Part 1: Captured by Christ: Grace in the Church

Listen as D. A. Carson speaks on Part 1: Captured by Christ: Grace in the Church in this address from The Gospel Coalition sermon library.

---

Don Reed: I don’t think we can really take the credit for producing him, but we feel we own a little part of him, and I think he still feels he has a few roots left here in BC and is pleased to come back and be among us. We recall with great delight his ministry, not only at the college but prior to that at Richmond Baptist Church. It was our joy on many occasions to be exposed to our brother Don’s ministry. It’s good to have him back.

He comes to us now from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a prestigious school. Dr. Carson was telling us just a little bit about the growth of TEDS as it’s sometimes known in recent years. Perhaps he will have an opportunity to share that with us publicly at some point. God has done great things in that particular ministry.

Brother Carson, it’s a delight to be able to greet you, welcome you tonight, and present you to this company of people. Dr. Carson has said to me, if at some point you would like to engage in a question period, he would be quite open to that, possibly through the days as well as tomorrow evening. The platform is yours, brother. May the Lord bless you.

Don Carson: My wife and I have often said, if we simply had to choose a place in which to live regardless of other considerations, Vancouver would be at the top of the heap, so it is always a pleasure to come back, not only for personal reasons to see many old friends but because of the associations we have had with this place now for over a decade and a half and the many friendships in Christ we have enjoyed over that time.

I would like to begin by reading this evening the first 16 verses of Ephesians, chapter 4. The apostle Paul takes up his pen, and he says,

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: ‘When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.’

(What does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) It was he who gave some to be It was he I apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ. 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.”

So reads the Word of God. Let us bow in prayer.

And now grant, heavenly Father, that the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts may be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer, both for the praise of your dear Son and for the good of the church for which he shed his life’s blood. Amen.

Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.

Force me to render up my sword, and I shall conqueror be.

I sink in life’s alarms when by myself I stand;

Imprison me within Thine arms, and strong shall be my hand.

So we sing. What does it mean? In fact, the idea is nowhere better articulated than in the passage I just read, for here we are told when Christ ascended on high, he led captives in his train and he gave gifts to men. If we’re to understand what this means and its centrality in the topic that governs these five addresses, we are going to have to back off a little and see the flow of the passage through these 16 verses. The movement is threefold.

1. Paul exhorts believers to keep the unity of the Spirit.

Verses 1 to 3. The governing command here is found in verse 3. “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” The words are strong words. It is presupposed this task will not be easy and the church will have to spend a great deal of energy on this business of keeping a certain peace, a certain unity of the Spirit. It is presupposed there will be difficulties and confrontations and challenges, but the responsibility will require that we expend a great deal of energy.

How are we to do this? We are to make every effort, we are told, to keep the unity of the Spirit. How? Through the bond of peace. Peace, here, is not portrayed as the ideal or the goal but, rather, as the means. The goal is the unity of the Spirit. Keeping the peace is the means. It is very important to maintain the distinction.

If the aim is simply to keep the peace, then we may be analogous to any other social grouping. If you belong to the Kiwanis Club or to the hockey team or to the local literary society or what have you, it is important to strive for peace. Peace is part of the oil that keeps organizations going.

But, surely, the church wants more than that. We want the unity of the Spirit, and Christians who have walked this way for 10 or 20 or 30 years know instantly the distinction. Peace can be simply a corporate decision not to fight over anything without there being life and pulsating vitality and the unity of the Spirit.

Yet, although our aim is the unity of the Spirit and not peace, one cannot gain the unity of the Spirit without using the means of peace, without working hard at peace. That means, amongst other things, when frictions arise amongst us, because we cherish the unity of the Spirit, we will learn in debate to lower our voices and cool our rhetoric and slacken our pace. We will use peace as a means to aim toward the unity of the Spirit himself.

It is almost as if peace, here, is seen as the twine or the tool that effects the unity of the Spirit, and that is what we are to work hard at achieving. How? “… through the bond of peace …” According to what standard? “… as a life,” we are told, “worthy of the calling we have received.” The calling language of the New Testament varies from writer to writer. In Matthew’s usage, the call of God is equivalent to invitation. “Many are called but few are chosen.”

In Paul’s language, the call is always effectual. If you’re called, you’re saved by definition. All those whom God calls are justified, so for Paul here to say the calling we have received provides the standard of the effort we are to expend is to say, in effect, we are to live up to what it means to be a Christian.

