Ephesians 4:1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,

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1 THE GOSPEL AND YOU 6. You and the Church part 5 Speaking the Truth in Love and the Gifts That Equip Us to Do That Ephesians 4:1-16 This is our 6 th installment in a mini-series titled THE GOSPEL AND YOU. The big idea in the series is for us to get our heads and hearts around just how massive the Gospel is how it speaks to, shapes and transforms every area of a Christian s life. The lion s share of the series has focused on how the Gospel speaks to, shapes and transforms the way we think of church the way we think about and relate to other believers. Paul began the middle section of his letter by saying Ephesians 4:1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, By inspiration of the Holy Spirit Paul told the 1 st century Christian and tells the 21 st century Christian that there is a way, a manner of living connected to the rescued life! He tells them, and us, that the way we live should weigh as much as the truths we believe. In other words We should LIVE UP to the Gospel of Jesus. Beginning in Ephesians 4:7 Paul tells us that LIVING UP to the Gospel requires GROWING UP in the Gospel. Ephesians 4:7; But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ s gift. 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 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, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 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 so that it builds itself up in love. 1

2 In verses 7-10 Paul tells us that God gives every Christian a spiritual gift (or spiritual gifts) abilities to minister to one another. BIG STUFF God creates us differently and gifts us differently because He wants to use us differently. In verse 11 Paul tells us about the spiritual gifts of leadership in the church that the leaders in a church are equippers. Every Christian has a gift of ministry, and the leaders of the church equip Christians to use their gifts to minister to and serve each other. As Paul wrote about the nature of the church and the gifts within the church he used the language of birth and life, growth and the process of maturing. 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 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, 14 so that we may no longer be children 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 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 so that it builds itself up in love. By inspiration of the Holy Spirit Paul tells us that Jesus gives these gifts, these ministers and these ministries because we all need to GROW UP in the Gospel if we re going to LIVE UP to the Gospel. We need the ministry of the church; we need the ministry of the prophets and apostles and evangelists and pastor/ teachers to equip the individual believers so we all are doing ministry all to the end that we will no longer be children. We also saw how Paul uses the first person plural (we) THREE times in FOUR verse. Paul included himself. He placed himself in the category of needing to mature! Paul realized that he wasn t all Jesus saved him to be! 2

3 Then we looked at three things in the chapter that identify or diagnose spiritual immaturity: Babies are utterly self-centered. They are at the center of their world. That is the only way they know how to process life. The mark of spiritual immaturity is thinking about yourself putting yourself in the center of the story processing every circumstance as being centered on you. The immature Christian is easily offended because they are constantly wondering, How are people looking at me thinking about me treating me? They are self-absorbed thinking about themselves rather than thinking about other people. Spiritual babies are not discerning. 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Immature Christians don t know the difference between sound doctrine and bad doctrine. Heresy leads to damnation. Error leads to a difficult Christian life. Some of that bad doctrine makes navigating life difficult Paul uses the imagery of a life that isn t anchored. Some bad doctrine is toxic (creates destructive concepts of God, promotes spiritual pride and legalism). Good theology, sound doctrine, is a requisite for maturity. Spiritual infants need sound doctrine. tossed to and fro Spiritual babies are all over the map! They are easily distracted they don t follow through. They bounce from one spiritual experience to the next one exciting event to the next. They ve attended numerous churches because the thing that attracted them to that church is no longer new and they ve seen something new in a different church. The immature person is looking for the spectacular. Every believer needs to GROW UP because the Christian life is a life of faith. One author described faith as a long obedience in the same direction regardless of what life looks like. The author of Hebrews described it as an endurance race. LIVING UP to the Gospel demands a plodding consistency a tenacious vision for God s glory in and through our life in the church and through the church. The believer who is in the process of maturing is learning to make a decision and follow through learning to be faithful and enduring and obedient even when things don t go well. 3

4 All of that is counterintuitive to a generation in a culture that talks about being radical yet is noticeably incapable of follow through. Lots of people talking about making an impact changing the world but haven t proved faithful in much of anything yet. We closed by saying that we should NEVER be shocked at the immaturity of other believers. If Paul referred to himself as in the process of maturing we can be sure that every church is filled with varying degrees of spiritual immaturity. We should never be shocked by spiritual immaturity but we should never be content with it; in our own lives, in the lives of others, or in the mission of Metro. HERE S THE CHALLENGE Are we committed to the hard work of developing and creating maturity in the church? This morning we re going to walk around in what kind of work we re talking about Look at verse Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, You will not grow I will not grow We cannot grow unless we dive in to a community of people who speak into each other s lives with this perfect balance of truth and love. FIRST LOVE without truth isn t really love at all. LOVE without truth is mere sentimentality. In reality, Love without truth is cowardly and selfish. Imagine a doctor saying, I don t want to cut out a malignant tumor because I don t want my patient to experience pain; or, I don t want them to think of me as the guy who hurt them. Yes, cancer is a horrible diagnosis! No doctor wants to walk into the room with that news. It doesn t matter why you re sitting in an examination room at your doctor s office but especially if you think you are seriously ill, every patient wants their doctor to come in and say, You re fine you re in perfect health; or, Nothing serious, take 2 aspirin, drink plenty of water go out there and have a good time. It would be unthinkable for a doctor to say things like that if his patient was really sick. A really caring doctor knows that the immediate emotional trauma the patient might experience from the diagnosis, and whatever short-term pain the patient might experience from the treatment, is worth it because their patient is 4

