Ephesians 4:11a
Christ's Gifts to the Church
When Jesus Christ was alone with His disciples in Matthew 16 He told them, “I will build My Church.” Since the day of Pentecost, Jesus Christ has been building His Church. And since the Church is people, the way in which He builds His Church is through people. What we need to remind ourselves of is what the Church is. It is not a building. It is not a social cause. The Church is a particular group of people that have one thing in common. The Church is all the people who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins and eternal life. It is all people everywhere who have believed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ for salvation.
Now, once you have been saved it is not the end of the story. It is just the beginning. It is the end of your sin, meaning that God has made an end of your sin by the atoning death of His Son on the cross. But while your old story before Christ ends, your new story with Christ begins. First Corinthians 5:17 says “therefore anyone who is in Christ is a brand new creation; the old is gone and the new has come.” Paul is saying here that salvation brings new life, a resurrection life, the life of Jesus Christ inside of you. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” You don’t have the same life you did before. You are changed from the inside out. A new day has dawned, a point has been passed and you can never go back.
And while we see changes in our lives when we are saved, we don’t get far along before we recognize that we aren’t perfect. There are temptations that we still have, pulls in certain directions that still exist in us. There are weaknesses and flaws in our character that were not removed when we were saved. We know our sins are forgiven, we know Christ died so we could be pardoned for our sins, but, still, we sin.
What are we to do now? What we do now is we pursue perfection. Or to say it like Peter in 2 Peter 3:18, we “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We begin a new life of continued conformity to the likeness of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). This isn’t something that happens overnight, or, through some experience. Slowly, gradually, inch by inch, in daily commitment to putting off our old selves and putting on our new selves we find that the very character of our Savior is becoming more and more visible in us.
But we must understand this is not done alone. It is done in cooperation with God who is at work in us for the same goal. Philippians 2:12-13 says, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.”
But not only is this done in cooperation with God, it is done in community. Specifically, it is done in the community of the Church. Paul says in Ephesians 4:16, “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.” Christ has called us out of the world to be together with each other. The idea that Christianity is like Euchre and there is an option to just “go it alone” isn’t biblical at all. Hebrews 10:25 says, “let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing…” The gathering together is one of the most fundamental parts of being a Christian. Why? Because personal spiritual growth – which is God’s will for your life – is directly related to getting together as believers for hearing the Word, encouraging one another, building one another up, and loving one another. All of us are saved not to stand still but as Ephesians 2:10 says, “to walk in the good deeds that God has prepared in advance for us to do.”
Remember Ephesians 2 where Paul says that we are a spiritual temple that is being built. We are not yet finished individually or corporately. It is like a builder buying all the materials and supplies to build a house, but He still needs to assemble the house. When Jesus saved you He bought you. And you are being prepared by Him to fit into the place He has prepared for you in His house. First Peter 2 says, “you also like living stones are being built into a spiritual house…”
How does He do this? Paul is going to answer that for us this morning in Ephesians 4:11-13. His purpose is building up people and He does that by using certain people. There are some in the Church Body whom Christ gives so that by their ministry the whole Church can benefit.
We have been seeing so far that Christ gives. In verse 7 He gives each of us as believers a certain amount of grace. And this grace is not for salvation, but, for serving. It is this grace that enables us to serve in a particular way for the good of others in the body at large. Then in verse 8 we see that Christ ascends on high and gives gifts to men.
What I want us to see here is that Christ works through His people to build up His people. And everything that Christ gives is coming out of His goodness. In John 1 it was Nathanael who when told of Jesus of Nazareth asked, “Can anything good come from there?” Jesus came from there. In John 10 He is the Good Shepherd. In Luke 18He told a man that no one is good except God alone, and being that He was God He was good. He preached the Good News, He did good deeds. Philippians 2:13 says His purposes are good. In Philemon verse 6 Paul says “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you may have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” Everything Jesus did then and does today is good and comes from His goodness and is for our good. And in Ephesians 4 we learn that He gives gifts and grace to us so that His goodness is expressed through believers into each other’s lives. And when we see this – when we see that His good gifts are expressions of the goodness of Who He is, we see that He is giving not just gifts to the Church, but, He is giving Himself to the Church.
