Talk 8 - Ephesians 4:1-16

0:00 Let's read together from Ephesians 4. That's where we've got to. This is the last one in this first half of our Ephesians series. We'll be picking it up again in the new year. So let's just enjoy and ask God by his spirit to really point out to us what we need to learn to grow from this. Let's read this together. As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Or you might know it in the way the ESV puts it, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called.

0:34 Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit, to maintain the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There's one body and one spirit. Listen to all the ones in here after hearing about what Al was saying. There's one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says, Paul quoting here from Psalm 68, when he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.

1:20 What does he ascended mean? Except that He also descended to the lower earthly regions. He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people and their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ. From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. As a child, I remember being subject to a repeated variation of a similar little jibe.

2:46 Normally from, you know the type of person this is, you know those grown-up men who talk to kids and think they're funny, but they're really not that funny. And the repeated jibe went something along these lines, ox, son, sure, don't worry, you'll soon grow into those ears. I know you didn't know whether to laugh or not, sure you didn't, you didn't know whether you were allowed to. First service nobody did apart from Suzanne Bennett who laughed very loudly. But yes, and that was a little window into the fact that my head had not quite grown into my ears yet. I'm not sure whether it ever has, but I'm past it now, so don't worry about that. It's very cathartic to share this stuff with you. But the reason I share it is very simple.

3:29 It's a little picture and there's a similar picture, there's similar image here in what Paul is saying. of course, in a much more loving and a much more gracious way, what he's saying here is, what's at the heart of what he's saying? Is that he wants the recipients of his letter, and this is at the very heart then too of what God wants for us as his church, because this is his spirit-breathed word here in Ephesians, that we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ. Or again, as the ASV puts it, there's a couple of places here I think that really helps. We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. Here is the end goal that is God's overall purpose for us, his church, That we, Christ's church, would be a body that fits, that is fitting, that is congruent with the head, with Christ, the head of our body. This isn't about a head that needs to grow into ears. This is about a body that needs to grow into a head.

4:45 And that is where God is taking us as his church. That's the picture that Paul gives here. So let's get into what he says here. There's a lot in this and we can't cover it all. So we're going to jump around the passage a little bit this morning. We're going to structure this just according to three sort of questions. The first, where are these recipients of Paul's letter now? In terms of their spiritual reality, but also then in terms of their spiritual maturity.

5:14 Then where does he want them to get to? We sort of alluded to that already. Where does he want them to get to? This body that fits the head. And then how might they move along the trajectory from A to B? How might they move away from spiritual immaturity growing into maturity together? So let's begin where they are. We already know where they are in terms of their spiritual reality, where they are in terms of their spiritual identity in Christ.

5:46 It's a glorious, glorious identity. We've looked at it time and time again across the last number in these first three chapters. By his grace, they are alive with Christ, no longer dead in their transgressions. By his grace, they are raised with him, seated with him in the heavenly realms. They have been in Christ by his grace, brought out of alienation and division and brought into this new creation of God, this new humanity, this new man of the church, Jew and Gentile together. a place, a people, a community where God, by his grace, has chosen to dwell by his spirit. And that's what we spent our time delving into to try and grasp more of this, praying the prayers that Paul prayed and hope that we grasp more of this. This is their wondrous reality, spiritual reality.

6:40 This is our glorious spiritual identity. This is who we are. This is where we sit, if you like. But the reality is, with Paul's readers, certainly there's a vast incongruence, there's a massive disparity between this fixed spiritual reality, who they truly are in Christ, and then how they are living, how they are walking, how they are relating to one another and to God. They are not, otherwise you wouldn't write this in the first place, they are not living lives worthy of their calling. They're not walking in a manner worthy of their sitting because they remain, they are spiritual infants, children, babies, when it comes to their spiritual maturity. We jump down to verse 14 to see what Paul says about that. He says, then we will no longer be infants.

7:36 Really struck me as I was reading this that he uses again what I was talking about. He uses we, not you. then we will no longer be infants. Let's be honest, if we think about where these new believers, the Ephesians, are in their spiritual maturity, and we think where Paul is, they are at totally different places in the spectrum. But Paul doesn't make this a you and me thing, a them and us thing. They're together in this, he says. He doesn't claim to have finished his journey of maturity, and that connects him with what he talks about Philippians 3, he says this, "Not that I've already obtained all this, "or have arrived at my goal, "but I press on to take hold of that "for which Christ Jesus took hold for me. "Brothers and sisters, "I don't consider myself yet to have taken hold of it."

