Ephesians - Lesson 22

We now turn to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1, through chapter 6, verse 17. I'm keeping that, those chapters together as one section in which Paul basically says, live godly lives as followers of Christ in the world and in the family and prepare yourselves for spiritual battle with Satan. We come really to the section where Paul gives the Ephesians a series of exhortations to walk and step with the gospel.

We'll walk through this section piece by piece, but let me just quickly highlight the different sections in which he articulates this. Chapter 4, verses 1 through 16, he talks about unity in the spirit. In chapter 4, verses 17 through 32, he commands them not to walk as Gentiles walk.

Chapter 5, verses 1 through 21, he exhorts them to be imitators of God. And then in chapter 5, verses 22 through 33, he exhorts wives to submit to their husbands and husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church. In chapter 6, verses 1 through 3, he commands children to obey their parents.

In chapter 6, verse 4, he commands fathers not to provoke their children to anger. And then in chapter 6, verses 5 through 8, he turns to slaves and masters. He exhorts slaves to obey their masters.

In verse 9, he exhorts masters to treat slaves with love and respect. In this context, he seems to be addressing Christian slaves and Christian masters. We'll talk more about this dynamic and what is happening here, but for now, just know he exhorts Christian slaves to obey their Christian masters and Christian masters to treat their Christian slaves with love and respect.

And then in chapter 6, verses 10 through 17, he commands them to put on the full armor of God. Now, in my view, basically, each of these chapters to which I just referred, Paul says the same thing in different ways. He's repeating himself over and over again to emphasize living a godly life, living in obedience to the gospel.

So, let's walk through chapter 4, 1 and following. He begins by saying, I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling to which you have been called. Now, I'll stop there and remind you what I said in a previous lecture about the word therefore.

As the old preacher said, when you hear the word therefore, ask yourself, why is it therefore? Remember, he has just finished arguing in chapters 2 and 3, we were dead in trespasses and sins, but God made us alive together with Christ. And that Jews and Gentiles now and Christ Jesus share in these same spiritual blessings, and God himself is dwelling in us, his body, as Gentile followers of Christ and Jewish followers of Christ. We're one people of God, not the same, but we're one, unified in Christ, and the Spirit lives in us, and we are a temple in whom God himself dwells by the Spirit.

Therefore, because God has done this great work in our lives through the cross of Jesus, he exhorts us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. I was born in the late 1970s, and I grew up at a time where the band and the rap group, the band Aerosmith and the rap group Run DMC were popular groups, and they came together one time, and they performed this song called Walk This Way. I will not sing the song because I can't sing, but Paul is exhorting them how to walk, walk this way, talk this way, live this way.

He wants them to conduct themselves in a manner of life that is worthy of this divine calling. Now, I'm going to press into this word walk once again, because what it reminds us about the Christian faith is it's not simply a faith where we check the right theological boxes. Certainly doctrine is important, but there are people who believe the right facts who do not love God.

I'll give you one example. Demons in the Gospels, when they encountered Jesus, they identified him as the Son of God, but they did not love God. The devil, even though he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he knows Jesus is the Son of God.

He knows Jesus died and resurrected from the dead. He believes those things as historical facts, but he doesn't love God. He's going to perish.

He's been dethroned. We have to remind ourselves as followers of Christ that the Christian life is a life that demands us to live the right way, but moreover, the Christian Gospel is a Gospel that transforms us so that we will live the right way. Remember chapter 1, Paul says, God chose us in love.

He predestined us unto adoption so that we would be holy and blameless. He wants us to live wholly devoted to the Lord, walk in a godly way. God himself in Christ by the Spirit, by election, by the blood of Jesus, he has set us apart to walk a path of righteousness.

Jesus himself teaches this way in the Sermon on the Mount when he says we should walk the narrow and difficult path that leads to life, a path that demands that we love our enemies, that we love one another. So Paul exhorts them because of this work of God in Christ, you walk this way. Notice the word walk here.

It popped up in chapter 2. Remember that in chapter 2, verse 2, back there with me for a moment. In chapter 2, verse 2, he's contrasting how to walk now versus how they once walked. In chapter 2, these Gentiles, they were, verse 1, dead in trespasses and sins and verse 2, in those sins, they once walked according to the course of this world, following the Prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

They lived their lives, in other words, in rebellion against God because they had no spiritual life. Dead people don't obey God, spiritually dead people. But in chapter 4, verse 1, Paul says because God has rescued us from death to life, he urges us.

