Welcome to Truth for Life, where today we're beginning a new study in the book of Ephesians. We're going to be looking at spiritual gifts. What are they? Who gives them? Who receives them?
Are some more significant than others? And what is the ultimate purpose of spiritual gifts? Alistair Begg answers those questions as he teaches from Ephesians chapter 4. To our passage, you will notice verse 8, when he—that is, Jesus—ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. Paul has explained to these Ephesian believers that they have become the dwelling place of God.
He has said that in a number of places. Classically, at the end of chapter 2, you're part of a structure that he is building, a holy temple in the Lord. You're being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
He's explained to them that this is all of grace, that it is as a result of his amazing goodness, that the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile has been broken down, and he has taken time in the opening part of what is for us chapter 4 to remind them of the foundation of their unity in the body of Christ. As believers, he says, you have one Father, you have one Savior, and you have one indwelling Spirit. Now, that is what the Bible clearly teaches. And when we read our Bibles, as we do, and when we read our newspapers, and when we go about our daily routine, it is quite common for that notion to be challenged again and again. And we come to our Bibles, and we read, There is one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all. That there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And through the work of that mediator, sinners like you and me are brought out of darkness into light and into a relationship with one another, which is marked by his indwelling presence. And it is to these individuals that Paul writes and has driven home for them the essential unity that is theirs in the Lord Jesus Christ. And now he is going on from there, having mentioned the all, the all, the one, the one, the one, the one. You'll notice in verse 7 he moves from the all to the each one. But grace was given to each one of us. The point is simply this—that our unity in the body does not involve a loss of personal identity.
God has given you your DNA. God has chosen to put you in a position in his family—big F—and in this little family, if this is your church family here, and he has equipped you for an express purpose within this group. That's what Paul is saying. There is one God and Father of all. He invades it all.
He fills it all up. And to each one of you grace has been given. When he writes to the Corinthians, he puts it straightforwardly, you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as he chose. So there's no loss of personal identity, nor are we to view the body of Christ in locales such as this as one of drab and colorless uniformity. Unity is not to be equated with uniformity. We're not carbon copies of one another, either by dint of our ethnicity or our background and so on, but particularly is what he mentions here. God has not been putting us together, as John Stott refers to it. He says, We shouldn't imagine that we were all mass-produced in some big celestial factory. When you move amongst a group of people who are professing believers, if they all have a peculiar sameness about them, it's weird.
It's kinda spooky. I mean, it's not supposed to be that way. We are all the one in Christ Jesus, but to each one grace has been given. The point is not a diversity that is based on birth or on background—he's mentioned that already—but this is a purposeful variety brought about by the different gifts given by Christ. But grace was given to each one of us. Now, the word for grace here, which comes variously throughout this letter and all of Paul's letters, should be understood not in terms of the grace that saves but rather the grace that enables us to serve. And the grace that he brings is multivarious.
It is variegated. It is wonderfully diverse. And that word which Paul has used, actually, of the wisdom of God in verse 10 of chapter 3—the manifold wisdom of God, the variegated grace and wisdom of God—is what he mentions here. When Peter writes about it, he says, I want you to be good stewards of God's varied grace. Now, so the grace was given to each one of you. The word for grace there is charis.
The word for gift is not mentioned. Grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift, not the gift of Christ. The word that is used there is not Paul's routine word in 1 Corinthians, which is charisma.
He uses a different word for gift, but it's the same thing. So he says, according to the charis of God, the grace of God, each of you has a charisma of God. So that by definition, a church is a charismatic place.
By definition, it's impossible for a church not to be, quote, charismatic, in the sense that it is by the outpouring of God's grace that the charisma is provided—the charisma being the gifts. The fact that certain fellowships and times in history have tended to focus on just two or three charisma is a separate discussion altogether, and not for this morning. Let's not miss what is clear—that first of all, these gifts are given to each one of us. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
So what does that say? Well, it says this, that none of us can opt out. None of us can opt out. He has decided to apportion his grace to each one.
Nobody left out. So nobody can say, Well, I don't have any part of this. If you're in Christ, yes, you do. Nor should we ever regard ourselves as having nothing to contribute. Every so often you hear somebody say, Well, I don't really know what I'm supposed to do around here. I don't know if I do anything much at all. You know, there are lists of gifts in the New Testament.
And they're not comprehensive. No, to each one of us. Secondly, notice that these gifts are gifts.
