Ephesians Part 8

In Ephesians 4:1-16, the apostle Paul turns from doctrine to discipleship, from theology to conduct, from what the Lord has accomplished to how His redeemed people are to live. How do we mature in this faith? By relationship with the Lord, and by gift ministries, given by Messiah to His Body, who equip the saints for ministry. Give a listen!

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SPEAKER_00 0:18

Welcome to the Messiah in Life podcast, hosted by Bishop Justin D. Elwell of Restoration Fellowship International and Messiah Congregation, recorded at our congregational home in Washington Mills, New York. In this study through Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, we invite you to rediscover the beauty of God's covenant purposes revealed in Messiah Jesus. Together, we will explore the theological and covenantal foundations of Paul's letter. It's called unity, holiness, redemption, and covenant identity for both Jew and Gentile in Messiah. This is more than a theological study. It is an invitation to see the story of Scripture as one unified testimony of the Lord's faithfulness from Israel to the nations, all brought together in Messiah. Thank you for joining us as we seek to live Messiah in everyday life. And now to Bishop Justin.

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Alright, Ephesians chapter 4. We're going to begin in verse 1. We're going to uh we will be studying through verse 16. There's a lot there, so let's get to it. I therefore a pr uh I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in the manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to it says men, but it's men and women, uh, to humanity. In saying he ascended, what does it mean? That he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fall, or f excuse me, fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain the unity of faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 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 and deceitful sh schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, 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. This is God's word. It is, it's a it's it's a beautiful beginning in a in a manner of speaking. It is, it does have the qualities of a doxology, of a prayer, of um in a in a theological reflection, but it's also very practical. So chapter four shifts away from in a manner of speaking, it it shifts away from the doctrine to discipleship and from theology to conduct. So this is kind of the practical heart of the of the book. When we get to chapter four and chapter five, what does it look like to walk worthy of the calling that we have in our Messiah? So the first three chapters, we have the unfolding plan of God revealed through the Messiah, the Father's plan that was before the foundation of the world, redemption through Messiah, through the Son, the sealing of the Holy Spirit, the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, all of these plans to bring together one new humanity for the renewal of all things. And that is the theology that Paul lays out, the mystery that had been hidden. And of course, it was hidden in plain sight because man could not conceive of how the Lord would actually do this. How does he bring the covenant people together with a people who are not a covenant people? How does he bring together Israel with the nations? How does he bring together Jew and Gentile? How does he do this work? This is impossible. It's an impossibility for there to be some type of treaty that would bring all of these elements together, even though we see that the gospel, as Paul tells us in Galatians, was preached first to Abraham. You know, Abraham received the gospel, right, in chapter 12, verses 1 through 3. So when we think about the revelation of the mystery, the mysterion, as he used so frequently in chapter 3, the mysterion that was revealed, and how this would come together is in Messiah through the gospel. So again, from doctrine to discipleship, what does it look like? What does it mean to be a follower of Messiah? Do we simply act the way we want to and say hallelujah on certain key points? Is there a theology of conduct? Paul is basically giving us that theology of conduct in chapter four and chapter five. And we are to live, we are to live what the Lord has accomplished. So we as the redeemed now live what he has accomplished. We are the living reality of what he has accomplished. And he calls us to that. It's not comfortable, it's not easy. It takes work, it takes patience, it takes grace, it takes forgiveness, it takes all of the qualities that quite often we do not want to extend or that we do not want to receive. We want to be right, we want to be the victor, we want to be the exalted one, however you want to process that. It runs uh against the grain of the natural human man. So therefore, here is the transition. Therefore, let me read from verse 20 in chapter three. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church. When we come together in the ecclesia, we're outcalled from our regular lives to gather an assembly together, we are glorifying him just by our presence in a space together, we're glorifying him, and we're bearing witness to what he has done. And in Jesus Christ, because of the work that he has done through all generations, forever and ever. Amen. I therefore, that's the shift. A prisoner for the Lord. Remember, he is in chains. Rome controls the chains, Messiah controls the plan. Urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Walk in this. So Paul is beginning this ethical instruction. Ethics, biblical ethics is the application of the Lord's eternal norms. Okay, so his ethical norms that he has given to us in the form of command, in the form of uh we even say narrative command, because of how the Lord reveal the Lord's revelation is given to us in the Word of God. Um, beginning uh even at the 10, we could say, I am the Lord. I'm looking at the representation here up on the back wall. I'm the Lord your