This is not a suggestion here. This is a command. Even though the verb is not in an imperative form, it is a imperatival notion.

If you have this mindset as a believer, it's the wrong mindset. If you think that God's sovereign election of you gives you the freedom to live any way you want contrary to the gospel, you do not understand the gospel. God's sovereign election of me, God's supernatural work in me does not give me permission to live any way I want.

Quite the contrary, it gives me and you divine enablement to live in a manner worthy of our calling. Remember, he's not saying, hear this, he's not saying, here's some bootstrap religion for you. He's not commanding us to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

That's why the word therefore is therefore. It's because God has done something. God's made us alive.

God's resurrected us from the dead. He's created in us, planted his spirit within us. He's done Ezekiel 36 and 37.

And so now guess what? We have the supernatural ability by the power of the spirit in Christ to do what God demands. Of course, we don't do it perfectly, but we do it faithfully by the power of the spirit. That's one of the differences, by the way, with the law of Moses.

In the Mosaic covenant, the law promised life in the land if the people obeyed it. Leviticus 18, 5. But the law was written on external tablets of stone. It didn't do anything to the heart unless the spirit worked.

This is why Paul says, or excuse me, why Moses says that the Lord had to circumcise their hearts. And this is why Paul says in places like 2 Corinthians, as well as Romans 2, that the spirit must take root in the heart. Circumcision of the heart, Romans 2. And in 2 Corinthians, he talks about a veil being on the face until one turns to the Lord and the spirit takes over and awakens the heart.

And where the spirit of the Lord is, Paul says, there is freedom. There is liberty in Christ Jesus. That liberty, that freedom that was promised in the law becomes a reality because the spirit has broken in.

Therefore, we can and here, Paul says, we must walk differently. Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. This calling, as I said earlier, is an effectual calling.

It's linked to what God did in chapter two when he raised us from the dead. It's not this general call that you can reject. It's the transformation of the heart.

So he's commanding us to walk in a manner worthy of that calling. We have been called. We have been resurrected from the dead.

We've been regenerate. We've been effectually called. So live like that.

Peter puts it this way. Be what you are. I am a committed UK fan.

I proudly wear my big blue nation shirt. Even though, even though I live in Louisville, Kentucky and I go to a lot of U of O games, it is really hard for me because I'm a UK fan to cheer for the Cardinals because I'm being what I am. I'm a UK fan.

I've come to the place in my life where I'm actually happy when the Cardinals win, as long as they're not playing UK. But the point that I'm making here is, is that we ought to be what we are. Here, Paul says, you are called.

So live like that. Now, he not only tells us to walk a certain way, but he gives us guidance as to what that walk will look like. Now, when he's talking about the walking here, it's a pattern of life.

It's a way of life. The Christian life is a way of life, a way of living and moving and being in the world. Of course, believing the right things about God, we got to do that.

But it's about more than simply cognitive affirmation. It's about living in a way that reflects that we have faith in what we say we believe. So he's going to give you some examples as to how to walk.

He says, walk, verse two, with all humility. There in verse two, where humility is a word that doesn't mean we have a passive personality. You know, people with passive personalities, they can be arrogant as well, not very humble.

And people who have, who are more extrovert can be humble. So this is not a personality thing. Arrogance, which is the opposite of humility, can manifest itself in a variety of ways.

It can manifest itself by means of self-exaltation. It can manifest itself by means of false humility, acting like we're lower than we really are, even though we think highly of ourselves. But it could also manifest itself by trusting in ourselves as opposed to trusting in God.

Perhaps it could also manifest itself by means of not, by means of us not receiving, receiving help from the Lord and the people of God when we need it, trying to live the Christian life by ourselves. So when he exhorts us to be humble, he's exhorting us to trust in God and to live in a way where our boast is in the Lord. Perhaps Jeremiah 9 is helpful here when he says, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the wealthy man boast in his riches, but let he who boast, boast in the Lord.

So walk in a humble way. What's the perfect example of that? Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to hold on to, or maybe perhaps better as something to exploit for his own gain. But he emptied himself, taking on the form of a bond servant, coming in likeness of mankind and being found in appearance as a human being.

He humbled himself to the point of obedience, even unto death on the cross. And what does he do when he's on that cross? He says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. He says, as Peter says, or rather, he doesn't return insult for insult, reproach for reproach, but he entrusted himself to God, who is able to judge righteously.