8:30 I find that really challenging. That Paul doesn't consider himself to be apart from these infants in Christ. That he brings himself together and that that he doesn't think at all that he has made it. But he does tell them, listen, you're spiritual infants. And there's no criticism implied here. After all, they're new or newish believers. So it's okay in that sense for them to be infants. But what Paul doesn't want is that they stay there, is that they remain infants, is that they do not grow up in their faith and immaturity.

9:16 And that's out of love. That's because, and we've talked about this so much, how much he loves them and he knows this, that while they remain as infants, they are in, and he talks about this, they're in grave danger from hostile spiritual forces, whose goal is to do anything possible to thwart God's purposes of them growing up together into their head, Jesus Christ. Look at how Paul characterizes their spiritual immaturity. Infants who are tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming and their lie. Think for a moment about all that we have to do to protect actual babies, actual toddlers and children from danger. You'll know about this if you're a parent or grandparent who's ever had to baby-proof your home. The stair gates and the fire guards, those little plastic things that go into plug sockets so they don't put their fingers in, those little straps on cupboards and fridges so they can't get access to anything that they might put in their mouths. Because to them, everything is potential food, isn't it?

10:40 Whether it's something perfectly safe, I don't know, a little rice cake. Or whether it is the trimmed off raw chicken from last night's dinner that's in the green food caddy in the cupboard. Or whether, even worse, it's the little pink Smarties, or so they think, but it's actually ibuprofen. If it looks good, they're going to put it in their mouths. If it looks good, they're going to eat it. I actually got most of those ideas from my dog because my kids are grown up, but similar sort of idea. We need to keep them safe because they've no idea what is good. They've no idea what is bad, what is healthy, what is deadly.

11:15 If it looks good, it's in their mouth. They're going to eat it. And that's what Paul is getting at here. Spiritual infants have little capacity to discern, to discriminate between teaching that is good or bad that is truth or lies that is edifying or deadly. And so they are in deep danger of, at the very least, consuming teaching that is of no spiritual nutrition whatsoever. So sort of a spiritual diet of like chocolate and crisps of celebrations and Doritos tastes good, but doesn't do anything for nutrition or growth. And then at the very worst, they consume teaching that poisons their faith and leads them away from spiritual life and into spiritual death. In their immaturity, they are far more susceptible to being tossed around on the waves of the next big teacher or the next big author or the next big YouTube sensation, far more concerned with that teacher or leader's charisma and popularity and cultural relevance than the actual truth content and the actual spiritual nutrition of what they are actually saying.

12:38 And then where these teachers are false, I'm not saying that everybody on YouTube is false, I'm not saying that everybody on YouTube is true either, but where they are false, then in their undiscerning way they are being taken away from what Paul talks about here of the knowledge of the Son of God, rather than being taken deeper into it, especially when that false teaching subtly or overtly calls into question the identity of Jesus as the Son of God, the deity of Christ. And so Paul says, that's where you are right now to them. You're infants. And like I said, he's not criticizing them for it. He's basically laying out this reality to them. Know who you are in this sense.

13:33 Because now you know who you are, you know what you've got to do about it. This cannot be a permanent reality. You've got to grow. You've got to take the danger of not growing deadly seriously. You've got to take the call to grow and the opportunity by God's grace that you've been given to grow deadly seriously. And the goal of this growth, as I said at the beginning then, is that they will grow to become in every respect a mature body of him who is the head. That they would grow up. That they would move away from being undiscerning, foolish infants.

14:15 and they would become more steady, more anchored in the truth of the gospel and God's word, become more discerning and wise and able to spot danger for themselves. But it's more than that as well. It's that together that they would be becoming more and more a body that fits the head. Not these spindly little arms and legs and a big head like a sort of four-year-old's drawing of a person, but that they would be filling out and strengthening and growing together. sinews joining together and growing together bones fusing together all of that sort of picture becoming mature and moving towards attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ where the fullness of Christ the head fills the body, the church and then where the church is fulfilling fully its purposes within God's purposes that's where Paul wants them to be going on that trajectory together and it's vital then that we see here and that we're challenged here by Paul's emphasis on maturity's connection with unity because we are so programmed programmed by our world but also programmed within the church I think as well to think about spiritual growth or to think about growing and maturity in purely individualistic terms. That's the way I am definitely wired.

15:45 That's my default. Whenever you say the word spiritual growth to me, I automatically think, to do with my upbringing, I think of spiritual growth somehow equates to having your Bible and your notebook and your pen with you. But it's an individual task. It's an individual pursuit. So when I think of it, I think of me, nobody else anywhere around me. Just me. in a study or in my office upstairs here, or if you want to go to the heights of spiritual growth, you need to find a place that that really works. And this would be the ultimate for me.