5 going to be spared from a life of chronic pain or saved from a life-threatening condition. HERE S THE DEAL As a rule, the patient is not a physician. I don t make it a practice to self-diagnose because despite the existence of Web MD I m medically illiterate. The thing I think is just a freckle might be melanoma; or the thing I think is melanoma might just be a freckle. I need the trained eyes of a dermatologist and a pathologist. When it comes to our spiritual growth we cannot fully or accurately self-diagnose. Check this out. Hebrews 3:13 But exhort one another every day as long as it is called "today," That means that ministry needs to be happening not just in Sundays or Mondays or Thursdays. It s not just happening inside these walls. It s not just being done by pastors. Ministry is happening everyday outside of the walls of church among yourselves! that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin deceives us it blinds us to the truth about us. We need people who will help us see ourselves. We need people who will love us enough to tell us the truth. If you live in a community where those who claim to love you won t tell you the truth about yourself, at the least your spiritual development is going to be stunted, and at the worst you re going to be crippled. You ll be spiritually disabled; limping through life; fruitless; you will always the person being cared for rather than someone who is caring for others. We just can t think of church as a place where we come and go. By the way a lot of people approach church like that because they don t want anyone to really get to know them. We also need to understand that Fellowship and Community is much, much more than hanging out with people from church who like the same things we like we like or the people from church we have a good time with. The local church is the place God puts us to GROW UP. (Remember Jesus cut us out of the quarry of this fallen world to be living stones in a living temple, placed exactly where He wants us, surrounded by other living stones specific ones that He wants to join together so we can help each other GROW UP and BUILD UP each other so that Jesus will be put on display for the world to see.) One of the most glorious things to see in this whole world is to see someone whose life was crippled by sin, but they were surrounded by people who loved them enough to tell them the truth and see the truth set that person free see that person GROW UP and then see that same person speaking the truth 5

6 in love to one day see that same person coming along someone else who is crippled by sin and speaking the truth in love to that person. TRUST ME When someone has loved you enough to speak the truth to you about the sin that has blinded you and then walked with you as you brought the truth of Scripture to bear upon that sin and prayed with you and for you to experience the transforming grace of God in that area of your life You GROW UP into the very person God can and will use to do the same in someone else s life. You can see in another person s life the sin that had crippled you! With humility and grace love you can speak the truth to them about it. You will be poster boy (or girl) of how love goes hand in hand with truth to heal what s broken. LOVE without truth is cowardly and selfish. We withhold the truth because we re afraid the person will be mad at us and hurt us. We withhold the truth because we re afraid the other person will be crushed and then we ll feel guilty. SECOND TRUTH without love is arrogant and selfish. It s a display of pride it s a self-righteousness power play. Truth without love is arrogant We re quick to speak the truth so that others will see how much we know. We re quick to speak the truth to show that we re right. TRUTH without love is a self-righteousness power play We tell the truth because we like winning arguments. We don t use the truth as an instrument of love to heal a life we wield the truth as a powerful weapon. We use the truth to put the other person down to wound them make them miserable. QUOTE: Vince Vitale Sadly. truth so often has been abused as power play, experience has taught us that disagreement goes hand in hand with devaluing There a lot of people who have stopped valuing the truth stopped valuing the Bible as God s truth because it s been used as a weapon to manipulate, abuse, and control. Historically the church collectively and believers individually have misrepresented the heart of the Gospel in the way they have wielded the Truth. We have so often not looked like Jesus who IS the Truth. Jesus knows every time we have done something we shouldn t have. He knows every way in which we are against Him. And yet He does not hold it over our heads. He allowed it to be held over His head. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). He didn t 6

