10. “Filled With Christ, For the World” (Ephesians 4)

 

Filled With Christ, For the World

Ephesians 4:7-16

 

I want to begin this morning by returning to something really important that Paul said in the middle of Ephesians 2. After Paul makes it abundantly clear that we are saved, not by our own efforts, but by grace, he then goes on to describe the outcome of being saved. “We are God’s workmanship,” Paul goes on to say—that is, we who are believers in Christ have been recreated by the power of the resurrection. He says we who are God’s workmanship are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Which is a fantastic thought when you consider it. God, before we were even born, has prepared for us good, important, meaningful work to do. And having been made alive in Christ, we now have the capacity to do it. By God’s grace, we now have work to do that is part of something bigger, that is truly meaningful, that is truly good.

Paul goes on to develop this further. The good work you and I get to be involved in is work we are to do with each other. It’s the work of the church, where together with other believers we are meant to engage in building the new, global temple of God. We talked about this a few weeks ago: whereas in the Old Testament the temple of God was limited to one location, now wherever there is a community of faith in Christ like this one here, what’s going on is Christ’s temple is being built. It is a divine incursion point of relationship with God, where God in Christ becomes more present and what is broken in this world begins to be repaired. Lives are restored; the world begins to be healed; the glory of God is revealed. You and I have work to do—good work, participating in Christ’s worldwide temple building project.

But what does that even mean? Some of you may have realized about me by now that I like to hang out in the world of ideas, in big picture thinking. And while there may be good parts of that, there can also be a problem. Big picture principles left in the abstract don’t give clear directions for action. And when directions aren’t clear, we can get lost.

There’s a story told by the business writer Steven Covey: A group of soldiers on an island were tasked with cutting a path through the jungle to their base some miles away. Their machetes are out and they’re hacking away moving forward steadily, bit by bit. But at one point one of the team, feeling a little uneasy, climbs up one of the trees. He looks around, and suddenly is filled with alarm. He calls down to the team, “Stop! We’re in the wrong jungle!” And they yell back to him: “Shut up! We’re making good progress!”   

So often that is what happens in churches. Believers know they’re supposed to serve Christ in his church, and so people in a church can become very busy. Churches offer more and more programs, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and people get involved in these programs, because that’s what they’re supposed to do. Attendance numbers seem good, giving numbers seem good, and people feel encouraged, “We’re making good progress!” But often nobody thinks to ask, “Wait, are we actually getting anywhere? Are we even hacking away at the right jungle?” Because all this busyness often happens without a clear sense of the goal, it’s not clear if any of it is truly accomplishing something.

How do we know if we as a church, as Trinity Western Springs, are doing what God intends for us to do in this temple building project? How can we know if the hard work we do—and it oftentimes is hard work—is work that is good, is the work that God prepared beforehand for us to do?

Well, Paul tells us. This morning’s passage provides us with a set of directions to help us with that very question. Or, to use a different metaphor, it offers us a blueprint to help us in our work of temple building. Paul gives us here a detailed picture of what we are building, of what we need to build this, and how we are to go about building it. What we’re building; what we need, how we do it.

What We Are Building

Before we get into the details, I just want to notice something a bit weird about Ephesians. When Paul is talking about us, the church, he likes to mix two metaphors that logically don’t quite fit together: we are a temple being built, and we are also a body that is growing. Maybe you noticed it a few weeks ago when we got to the end of chapter 2 and Paul said to Christians “you are being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone”—this is that temple building imagery we’ve been talking about—”in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” Did you catch that last bit? Now I am not a construction worker, so my experience is limited. But I’ve never known a building to grow into its completed form.

We find the very same mixture here in our passage: in 4:12 Paul speaks about us “building a body,” or again, verse 16 “makes the body grow so that it builds itself.”

The reason for this is because we need both metaphors to really understand the project that we’re a part of. On one hand we are to think of ourselves like those in the Old Testament tasked with the great project of building the temple, working together to establish a house in this world in which God dwells. At the same time, we must not think of it as something inert, built merely with bricks and lumber. What is being formed is something living, something growing, something where we are the building material. And the temple we’re talking about isn’t just some monument—it’s the active presence of Jesus in this world—this temple is the body of Christ.

Which is why when Paul unrolls the blueprints and puts them on the table for us, what we see as we gaze upon them is a picture of Jesus. Verse 13 describes what we are building—this is what Trinity Western Springs is called by God to become: “until we all attain to 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.”

Our shared project is, as a church, to become a mature adult, which sounds weird, I know. Specifically, we are to become a community who together fully embodies Jesus. We are to go about “building” in such a way that we grow and become so shaped by Jesus that our church makes Jesus more present in this world. That’s what temple building is about.

