Study Focus: Eph. 4:1–16; Phil. 2:3; Ps. 68:18; Acts 2; 1 Cor. 12:4–11, 27–30; Isa. 5:4.
Introduction: So far, Paul has explained the power of God’s salvation and how it operates in the history of the world, uniting Jews and Gentiles into a new humanity in Christ. In Ephesians 4:1–17, Paul continues the theme of unity. By so doing, Paul emphasizes that unity is an indispensable attribute or mark of the church. Unity is the result of God’s salvation, but it is also God’s tool for fulfilling His mission for the church and through the church. For this reason, Paul moves beyond the theme of the unity of the Jews and Gentiles in the church to focus on the church’s internal unity in life and mission. Now that in Christ there is no Jew nor Gentile, now that in Christ we are all brothers and sisters without respect to ethnicity, Paul discusses the unity of all Christians as members of the same body and involved in the same mission of Christ.
The unity of the church is achieved in several ways:
(1) by sharing in Christ’s attitudes of humility, gentleness, and patience;
(2) by contemplating the ultimate model for the life of the church: the Godhead in the Three Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and Their work in Creation and Redemption;
(3) by Christ’s unifying tools of salvation that constitute the church—one hope, one faith, and one baptism; and
(4) by the spiritual gifts through which God blesses the church to grow and unite in one body in Christ and accomplish its mission in the world.
Lesson Themes: This study focuses on three major themes from Ephesians 4:1–16:
1. The unity of the church is essential to the identity, life, and mission of the church.
Church unity is achieved when the church looks at the triune life of the Godhead and embraces God’s values and attitudes: the Three Persons of the Godhead though different, live and act in perfect unity.
The spiritual gifts are essential for the unity, life, and mission of the church.
Part II: Commentary
The Church as the Body of Christ
When Paul mentions in Ephesians 1:22 that the church is the body of Christ, he does not mean that the church itself is divine or supernatural. In the economy of the plan of salvation, it was God who was incarnated, and not humans who were divinized. The church is the body of Christ in the sense that it is the new, saved humanity represented and accomplished by, and in, Christ’s incarnation. It is the new humanity created, saved, and ruled by Christ, its Creator, Savior, and Lord. Thus, the church is not an emanation from the divine; rather, the church is God’s people—the people who were created by God and now have been restored by Him back into His kingdom. It is in this sense that the church is the “fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23, NKJV).
The Triune Source and Model of the Church’s Existence and Unity
The unity of the church is essential to Paul’s doctrine of the church. However, Paul does not model this unity after the administrative, political, economic, and military unity of the Roman Empire or some other human institution. Rather, Paul roots the unity of the church in the very nature of the Christian God, the triune God. In fact, the Epistle to the Ephesians is filled with references to the various Persons of the Godhead that reveal Paul’s grand vision of all Three Persons of the Godhead at work in the plan of salvation, in creating and building the church.
Just as in Ephesians 1:1–14 Paul describes the members of the Godhead at work for our salvation, in Ephesians 1:15–23, Paul describes the Father and the Son at work in creating, blessing, and empowering the church. For this reason, Paul ends this section by calling the church the “body” of Christ and the “fullness” of the Father (Eph. 1:23; see also Eph. 4:6). In Ephesians 2:19–22, all the members of the Godhead are involved in the making of the church: the church is the “household” or the “holy temple” of the Father built upon Christ Jesus and “in whom” the church members are “built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit” (NASB). In Ephesians 3, Paul views the church as the result of the grace of the Father (Eph. 3:2) being revealed “in the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5, NASB) as “the mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3:4) or “unfathomable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8, NASB) to the “apostles and prophets” (Eph 3:5). Also, the Father (Eph. 3:14) empowers the church “through His Spirit . . . so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:16, 17, NASB) and so that the church would “comprehend” the love of Christ (Eph. 3:18) and “be filled to all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19, NASB). In addition, the church is created and united by God because her God is the Father of “every family in heaven and on earth” (Eph 3:14, 15, NASB). All the beings in the universe take His surname because He created us all, and in Him we are a family. In God’s universal family, we are kin, not only with all the other members of the church throughout humanity but also with the entire population of the universe (see also Heb. 12:22, 23). Thus, while Paul focuses on salvation and on the church on earth, he is careful to keep his cosmic perspective that he introduced when writing about the heavenly places in Ephesians 1.
