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.
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.”
We hope, pray, and work to help our church make an impact in our community. We ask God to use us to bring the good news to those who are outside of Christ, so that they can join us in worshiping him. Do you realize that in Ephesians 3:7–13 Paul writes about the impact that you, his church, make to angelic beings in the highest heavens?
Understand the unsearchable riches. The riches of Christ are beyond tracking out. An African tracker may see things you don’t see. In Ephesians 3:7–13, Paul points you to something that is beyond tracking out. You have experienced God’s love and grace in Christ Jesus. “Unsearchable” means beyond tracking out—you cannot fully understand how and why it reached you. However, rejoice that it has! These riches include the mystery, formerly hidden, but now revealed, that in Christ the Gentiles have been brought near. Keep those riches in mind as you prepare to come to the Lord’s Table.
“Now this secret has been revealed to us–to us whose salvation from sin and death and Satan required nothing less than the death of God the Son in our flesh. Neither Old Testament prophets nor wise men neither archangels nor seraphim, possessed the plumb line to sound the depths of such a plan of divine grace. But we know. We have been told. We have been enlightened…. There is no creature in heaven or earth more privileged than the humblest believer who has come to understand the depth of this great mystery.”
What job is important enough that you would go to prison for it? In Ephesians 3:1–6, Paul writes about his role as one who administers God’s grace in the church, prefacing it with the reminder that he is a prisoner.
Look at how God’s grace has come to you. Paul’s calling was to administer God’s grace. Various peple work together to make a home, a household work. Paul has just spoken of the household of God. In a large household there was need for an administrator. And some of that function, especially as it concerned the Gentiles, fell to Paul. “For this reason” looks back to Ephesians 2:19–22. It is not enough that your salvation was planned from eternity (as Paul has mentioned in Ephesians 1), or that you were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. It is not enough that Christ died and was raised for your salvation. That salvation needs to be applied to you. You need to stand, not outside Christ, but in Christ. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. But what tools, what means does the Spirit use? The ordinary means of grace, usually administered through the church.
Mark 11 tells us that after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, he went and looked around the temple. They synoptic Gospels all describe the cleansing of the temple which followed his entry. If he was concerned about the proper use of that temple, how much more the temple of which you are part, the temple Paul describes in Ephesians 2:19–22!
You are no longer aliens. Once you were a foreigner. Steve Baugh refers to a late second or early third century inscription in Ephesus, praising a Aurelius Barenus, who gave a multi-day banquet for the leaders of Ephesus and its 1,040 citizens. Citizenship was a rare privilege in Ephesus. The Gentile members of the church at Ephesus, and you were separated, not only from other believers, but from Christ. Your sins left you without God and without hope. Separation from God results in human separation. Sin brought disharmony to Eden. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, pictures hell as a constantly expanding city of mostly empty residences. By birth and nature we are all alienated from God’s people.
However, now you are a citizen. Christ has brought you near to God. His blood brought you near, verse 13. He reconciled you to God by the cross, verse 16. Now you are a citizen. The privileges which had been limited to Israel (by and large) now belong to us Gentiles! But your position is even better. You are part of God’s household. God has adopted you into his family. You belong there, with all of his people.
“The church is not an aggregate of diverse people, but individuals united to each other in their union with Jesus Christ…. Christ builds from living stones, sinners who are resistant material, difficult to shape, reluctant to fit with other living stones. Yet Christ continues to build — for he means to come himself, by his Spirit, to dwell among us as his house and temple (1 Cor. 3:16-17). He wants to be able to point to the church in the world and say: ‘See, that is what I can do. See my wisdom, power and love’ (cf. 3:10)!”
Sinclair B. Ferguson, Let’s Study Ephesians, p. 73
You are part of the house and household of God. You are built on the firm foundation. The apostles and prophets are foundational. Paul’s change of imagery helps unfold the reality he is describing. The coordinate offices of apostles and prophets were basic to the church, see 1 Corinthians 12:28. To be part of Christ’s church means building on the revelation and teaching of the apostles. Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. This is not a mere decorative or ceremonial stone. This is the crucial block of the foundation, the one that determines the structure and orientation of the building. See Psalm 118:22 and Mark 12:10, where Christ quotes the Psalm, applying it to himself. You cannot be part of Christ’s church without having a relationship with Christ.
God has formed you into his house, a temple. Peter uses the term “living stones” to describe this. Paul talks about being built into a holy temple. God’s people are called into the body of Christ. The church is crucial. The sacraments, administered by the church, are not options to take or leave–they are things God uses to build you up, to draw you to himself. St. Cyprian of Carthage said in the third century, “You cannot have God for your Father unless you have the church for your Mother.” If the church is the bride of Christ, she is the mother of the faithful. Though the New Testament church cannot contain God any more than Solomon’s temple could, both are where God has chosen, where God has condescended to dwell. It is true that the Spirit lives in believers individually, but Paul here has in mind a corporate concept. The faithful, gathered from diverse backgrounds, by God’s grace pulled out of their death in sin, have become the house where God lives.
“[T]he spiritual unity of all who believe in Christ is indeed a present reality, but its fullest realization and the attainment of its highest degree lie in the future…. The fact remains that the church of God, far from being a tangled heap of wreckage, is even now God’s own perfectly proportioned temple, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ Himself as the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building is fitly framed together and all believers are built together for a habitation of God though the Spirit (Ephesians 2:20–22). God omniscient sees it thus. So does God’s child with the eye of faith.”
R. B. Kuiper, The Glorious Body of Christ, p. 48
Grasp that picture as you deal with those around you. Understand how important your sanctification is–because you are a holy temple. Self-consciously be what you are. You are the temple Christ cleansed, not with a whip, but with his lifeblood—poured out on the cross for you.
Rejoice, not just in the unity you have with one another, but above all in the reality in which that is based–the unity you have with your Savior, the fact that you have become God’s house!