That's humility. So Paul is exhorting us to walk with all humility and gentleness. It's where gentleness could be a way of talking about meekness, talking about acting in a way that is humble, kind.

And then verse two, with patience. Patience not only in terms of patience with people, that's part of it, because later he's going to talk about the importance of being, pursuing unity. And then he's going to talk about the importance of loving one another, but patience also in terms of trusting God, waiting on God, not trying to take things into our own hands, right? Not trying to go at it alone.

That's hard. It's hard, especially if you were raised with the mindset of the need to work hard, which is a good thing. It was drilled into my brain at a young age.

You work hard. You don't make any excuses. If there are challenges or there will be challenges and disadvantages, there will be struggles, but you never use those challenges or struggles or any form of discrimination as excuses to be lazy or to fail.

It's drilled into my brain. You work hard. Sometimes that mentality can follow you into the Christian life and you think the Christian life is about just working really hard.

Now, of course, again, I want to work hard as a Christian. I want to work hard to wake up and read my Bible and to keep my languages up, Greek and Hebrew. I want to work hard to make sure I'm being faithful in prayer, so on and so forth.

But we can end up making our disciplines, frankly, a basis upon which we think we're going to be right with God. And so when we talk about patience, it's also patience that shows itself by waiting for the Lord. Yes, acting responsibly, but entrusting things to him, being patient.

And then look at verse two. I think the patience here emphasizes patience with each other, but I think the patience with the Lord is important as well. But verse two, bearing with one another in love.

How do you show patience towards someone? By enduring them in love. We all know there are just certain types of people with certain types of personality that annoy us. I know I annoy people.

I know that. People never tell me that, but I know my personality annoys people. I'm an introvert for the most part.

I love being in my space and doing my thing, but I can get really passionate about things that I think that are right, and I can sometimes be the kind of person that is not very patient with people with whom I might disagree. It doesn't have to be about theology. It can be about basketball or what movie to watch or where to go on a vacation or what to have for dinner or so on and so forth.

And when you're dealing with Christian people, remember, this is in the context of Christian community. You can't love one another unless you're with one another. He's assuming collective interaction here.

When you get together with fellow believers in the context of the church, conflict is inevitable. Relationships are dysfunctional even in the church, maybe especially in the church, and so the exhortation is not some abstract. Remember, Paul was a missionary, a church planner, not some abstract discourse he's giving.

It is on the ground, theology being developed, the context of Christian ministry, and he's exhorting them to bear with one another and love, be patient with one another, and notice how they all link together really. Walk this way. Walk with humility.

Walk with gentleness. Walk with patience. Bury one another in love.

I'm assuming he's saying walk this way with gentleness, with patience, with each other, and he gives us this final thing in verse 2 as the climax of the previous series of things. We do these things in love. Love doesn't mean you are going to feel, I don't think, positive affections toward people all the time.

I recognize there are emotional things that are connected to love. I get that. As I've said before, I love college basketball, Kentucky especially, but I walk into the greatest college basketball arena in the world, namely Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky.

When I walk in there, I move to emotion because I think of my childhood growing up in eastern Kentucky in Appalachia, listening to games on the radio with my granddad, going to my first UK game with my uncle, experiencing the joy of national championship as a teenager, watching them win the championship. There's all this Kentucky history that's a part of my DNA. When I walk into that arena, I'm overwhelmed with all these memories, and I move to emotion because I love watching them.

Love certainly has certain things that can stir up emotions, but love is an action. If I didn't love Kentucky basketball, I would not pay the money for the ticket. I wouldn't waste the time to go to the game.

So when he's calling us to bear with one another in love, he's calling us to act appropriately to each other in the context of Christian community. He doesn't mean that we need to have lunch with everybody. He means in the context of the church as we do life with each other, as the people of God bear with each other in love.

People will irritate you. You will irritate people, and so will I. We need patience, however, and gentleness and humility. Not everything needs the sword.

Not every disagreement should require us to bang the table with passion. In verse 3, hastening to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. So he's exhorting us to walk this way with all humility, endure one another in love, and also to hasten, be eager.

That's what he means by hasten, to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The unity that comes from the Spirit is crucial that we realize he's not saying we create unity. He's not saying go create unity.