In Ephesians 4, Paul brings to a climax his grand development of the doctrine of the church as created and united by, and in, the Godhead. Paul declares that the unity of the church is, in fact, the “unity of the Spirit” (Eph. 4:3). In a rather poetic fashion, the apostle tells his readers that this unity is essentially related to all the Persons of the Godhead. We are “one body” because there is “one Spirit” who called us “in one hope” (Eph. 4:4). In the same way, in our “one Lord” we have “one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). Ultimately, the church is united because we have “one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6, NASB). Thus, the church exists because God created us and called us. In addition, the church exists as a united body because the God who created and called her is One: Three Persons, yet one God. The church cannot exist without God; the church cannot exist if it is not “one”; and the church cannot be one if it is not rooted in the biblical teaching of One God in Three Persons.
The Spiritual Gifts, Existence, Unity, and Mission of the Church
After laying the theological foundation for the existence and the unity of the church in the triune God, Paul, in Ephesians 4, explains in a more practical way how the church is the body of Christ and how the Holy Spirit operates in its unity. To do so, Paul returns to a set of themes in Ephesians 1: Christ’s ascension to the throne of God (Eph. 1:20), His exaltation (Eph. 1:21, 22) to the status of “head” of the church, “His body” (Eph. 1:22, 23, NKJV), and the blessing of His church “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph 1:3, NASB). These blessings were blessings of grace for salvation in Christ: “redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Eph. 1:7, NKJV), revelation of the gospel of Christ (Eph. 1:7–13), and faith (Eph. 1:13, 15).
In Ephesians 4, the apostle follows a similar pattern to explain that Christ ascended (Eph. 4:8) and was exalted (Eph. 4:10). Being the “head” of the church (Eph. 4:15)—that is, His body (Eph. 4:16)—Christ “gave gifts” to His people (Eph. 4:8). These gifts are called Christ’s gifts and are also associated with “grace”: “to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Eph. 4:7, NKJV). However, these gifts are not blessings for saving sinners, as in Ephesians 1, but rather blessings or gifts of empowerment for the constitution, unity, and mission of the church. Paul identifies these gifts as “apostles . . . prophets . . . evangelists . . . pastors and teachers” (Eph. 4:11). Elsewhere, Paul calls them gifts of grace (charismata; Rom. 12:6–8, 1 Cor. 12:4) or gifts of the Spirit (pneumatikois; 1 Cor 12:1), given and distributed by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4, 7–11) to the members of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12, 13).
Thus, although Paul uses a very similar pattern of themes in Ephesians 1 and 4, he addresses different aspects of the church. While in Ephesians 1 the apostle talks about the salvation of humans, in Ephesians 4 he discusses the existence, unity, and mission of the church. That is why, in Ephesians 4, the risen and ascended Lord Jesus (Eph. 4:8–10) gives each member of the church “grace . . . according to the measure of the gift of Christ” (Eph. 4:7). The “giving” or the “grace” is an assignment here (Eph. 4:11), and not the grace of salvation or forgiveness. It is the gift of “equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12, NASB).
Yes, the church is constituted by individual people who were saved, but their being saved is only the beginning of the life God envisions for His church. God creates a new humanity, His people, and this new community is built by the Spirit through “grace” (charisma; Eph. 4:7). Through the charismata, or gifts, the Spirit works in the church “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God” (Eph. 4:13, NIV). Or, in other words, until we all mature “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13, NKJV), who is the Head of the church (Eph. 4:15).
There are at least several major conclusions and implications that we may draw from Paul’s theology of the church in Ephesians 4:
First, the church is not a human organization, built and sustained by humans and for human purposes. Rather, the church is created, sustained, and guided in its mission by God Himself.
Second, reflecting the image of its triune God, the church is, and must be, united. In His high-priestly prayer, Jesus pleaded with the Father that the church “may all be one; just as You . . . are in Me and I in You . . . so that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:21, NASB).
Third, this unity is not the product of human will or genius, but the work of the Father, Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit working in and through the church.
Fourth, the triune God works out the unity and growth of the church through the spiritual gifts. Thus, the spiritual gifts are not an optional program of the church to be used when deemed necessary by church members. Rather, the spiritual gifts are the way that God constitutes, sustains, and guides the church. It is important to note that when talking about the essence and the unity of the church, Paul does not propose a hierarchical and sacramental governance structure of the church. Rather, while promoting a good organization of the church, the apostle viewed the source of the existence, unity, and mission of the church as being rooted in the triune God, who is the Head of the church and of the spiritual gifts He bestowed to manifest His presence and work in the church.