God. That's the first command. We know who our deliverer is through that first statement. Because that's the working of grace. Grace is given to us before the command is. So now, once he commands us, because he has delivered us, and this has given us a relationship with him by which he has the legal jurisdiction over us to command us, to direct us. As I've said so many times, I approach the Sinai covenant as one of discipleship, not as salvation. It's not a salvific um covenant. So we have Abraham that gives us a covenant that is of faith. Abraham believed the Lord and it was accounted to him as righteousness. We come before Sinai to learn how to walk as free people in covenant relationship with the Lord. So when we apply Christian ethics, it is not difficult, Jewish ethics is not difficult. I'll give you the, I've given the um Tilian, I would say. Um sorry, my internet is uh unstable here. Um I'll give you the Vantilian brief, which is uh Christian ethics is the word of God applied to a situation by a person. The word of God applied to a situation by a person. So it's triperspectival, we say. It's three three parts. So you have the normative standard, which is the word of God, you have the situational aspect, we're always in a situation, even if we're by ourselves, we still need to apply the word of God. And then you have the existential action. What is the actor? What is the motivation of the actor in that situation? Of course, that's informed for us by scripture. Paul is telling us to live out scripture, live out the word of God. So ethics, ethical theology is never detached from biblical theology. They are, you know, hand in glove together. So from biblical theology, we have uh moral theology. What does it look like in the public square? How do we live our life? So quite often we we say that ethics is a prescriptive science. It tells us what the Lord expects of us. Morality is a descriptive. What does it look like within our society? What does it look like lived out? So when the broader culture, the conventional norm tells us that this is an acceptable practice, uh, whatever that might be, if it's opposed to the word of God, we are to walk contrary to that. So, in a manner of speaking, the broader world might see us as amoral because we are not living according to their ethical or moral standard. Just as the Romans considered Christians atheists because they didn't worship one of the gods of Rome. So they were without God. So the broader world might say, well, those believers, those faithful uh of Christ, are without ethics, they're without morality because they don't they don't uh follow our convention. So how do we live out? That's what Paul is Paul is giving to us. How do we live this theology? So the faithful do not walk worthy in order to be received or accepted by the Lord. We're not living an ethical life in order to be accepted by him. The ethical or the moral life in biblical terms is lived because we have already been accepted by him. So we're free from those restraints that would keep us in uh in captive to sin and all of the activities that are associated with sin. And now we walk into freedom with Christ. That doesn't mean we're without restraint. There's still guardrails, there's still restriction on action, but we're now empowered, as I've said so many times before. My uh one of my uh Christian ethics um professors said so beautifully, um, that freedom in Christ is not the power to do what you want, it's the power to do what you ought. So now we can do the ethical ought. So obedience, again, is not a means of earning favor with the Lord. We're obedient because we already have his favor and we're free to walk in that favor. So we've experienced his grace, we know what his grace feels like, we know what his grace looks like. So Paul again is reminding us that we're a prisoner, or he is a prisoner, and he is speaking as a prisoner in this glorious way. He is speaking from chains as though he were not in chains. And that to me is incredibly encouraging, and I think it should be encouraging to all of us. But they authenticate his message. Why is he in chains? Well, remember, he was accused of bringing Gentiles into the courts of the temple, and because his message was so pervasive, even among the the Jewish faithful um and those who were persecuting him, the message of the gospel that he was giving was such a controversy. We don't think about that today in in those types of terms, because it's all normal now. It's all normal. This is this is what Christianity is. But at the time, these are all disputes. And this was a controversy. Remember, James says to Paul, they've heard about you, these myriad thousands who are here that are zealous for the law and faithful for Christ. They've heard about you and they'll want an answer about why you're telling uh Jewish uh believers to not circumcise their sons and obey the law of Moses. And Paul, to just to prove that that is a that's a fallacy, that it is in fact a rumor about him, he obeys what James gives. Not because he's placate, because Paul doesn't placate anyone, please. He's not, you know, the idea that he was just trying to calm James down. He confronted Peter, one of the three pillars, right? One of the three pillars that even Paul recognizes in Jerusalem. He confronted Peter. He said, Hey Peter, you're not walking worthy. You're not walking according to the gospel. Isn't that great? Um I'd love to have been a fly on that wall. Or I would have run and hit. I'm not sure which I would have done. But he's suffering because of the message of the gospel. He's suffering for the very thing that uh he is proclaiming through this letter. So the gospel and the reconciliation between Jew and Gentile wasn't simply just a footnote to this. It was an incredibly important and significant theological idea that was socially profound, religiously profound, and had incredible political consequences in the first century. And again, that's lost on us today, the dynamic of what it meant to be a believer, whether you