This is especially seen in the next section of our passage this morning where we find that Jesus in yet another way gives to His Body. While thus far we have seen Christ giving gifts to the individuals of the Church, we now see there are some individuals who are given as gifts to the Church. Everybody has a gift, but, not everybody is a gift. There are certain saints who are gifts from Christ to all the other saints. Their roles are representative of Christ. In other words, while someone may have been given as an apostle, or a prophet, or an evangelist or a pastor-teacher, these roles find their perfection in Christ. He is THE Apostle (Heb. 3:1), THE Prophet (Deut. 18), THE Evangelist (“preaching the good news”), THE PASTOR-TEACHER (John 10; Heb. 13; 1 Pet. 5). These identity of who these people are in the Church and their roles are so connected to the identity and roles of Jesus that what we cannot fail to see is that through them Christ is giving Himself to His Bride for her own good.
We can outline our message with 3 questions: Who did Christ give to the Church? What are they supposed to do? Why are they given?
Who did Christ give to the Church? (v11)
While Christ is building His Church, He has given certain gifted men as gifts to the Church. Notice in verse 11 who they are: “It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers”. We have here a company of men specifically given to the Church for the whole Church’s benefit. Four offices within the Church are found here: apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers. The first two, Apostles and Prophets existed in the beginning of the Church during the 1st Century. Since then these men no longer exist and we’ll see why as we go through. The last two, Evangelists, and Pastor-Teachers existed since the days of the Apostles and carried on the work of the Church since then.
First, we see apostles. Apostle comes from the Greek word, “apostolos”, which means simply “someone sent on a mission”. Generally speaking anyone sent on a mission can be called an apostle. Paul dispatched Timothy and Titus and others to churches on his behalf and they could be called apostles of Paul in that sense. Other times a church would send someone out and they would be called apostles. The distinct difference though is that they would be apostles of a church,, whereas the apostles of Jesus Christ were directly called and commissioned by Him personally.
And that is the primary way the term apostle is used in the NT. It is in reference to the 12 apostles that Jesus chose, and then later, Paul. Their purpose was absolutely crucial to the establishment of the Church, and, their ministry was unique.
First, they were to lay the foundation of the Church. Ephesians 2:20 says the Church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone.” Their work was laying the ground and foundation for what the succeeding generations would build on. Once their work was done, it was done, and they were no longer needed. The 12 Apostles are seen in Revelation 21 where the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven after the new heavens and earth are established. The city has 12 foundations and the names of the 12 Apostles are on the 12 foundations.
Everything we do is built on their ministry. Their ministry is preserved for us here in the NT writings. All of the NT is written either by an apostle or someone who was a close associate of an apostle.
Contained in the NT is not only the record of what they did, but, what they taught. So if we want to know what Paul the Apostle taught the Ephesians for the 3 years he was there when they met daily in the house of Tyrannus, we have to look no further than his writings here in the NT. He and the other Apostles received and declared and taught the revelation of God’s Word. Ephesians 3:5 says, “the mystery of Christ was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets.” In Galatians 1:11-12 he says “I want you to know brothers that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. Nor did I receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.”
We are not preaching and teaching something new at EFC. We are preaching the same message that began with the Apostles. The message has not changed. What the Apostles were eyewitnesses of – the resurrection of Jesus – and what the Apostles were taught directly by Jesus Christ, is what we are hearing directly from the Apostles right here in their writings in the NT. And it is what we strive and pray to base our entire ministry on.
In order to be an apostle there were certain qualifications. First you had to be an eyewitness of the resurrected Jesus Christ. In Acts 1:22 when they had to replace Judas, Peter said of the two candidates, “For one of these must become a witness with us of Jesus Christ’s resurrection.” This is one reason why commentators say apostles do not exist today.
However, with many people claiming to have had visions of seeing Jesus, which are not genuine, this point seems to lose some of its power. But, there is a qualification I see that is often overlooked by commentators. This qualification for Apostleship slams the door shut on the possibility of anyone today being an apostle. In Acts 1:21 Peter says, “Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning with John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.” The significance here is that the person who witnessed Jesus alive after He was crucified and buried was also to have witnessed Jesus before He was crucified and buried. To be an Apostle, you had to have been there with Jesus all the way back when John the Baptist was still ministering (more than 3 years prior). You had to have seen Him do the miracles, hear the public teachings, see Him crucified, buried, and then alive after His death. You had to be a witness of Jesus on both sides of the cross. No one today can possibly fill that requirement to be an Apostle.