16:21 This is a little study area in St. Andrews. It's called Martyrs Kirk. It's an old church turned into a study area. You feel smarter just being in there. But that's what I think of when I think of spiritual growth. It's all about me. It's all about me and my own. Nobody else in sight.

16:41 And that suits me down to the ground, that picture. So it's my personality. I'd be quite happy with that. But it's not the picture that Paul gives here. And now don't mishear me. I don't want you to come to Glen Abbey and go away saying, Chris told us not to read on our own or ever study on our own or pray on our own. That's not what I'm saying. It's important that that's part of the picture, but on its own, it's a deeply, deeply impoverished approach to growing in maturity.

17:10 And in fact, if it is used, as it sometimes is, by people as a means of avoiding everyone else in the church, well then it can easily become a barrier to maturity. See, one person could look at this passage and maybe come to the conclusion that my individual maturity leads towards the unity of the church. And there's an element that that is true. Another could look at it from another angle and say, well, come to the conclusion that the unity of the church then leads to my maturity. And in a sense, that is true as well. But I think what Paul is saying here goes further than that. He seems to be really equating the two. They're almost interchangeable in that sense.

17:56 He's saying growing in unity is growing in maturity and growing in maturity is growing in unity. They are one and the same thing. Again, for this week, I think the ESV captures it slightly better when in verse 13, Paul says this, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood. And the reason I think that captures better is because what Paul is doing here, he's talking about the church in the singular. He's actually saying, until we become, all of us together, become one mature body, one mature man, one mature being in that sense. So if you look at it, when we are spiritually immature, we are infants, plural. But when we are spiritually mature, when we get there, we will be fully one man, singular. So to become more mature is to become less, plural.

19:00 And I don't by that mean uniform and all exactly the same, like we're all clones, but to become less plural and to become more singular. To become more mature is to become less detached and separated and divided from the body and more united, hence the metaphor of a body. That's the reason we get this picture given to us. And then the implications of that for me and my little spiritual growth idea and for anybody else who's the same are clear. I cannot grow in maturity on my own because I cannot grow in unity on my own. It's impossible. There's no maturity without us. There's no maturity without the church.

19:47 So with that in mind then, how does Paul guide his readers here? and how does he guide us to move along the spectrum away from wherever we are in terms of our spiritual infancy and towards maturity and i'm only going to be able to touch on these there's a number of points in this list but hopefully this will prime conversations set up conversations in your groups this week and maybe as i go through them there might just be one that sticks out for you. Go, yeah, I've actually either never thought about that before or I know that and I need reminded of that. Let me just ask God by his spirit to actually point that out to you. So let's run through these in the next 10 minutes or so. We, first of all, grow together in unity and maturity when we focus on what unites us rather than on what divides us. I remember reading headlines like these, whenever Brexit was, 2016, 2017, something around that, of these stories of families falling out and not speaking to each other at all because of their differing views on Brexit.

21:12 And they're tragic stories when you read them. Imagine a seesaw. with this in mind. And all that united a family on one side of that seesaw and then the little pebble of Brexit on this side and yet somehow people would allow that to tip the balance and divide them and fracture them and so on. And I think Paul's got this sort of balancing idea in his head as well when he says to them, be people who look at, who choose to focus on all that unites you, not on the little that divides you. And we find this so hard. Look at this unite side though of the seesaw that Paul gives us from verse four, all these ones, repeating them, building them up.

22:11 There's one body because there is one spirit who indwells you all and makes you one body. And that leads you to the one hope. There's one Lord, one Christ, on whom our faith is centered on and whom we've been baptized into. And then there's one Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. We are all indwelt by the same Spirit. We're all under the Lordship of the same Lord Jesus. And we're all sons and daughters in our diversity of the same father. It's not a unity you have to create, Paul says to them.

22:50 It's already there. It's a unity that you need to be eager to keep, to guard, to protect, to maintain. Focus on the size and the weight of that oneness, not, tragically, what we so often do, even in the church, which is to fixate on this little pebble over here and somehow allow that little pebble to outweigh all the rocks and boulders of the weight of what unites us together. You can talk in your discussions this week about what some of those pebbles might be. I'm sure you'll have no problem listing all sorts of different things, but let's be people who focus on what all unites us rather than divides us. Then secondly, we grow together in unity and maturity when we focus on the Trinitarian nature of God. And Al's already done this in our time of praise.