The calling is our calling to be Christians. If we are Christians, sons of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ, if already our citizenship is in heaven, then we are to live out our lives in the light of that calling of that reality in our lives. We must, then, conduct ourselves in conformity with our primary calling.

Explicitly, what does this mean? It means, Paul says, “Be completely humble and gentle.” We cannot help but think of the description of the Lord Jesus Christ recorded by Matthew. “He who was meek and lowly of heart …” Humility suggests a certain kind of lowliness, cheerfully allowing others to take precedence over us, not so much concerned about equality as with building up one another, cheerfully counting others better than ourselves.

Meekness is not slighted when others are offensive. It is not retaliatory. It goes quickly to God in prayer, as did Moses when he was confronted with opposition. It does not keep score cards. Patient, Paul says. The ability here to deal quietly and courteously with those who are offensive and awkward, and every church has some.

In fact, the church inevitably gains more than its fair share of awkward and offensive people. Do you know why? Because no other group in society will have them. The church is bound to collect a disproportionate percentage of misfits because, by and large, the church is still a more receptive place for them than other places, and far from shunning them and squeezing them to the periphery, we ought to glory that Christ goes after the ignoble and the weak.

“… bearing with one another in love.” Paul doesn’t think Christian unity is going to be made up of a kind of syrupy, smarmy kind of spirituality. We will have to bear with one another in love. The presupposition, again, is that it takes some doing, but that is exactly what he exhorts us to do in measure of our calling.

How, then, are we to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit? “… through the bond of peace.” According to what standard? According to the standard of the calling we have received. By whose example? In this instance, by the example of Paul himself. He begins, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”

Paul is no armchair theologian. He writes from difficulty. He writes from the experience of hardship. He writes from the experience of loss, grief, frequent loneliness, actual punishment. He writes as a prisoner for the Lord, not from the position of the person who is filling in a few hours penning a letter while sitting in a La-Z-Boy.

What he is saying, in effect, is, “If the effort that you see I have expended to build the unity of the church, Jew and Gentile, so central a theme in this epistle.… If the energy you see I have expended means anything to you, remember I write as a prisoner of the Lord.” Probably, he is resorting to a little play on words. He is a prisoner because he sits in a prison, and he is a prisoner, also, because he is constrained by Christ. He is doubly a prisoner of the Lord.

Having stressed this unity, Paul goes on to outline the theological unity that Christ’s people share. It is not simply enough to stress unity at the experiential level. Paul goes further and lays out the theological basis for the exhortation he has given in the first three verses. This theological unity in this particular summary of the apostle is in six or seven parts.

A) One body

We are told, “There is one body and one Spirit.” The body language of the New Testament is pervasive, and nowhere is it stronger than in the epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. Already in chapter 1, verses 22 and 23, we read, “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

Elsewhere, we are told in Romans 12:5, “So in Christ we, who are many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” I will deal a little more with this body language and church language in ensuing talks. At the moment, however, it is important to understand for Paul there is never a very radical distinction between what might be called the church universal and the local church.

We will tease out that tension in the course of the next couple of days, but from Paul’s point of view, the local church is the manifestation of the unity of what might be called the church universal. There is no rabid distinction between the two in Paul; however, fine distinctions may be made. Therefore, if there is one body of Christ, the local church must manifest it as such.

B) One Spirit

The Holy Spirit. Elsewhere, Paul insists that all who have been baptized into the body by the Holy Spirit or in the Holy Spirit constitute this body.

C) One hope

All true Christians, members of the one body, share the same destination. We may as well learn to get on now. We’re all going to the same place. Indeed, this orientation is the one that grounds the other two. Here, Paul says, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called.”

D) One Lord

That one we know about a little more, partly because we sing so often …

The Church’s one foundation

Is Jesus Christ her Lord.

She is his new creation

By water and the Word.

If there is but one Lord, then surely, this one Lord giving his commands cannot be issuing commands that end in division and strife amongst his servants.

E) One faith

 Probably both in an objective sense and a subjective sense. Without faith exercising trust in the saving God, it is impossible to please God. Yet, there is only one faith in a dogmatic sense. One apostolic body of doctrine.

F) One baptism

You say, “Ah! Now we have you.” We all know in the contemporary age there is more than one baptism. What does Paul mean by this? Is he simply trying to score points against paedo-baptists? In my view, they weren’t invented yet, so it’s not likely. I think we can best understand what Paul means here when we understand how baptism functioned in the early church, and a parallel drawn from American evangelicalism of half a century ago may help.