He says you hasten, be eager to keep it, to maintain it because it's unity that we don't create. It's unity that we receive by the Spirit. In other words, here's some good news.

Our ability to be unified with those from different tongues, tribes, peoples, and nations, and with those who are different from us, with those who might irritate us, our ability to still figure out a way as the people of God in the context of the church to pursue unity is anchored in what God has done for us in Jesus, and it's fulfilled in our hearts by the indwelling presence and power of the Spirit. Peace and patience and love are fruit of the Spirit. So notice he says, be eager to keep the unity that comes from the Spirit.

The Spirit gives unity. So if we find ourselves in our churches, in spaces where we need unity, pray that the Spirit to give it. Now again, I recognize there are times when we must leave churches to go to other churches because there is such strong disunity and reconciliation, though it's ideal, it's not always possible.

Let's just be honest about that. There are times in our lives where the pain is so deep and we've been hurt so badly that the way in which we can pursue unity in the Spirit and the bond of peace is separating ourself, separating ourself from a space where we might be inclined to promote disunity because of how we've been hurt. And it takes wisdom and prayer to discern when and if it's time to leave one congregation and go to the next.

But Paul is assuming here, I think, that the kind of unity he's exhorting them to maintain is the kind of unity that the Spirit creates. And then he's going to really give you, I think, a reason why. He doesn't give us a for or because in the text to help us show that he's supporting what he's saying, but he seems at the contextual level to give us the pattern of what unity looks like.

In other words, the exhortation to pursue unity is not something that we can create or achieve on our own. It's something that's modeled after the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit. So what he's calling us to pursue, it already exists in the eternal Trinitarian nature of God.

So he starts by saying, verse 4, there's one body. I think he refers to the body of Christ, given how he's used the word body in chapter 1 and how he used it at the end of chapter 2. It probably means one body of Christ, and if that's right, I think he's talking not about the localized churches here, but he's talking about the church universal one body of Christ. Of course, the one body of Christ is represented by all the different local assemblies scattered throughout the world, but even though we're different local assemblies, we're a part of one body would be the idea.

And there's one Spirit, one Holy Spirit. He's not talking about the human Spirit. He's mentioned Spirit numerous times, and it's been the Holy Spirit every time except the one time in chapter 2 when he talks about the Spirit of the anti-God power working in the sons of disobedience.

Every other time, it's been the Holy Spirit. So there's one body. There's one Spirit.

There's not a Jewish Holy Spirit and a Gentile Holy Spirit. There's not a black Holy Spirit, a white Holy Spirit, Hispanic Holy Spirit, American Holy Spirit. Pick an ethnicity, pick whatever.

There's one Spirit just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. So there's one effectual calling that we receive. God doesn't effectually call Gentiles one way, chapter 2, and then Jews another way, that he raises us from death to life by the Spirit through the gospel.

And then he's going to focus on other aspects of one. And so notice he's mentioned one Spirit, that's the Holy Spirit, verse 5, one Lord, that's Jesus. And we know that's Jesus because in verse 6, he calls God Father.

That's what he typically does in this letter and elsewhere. When he calls Jesus God, he uses the term Lord, kurios. When he's referring to the Father as God, he uses the word theos, typically.

So there's one Spirit. There's one Lord. There's one faith.

I think he's using the word faith here confessionally. There's one Christian faith. There's one confession of faith.

What's that confession? Jesus is Lord. God raised him from the dead. There's one baptism.

I take that to be water baptism. He doesn't mention baptism by the Spirit in Ephesians. There's one God.

So notice the Trinity, Spirit, verse 5, Lord Jesus, verse 6, God the Father. So there's this Trinitarian unity. One God and Father over all or of all, excuse me, who is over all and through all and in all.

He's comprehensively sovereign over all things. So then just taking it back to the exhortation to walk this way. To walk in a manner worthy of your calling means you walk in a way that demonstrates you have been raised from death to life.

That's what it means. Let me just say a practical word here about this. I really want to be practical in these chapters because Paul is especially practical here.

Everything I've said about the previous chapters is practical as well, but especially here when he's talking about how to live the Christian life, how to live out the gospel. Practically, we do not as Christians perfectly obey God. We all fall short in many ways.

And even as we're seeking God through prayer, through devotions, through church attendance and involvement, and seeking to be a faithful steward of the gifts and callings God has given to us, we find ourselves even doing all those things, struggling with various types of things like impatience or lacking love or lacking joy. So we all have these experiences as Christians where we never do any of these things perfectly. And there are times in our lives where we might ebb and flow on our ability to walk in the way he's encouraging us to walk.