Notice, and this is important, that “maturity” here is talking about a community. People often read these verses and think Paul is talking about individual growth, about each one of us moving from being spiritual babies to spiritual grownups. But if you look closely, you’ll see that this isn’t what Paul means. Rather he’s talking about an entire church becoming mature. 

As we see in verses 13 and 14, there can be mature communities and immature communities.

A mature community is unified: it attains to the unity of the faith and knowledge of Christ, it is so unified it’s described as a single man. An immature community is not. It’s a bunch of children, in the plural. 

A mature community is stable, with a deep understanding of what is true, unaffected by the fads and controversies of the moment. An immature community, Paul tells us, is tossed to and fro; like a raft on the sea in the middle of a storm. The wind is blowing fiercely; the waves are coming up and down, and whoever is on this raft is being thrown around by everything. Every new idea is like a wave, tossing the lifeboat; every faddish teacher is like a wind, pushing it in a new direction. There’s no stability. And as a result, in their immaturity, this community is also vulnerable. They are subject to “the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.” An immature community is taken in by the lies of con artists and manipulators.

By way of illustration, we might think of our present society as an example of an immature community. It’s obviously not unified—everyone seems to be in their own corner, angry at the rest. And it’s not stable either. Every strongly held opinion seems to last for 30 seconds before being replaced by a new fad, a new reason for outrage related to whatever the orthodoxy is of the moment. It all feels so arbitrary and shallow, without any depth or sustained thoughtfulness or wisdom. Everyone is on a raft, being tossed in whatever direction. And in this there is a terrible vulnerability to the worst kind of actors: people who cynically seek to manipulate others with lies and conspiracy theories so that they can achieve their own ends. This is exactly the kind of community Paul is talking about in verse 14.

But this is not the community that Christ is building here. In his strength we are growing into the mature man that is Christ. We are, Paul says, growing into a community with a shared sense of its story. That’s what “unity of the faith” means, because “faith” here is another term for the story of what God has done for humanity through Jesus’ death and resurrection. A story that involves the brokenness of the world and our own failure and need. A story about God’s love and grace and rescue. A story of hope due to God’s plans for this world. This is the story that defines a mature community, and it brings humility and hopefulness and graciousness. 

And we are growing into a community with a shared love for our king: verse 13 says we “attain the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God.” “Knowledge” here is not only facts; it is talking about an experiential, relational knowledge, where the people don’t just know about Jesus, we know Jesus, and in Jesus, we know God. We listen to him as he speaks in his word, we speak to him in prayer, we worship him in song and obedience. And that shared love binds us to each other and turns us outward in love for the world.

When we, people from different backgrounds with different traditions and political opinions, when we increasingly are united by a shared understanding of our story and our love for our king, we develop depth, rootedness, stability, so that the fads of the moment stop mattering as much. Human movements and politics never seem quite so important when you know that you have been saved by your Creator, that your real king is the Son of God and that this world will one day be full of his glory.

When a church has grown up into maturity, it looks like Jesus. That’s what we’re building together in Trinity Western Springs. This is what we mean when we say “Christ’s beautiful church for the good of the world.”

What We Need

That’s the goal, that’s the blueprint. Paul also tells us what will be needed to build this. In short, it takes all of us working together.

Sometimes in a church people think that the primary work, the primary “ministry” is what is done by the pastors like me and Nick and MacKenzie. But notice what Paul tells us in verses 11 and 12: Jesus sends those with teaching gifts, including pastors and teachers to do a specific job: “to equip the saints.” Saints are the people who belong to the church. Equipping here has the idea of restoring to make it functional, like when a bone is reset so that as it heals it can once again carry weight. Jesus gives the ministry of preaching and teaching to help heal and restore and empower believers to do the “good work” God intended for them.

And what is that good work? Again, verse 12: the saints are equipped for the WORK (there’s that word again) of ministry—specifically, for the building up of the body of Christ.” You see that? The building and growth project God intends for us is meant to be done by the community of faith.

And it takes all of us. This is a theme that runs throughout our passage. Look with me at verse 7: “Grace was given to each one of us.” Then again, verse 13, “Until we all attain unity.” Then, in case we miss the emphasis, verses 15 and 16 “we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow.”

This last description is kind of a funny image when you think about it: we’re growing up into the head. It’s like there’s a mature shape of the adult Christ, and Christ, the head is already where he’s supposed to be, but as we grow, our body is still catching up.