Those of you who are older will recall the revival meetings, as they were called, at which Billy Sunday preached. Coming out of the push toward prohibition, converted from baseball, he preached prohibition and gospel in approximately equal proportions. He went from place to place and put up a huge tent and saw many, many thousands converted under his ministry. He was a rough-cut jewel. He wasn’t polished or learned, but he spoke to the hearts of many people.

Unfortunately, the tent in which he preached had no floor. Therefore, if he pitched his tent on ground that was a little bit wet, when people went forward, and there were enough of them, the aisles were soon turned to mud, and people got their shoes filthy. If, on the other hand, he pitched his tent on a dry place, then with the numbers going forward, clouds of dust were soon enveloping the congregation and choking everybody.

He quickly learned to sprinkle sawdust down all the aisles, and out of that habit came the expression, “To hit the sawdust trail,” which, being interpreted, means going forward at a Billy Sunday meeting to make a profession of faith. If you spoke to somebody who had been converted at a Billy Sunday meeting and asked him some years later, “When did you come to know the Lord?” he might reply, “I hit the sawdust trail in Cincinnati in 1927,” or something like that.

No one would understand the expression hitting the sawdust trail in a literal way. It wasn’t that somebody went out, laid down some sawdust, found a hammer, and started hitting it, nor was it even used metaphorically to mean that by actually walking on a trail of sawdust something of grace was effected in the individual’s life.

For if he understood anything at all about the gospel of Christ that had redeemed him, he understood, rather, that by going down on this trail of sawdust he had responded with a heart of faith to the appeal of the gospel and had come into a saving, close relationship with Christ through repentance and belief.

But going down this sawdust trail was so bound up with his conversion experience, that by metonymy, to use the technical name, he can refer to his entire conversion by simply referring to walking down a little trail of sawdust. That’s the way baptism functioned in the New Testament. In the New Testament, when you got converted you were baptized … no ifs, ands, or buts. It was part of the conversion package. It wasn’t added on once you prepared to accept Jesus as Lord.

You couldn’t be a Christian unless you knew Jesus as Lord. It wasn’t a test of your spiritual maturity some months or some years later; it was bound up with conversion, and you weren’t really seen as converted until you had made that step. It was part of the package. But that doesn’t mean the New Testament treats baptism as the means of conversion or as if being dipped in water somehow effects grace or regenerates you. Rather, all those who were converted were baptized.

As a result, any individual Christian, when asked some years later, “When did you become a Christian?” could respond, “I was baptized in Philippi in 47.” As a result, baptism serves as metonymy for the entire conversion of the individual. That is why you can read an expression like that at the end of Galatians, chapter 3. “All those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

Here, when Paul says there is one baptism, almost certainly what he means is there is no entry into this community apart from conversion. You’ve been converted. In the church of Jesus Christ, you have a closed community. It is a believing community. It is a believer’s church. It is a regenerate entity.

G) One God and Father of all

Over against the paganism and the polytheism of the day, Paul says, “We serve but one God.” He is the Father, the loving Father, and he is, we are told, over all, through all, and in all. He is overall supreme and transcendent, alone the governor. Through all, not only imminent but working in everything and everyone according to his good pleasure.

And in all.… Here, quite certainly, in all of his people. By the blessed Holy Spirit bequeathed by Christ, God himself has taken up residence within us. As Jesus himself taught us in the Farewell Discourse recorded in John, chapter 14, verse 23, when the blessed Paraclete comes, “My Father and I will be in you, will take up residence within you, by means of this Holy Spirit.”

These are sure theological unities that ground the exhortation to unity in the earlier part of the chapter. Before I leave this section, I want to issue a warning. There are some Christians who take one or two doctrinal tests in the New Testament and make them decisive for determining what is and what is not Christian or who is and who is not Christian.

For example, the World Council of Churches is happy simply with the little description, “Jesus is Lord.” The trouble is, when you probe the documents carefully you discover they mean somewhat different things by Jesus, by is, and by Lord, which compounds the communication problem somewhat.

What you discover when you examine doctrinal tests in the New Testament is that no doctrinal test is ever universally sufficient. Doctrinal tests in the New Testament are always necessary; not one of them is sufficient. Let me give you an example. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, for instance, where Paul enunciates the test, “Jesus is Lord,” it is over against the prevailing polytheism of Corinth where there were lords aplenty.

If, truly, a Christian came to understand and believe and appropriate the confession, “Jesus is Lord,” it was a sufficient test for that situation. It was a test that was necessary, but it was also sufficient. If, however, we begin to read 1 John, there we discover three different tests, and the doctrinal one has nothing to do with the lordship of Christ. There, the doctrinal test is, “Jesus is the Christ,” because there were some people in John’s day who were denying that point.