were a Jew or whether you were a Gentile, because either way, there were serious social, political, uh, and religious consequences for that. This is why the power, the why the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, for which Paul is not ashamed. Because he was seeing lives transformed. He was seeing people brought together who ordinarily would not be together, eat together, walk together, talk together, they would be distant, they would be remote. And so he sees that as the power of God working. Again, because we're 2,000 years detached from that cultural and religious reality, we don't have the same appreciation of it and the significance of it and why Paul is glorifying God for it. So he begins with, therefore, walk. Walk, of course, the idea of halacha, of walking with the Lord today. Halacha is synonymous with Jewish law within the um within the rabbinic tradition. So this is how we walk. This is how we, you know, how we walk in order to be recognized as a Jew, in order to uh to live a life of as a faithful Jew before the Lord. So Paul's language, that manner of walking, is again, it's a it's an incredibly significant background to what Paul, the language that Paul is using here. And of course, throughout Scripture, covenant faithfulness was witnessed through your walk. What were you doing? Why were you doing it? How were you doing it? And we can see that in Deuteronomy 10, 12, Micah 6, 8. But now he's giving us a distinctly messianic halacha, a distinctly messianic approach to what does it look like to walk faithfully with the Lord, to walk humbly with the Lord. It is a life shaped by the character of Messiah. It's not a life that is shaped by our own character or by um attempting to assume the character of someone that we greatly regard and respect. It is the character Messiah, walking empowered by the Holy Spirit. So the the faithful walk is characterized in this way, these five points. Humility. Now, humility is not weakness, remember. It's not weakness. Gentleness, patience, patience, patience, emphasis, bearing with one another in low love, and preserving the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. These are characteristics, and I'm sure Paul would agree it's not an exhaustive list, but it's enough for the point that he's making here. So walk in a manner that's worthy to which you've been called with all humility, with gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Hmm, isn't that fun? That's challenging, yes? That's where grace comes into our life and where we experience it most profoundly. Eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. So the virtues that Paul is giving to us here stand in sharp contrast to what was common in the day of honor and status in the Roman Greco-Roman culture. Uh class systems were very distinct. They were very um very much uh enforced. You knew your position, you knew your place, you didn't go beyond it, you didn't attempt to. You honored those who were above you, you obeyed them, and of course the status was recognized, but that's not in play in the kingdom of God. And Paul, I'll I'll shift a little bit of that thought in just a moment. But it challenged, it challenges even our everyday attempt, we might say, at spiritual pride or the inclination towards spiritual pride within the ecclesia, within the now called a messiah. So again, in that in that day, in that age, in that culture, it was the broader culture that Paul is informing against. Okay. This is what you're familiar with out here, but this is not the way it is in here. We don't take the broader culture and conform it to the image of our Messiah. Even though it's more difficult to walk out there in the character that is worthy of Messiah because we're being conformed to him, that's the call that we have. And so this is it's it's going directly against that. And Paul is emphasizing at the beginning of this, what does it look like to live out your theology? What do you believe about the Lord? What you believe about the Lord informs your walk. Right? Um, how you pray, even. I'm working on an article about that right now. How you pray um quite often influences or uh I would say shapes what you believe. Right? Because you're you're proclaiming something, you're saying something, you're you're focusing on something, and that will quite often change what you think and change what you believe. But that could be for the good or for the bad. So we we keep these things in mind. We have to be uh very aware of the power of our words, particularly the power of our words and the impact they have on our inner dialogue. Yeah. So Paul is deliberately saying to the faithful that they're to maintain. That's a that's an important point. Uh eager, verse three, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Maintain, not create it. We're not responsible to create peace. We're not responsible to create the peace among the brethren because he has already established it through Messiah. He's already established it. So the Ecclesia is called to preserve what he has accomplished. We're to be stewards of peace, not establishers of it. Remember, we're to be imitators, not originators. So we don't we don't even originate peace. Steward and protect, maintain what he has already done. Stewards of peace among the faithful. That's forgiveness, that's grace, that's mercy, that's listening, that's guarding our tongue, protecting our speech. Whatever we have, and and you know, the the beautiful thing is about the body of Christ, and this is probably going to be offensive, is that we're all a bunch of losers. None of us are victors in ourselves. None of us have some point of boasting. None of us have received a participation trophy from the kingdom of heaven because we showed up. None of us have a place from which we can look down upon our brothers and sisters. None of us have a place from which we can look down on the lost. Aren't you happy you came? You braved the weather today in order for this? He really knows how to uh to help us, doesn't he?