Secondly, an Apostle’s role was to establish the foundation of the entire Church. Ephesians 2:20 again says, the Church is “built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, with Christ Jesus as the Chief Cornerstone.” There are no more chief cornerstones, and, there are no more foundations. They are already laid down and put in place. The foundational work is complete, just like the Chief Cornerstone’s work is complete and does not continue, so therefore the ministry of Apostleship is no longer necessary. Everything else since then is built on top of the foundation of Jesus Christ and the Apostles and Prophets.
A third qualification was you had to be personally enlisted by Christ to be His Apostle. Jesus said in John 15 that He chose the disciples – they did not choose Him. On the road to Damascus, the murderous persecutor of the Church, Saul of Tarsus, was confronted by the resurrected Jesus. He was saved and chosen by Christ to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. To be an Apostle you had to be personally enlisted by Christ.
A fourth qualification is that you had be empowered by Christ to do miracles, signs and wonders. If you wanted to know how to identify an Apostle, Paul tells you in 2 Corinthians 12:12, “The things that mark an apostle – signs, wonders, and miracles – were done among you with great perseverance.” Hebrews 2:3-4 says, “This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him (12 Apostles). God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles…” The powerful signs, wonders, and miracles were to confirm the message of the Gospel that was being preached. Now understand this: the ministry of the Apostles was directly related to each of them being personal witnesses of the resurrected Jesus Christ. They saw Him alive both before and after He was crucified. The miracle of the resurrection, demonstrated the power of God to save from sin, as declared in the Gospel message. That power of that God did to raise Jesus was at work in those who saw Jesus to do signs, wonders, and miracles to prove that God was with them, authenticating the message they were preaching.
The Apostles were foundational to the Church. Now lets look at another foundational ministry to the Church.
Conclusion:
Let me conclude by doing the work of an evangelist. Jesus Christ is building His Church even to this day. Are you a part of what Jesus Christ is building? There is only one way to be a part of what Jesus Christ is doing. You have only one thing that God wants from you in order for you to be able to participate. God wants your trust. The Bible says that if you put your trust in Jesus Christ as the One who died for your sins and paid the penalty of death on your behalf then God will forgive you of your sins, wash you clean, and make you a part of His family. Then you will be a part of everything that Jesus Christ is doing and building.
Christ's Gifts to the Church
When Jesus Christ was alone with His disciples in Matthew 16 He told them, “I will build My Church.” Since the day of Pentecost, Jesus Christ has been building His Church. And since the Church is people, the way in which He builds His Church is through people. What we need to remind ourselves of is what the Church is. It is not a building. It is not a social cause. The Church is a particular group of people that have one thing in common. The Church is all the people who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins and eternal life. It is all people everywhere who have believed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ for salvation.
Now, once you have been saved it is not the end of the story. It is just the beginning. It is the end of your sin, meaning that God has made an end of your sin by the atoning death of His Son on the cross. But while your old story before Christ ends, your new story with Christ begins. First Corinthians 5:17 says “therefore anyone who is in Christ is a brand new creation; the old is gone and the new has come.” Paul is saying here that salvation brings new life, a resurrection life, the life of Jesus Christ inside of you. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” You don’t have the same life you did before. You are changed from the inside out. A new day has dawned, a point has been passed and you can never go back.
And while we see changes in our lives when we are saved, we don’t get far along before we recognize that we aren’t perfect. There are temptations that we still have, pulls in certain directions that still exist in us. There are weaknesses and flaws in our character that were not removed when we were saved. We know our sins are forgiven, we know Christ died so we could be pardoned for our sins, but, still, we sin.
What are we to do now? What we do now is we pursue perfection. Or to say it like Peter in 2 Peter 3:18, we “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We begin a new life of continued conformity to the likeness of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). This isn’t something that happens overnight, or, through some experience. Slowly, gradually, inch by inch, in daily commitment to putting off our old selves and putting on our new selves we find that the very character of our Savior is becoming more and more visible in us.
But we must understand this is not done alone. It is done in cooperation with God who is at work in us for the same goal. Philippians 2:12-13 says, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.”
But not only is this done in cooperation with God, it is done in community. Specifically, it is done in the community of the Church. Paul says in Ephesians 4:16, “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.” Christ has called us out of the world to be together with each other. The idea that Christianity is like Euchre and there is an option to just “go it alone” isn’t biblical at all. Hebrews 10:25 says, “let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing…” The gathering together is one of the most fundamental parts of being a Christian. Why? Because personal spiritual growth – which is God’s will for your life – is directly related to getting together as believers for hearing the Word, encouraging one another, building one another up, and loving one another. All of us are saved not to stand still but as Ephesians 2:10 says, “to walk in the good deeds that God has prepared in advance for us to do.”