They were suggesting the Christ came down as a kind of demigod and rested on the human person, Jesus, perhaps at his baptism, and left Jesus at the cross. Just when things were getting tough, this divine being, this Christ, left Jesus hanging there in the lurch crying out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” so that Jesus was not Christ.

The doctrinal test in that context was, “Jesus is Christ.” In that context, it was a sufficient test as well as a necessary test, but in Paul’s context, it wouldn’t have been adequate. Paul says John’s test would not have been adequate. Both tests proved necessary; neither proves sufficient.

When you stretch a little further in the New Testament, also in 1 John, you discover there is a test of love. You could be as orthodox as Paul and as moral as a saint, but Paul says, “If you don’t love the brothers, the truth isn’t in you.” Those of us who have come out of more conservative backgrounds where we have been taught to fight for the faith, with the emphasis on fight not faith, where we have confused being contentious about the faith with contending for the faith, need to hear that test as well.

Of course, it is not a sufficient test in every situation. It is merely a necessary test in all situations and a sufficient one in some situations. What this means is, inevitably, in the church there is profound need for spiritual discernment as to how to apply the various biblical tests. It is not simply a question of arbitrarily selecting the one that suits me best. In fact, probably, you should select the one that suits you least comfortably and apply that most vigorously.

Having laid out the doctrinal foundation, Paul then goes on in the major part of this section of Scripture to the major point, in fact, he’s trying to make.

2. Despite the unity he has just enunciated there is great diversity.

Each Christian has been given individual grace as Christ has apportioned it. This kind of argument is, in fact, quite frequent in Paul. You find it, for instance, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12. There, Paul stresses the unity of the body. Then he insists immediately afterward that different gifts have, nevertheless, been given for the common good. The stress on unity develops instantly into a maximizing of diversity, a glorying in it.

When God sends frozen precipitation like the white stuff outside on the ground, he makes each snowflake different. We make ice cubes. “Like a mighty army moves the church of God.” Some of us think that means we should all be dressed in khaki and look the same way. Another metaphor might picture the church as a symphony, and the piccolo had better not sound like a drum. There is a place for diversity in the church to make symphony, and the very symphony sounds like harmony.

That is Paul’s point in these verses. Having stressed the unity, he now says, “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.” He says this truth is in accordance with the Scriptures, in the first place. Verses 7 and 8. We are told, “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it [Scripture, or he, God, the author] says, ‘When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.’ ”

If you check out the source of that reference, you discover it is from Psalm 68, and when you look up Psalm 68, you discover the wording is a little different. There you read, “When you [God] ascended on high, you led captives in your train; you received gifts from men.”

In other words, the psalmist is addressing God and insists God received gifts from men, but Paul here speaks of Christ ascending on high and insists he gave gifts to men, so many critics have suggested Paul is tampering a little with the text. He couldn’t find one that made his point, so he found one that was pretty close and changed a couple of words and got his point made that way.

The trouble with that interpretation, of course, apart from the doctrine of Scripture itself, is it presupposes the people to whom Paul was writing couldn’t read, for here Paul is clearly grounding a major plank in his argument on the citation of Scripture he makes, and if his readers can’t follow the argument, it’s a weak argument.

In fact, the solution is quite straightforward. Psalm 68 is one of that small grouping of psalms often called historical psalms in which the psalmist surveys some part of biblical history, usually connected with the exodus and wilderness years and the opening up of the land under Joshua, and from this recital of history makes a number of telling points … moral points, ethical points.

It has been shown the particular language that is used by the psalmist in Psalm 68 at this point in his psalm is, in fact, evocative of earlier things connected with the exodus. In particular, that God glorified himself above the assembly. He ascended above them. He glorified himself above them and received gifts from them in language that is strongly reminiscent of Numbers 8 and 18.

In Numbers 8, for example, we have the setting apart of the Levites. It culminates, then, in Numbers 8:19 in these words. God says, “Of all the Israelites, I have given the Levites as gifts to Aaron and his sons to do the work at the tent of meeting on behalf of the Israelites and to make atonement for them.”

A little earlier in the same chapter, verse 16, we are told God says, “They are the Israelites who are to be given wholly to me. I have taken them as my own in place of the firstborn.” Here in the same passage, the Israelites are said to be taken by God from amongst the people for himself and then to be given by God to the people. In the same passage.