See, every so often I come up with a really brilliant insight, just like that. These gifts are gifts. You see, when you have a gift, the gift magnifies the giver, not the recipient. Not the recipient. Because a gift is a gift. So if somebody has a particular gift, a particular capacity, and has a fat head, that's another story that we're gonna have to deal with on another day.
Because the gifts are gifts. Therefore, there is no place for self-congratulation. There's no place for actually saying, You know, do you realize how gifted I am? Do you know what I am able to do?
Or whatever it is. See, you know, well, you couldn't even get up in the morning apart from the grace of God, let alone do what you do. You see, if the gifts are given so that we might minister—serve—to the glory of God, we will never ever actually use our gifts to the glory of God unless we understand and believe that this has begun with his giving. So it extends his glory when we know that it's his gift. That's why, you know, of all pride, spiritual pride is going to be the worst. Because it is so obvious this person has been endowed with help, has been gifted in this way, whatever the way might be.
You say, Well, you don't need to believe at the point. All right, I take it that you've got it. But here we have Jesus, as it were, ascending on high and giving out the gifts purposefully and uniquely. Each one, they're gifts. Thirdly, not all the gifts that he gives are equal in size or equal in significance. Paul is going to mention particular gifts here.
We'll come to that later on. But as I said before, there are a number of places where the gifts are listed—1 Peter 4, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, here as well. There's probably about five places. And when you take all the gifts that are mentioned, there's only about twenty of them in all. Well, that ought to tell us something. Twenty can't cover all the gifts that are dispensed by the ascended Christ. So that is not an exhaustive list. It is a representative list. So that the ministries that are exercised by the people of God cover so much more than that which is simply detailed for us in the text.
So the ministry of art and of music and of helps and of… You just go through it again and again and again. And the point is that not all of the gifts are the same. There are varieties of gifts, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 12, but one giver. So when we understand that grace was given by the ascended Christ to each one of us purposefully, then it can set us free from sitting around going, Why did she get that? Why did I not get that?
Why does he have that? Why is the gift that was given to me apparently not as useful as the gift that was given to him? But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. In other words, the gifts are the gifts of the ascended Christ.
Christ has received, and Christ has dispensed. What Paul does here in verse 8 is quote from Psalm 68—and if you turn to it for just a moment, you can see it and you can perhaps follow it up on your own—but in Psalm 68 you have this amazing picture that runs through the psalm, where the psalmist in poetic form is describing the arrival of the ark of the Lord in Jerusalem. Remember, the ark of the Lord represents the presence of the Lord. And so the picture in Psalm 68 is of Jehovah having conquered the enemies of his people, having conquered the citadel, ascending, as it were, the earthly sanctuary of Zion to share the spoils of his victory with his people. And so, verse 17, the chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands.
In other words, you can't even enumerate this. The Lord is among them. Sinai is now in the sanctuary.
Here we go. You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the most rebellious that the Lord God may dwell there. We come back to Ephesians 4, and what is Paul doing? Well, he's quoting the psalmist. Yeah, but what is he saying in quoting the psalmist? He's saying this—that the picture of Psalm 68 18 is ultimately fulfilled in the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember, I've said to you again and again that if we learn to read our Bibles backwards, we'll often be greatly helped. You read Psalm 68, and you say, What does this ultimately mean? You read the New Testament, and Paul answers the question for you. He says, Here it is, quoting the Sixty-eighth Psalm. If you want to know how this is ultimately fulfilled, then he says you need to see it in view of Jesus ascending and leading a host of captives. Where did the triumph occur? At the place of apparent weakness and shame, in the death of this Jesus of Nazareth.
Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, and triumphs over all the powers of darkness. We've got him now, they said. The hosts of heaven said, Look, there he is.
We've got him now. Put him in that tomb. Thank you, Joseph of Arimathea.
Roll the stone over Phinito! And up from the grave he arose, with a mighty triumph for his foes. Here's the triumph, says Paul. He ascended on high, leading captives in his train.
Now, if you just take a concordance, you can work your way through this. When he writes to the Colossians, Paul puts it this way. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in the cross. Or in Hebrews 2, through death he destroyed the one who had the power of death—that is, the devil—and delivered those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. So the captives are the vanquished powers of evil, the vanquished powers of evil. You have read your papers this week, as I have.