Remember Ephesians 2 where Paul says that we are a spiritual temple that is being built. We are not yet finished individually or corporately. It is like a builder buying all the materials and supplies to build a house, but He still needs to assemble the house. When Jesus saved you He bought you. And you are being prepared by Him to fit into the place He has prepared for you in His house. First Peter 2 says, “you also like living stones are being built into a spiritual house…”
How does He do this? Paul is going to answer that for us this morning in Ephesians 4:11-13. His purpose is building up people and He does that by using certain people. There are some in the Church Body whom Christ gives so that by their ministry the whole Church can benefit.
We have been seeing so far that Christ gives. In verse 7 He gives each of us as believers a certain amount of grace. And this grace is not for salvation, but, for serving. It is this grace that enables us to serve in a particular way for the good of others in the body at large. Then in verse 8 we see that Christ ascends on high and gives gifts to men.
What I want us to see here is that Christ works through His people to build up His people. And everything that Christ gives is coming out of His goodness. In John 1 it was Nathanael who when told of Jesus of Nazareth asked, “Can anything good come from there?” Jesus came from there. In John 10 He is the Good Shepherd. In Luke 18He told a man that no one is good except God alone, and being that He was God He was good. He preached the Good News, He did good deeds. Philippians 2:13 says His purposes are good. In Philemon verse 6 Paul says “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you may have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” Everything Jesus did then and does today is good and comes from His goodness and is for our good. And in Ephesians 4 we learn that He gives gifts and grace to us so that His goodness is expressed through believers into each other’s lives. And when we see this – when we see that His good gifts are expressions of the goodness of Who He is, we see that He is giving not just gifts to the Church, but, He is giving Himself to the Church.
This is especially seen in the next section of our passage this morning where we find that Jesus in yet another way gives to His Body. While thus far we have seen Christ giving gifts to the individuals of the Church, we now see there are some individuals who are given as gifts to the Church. Everybody has a gift, but, not everybody is a gift. There are certain saints who are gifts from Christ to all the other saints. Their roles are representative of Christ. In other words, while someone may have been given as an apostle, or a prophet, or an evangelist or a pastor-teacher, these roles find their perfection in Christ. He is THE Apostle (Heb. 3:1), THE Prophet (Deut. 18), THE Evangelist (“preaching the good news”), THE PASTOR-TEACHER (John 10; Heb. 13; 1 Pet. 5). These identity of who these people are in the Church and their roles are so connected to the identity and roles of Jesus that what we cannot fail to see is that through them Christ is giving Himself to His Bride for her own good.
We can outline our message with 3 questions: Who did Christ give to the Church? What are they supposed to do? Why are they given?
Who did Christ give to the Church? (v11)
While Christ is building His Church, He has given certain gifted men as gifts to the Church. Notice in verse 11 who they are: “It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers”. We have here a company of men specifically given to the Church for the whole Church’s benefit. Four offices within the Church are found here: apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers. The first two, Apostles and Prophets existed in the beginning of the Church during the 1st Century. Since then these men no longer exist and we’ll see why as we go through. The last two, Evangelists, and Pastor-Teachers existed since the days of the Apostles and carried on the work of the Church since then.
First, we see apostles. Apostle comes from the Greek word, “apostolos”, which means simply “someone sent on a mission”. Generally speaking anyone sent on a mission can be called an apostle. Paul dispatched Timothy and Titus and others to churches on his behalf and they could be called apostles of Paul in that sense. Other times a church would send someone out and they would be called apostles. The distinct difference though is that they would be apostles of a church,, whereas the apostles of Jesus Christ were directly called and commissioned by Him personally.
And that is the primary way the term apostle is used in the NT. It is in reference to the 12 apostles that Jesus chose, and then later, Paul. Their purpose was absolutely crucial to the establishment of the Church, and, their ministry was unique.
First, they were to lay the foundation of the Church. Ephesians 2:20 says the Church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone.” Their work was laying the ground and foundation for what the succeeding generations would build on. Once their work was done, it was done, and they were no longer needed. The 12 Apostles are seen in Revelation 21 where the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven after the new heavens and earth are established. The city has 12 foundations and the names of the 12 Apostles are on the 12 foundations.