Fifth, so important for biblical theology are the topics of the Godhead and the spiritual gifts that Seventh-day Adventists consider them in numerous statements of belief. The Godhead is discussed in five fundamental beliefs: 2 (which discusses the biblical teaching of the triune God), 3 (“God the Father”), 4 (“God the Son”), 5 (“God the Holy Spirit”), and 10 (“The Experience of Salvation,” which discusses the implication of all Three Persons of the Godhead in the salvation of humanity). The doctrine of the church is richly articulated in seven fundamental beliefs: 12 (“The Church”), 13 (“The Remnant and Its Mission”), 14 (“Unity in the Body of Christ”), 15 (“Baptism”), 16 (“The Lord’s Supper”), 17 (“Spiritual Gifts and Ministries”), and 18 (“The Gift of Prophecy”).
Part III: Life Application
One of the tragic developments in the history of any church is its division and fragmentation. Based on the class’s study of Ephesians 4:1–16, guide your students in developing a three-point strategy to keep your local or regional church united and growing.
What, in your students’ understanding, is the relation between one’s conversion, membership in the church as the body of Christ, and spiritual gifts?
Lead your class in a discussion of the following question: When was the last time you have thought of yourself, your family, your group of friends, or your church in terms of spiritual gifts? Now ask your students how they think their Sabbath School group or church could help better promote the idea that spiritual gifts are the work of the Holy Spirit in the church. Ask class members to identify three ways in which the church election process or the church leadership could promote spiritual gifts to pursue the church’s growth, unity, and mission.
Perhaps it would be difficult to invent a tool for measuring humility, gentleness, and patience. However, if such a measuring device were to exist, what level of these values and attitudes do your students think such a device would reveal in their own lives, in the lives of their friends, or in the life of their church? Ask class members to think of three ways to promote the true biblical values of humility and patience in their own lives and in the life of your church that would help lead to greater unity.
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Key Text: Ephesians 4:11, 12
Study Focus: Eph. 4:1–16; Phil. 2:3; Ps. 68:18; Acts 2; 1 Cor. 12:4–11, 27–30; Isa. 5:4.
Introduction: So far, Paul has explained the power of God’s salvation and how it operates in the history of the world, uniting Jews and Gentiles into a new humanity in Christ. In Ephesians 4:1–17, Paul continues the theme of unity. By so doing, Paul emphasizes that unity is an indispensable attribute or mark of the church. Unity is the result of God’s salvation, but it is also God’s tool for fulfilling His mission for the church and through the church. For this reason, Paul moves beyond the theme of the unity of the Jews and Gentiles in the church to focus on the church’s internal unity in life and mission. Now that in Christ there is no Jew nor Gentile, now that in Christ we are all brothers and sisters without respect to ethnicity, Paul discusses the unity of all Christians as members of the same body and involved in the same mission of Christ.
The unity of the church is achieved in several ways:
(1) by sharing in Christ’s attitudes of humility, gentleness, and patience;
(2) by contemplating the ultimate model for the life of the church: the Godhead in the Three Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and Their work in Creation and Redemption;
(3) by Christ’s unifying tools of salvation that constitute the church—one hope, one faith, and one baptism; and
(4) by the spiritual gifts through which God blesses the church to grow and unite in one body in Christ and accomplish its mission in the world.
Lesson Themes: This study focuses on three major themes from Ephesians 4:1–16:
1. The unity of the church is essential to the identity, life, and mission of the church.
Church unity is achieved when the church looks at the triune life of the Godhead and embraces God’s values and attitudes: the Three Persons of the Godhead though different, live and act in perfect unity.
The spiritual gifts are essential for the unity, life, and mission of the church.
Part II: Commentary
The Church as the Body of Christ
When Paul mentions in Ephesians 1:22 that the church is the body of Christ, he does not mean that the church itself is divine or supernatural. In the economy of the plan of salvation, it was God who was incarnated, and not humans who were divinized. The church is the body of Christ in the sense that it is the new, saved humanity represented and accomplished by, and in, Christ’s incarnation. It is the new humanity created, saved, and ruled by Christ, its Creator, Savior, and Lord. Thus, the church is not an emanation from the divine; rather, the church is God’s people—the people who were created by God and now have been restored by Him back into His kingdom. It is in this sense that the church is the “fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23, NKJV).