Again, in Numbers, chapter 18, you find exactly the same thought enunciated. For example, chapter 18, verse 6, God says, “I myself have selected your fellow Levites from among the Israelites as a gift to you.” Here, God takes these people and, then, as his, he gives them back to the people.

Paul, understanding this background to Psalm 68, concatenates the two themes. He puts the two passages together (Psalm 68 and that on which it depends, Numbers 8 and 18). He puts the two together as quite a number of New Testament quotations of Scripture do, weaving together two or three Scripture in order to make this declaration, “When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to them.”

Only here, the exaltation is not simply of Yahweh, God the Father in the Old Testament, as he stands exalted above the covenant community. Here, the exaltation of God par excellence is the resurrection and ascension and glorification of God the eternal Son who is raised above his people and by that ascension, by that exaltation, by that triumphant cross work and ascension he takes captives, and then he gives them back.

What’s the difference between this God and that of the Old Testament? In the Old Testament, God takes the Israelites from amongst the covenant community and gives them back to the covenant community, but in the New Testament, under the new covenant, God takes each of us. We are told, “To each of us grace has been apportioned.” This each language is so strong throughout this chapter.

We go on to read a little further on in verse 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.” Here, just as New Testament Christians constitute the new covenant priesthood, so also New Testament Christians constitute the captured humanity which, then, has been poured back out on the church as God’s love gift to the church.

In other words, according to this passage, Christ by his ascension, his triumphant work, captures men and women. That is part of his triumphant work. That is what his cross work was in part about, and in capturing us, in making us his, he assigns us each a place. He apportions grace to each one as he sees fit. Then he pours us back onto the church.

In other words, Paul says the apportioning of gifts and grace constitutes part of the triumph of Christ, and it is equivalent to being captured by Christ as part of that triumph and then bestowed as a gift to the church. The parenthetical words in verses 9 and 10, I take it, refer to the incarnation. “What does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions?” He descended to us, I take it, in the incarnation. “He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens.” It is in the wake of that glorious triumph that tasks are assigned.

This apportioning of grace, in the second place, is then the ultimate basis of all distinctive roles amongst God’s people. That is why we read in verse 11, “It was he who gave some …” Then most of our English versions have “… to be It was he I apostles …” If I read the original correctly, we should simply read this way. “It was he who gave some apostles. It was he who gave some prophets. It was he who gave some evangelists. It was he who gave some pastors and teachers.”

It’s not that he gave certain people to be something; he gave the people. He captured us. Then he gave us as his gifts. Paul, here, stresses apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and so on, but he has already made the point, and he makes it even more strongly elsewhere, that the principle applies not to the clerics, the clergy alone.

The antitype of the Levitical priesthood in the New Testament is never the clergy. In the ministry of the new covenant, the antitype of the Levites in the Old Testament, is always either Christ himself, the high priest, or is all of us, brothers and sisters in Christ. In that context, Paul is saying every single grace gift we have known has come about because Christ, in his triumphant exaltation, has captured us by that victory and then given us individually as his loving gift to the church.

I suggest to you we would solve many of our ecclesiastical problems if leadership and lay alike had that kind of view of our calling and service. Too often we have seen our service in terms of mere professionalism or in terms of power struggles or in terms of influence, and we have not seen ourselves, first and foremost, as Christ’s captives won by him at fearful cost and now also his gift to the church.

When I was pastor at Richmond Baptist there was a man in the congregation who did not participate very actively. He was faithful in attendance at all kinds of meetings, but for one reason or another he had never been given office in the church nor did he seek it nor was he the sort of person who would ever teach a Bible class or the like.

One day, in what by human standards seemed to be a freak in constitutional polity, he was made head usher. Considering that he was retiring and shy and a bit bashful, that did not seem the most obvious appointment. He came to me the following week. “How is an usher to act?” Then I thought no more about it. We had the best ushed church in the country.

I don’t see Jim Falconer here tonight, but I tell you, he did it not because he was spectacularly endowed with administration. He wouldn’t mind my saying this in front of him. He knows it’s the truth. He did it because he understood himself to be God’s gift. He had been captured by Christ, and Christ himself had poured out this brother on the church as his gift to the church.

That shy man memorized every name in the congregation, children and adults alike. He was always the first to arrive and often the last to leave. He got to know where people liked to sit. He got to know the children’s nicknames and often had candies for them as they left. He was a soul of gentleness and friendliness without being obtrusive or obnoxious. He was no professional. He was God’s gift to the church. This apportioning of grace is the ultimate basis of all astute roles amongst God’s people.