23:57 'Cause as we focus there, well listen, nothing will save us from falling into the trap of the solo spiritual maturity journey more than doing that than by focusing on the truth that God is Father, Spirit, Son. Three persons in perfect, harmonious, loving relationship, loving community. This triune God, Father, Spirit, Son, is on display all over Ephesians. It's right at the beginning in chapter one, and then Paul can't help himself to continue to talk about Father, Spirit, and Son over and over again throughout the letter. And as we let that seep in and as we focus on the triune God as God is three in one, it's obvious then. If we want to grow in maturity, if we want to grow in Christ-likeness, we can only do so in relationship as he is in relationship. We can only do so in community as he is in community.

25:02 and the level and the depth and the amount that we push into and be part of relationships and community will obviously and clearly have an impact then on how much we grow. Next then, we grow together in unity and maturity when church leaders and teachers do their job, but don't do everybody else's job. Let me explain what I mean by that. Paul quotes here from Psalm 68, 18. And there's a lot more nuance and color in it than this. So if you want to delve into that a wee bit more in your groups, you can. But basically what he's doing here, I think, is that he is seeing from Psalm 68, David's celebration of the journey of the Ark of the Covenant, going from Mount Sinai and being brought ascending to Mount Zion as a picture, as a prefiguration of a much greater ascension, of Christ's ascension to heaven, where he then receives the Holy Spirit and pours out the Holy Spirit on the church. And part of that outpouring is an outpouring of gifts of the Spirit onto each and every believer in the church.

26:15 And we're not going to go into spiritual gifts in great detail. If you want to do that, go back to our series in 1 Corinthians, find chapter 12. We talked a lot about it there. I talked about them a number of years ago when we did a series in Romans 12 called Transformed. You can find out more there as well. But where Paul is focusing on here in this passage is on those specific gifts of people who have been gifted by the Holy Spirit in the area of handling and communicating and teaching and proclaiming God's word. Apostles like him, prophets, evangelists, and shepherd teachers. I think that last one actually is just one role.

26:56 And he says they have been given to the church in this purpose of unity and maturity for a particular reason. And that is to equip his people for service. To equip all the saints for their works of service. I love how one little paraphrase puts it. It says this, their job is to give God's people the equipment they need. Their job is to give God's people the equipment they need from his word. for there, the whole church's, each member of the body's works of service. So if the church is gonna grow in unity, if the church is gonna grow in maturity, it needs faithful, gifted handlers and teachers to fulfill their purpose in feeding the church with the truth of God's word.

27:54 That's what we need to unite around. and then also equipping each member of the church for their own work of service. But they're not meant to do everything. They're meant to focus on this task of equipping and not get in the way of the rest of the church serving. This is this whole thing we talk about all the time. Every member ministry. And a church where a small proportion of the people do all the work and do all the ministry is not a church that is growing in maturity and is not a church that is growing in unity. And sometimes leaders need to get out of the way.

28:35 Because, and this is the next one, we grow together in unity, maturity when every member is actively using their gifts for service. So following on from this, and the reality is this, we will not grow in maturity if we are people who approach church as consumers. We will not grow in maturity as individuals if we are approaching church as consumers. And what Paul is saying here then is we actually reduce the potential growth of the whole body because that's what he's focused on by neglecting the use of our own gifts in the service of others. the unity of the church and the maturity of the church grows through the diversity of the gifts that christ has given us by his spirit we are diverse people with diverse gifts that's the way god has designed it with a unity of purpose we all have our part to play in the body but if we're coming here every week and being equipped or if we're going to home group every week and we're being equipped, but then we're not serving the church with our gifts from the Spirit as Christ has apportioned it by his grace, well, then we're not growing.

30:00 We might be growing in knowledge, absolutely. Great. And that's not a bad thing, but we're not growing in maturity. As with a physical body, you stop and you're passive. That's the enemy of growth. And then lastly, we grow together in unity and maturity when we speak the truth in love to one another. When we speak the truth in love to one another. And this is a crucial responsibility.

30:36 This is a crucial principle. in the church growing together up into the head. But we all know behind a seemingly simple phrase is the most difficult, the most challenging of responsibilities we have for one another in the church. It's not something that we get to learn from the world at all. There's plenty of angry truth out there. but there's not very much speaking the truth in love. And if we're honest, I'm not sure whether there's enough speaking the truth in love inside the church either. And I think there are three ways that we can miss the mark here.

31:27 And those three ways, you can think through which one is your propensity to miss on. It's all to do probably with how we were brought up and our personalities and all that sort of thing. So first of all, we can speak the truth without love. We can speak the truth without love. And some of us, by our nature, are very good at doing that. But the problem with that, of course, is that truth delivered without love generally doesn't land. generally doesn't achieve what it was set out to do. Generally doesn't get past the defenses of a prideful heart or a hard heart.