The Triune Source and Model of the Church’s Existence and Unity
The unity of the church is essential to Paul’s doctrine of the church. However, Paul does not model this unity after the administrative, political, economic, and military unity of the Roman Empire or some other human institution. Rather, Paul roots the unity of the church in the very nature of the Christian God, the triune God. In fact, the Epistle to the Ephesians is filled with references to the various Persons of the Godhead that reveal Paul’s grand vision of all Three Persons of the Godhead at work in the plan of salvation, in creating and building the church.
Just as in Ephesians 1:1–14 Paul describes the members of the Godhead at work for our salvation, in Ephesians 1:15–23, Paul describes the Father and the Son at work in creating, blessing, and empowering the church. For this reason, Paul ends this section by calling the church the “body” of Christ and the “fullness” of the Father (Eph. 1:23; see also Eph. 4:6). In Ephesians 2:19–22, all the members of the Godhead are involved in the making of the church: the church is the “household” or the “holy temple” of the Father built upon Christ Jesus and “in whom” the church members are “built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit” (NASB). In Ephesians 3, Paul views the church as the result of the grace of the Father (Eph. 3:2) being revealed “in the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5, NASB) as “the mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3:4) or “unfathomable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8, NASB) to the “apostles and prophets” (Eph 3:5). Also, the Father (Eph. 3:14) empowers the church “through His Spirit . . . so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:16, 17, NASB) and so that the church would “comprehend” the love of Christ (Eph. 3:18) and “be filled to all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19, NASB). In addition, the church is created and united by God because her God is the Father of “every family in heaven and on earth” (Eph 3:14, 15, NASB). All the beings in the universe take His surname because He created us all, and in Him we are a family. In God’s universal family, we are kin, not only with all the other members of the church throughout humanity but also with the entire population of the universe (see also Heb. 12:22, 23). Thus, while Paul focuses on salvation and on the church on earth, he is careful to keep his cosmic perspective that he introduced when writing about the heavenly places in Ephesians 1.
In Ephesians 4, Paul brings to a climax his grand development of the doctrine of the church as created and united by, and in, the Godhead. Paul declares that the unity of the church is, in fact, the “unity of the Spirit” (Eph. 4:3). In a rather poetic fashion, the apostle tells his readers that this unity is essentially related to all the Persons of the Godhead. We are “one body” because there is “one Spirit” who called us “in one hope” (Eph. 4:4). In the same way, in our “one Lord” we have “one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). Ultimately, the church is united because we have “one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6, NASB). Thus, the church exists because God created us and called us. In addition, the church exists as a united body because the God who created and called her is One: Three Persons, yet one God. The church cannot exist without God; the church cannot exist if it is not “one”; and the church cannot be one if it is not rooted in the biblical teaching of One God in Three Persons.
The Spiritual Gifts, Existence, Unity, and Mission of the Church
After laying the theological foundation for the existence and the unity of the church in the triune God, Paul, in Ephesians 4, explains in a more practical way how the church is the body of Christ and how the Holy Spirit operates in its unity. To do so, Paul returns to a set of themes in Ephesians 1: Christ’s ascension to the throne of God (Eph. 1:20), His exaltation (Eph. 1:21, 22) to the status of “head” of the church, “His body” (Eph. 1:22, 23, NKJV), and the blessing of His church “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph 1:3, NASB). These blessings were blessings of grace for salvation in Christ: “redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Eph. 1:7, NKJV), revelation of the gospel of Christ (Eph. 1:7–13), and faith (Eph. 1:13, 15).
In Ephesians 4, the apostle follows a similar pattern to explain that Christ ascended (Eph. 4:8) and was exalted (Eph. 4:10). Being the “head” of the church (Eph. 4:15)—that is, His body (Eph. 4:16)—Christ “gave gifts” to His people (Eph. 4:8). These gifts are called Christ’s gifts and are also associated with “grace”: “to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Eph. 4:7, NKJV). However, these gifts are not blessings for saving sinners, as in Ephesians 1, but rather blessings or gifts of empowerment for the constitution, unity, and mission of the church. Paul identifies these gifts as “apostles . . . prophets . . . evangelists . . . pastors and teachers” (Eph. 4:11). Elsewhere, Paul calls them gifts of grace (charismata; Rom. 12:6–8, 1 Cor. 12:4) or gifts of the Spirit (pneumatikois; 1 Cor 12:1), given and distributed by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4, 7–11) to the members of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12, 13).