By which I mean, maybe there are moments in my life because of the season of life where I am a bit more patient than at other times or more impatient. You know, stress, fatigue, the challenges of life, the challenges if you're a pastor or in ministry, the challenges of ministry, the challenges of work, if you're not a pastor, any form of work, being a parent, being a spouse, relationship, life in general can impact positively or negatively how well we're doing walking in a manner worthy of our calling. And so we need then to remind ourselves that this is a pattern of life to which he's calling us to walk.

He's not saying, now you can walk this way on Monday, but Tuesday you can just let it all hang out and do whatever you want to do. And who cares about it? He's saying, no, there will be moments in your life where the walk is going to be a little bit easier, but there will be moments in our lives where it's going to be hard. But the point is that the expectation is we need to be walking.

So if it's hard, we need to fight for God to help us walk faithfully, perhaps more than we fight than when life is not as hard because God is over all, in all, through all. Amen. And I was going to turn back to talking about the gift.

Paul loves talking about gift, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. I just want to point out to you once again, the repetition, the emphasis that he makes in Ephesians about gift. Here in verse 7, the Greek verb that he uses regarding to be given is one use of gift language.

And then secondly, the noun grace or gift is a second occurrence of gift language. And then in verse 7 as well, he uses another word that means gift. So three times he talks about gift.

The gift was gifted according to the measure of the gift is what he's basically saying, the gift of Christ. Now, question I suppose is, does he mean the gift which is Christ or the gift that comes from Christ? So you notice that there in verse 7, Christ, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. It seems to me while I do think Christ is the gift in one sense here, he seems to be emphasizing gifts that Christ will give.

Because if you read in verse 8, he says, there it is again, therefore, therefore it says, and then he gives you an Old Testament citation. And the Old Testament citation comes from Psalm 68 verse 18. And this is what he cites from that verse or from that Psalm, this verse says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.

So there's multiple things I want to say here about this Psalm. But one thing I want to point out to you here is, is that going back to verse 7, when he talks about the grace was given to each of us, according to the measure of Christ's gift, he is identifying Christ as the gift giver by that statement. Because in verse 8, when he cites Psalm 68 verse 19, he explains it in such a way where he has Christ being the one ascending, and Christ being the one who's giving gifts to men.

And furthermore, if you read on throughout verses 9 and following, he then talks about the gifts that Christ gives to the church for the purpose of building up the church into full maturity. So we'll talk about that more in a moment. The first thing I want us to think about is, is what in the world is he doing with Psalm 68 verse 19? Because if you turn to the Psalm with me, go ahead, please do that.

If you turn to the Psalm with me, the Psalm is a Psalm in which Yahweh is hailed as a conquering king, God is hailed as a conquering king, triumphantly entering into Jerusalem, and receiving gifts from men. And he's ascending, Yahweh that is, himself triumphantly. In the use of Psalm 68 verse 19, Paul switches some words around.

So I'm going to read the translation to you from the ESV, but you should still be able to see what I'm talking about in another translation. So here's what Psalm 68 verse 18 says in the ESV. You ascended on high, that you is referring to God, to the Lord.

You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train. A host of captives here in his train to those whom the Lord is conquering, the enemies of the people of God. And you receive gifts among men.

So in the Psalm, it's the Lord, Yahweh, it's God receiving gifts among men, not giving gifts to men. If you look at what Paul does, just read it again. It says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.

So Paul is basically changing the words around. So I don't want to be too technical here, but it's helpful to know that he's taking the word that means ascend, and instead of the word referring to, the pronoun referring to God or Yahweh in the text, he's making it agree with Christ in the text. So that it's not God ascending or you ascending, excuse me, as the Psalm says in this original context, it is, and you referring to the Yahweh, the Lord, it is Jesus ascends on high.

So I'm just going to translate it that way. Jesus ascends on high, and then again, Paul's use says that he led, and that pronoun, that third singular pronoun is another shift. It is he, that is Jesus, whereas in the original Psalm, it is you, you took captive the captive.

But here it's, you ascended on, he ascended on high, and he took captive the captive. That is the he, he's applying it to Jesus. And then it's not Yahweh receiving gifts, it's Jesus giving gifts to men