7 make a play for power. Instead He set aside His power in order to sacrificially love and serve those who rejected the truth rejected Him! When we speak the truth to show how much we know to show we re right; when we speak the truth to wound the other person to devalue them them we are going to drive them further from the truth. What is our tone when we speak the truth? What is the tone of our countenance our posture. QUESTION How do we handle the word of God? Are we afraid to share it with those we love who need to hear it for fear they won t like us or for fear it will hurt them and make us feel guilty? Or, are we quick to use it to display how much we know win a point wound and devalue the other person? HERE S THE DEAL Some of us come right out of the shoot with a gentle temperament that never wants to see others hurt or uncomfortable. As a result you find it hard to speak the truth. Some of us come right out of the shoot with the temperament of a steam roller. You find it really hard to speak the truth in love. TWO THINGS to think about: 1. LOVE AND TRUTH are NOT mutually exclusive! 2. Speaking the truth in love IS NOT A NATURAL THING! Selfishness and sin work against this union of truth and love. In the natural, love and truth seem mutually exclusive. But they re not. There is a place where we see in a tangible way how truth and love work together! It is the place where we reconcile virtually every human dilemma THE CROSS OF JESUS CHRIST. Jesus died because of the truth! The cross tells us the truth about us! When Jesus Christ went to the cross, it was the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to you about you. Jesus nailed to a Roman cross tells you and me that we are so lost messed up so condemned, that nothing less than the death of the Son of God can save you and me. At the very same time the cross tells us how much we re loved. Jesus nailed to a Roman cross tells us that God loves us so much that He was willing to join Himself to our humanity so He could die in our place for our sins. 7

8 When we understand the Cross we are humbled out of ever withholding the truth for our own selfish reasons; we re humbled out of ever using the truth to hurt and devalue. Jesus gave gifts to the church to help us GROW UP in the Gospel and EQUIP and ENABLE each member of the Body of Christ to speak the truth in love. (By the way that is what making disciples looks like!) Ephesians 4:11-12 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, The NKJV reads verse 11 as He Himself gave. Jesus Himself established these offices. They are His divine design for building His church. These offices and giftings are His personal provision for His church to GROW UP in the Gospel. AND He Himself appoints those who serve in them. Paul describes four offices (not five, as in the commonly yet erroneously termed five-fold ministry). Apostles In our study of Luke s Gospel we learned that this word means one who is sent one who is sent with a commission. Jesus had many disciples, but He selected 12 Apostles (Luke 6 and Matt. 10). Wiersbe gives a really clear and concise take on this. A disciple is a follower or a learner, but an apostle is a divinely appointed representative. The original Apostles had to have seen the risen Christ personally (1 Cor. 9:1 2). These men helped to lay the foundation of the church the foundation laid by the Apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20), and once the foundation was laid, they were no longer needed. 1 There are no apostles today in the strictest New Testament sense. But there are men who are sent today and though they don t have the same authoritative role of the first century apostles they are ground-breaking pioneers of the Gospel in countries and regions. 1 Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 2, p. 37). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books. 8

9 Prophets The prophets of the Old Testament spoke the very words of God there was absolute authority of God in what they said. Their words became Scripture. I believe that the prophets of Ephesians 4:11 refers to the prophetic authority of the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles and those whose who went on to pen scripture. Back in Ephesians 2 Paul said that the church is built upon the foundation of apostles and the prophets. You only lay a foundation once. God has been building His church on that foundation for 2,000 years. So we don t want to confuse the office of prophet with the gift of prophecy. Those who exercise the gift of prophecy in the church do not speak in the same authoritative sense as the first century prophets who brought God s foundational word. Evangelists are those who are specifically gifted to preach the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. Pastors and teachers more literally pastor-teacher. The Greek clearly describes one office with two descriptive titles. This is a reference to those men who shepherd the flock of God primarily (though not exclusively) through teaching the Word of God. QUOTE: F.F. Bruce Teaching is an essential part of the pastoral ministry; it is appropriate, therefore, that the two terms, pastors and teachers, should be joined together to denote one order of ministry. Jesus gave to the church pastor/teachers to feed the flock of God the Word of God. Paul wrote these words not to the pastor/teachers but to everyone in the church in Colossae. This is what they were to do with the things their pastorteachers taught Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, Here s how Kenneth Wuest translates the verse Kenneth Wuest (The New Testament: an expanded translation) Let the word of Christ be continually at home in you in abundance. 2 2 Wuest, K. S. (1961). The New Testament: an expanded translation (Col 3:12 17). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 9

10 It is a command. It s in the present tense do it right now! It s active (it s not something done for the Christian or to the Christian. The Christian is the one performing the action. There s a specific reason for the command and the immediate action of Letting the word of Christ be continually at home in you in abundance. So that you and I can with our lives and our words speak the truth in love teach and admonish (warn) one another. THAT IS HOW Christians GROW UP. And when they are GROWING UP IN the Gospel they are more and more going to LIVE UP TO the Gospel. They will be SALT and LIGHT in their home / neighborhood / classroom / workplace / market place We are not called to grow attendance! We are called to build lives. The church is a body and must have spiritual food. This food is the Word of God. The pastorteacher is to nourish and equip the saints with the Word of God so they can perform the work of the ministry. Our philosophy of ministry what we do and how we do it has to be built upon that. 10