3. The purpose of this distribution of God’s gracious gifts is twofold.

First, to prepare God’s people for works of ministry (the first part of verse 12) and secondly, to build up the entire body of Christ, aiming for the unity that maturity brings. Verse 11: “It was he who gave some to be It was he I apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and other kinds of gifts to the church …” Why? For what purpose? “… to prepare God’s people for works of service …”

In other words, the gifts serve the congregation in order to develop the congregation to further service. This is not an elitist crowd. We do not serve in order to advance a little higher up the pecking order and, finally, to be recognized in circles of ecclesiastical eminence. We serve to help the body to serve.

Because Jim Falconer ushed, everybody else in the congregation was able to do their own thing a little better than would otherwise have been the case. We serve to promote service, because after all, our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, is the supreme paradigm, and he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. In that context, then, “… the body of Christ [will] be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

What are the results of all of this? Twofold again. Doctrinal stability (verses 14 and 15) and mutual interdependence (verse 16). Look at verses 14 and 15. Paul says, when this is achieved, “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ.”

In our intellectual Western world we sometimes think the primary way of establishing doctrinal stability is by strong, doctrinal formulations, and there’s some truth to it, but only some, or we think doctrinal stability and unity in the church will be achieved by excellent pulpit ministry. God help us. We need more of that, but by itself it’s not enough.

No. Beyond that, we need also the kind of churches where each one sees himself or herself as God’s captive, now God’s gift to the church, serving the whole body with the whole body administering ministry, and that will issue in doctrinal stability. That’s what the text says. Isn’t that a strange way of building doctrinal stability?

Very, very often, doctrinal aberrations (not always, but very, very often) are, in fact, a reflection of something wrong in a church. Some deadness or some corruption or some suppressed sin, something not functioning right in the church. I know every once in a while you get some joker coming along whose whole love is originality, and he will come up with some harebrained scheme and take away a few members here or there. Yes. But in my opinion, the vast majority of splits over doctrinal reasons are not primarily doctrinal. That’s just the excuse.

If you want a doctrinally mature and stable church, you must have a church where the vast majority of members see themselves as captured by the risen and exalted Lord and themselves, now, as his gifts to the church. Away then with this silly Western individualism. Instead, let us see ourselves as Christ’s captives, and within that context, we will see more doctrinal stability.

The last result is, strangely, mutual interdependence. Verse 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.” The language is very much akin to that of 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, where Paul uses the body metaphor in a similar kind of argument.

“If all the members were an eye, where would the hearing be? If all were hearing, where would the nose be?” A body will not be considered, in general, to be very efficient if it’s one great big eyeball. Where are the feet? If it’s just feet, where’s the stomach to feed the feet? The very diversity that Christ gives should result in our unity.

The diversity is not unqualified. It does not come outside the bounds of the doctrinal confessions Paul has laid out here or that are taught elsewhere in Scripture. It does not deny or step outside the bounds Scripture itself lays down. Apart from that, we ought to exalt in diversity.

I thank God every time I have the opportunity to minister in a church where there are young and old and well-educated and poorly educated and wealthy and poor and white and black, a mixture, a strange mixture who are bound together by just one thing, and where that exists it is the most beautiful thing on God’s green earth.

There, there is harmony. There, there is not merely the compagination of social forces where there is mutual approval and backslapping. Any pagan society can achieve that. Here, there is rather the unity of the Spirit achieved by making every effort to work at the bond of peace.

Why have I spent this entire first evening dealing very little with the question of the structure and authority of the local church? For two reasons. First, I am deeply persuaded we cannot rightly understand what the New Testament has to say about structure and authority in the local church until we set such themes within a larger, theological, conceptual, and spiritual …

If I lay out for you patterns found in the New Testament (responsibilities of deacons to elders, responsibility of the church to discipline elders, the elders’ responsibility to the church, and so on) but we do not deal with the fundamental nature of the church and its constituent members, their responsibilities to each other, we will generate simply a book of rules and fail to perceive the life-giving, pulsating organism that is the local church. In other words, it is the broader New Testament context that establishes meaning in the patterns and authority and structure.

Secondly, the truth of the matter is these verses deal directly with our theme, for they establish a manner in which Christians are to look at themselves and at each other and at their God and see their network of relationships and responsibilities and gifts within a broader umbrella of God’s sovereignty, Christ’s ascending triumphant power, and our place as his gifts, his captured people now his gifts poured out on the church. If we maintain, we will begin to display to the world what the church ought to be between the first and second advents. May God help us.