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Yes.

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So we're to be stewards of the peace. Stewards of the peace that the Lord has given to us, that he has established, that he has created, it's not what we've created, it's not what we've done, it's what he has done. So the sevenfold unity of the people of God, if we look at what he is saying here, verse uh four. There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. This is perhaps one of the greatest confessional statements that we have in the New Testament. We have one body, of course, that is the one body of Christ. All of us joined together. We're all joined together, we're all knit together, one spirit, of course, the spirit of God. Um, one hope. And that hope is, of course, in Messiah, one Lord, that Lord is Messiah, one faith that comes to us through Messiah, one baptism through Messiah and into Messiah, one God and Father of all, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's it's not distinct and it's not based on our preference, it's not based on how we divide or how we would um how we would prefer things to be. It is how he has aligned and what he has made. So the seven the sevenfold confession that he has here reflects both Jewish monotheism and messianic fulfillment. So uh when we think about still recording, uh I'll have to double check that. But anyway, so the messianic fulfillment, the Jewish theology, this one God and Father of all, of course, echoes the Shema. Uh Deuteronomy uh 6.4, echoing the Shema, Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. So the one body that is in him. So Paul is not abandoning the confession that he would have been so familiar. Quite in quite a number of places, he draws on that theology of one God. So he's proclaiming that unity, the unity confessed in the Shema now finds its visible expression in the unified people of God, of Jew and Gentile, under the Lordship of Messiah. It's come to full, it's come to fruition as the Lord is working his redemptive plan throughout history. So that is a very important point because it leads us to the unity that we now have. Um God, one Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all. The unity of the Ecclesia, the glory that we give to Him in the midst of the congregation when we are assembled together, the reality of the grace that we need to give each other, the forgiveness that we need to give each other, the idea that there are times when, of course, in order to walk in forgiveness and to walk in grace, we are, in fact, in second place. It's behind the person that we're trying to work with and help or forgive. So the unity that we have in Christ, the unity that we have in Messiah is the unity, the visible unity of the Godhead. Because we are in the Lord, in Messiah, with the Holy Spirit in us as we are in him. So we are a visible um physical manifestation of the Godhead and that glorifies him. So it becomes a beautiful picture of the complete work that he is doing of manifesting among his people. Let's continue on verse 7 through 16. We're gonna kind of there's a lot of important concepts here. So there's one body, but it's not uniformity, right? We're not uniform as our appearance or our cultural backgrounds or what have you. We're not locked into some false sense of uniformity and happily expecting that, you know what, if we all dress the same way, have our beards the same way, have our hair cut the same way, have our clothes hemmed to the same length, somehow in that perfection that we might try to create, somehow we will be a a a greater witness or a greater um representation of him. I don't think it works that way. So, but to each of you, here's where we see this kind of non-conformist uh the expectation of not being conform or not being conformed to our human expectations. Um what does he say? But to each one, grace was given. To each one, grace was given. The measure of the gift of the Messiah. To each of us, he gives the measure of what is necessary for the call. What you need to fulfill your call may not be what I need to fulfill my call. He knows exactly what we need to fulfill the commission that he's given to us. So we should not look to the right or to the left or the front or the back and say, if only I was like that, I would be able to do this. No, what we have been given is exactly what we need. And when we need something else, he will provide it. But it is walking in faithfulness to that. Grace here refers not only to saving grace, but for the grace, the grace for ministry itself. To walk in grace for the ministry that he is called to us, calling us into. All of us are in ministry. All of us have been called to a ministry. Every believer, every believer, every single believer, everyone in Christ has received a gift for the building up of the body. That's what he is talking about at the end in verse 16. Um, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint. Isn't it a blessing to be a joint in the body of Christ, right? Which uh with which is the excuse me, by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly, makes the whole makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Why? Because the nourishment of the Holy Spirit is able to circulate through the body properly, correctly. We're being fed correctly as the body, we're being built up properly as the body, and that relies on each and every one of us walking in the gifting and the calling that he has uh brought us to. So all of us have gifts, all of us have received gifts, all of us need to walk in that in order to function properly in the body. Now, Paul gives us, you know, he he it seems like he's doing um kind of an excursus here where he says, when he ascends on high, he has held, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. But