Once you've done that, you need to go out and walk for a long time and just try and clear your head. And I find myself, I have to come back and say, Lord Jesus, I thank you that when you ascended on high, you took captivity captive. You marched, as it were, into Jerusalem in a picture of weakness, but you will return in power and in great glory. And although it doesn't seem so, and although everything seems upside down, and although it would appear that evil goes from bad to worse and so on, here I'm reading my Bible, and here is what you're telling me. But you said, I read the passage in 68, and I thought it said that he received, and now I'm looking at the passage in Ephesians 4, and it says that he gave. Is this a dilemma? No.
No. In actual fact, certain of the Old Testament translations use the very word gave, but that's a separate matter altogether. Leave it as it is—received. This is the pattern of Jesus. Remember, Jesus bids his disciples farewell. He says, All power has been given unto me. Therefore, I'm going to give it to you.
Now you go and preach the gospel. He says to his followers, The words that the Father gave me I have given to you. As you, Father, have sent me, so I send them.
The glory that you gave me, may it be their glory. Now, he says, in mentioning the notion of the ascension, what does that actually mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended, far above all the heavens, that he might fool all things. You remember, actually, when Jesus is talking with Nicodemus, he says to him, No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, namely, the Son of Man.
Now, I'm forced to tell you that there's some debate over this little section here in verses 9 and 10. In this respect, when it says here—and the ESV actually helps us a little bit—when it says he had also descended into the lower regions, you may have a version that says the lower regions of the earth. The ESV says the lower regions, the earth. In other words, it's actually explaining that for him to go to the lower regions was for him to come to earth. If you live in heaven, the earth is the lower regions.
But because of the lower regions of the earth, tied in with 1 Peter chapter 3 and the very difficult passage about he went and preached to those who were in prison and so on, it's possible to get yourself a significant PhD by trying to combine both of these sections. It is a matter of debate. The more I read it and thought about it, I came to the conclusion that to think of it in spatial terms is probably wrong.
Because after all, it says that he ascended above all the heavens. Well, where's that? Well, it's somewhere.
No, it's not anywhere. It's an expression. I think the whole thing is simply an expression of humiliation and exaltation. Read it in terms of Philippians chapter 2, that although he knew equality with God, he did not account it as something to be held onto, but he gave it up, and he came down into earth, and he became obedient unto death, even to death on the cross, wherefore God has highly exalted him and given him a name that is above every name.
Now, you must do with it as you choose. But what Paul is making clear is simply this—that the highest place that heaven affords is the sovereign right of the Lord Jesus. That's why we read from Psalm 24 earlier.
Again, the picture in Psalm 24 is akin to Psalm 68. Here is the picture of the city, and the people are on the walls of the city, and the word goes out, Open the gates of the city that the king may enter in. And the people on the ramparts say, Who is this king of glory? And the answer comes back, The LORD, strong and mighty in battle, he is the king of glory, the LORD of hosts. Open the gates, bring the gates up, that the king of glory may enter in.
Who is this king of glory? And Paul says, Here it is. You have been brought by his grace into his body. And to you, to you, yes, to you, to each one of you, according to the measure of Christ's gift, grace has been given. When he in his great triumph ascended on high, he triumphed over all the powers of evil.
One day that will be manifest in finality. That's why when Paul is preaching to the Athenians, he eventually says to them at the end of his talk, you know, he says, you know, he has given proof of all the things I'm telling you about by raising Jesus Christ from the dead, and he has set a day when he will judge the world. Well, who has the right to judge the world? Only he who is the king of glory. Only he who is the ascended Christ.
Only the one who looked out on you and gave you gifts. Not as toys to be played with but as tools to be used. And remember this talk when we get to verse 16 of this chapter, because the key to the effectiveness of the body of Christ is when each part is working properly.
When is each part working properly? When each component part is happy to exercise the gift that it has received, that he or she has received, not complaining, because it seems not to be as spectacular as another, but to recognize how vital they all are. One of the great lies of the evil one is to sow discord amongst the people of God, causing us to act like children, comparing what we have with what someone else has, or assuming that we've got nothing when we've got everything he wants us to have. I think God will be showing us from his Word just how vitally important this is.
And so we will be prayerful to that end. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. Our mission at Truth for Life is to provide you with clear, relevant Bible teaching so that anyone who wants to learn more about the Bible can do so without cost being a barrier. Throughout this month of September, we want to invite you to download the ebook version of Alistair's book, The Christian Manifesto, for free. In this book, Alistair unpacks Jesus' challenging teaching in Luke chapter 6, which is often referred to as the Sermon on the Plain.
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To give, visit us online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Thanks for joining us this week. Do we have modern day prophets and apostles in the 21st century? Are they the same thing as evangelists? Monday we'll hear the answers. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
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