32:17 Or a broken heart even. The reality is that truth coming from a prideful heart does not break through into another prideful heart. Secondly, we can seek to be loving and in so doing, we can fall into the temptation of twisting the truth a little bit or muddying the truth a little bit or blurring it a little bit. Because we want to appear accepting and we want to appear non-judgmental and we don't want to cause hurt or seem harsh or put strain on the relationship. but even on this side there's that element of pride in there as well and of course is it loving whenever we don't actually come to someone with the truth i don't think so and then the last one and i wonder how many of us feel this one we can just avoid speaking altogether. We just don't do it. It's like the family situation.

33:31 These are the things we don't talk about, that sort of thing. And we're so scared. We're so scared of getting it wrong one way or the other, speaking the truth without love or speaking love without truth, that we just literally cop out completely. And we might say, yeah, that person, yes, that's my friend, yes, or yes, they are my home group, but that's not my responsibility. That's a home group leader's job, or that's an elder's job, or whatever it is. And so all of us are walking around with these specks or logs in our eyes, stunting our growth. At least none of us have hurt feelings, but sure, we're not growing at all because these are in the way, And nobody's helping us take them out. We need to take this responsibility of speaking the truth in love seriously.

34:29 And in my experience, thinking about people who do this well. I'm in a privileged position to know lots of people and see a number of people who do this well. And they are gifts to the church. They are gifts to the church. And they're able and willing to speak the truth in love, not because they're more confident people, not because they're more articulate or even more courageous. No, first, they are people who are humble because they truly know their own identity as sinners saved by grace. And they're always looking for the log in their own eye first before looking for the speck in the other person's. Second, they are people who truly know the worth of the person sitting opposite to them, to Jesus who died on the cross for that person.

35:27 And they see that clearly. Third, I think they're people who are praying consistently and persistently prayers like the Ephesians 3 prayer from last week for themselves, for the Spirit's power to strengthen in them and their inner being, and so that they might know God's love more deeply in them. And then because of and out of that grasp of his love for them, they have this seemingly growing freedom of not needing to be liked, of not needing to be affirmed by others, of not needing to not put somebody's nose out of joint, not in a brash way at all, But in a gentle, humble way, a controlled strength way. Which usually means that even when they communicate the hardest of truths to people, they still come away smelling of roses. They still come away and the people still like them. Because they've known that this has been communicated truth in love. They're spirit-empowered people.

36:38 Captured by Jesus' love and grace for them and captured by God's purpose for the church. They're so shaped by the gospel. They're so shaped by Christ. Thinking of him in Philippians 2, Paul's hymn, of his humility, of his going down, all of this, they're so shaped by that that they're able to do this. And we need so many more of us to be speaking the truth and love into each other's lives if we are to grow, if we are to stop our own individual growth stunting and if we are to stop the growth of the church stunting and allow it to flourish. We need it in each other's lives. Teaching and admonishing one another, not just from up here, but in our relationships. and I think we especially need this for our younger generations in our church we need people willing to draw alongside to build relationships

37:48 and to speak truth and love into lies and into situations where everything else that is being communicated to them are lies of cunningness and deceit if we're going to grow together as his church, we need more of us to be speaking truth and love to one another. I've run out of time, as always. Let me finish here. We started singing this morning, This is Amazing Grace. And God in his amazing grace has blessed us in so many ways. Let's remind ourselves of that. He has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, with all of these boundless riches that are ours.

38:35 He's saved us by grace. He's adopted us by grace. He's brought us into this church and the global church by his grace. He dwells in us by his spirit, by his grace. And then in that same grace, he has given our lives purpose and meaning inside his purposes. and not only that, he has given us the resources by his spirit and by his word and by each other to grow together in love into what he's called us to be. Let's pray that we get captured by that vision for our lives together.

39:24 As we finish, let's pray together. Father, this is our prayer. that we wouldn't go away today and for another seven days live our individual lives. But through your word, by your spirit, you will take what we have heard today, get rid of all the rubbish that I've said, and from your word. pierce our hearts with truth so that we might take our place fulfill our role exercise our gifts speak the truth in love

40:18 focus on what unites us not on what divides us so that we might in the power of your spirit more and more move away from infancy and towards maturity and unity and so that the world might see your beauty displayed in our relationships with one another, in our community and so that then by your grace you might add more and more people to your church for your kingdom, for your glory in your love and in your grace and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.