this is a very important point to his overall theme that he's about to get into. He's citing, of course, Psalm 68, 18, and it's a psalm celebrating the victory of the Lord, how the Lord has been victorious throughout the history of his people. So, within Jewish interpretation, the rabbis see the Lord ascending in glory upon Mount Zion after victory. And the image here, as he's about to get into, is how he has dispersed the gifts of war. The battle that he has fought in order to redeem his people, he then gives gifts to those people. He gives gifts to all of us. He now applies the same imagery from Psalm 68 regarding the Father. He he applies it to Messiah for the purpose of what he is about to discuss. So we have the victory of King Messiah, who now distributes gifts to his people. And I got a surprise of surprises for you. You're a gift, not only to his people, but also to him. And I think that should be an encouragement. So, but let's look at these ministry gifts that he has. And he gave, here is the giving of gifts. He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers, so that they might be glorified. Right? Are you reading that part of the text? So that they might be glorified in all that they do, and right, you're looking for it, but you can't find it because it's not there. It sounded pretty legit, though, didn't it? Yeah, no. He gave He gave them to what? To equip in verse 12, to equip the saints for the work of ministry. How many of us are convinced that the fivefold ministry is the ministry? That's the usual story. No, the fivefold ministry, as we call it, the gift ministries, as I like to refer it, is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Who are the saints? All of us in Christ, yes? So to equip the saints for the work of ministry for the what? The building up of the body of Messiah. So it's not a select few, we happy few who are doing the work of ministry. It is the body of Messiah. Now, there are leaders, just as we see in Exodus 19 and Exodus 20, there are priests who serve the priests, the nation of priests. There are ministers, gift ministries that serve the ministers of Christ and the ministry for the preparation of that. That's all legit. You just have to put it in the right perspective. It's not that you come here to hear my ministry. This is my ministry, and this is what I'm doing. No, you we come together to praise the Lord, to study and to fellowship, and in that we have the equipping of the body for the work of ministry that we've been called to in this region, right? Or wherever you might be listening from. So he identifies these um gifts, and we recognize that there is overlap. There's overlap. So there was times when Paul was, of course, Paul was the apostle, but he was also an evangelist. He's also a pastor, he's also a teacher, and he also spoke prophetically quite often. So there's overlap in this. But again, these aren't about titles. This is about a mission. It's about action. So the apostles brought or bring the foundational teaching of the messianic faith. That was the principal work of the apostles. The prophets proclaim the true word of God for inspiration, to inspire his people, to correct his people, and to align his people to the will of God. It's not a thus saith in the sense that we saw Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel uh speak. It is in the sense of speaking into the lives of the people. Uh of course I am dropped again, but we'll keep going. Hopefully, it's still recording. Yes, it is. Um, but it's for inspiration, correction, alignment, and uh with his thank you. You gotta love our internet here. Yes. Close, be done with it. There we go. Okay, I will continue on. Um then the evangelists, what do what do the evangelists do? Well, they speak the truth of the gospel to the non-believer, right? They are bringing the message of the gospel, and they're doing so to those who do have not yet believed. Pastors, what are pastors? And each of these have they again they overlap and they're they have um they're very closely aligned. But we see that particularly with pastors and teachers, because you could you could uh rightly translate translate this apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastoring teachers. Because pastor and teacher, they the way they're connected in the Greek shows that there is a there is a tremendous overlap between the two. So, what does a pastor do? Protect, guide, care for, and nurture the flock, right? And what do teachers do, they explain the word of God with clarity. So they're not titles of honor, they're gifts of service. One of the things that I tell people when I explain what it is I do is I serve the servants of God. That's exactly what Paul is explaining, and and kind of my takeaway from that is that we are to serve the servants of God. So it's never a you know personal about personal authority or prestige or being greater than again, it's to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And that reflects an incredibly important biblical principle. Leadership exists to prepare the Lord's people for ministry, not to perform ministry in the place of them. Did you catch that? Leadership exists to prepare the Lord's people for ministry, not, and in my notes I have that underlined, not to perform ministry in place of them. So the quote clergy are not to be replacements for the ministers of Christ that is the body of Christ. If we're genuinely the body of Christ, then we are all on that great commission to be the hands, to be the feet. You can see how our theology over the last you know couple of millennia has really taken away the beauty of what the Lord wants to do because you had people who were not permitted. You cannot do this. This is holy, this is sacred, you're profane, even though, yes, we sprinkled water on you, but