Thus, although Paul uses a very similar pattern of themes in Ephesians 1 and 4, he addresses different aspects of the church. While in Ephesians 1 the apostle talks about the salvation of humans, in Ephesians 4 he discusses the existence, unity, and mission of the church. That is why, in Ephesians 4, the risen and ascended Lord Jesus (Eph. 4:8–10) gives each member of the church “grace . . . according to the measure of the gift of Christ” (Eph. 4:7). The “giving” or the “grace” is an assignment here (Eph. 4:11), and not the grace of salvation or forgiveness. It is the gift of “equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12, NASB).
Yes, the church is constituted by individual people who were saved, but their being saved is only the beginning of the life God envisions for His church. God creates a new humanity, His people, and this new community is built by the Spirit through “grace” (charisma; Eph. 4:7). Through the charismata, or gifts, the Spirit works in the church “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God” (Eph. 4:13, NIV). Or, in other words, until we all mature “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13, NKJV), who is the Head of the church (Eph. 4:15).
There are at least several major conclusions and implications that we may draw from Paul’s theology of the church in Ephesians 4:
First, the church is not a human organization, built and sustained by humans and for human purposes. Rather, the church is created, sustained, and guided in its mission by God Himself.
Second, reflecting the image of its triune God, the church is, and must be, united. In His high-priestly prayer, Jesus pleaded with the Father that the church “may all be one; just as You . . . are in Me and I in You . . . so that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:21, NASB).
Third, this unity is not the product of human will or genius, but the work of the Father, Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit working in and through the church.
Fourth, the triune God works out the unity and growth of the church through the spiritual gifts. Thus, the spiritual gifts are not an optional program of the church to be used when deemed necessary by church members. Rather, the spiritual gifts are the way that God constitutes, sustains, and guides the church. It is important to note that when talking about the essence and the unity of the church, Paul does not propose a hierarchical and sacramental governance structure of the church. Rather, while promoting a good organization of the church, the apostle viewed the source of the existence, unity, and mission of the church as being rooted in the triune God, who is the Head of the church and of the spiritual gifts He bestowed to manifest His presence and work in the church.
Fifth, so important for biblical theology are the topics of the Godhead and the spiritual gifts that Seventh-day Adventists consider them in numerous statements of belief. The Godhead is discussed in five fundamental beliefs: 2 (which discusses the biblical teaching of the triune God), 3 (“God the Father”), 4 (“God the Son”), 5 (“God the Holy Spirit”), and 10 (“The Experience of Salvation,” which discusses the implication of all Three Persons of the Godhead in the salvation of humanity). The doctrine of the church is richly articulated in seven fundamental beliefs: 12 (“The Church”), 13 (“The Remnant and Its Mission”), 14 (“Unity in the Body of Christ”), 15 (“Baptism”), 16 (“The Lord’s Supper”), 17 (“Spiritual Gifts and Ministries”), and 18 (“The Gift of Prophecy”).
Part III: Life Application
One of the tragic developments in the history of any church is its division and fragmentation. Based on the class’s study of Ephesians 4:1–16, guide your students in developing a three-point strategy to keep your local or regional church united and growing.
What, in your students’ understanding, is the relation between one’s conversion, membership in the church as the body of Christ, and spiritual gifts?
Lead your class in a discussion of the following question: When was the last time you have thought of yourself, your family, your group of friends, or your church in terms of spiritual gifts? Now ask your students how they think their Sabbath School group or church could help better promote the idea that spiritual gifts are the work of the Holy Spirit in the church. Ask class members to identify three ways in which the church election process or the church leadership could promote spiritual gifts to pursue the church’s growth, unity, and mission.
Perhaps it would be difficult to invent a tool for measuring humility, gentleness, and patience. However, if such a measuring device were to exist, what level of these values and attitudes do your students think such a device would reveal in their own lives, in the lives of their friends, or in the life of their church? Ask class members to think of three ways to promote the true biblical values of humility and patience in their own lives and in the life of your church that would help lead to greater unity.