish in our relationships as He flourishes among us!  That is amply clear from our text. As Jesus is exalted in our midst, He gets the glory and we get the joy.  As we  learn to speak  His truth in love  (4:15)  we get the benefit of  being built up in love (4:16). This love is the greatest  testimony  and evangelistic tool the world has seen.  Christ is most clearly communicated and  understood  by the world  when  we,  the church, speak and  live together in visible and loving unity  and relationships: “By this shall all men (i.e.the world) know that you are my disciples, when you have love one for another“. (Jn. 13:35).

CONCLUSION

The key words in our text-  'unity',  'the  knowledge of Christ', 'building up', 'maturity', 'speaking  the truth in love'  … these are the  things , the design of God  that builds  good churches that glorify our  God. 

This weekend we have been reminded  by  the communication of God’s Word that we are  to be a  humble, gentle, patient, loving   people, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace as we  draw or  strength  to be this kind of people,  from our Tri-une God. 

We commit ourselves to sit under the prophetic and apostolic  teaching and preaching of the Word of God by gifted teachers, whose work it is  to equip us for the work of ministry. This ministry is a building ministry. We build! And the tools of our building  are loving communication of the truth, together with a robust  commitment  to  keeping our relationships  intact  so far as it depends upon us.  

In that process God shall have all the glory, and we shall have all  the joy.