you're still profane, right? And all too often it's that we're doing ministry in place of the ministry of the body of Christ. That's not how this is supposed to work. So every believer, it doesn't matter how old or how young, has a role to play in the life of the ecclesia, of the body of Christ. So the health of the body, as I just I talked about a moment ago, the health of the body, the health of the ecclesia, the outcalled, depends on the proper functioning of each member of the body in use of their gifts. How has the Lord gifted you to minister to the body to reach the lost? We're most healthy when everyone is using and walking in the gift that the Lord has given. That's when we are most healthy. It's not we're not most healthy when one or two who are quote on staff do it. In fact, that is an unhealthy approach, and I can testify to that. So it's to bring what to maturity. Let me just uh continue reading here. Until we all pay attention to Paul's language, until we all attain the unity of the faith, he's recognizing that there is going to be disunity in the body. Unfortunately, because why we're still human? That's why there will be disunity, there will be discord, there will be and what do we do in that? Grace, forgiveness, make ourselves lower, the unity of the faith and the knowledge, personal knowledge to know deeply, the Son of God to mature manhood, to measure the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, because we're being conformed to him, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning. Do you see what he is saying? By human cunning, by craftiness of deceitful schemes. Quite often it's the deceitful schemes, unfortunately, happen among the brethren. The devil's not interested in getting the world to trip you up. He's more interested in getting your brothers to trip you up, your sisters to trip you up. Because then he creates discord in the church, and then we continually um have division. So that we may no longer be tossed, tossed. Rather, speaking the truth in love. It's the truth, the truth, the gospel. Not my truth, not your truth, but the truth of the gospel in love. We are to grow up in every way. Do you hear this? We start as children. We're to grow up, we're to mature. You can hear the apostle speaking in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. So we are to be again, we're being conformed to him. We are to mature into him, but not in place of him, 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. The goal until we all attain, not until a few attain, or until some special person attains, but he emphasizes all. So what is the direction that Jew and Gentile, one and Messiah are going? Unity of faith, knowledge of the Son of God, mature humanity, the fullness of Messiah who is the head. All of us are called to that. This is all part of that walking that he that we began with. What is the walk worthy that is characterized by following our Messiah? Humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love, preserving the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. So once again, Paul returns to that theme that he introduced in chapter two, the one new man growing towards fullness, originally intended by God. What did the Lord intend with Adam and Eve? What did he intend with humanity? The restoration Messiah is taking that. So that takes time. It takes discipleship, it takes maturity, it takes years of walking with the Lord, it takes the hills, it takes the valleys, it takes the bumps, it takes the bruises, it takes the hurts, it takes the joys. All of that, again, in the direction of faith of two Messiah. So we begin as innocent children. When we're born again, we're as innocent children. But if we remain untaught, if we remain uncorrected, we remain spiritually immature and therefore dangerous. We remain spiritual brats. So we have to be mindful of that. We have to be cautious of that, be careful of that. We have to yield to correction, the correction of the Lord. We have to yield to the word of God, correct our life according to it, because that is the measure that we are expected to follow. So we can easily be drawn away. We can easily be drawn away by changing cultural norms, what the expectations are. And of course, we always have the fresh revelation and we're and we're back. Yes, today is the day I should not have used Zoom to record this. So, as I was saying, you know, we have fresh revelation, that fresh revelation that people quite often uh become so attached to and fixated on. And it changes. It's the, you know, as Paul says, every changing wind of doctrine. But what is he connected to? Human cunning, craftiness of deceitful schemes. So that's what Paul connects it to. That's what Paul is seeing here, and why he is giving us this warning. So the purpose, again, of the fivefold ministry, as we call it, the fivefold gift ministry, is to bring to maturity the body of Messiah, not restrain it for its own gain. We're not to allow the gift ministry to the body of Christ to restrain the body for its own gain. And I think that's quite often the problem that we see is that it works on kind of an ecclesial fallacy. Okay. And that fallacy is that there's only a select few who are have to do better. So that fallacy that says that only a select few are actually ministers, and I think that is a, of course, a very dangerous and a very um a very narrow and biblically unsound approach. So that's where we're gonna pause for this week. Obviously, next week will be a little bit different, but we will continue to study our way through this uh beautiful epistle through the summer. Amen.

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Amen. Thank you for studying with us. And until our next episode, may the Lord bless and keep you all in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.