Everything we do is built on their ministry. Their ministry is preserved for us here in the NT writings. All of the NT is written either by an apostle or someone who was a close associate of an apostle.
Contained in the NT is not only the record of what they did, but, what they taught. So if we want to know what Paul the Apostle taught the Ephesians for the 3 years he was there when they met daily in the house of Tyrannus, we have to look no further than his writings here in the NT. He and the other Apostles received and declared and taught the revelation of God’s Word. Ephesians 3:5 says, “the mystery of Christ was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets.” In Galatians 1:11-12 he says “I want you to know brothers that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. Nor did I receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.”
We are not preaching and teaching something new at EFC. We are preaching the same message that began with the Apostles. The message has not changed. What the Apostles were eyewitnesses of – the resurrection of Jesus – and what the Apostles were taught directly by Jesus Christ, is what we are hearing directly from the Apostles right here in their writings in the NT. And it is what we strive and pray to base our entire ministry on.
In order to be an apostle there were certain qualifications. First you had to be an eyewitness of the resurrected Jesus Christ. In Acts 1:22 when they had to replace Judas, Peter said of the two candidates, “For one of these must become a witness with us of Jesus Christ’s resurrection.” This is one reason why commentators say apostles do not exist today.
However, with many people claiming to have had visions of seeing Jesus, which are not genuine, this point seems to lose some of its power. But, there is a qualification I see that is often overlooked by commentators. This qualification for Apostleship slams the door shut on the possibility of anyone today being an apostle. In Acts 1:21 Peter says, “Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning with John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.” The significance here is that the person who witnessed Jesus alive after He was crucified and buried was also to have witnessed Jesus before He was crucified and buried. To be an Apostle, you had to have been there with Jesus all the way back when John the Baptist was still ministering (more than 3 years prior). You had to have seen Him do the miracles, hear the public teachings, see Him crucified, buried, and then alive after His death. You had to be a witness of Jesus on both sides of the cross. No one today can possibly fill that requirement to be an Apostle.
Secondly, an Apostle’s role was to establish the foundation of the entire Church. Ephesians 2:20 again says, the Church is “built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, with Christ Jesus as the Chief Cornerstone.” There are no more chief cornerstones, and, there are no more foundations. They are already laid down and put in place. The foundational work is complete, just like the Chief Cornerstone’s work is complete and does not continue, so therefore the ministry of Apostleship is no longer necessary. Everything else since then is built on top of the foundation of Jesus Christ and the Apostles and Prophets.
A third qualification was you had to be personally enlisted by Christ to be His Apostle. Jesus said in John 15 that He chose the disciples – they did not choose Him. On the road to Damascus, the murderous persecutor of the Church, Saul of Tarsus, was confronted by the resurrected Jesus. He was saved and chosen by Christ to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. To be an Apostle you had to be personally enlisted by Christ.
A fourth qualification is that you had be empowered by Christ to do miracles, signs and wonders. If you wanted to know how to identify an Apostle, Paul tells you in 2 Corinthians 12:12, “The things that mark an apostle – signs, wonders, and miracles – were done among you with great perseverance.” Hebrews 2:3-4 says, “This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him (12 Apostles). God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles…” The powerful signs, wonders, and miracles were to confirm the message of the Gospel that was being preached. Now understand this: the ministry of the Apostles was directly related to each of them being personal witnesses of the resurrected Jesus Christ. They saw Him alive both before and after He was crucified. The miracle of the resurrection, demonstrated the power of God to save from sin, as declared in the Gospel message. That power of that God did to raise Jesus was at work in those who saw Jesus to do signs, wonders, and miracles to prove that God was with them, authenticating the message they were preaching.
The Apostles were foundational to the Church. Now lets look at another foundational ministry to the Church.
Conclusion:
Let me conclude by doing the work of an evangelist. Jesus Christ is building His Church even to this day. Are you a part of what Jesus Christ is building? There is only one way to be a part of what Jesus Christ is doing. You have only one thing that God wants from you in order for you to be able to participate. God wants your trust. The Bible says that if you put your trust in Jesus Christ as the One who died for your sins and paid the penalty of death on your behalf then God will forgive you of your sins, wash you clean, and make you a part of His family. Then you will be a part of everything that Jesus Christ is doing and building.
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