Month: April 2025

You tell a child who is misbehaving (or even an adult, sometimes), “O grow up!” Paul, in Ephesians 4:14–16, summons you to Christian maturity.

Grow up! Don’t stay a toddler. Infancy is normal—for a time. Don’t forget that at the beginning of our Christian walk we all were infants. And being a baby Christian is far different from being an unbeliever. However, don’t be satisfied with spiritual immaturity. Christ has blessed his church with word-gifts so that you can grow in maturity. Paul thinks of the weakness and lack of coordination of an infant: “Support her head!” He will expand on the maturation process shortly. The immaturity is also compared to a small boat driven about and influenced, in this case not by the waves of a storm, but by the winds of false teaching. The cults are superb at concealing what they want to. Paul uses strong language to condemn those who are apparently self-consciously leading people astray.

Continue reading “Maturity in Christ Jesus”

A Roman general, returning from a successful campaign, would hold a triumph, a massive parade, in which he would lead his legions through the city, displaying the captured plunder and slaves. Then a portion of the plunder would be distributed to those he favored. In Ephesians 4:7–13, Paul tells you of a greater triumph, with more wonderful gifts. It began, not with a parade through a city, but with the Savior appearing to women in a garden.

Your ascended Lord has triumphed. First he descended. Your Lord was exalted because he first descended. Included is his entire humiliation, especially his obedient suffering and death. But his death is not the end of his story. Rather, the time in the tomb marks the transition from humiliation to exaltation.

Continue reading “The Lord Is Risen Indeed!”

Ephesians 4:7–10 is part of a passage celebrating the triumph of the Lord Jesus Christ and explaining that as the resurrected, ascended, triumphant conqueror, he has given gifts to his church. Partly because Paul packs so much into Ephesians 4, and partly because we are focusing, first on the death, and then on the resurrection of our Lord, let’s slow down and look carefully at Christ’s descent.

Your Lord descended. Jesus Christ had to descend in order to ascend in triumph. We think, “What goes up, must come down.” That’s not only true of planes, people in the first century saw that in birds. But Paul reverses it — what has descended must ascend. Psalm 68, from which Paul quotes and which we will look at more closely next week, celebrates the triumph, not only of David, but of David’s God. The victory is preceded by the Lord coming down to do battle against his enemies. You have a clue as to how to look at the history recorded in the Old Testament. David may be thinking of his own victory over Goliath as well as his other triumphs. But the Psalm presents them as the Lord gaining the victory over his enemies. Goliath’s defeat is part of the conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of serpent. For Christ to return to the heavens in triumphant glory, he first had to descend to the lower, earthly region. He entered Jerusalem in his triumphal entry — knowing that a cross awaited him before the week was up.

Continue reading “The Triumphal Descent”

In the Nicene Creed we confess that we believe in one church. Paul, in Ephesians 4:1–6 both assures you of the unity of the church and challenges you to display that unity. The unity of the church includes a lot of diversity. Sometimes the unity seems to vanish in diversity. Yet, if God’s Word tells you to pursue unity, and if Jesus prayed for unity in his high priestly prayer, you need to pay attention!

Be one because you serve one God. You belong to the one God and Father. You share in the great confession of the Shema. Without that confession there is no problem in many different cults and religions, each selecting its own god and worshiping him or her. We have our contemporary pluralistic religion. Instead, you belong to the one God and Father, Ephesians 4:6. He is transcendent over all—yet is also through all and in all. He condescends to connect with us. To divide needlessly flies in the face of the one God you confess. It insults the Father, who has formed you into his people, his temple.

“On the Day or Pentecost that new community became the sphere in which the eschatlogical reversal of the effects of sin began to appear in a reconciled people consisting of both Jew and Gentile, possessing one Lord, one faith and one baptism (Eph. 4:1ff.), united by the Spirit.”

Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, p. 60

Continue reading “One Church”