And while it’s clearly Jesus who ultimately enables this growth to happen, what’s clear is that it also requires every member. Verse 16: it only works as the whole body grows—every part of the body needs to grow together. It needs every joint, that is, every ligament to hold things together, or else the body starts to fall apart. It only takes place with every part working properly. If the liver or the kidneys just stops functioning, growth won’t happen. Paul’s point is simple: this “building up” only works when all of us work. 

The way we become a mature, Christlike community is when together, each of us works to help our community grow.

If you belong to Trinity—whether you are officially a member or a regular attender—as long as this is your church, you are essential to this church community growing into what we are called to be. We need you. Each of you who are part of this church has something to offer, and has a role to play that Trinity needs, whether you realize it or not. Christ has gifted you, like has gifted each of the rest of us to help us grow together into Christlikeness. We become mature as a community, we are building the temple of God, when each of us plays our part.

How We Do This

So for this to happen, it needs each of us. But what exactly are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to go about building? Thankfully, Paul answers that question for us as well. It’s through the word of Jesus and the love of Jesus.

We won’t be reading these verses rightly if we don’t recognize that the driving force in this whole building project is Jesus. Verse 7 tells us that Jesus is the one who gives each of us the grace needed to do this work, gracious power that he won for us through his death and resurrection. He in verse 11 is the one who sent people with word gifts to us people with word gifts, and verse 16 tells us that it’s “from Jesus” that we are able to grow and build ourselves up. All of this that we’re talking about is only possible because of the power of the resurrection at work in us, Jesus building his church.

And in particular, the power he has given us to do this comes in the form of his word and his love. We already began to see that a moment ago: he sends those with gifts of proclaiming his Word, his gospel of grace, so that the people in the church can be renewed, strengthened, equipped for the work they’ve been given. And then verse 15 describes this good work that all of us, changed by this word, are to do to build this temple and grow this body: “speaking the truth in love” or, perhaps more accurately, making the truth known as we love” we will grow.”  

So this is how the work works. It begins with us listening to the gospel as it is preached, hearing the word of Christ, allowing it to reshape and equip us. And then, in this strength, prayerfully relying on Christ, each of us in our own way, by our words and our actions, help others to see and experience the reality of Jesus and his love more clearly. That’s it—it’s a simple description, but it has a thousand different manifestations. And this is how together we grow.

• When a Children’s Church teacher works hard to know the names of each kid in the class so that on other Sundays the teacher can say hi to them, these children see that the one who speaks about Jesus is the one who loves them like Jesus. That’s making the truth known as we love.
• When a person takes some time to text someone from their community group, asking how they’re doing and saying they’re continuing to pray about the struggle they’re facing, in that moment the person who is struggling experiences the reality that God continues to see them and they’re not alone. That’s making the truth known as we love.
• Likewise, when a person in the quiet of their homes actively loves their fellow believers by praying for them, asking for Christ to be at work in them—that too, in the power of Christ, is making the truth known as we love. 
• When two people become upset with each other because of a political disagreement, and then after they agree to go out to coffee to try to hear each other better, they are showing to each other that Jesus is more central than their politics. That’s making the truth known as we love.
• And when one of us blows it, really messes up, but the one who’s been hurt extends grace and forgiveness, the forgiveness of Jesus becomes more real in that moment. That’s making the truth known as we love. 

Notice that this isn’t about ministry titles; most of this won’t be seen on the back of the bulletin or in some sort of ministry directory. But it actually is the heart and soul of the work being done. Making the truth known as we love is how we grow. It is how Trinity Western Springs increasingly becomes the mature embodiment of Christ, the temple of God. 

And as we and countless other churches engage in this project, it’s how the world is transformed. 

There’s one more thing to notice here. In the opening verses of our passage, Paul speaks of how Christ gifts each one of us as an outworking of his triumph over sin and death. At the end of verse 10, we are told of Christ’s goal in this. He gifts us and empowers us for our work “that he might fill all things.” Put in other words: Christ’s purpose in this building project is that everything everywhere comes to experience the effect of his loving, saving rule. 

Because that’s really what this world is sick and dying from its disconnection from God needs. As people encounter Jesus, the guilty are forgiven, the lost are found, the blind see. Jesus can bring the prodigal son home so that he once again knows his heavenly Father and knows he is loved. As Jesus fills the world, what was withered now grows, what was shattered now begins to become whole, and despair turns to joy.   

And here’s the remarkable thing. The way Jesus has chosen to move towards this world and heal it is through us. Through the community, the temple we build as each of us work together in his power, making the truth known to each other as we love, growing into his likeness. This, this is truly good work to do.