Commentaries:
Jesus Christ is the standard and example, the pinnacle of all things a human should be. Not only was He legally sinless, He was also humble, meek, merciful, sacrificial, kind, encouraging, positive, and patient. When considering what He was in His total personality for the purpose of comparing ourselves to Him, we need to recall Romans 3:23: "All . . . fall short of the glory of God." None of us measure up to His standard in any area of personality, and this is what hamartia ("sins") and paraptoma ("trespasses") describe: falling short of the ideal. Together, hamartia and paraptoma directly tie what we might think of as minor, unimportant, and secondary issues of conduct and attitude into the Ten Commandments.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Elements of Motivation (Part Seven): Fear of Judgment
Ephesians 4:11-14 gives instruction on how God gifts some more than others in the church. The "He" in verse 11 refers to God in verse 6. Our Father has given these additional spiritual gifts to some for the purpose of perfecting and fully equipping the saints toward building up Christ's Body. Verse 13 shows that these roles or positions will help the Body function until all of us attain "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." This is the order God has established until the Body is glorified in the resurrection.
Verse 14 adds another reason why these roles are given. Religious anarchists believe that structure and authority hinder us from attaining our potential. In contrast, Paul says that God places people into these roles as a means of attaining spiritual maturity: He gives these spiritual gifts to a few so that the rest do not continue to be spiritual children.
A hallmark of immaturity is not knowing what we do not know, but at the same time, believing that we are right and feeling as if we are invincible. The immature are especially susceptible to novel concepts and charismatic personalities that may tickle their particular fancy. Spiritually, the stakes are high; some winds of doctrine blow the immature so far off course that they never return. To protect against this, God has provided a bulwark against such storms, giving additional spiritual gifts to some to keep the rest headed in the right direction by declaring and expounding the whole counsel of God.
If we reject the spiritual gifts God has given to others, we put ourselves at risk of being deceived, and we may find ourselves radically altering our belief system in response to every shiny new idea that comes our way. But the human leadership God provides is intended to be a steadying force, which is not to suggest that it is perfect or infallible. Nevertheless, it is part of the order God has established.
Conversely, anarchy has come to be synonymous with chaos and confusion because those are the results of rejecting leadership. Even worse than confusion, to paraphrase Jesus, rejecting someone God has sent is the same as rejecting God Himself (Luke 10:16).
David C. Grabbe
Anarchy in God's Church? (Part Three)
This is why the ministry exists. What does God mean by this? Perfecting is a term that can be used to refer to "setting a broken bone." It means "putting into the condition in which it should be." The ministry guides and directs us into a spiritual condition acceptable to God. The saints are being prepared for the duty of ministering in divine things. We are not just called to be saved; we are called to perfection - developing the mature, spiritual character we must have to serve in divine matters. There is a whole world that will one day soon require conversion, and it is for this we are now being trained!
John O. Reid
Tithing
A key to understanding God's intention for the church appears in the letter to the church of Ephesus. To understand the context for the word "gave" in verse 11, we must back up to verse 7: "But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore He says: "When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men" (Ephesians 4:7-8; emphasis ours throughout). In other words, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are given as gifts by Jesus Christ. He gives these gifts to edify—build up—the Body of Christ.
One implication of this, however, is that as long as the Body needs edifying—as long as it has not achieved "the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God," and its members are not yet up to "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ"—God will continue to work through such men to bring about that edification. The structure and cohesiveness may be more rigidly defined at some points in church history than at others, but where Christ's Body is found, there will be structure. Certainly, God works through isolation at times, but those times are limited, for members begin to die spiritually when severed from the rest of the Body.
The prophetic books of Zechariah and Revelation indicate that before Christ's return, a definite structure will be in place. Revelation records a vision of "the Lord's Day" (Revelation 1:10), that is, the time generally known as the Day of the Lord. As the vision begins, Jesus tells the apostle John to write what he sees and to "send it to the seven churches." Turning to see the Speaker, John sees Jesus "in the midst of the seven lampstands," symbolic of the seven churches. It is critical to notice that each letter contains language that ties it to the end time—the period around the Day of the Lord. Thus, one application of the letters found in Revelation 2-3 is that they are seven distinct groupings, all in existence during the Day of the Lord.
This end-time aspect of Revelation 1-3 is strengthened by a vision given to Zechariah:
Now the angel who talked with me came back and wakened me, as a man who is wakened out of his sleep. And he said to me, "What do you see?" So I said, "I am looking, and there is a lampstand of solid gold with a bowl on top of it, and on the stand seven lamps with seven pipes to the seven lamps. Two olive trees are by it, one at the right of the bowl and the other at its left." . . . Then I answered and said to him, "What are these two olive trees—at the right of the lampstand and at its left?" And I further answered and said to him, "What are these two olive branches that drip into the receptacles of the two gold pipes from which the golden oil drains?" Then he answered me and said, "Do you not know what these are?" And I said, "No, my lord." So he said, "These are the two anointed ones, who stand beside the Lord of the whole earth." (Zechariah 4:1-4, 11-14; cf. Revelation 11:3-4)
While we may not fully understand all these figures until they begin shaping up, it is plain to see that a definite structure to the body of believers exists at the end time. There are still churches—groupings, congregations, or other forms of organization. The seven lamps all receive their oil from the same place. This is not a description of complete dissolution or maximum entropy but one of order and providential care of the organized Body by the Head. To use the analogy in I Peter 2:4-5, the stones are fitted together here, not isolated or standing on their own.
The church of God is a spiritual organism, and though corporate designations will come and go, there will always be a unity of the Spirit (Ephesians 4:3). Also, Jesus' disciples will always be known by their love for one another (John 13:35). These attributes cannot exist in isolation. Physical organizations may be built up and dissolve away, but the church will prevail against the gates of Hades. Though all the living stones will never be in the same place until the resurrection, they will also never be very far apart.
David C. Grabbe
Will the Church of God Be Thrown Down? (Part Two)
When He ascended, He was resurrected as very God. He was an immortal spirit Being once again!
These verses show the goal, the focus, the very reason the church exists—why we have been given the Spirit of God: "till we come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God." Paul is describing something that will not occur while we are still physical beings, pointing to the great goal that lies beyond the resurrection of the dead!
We find our hope and goal in verse 13. We must begin to expand on what Jesus Christ is now—that is what the apostle Paul points to. Our standard is not Jesus merely as a man before He was crucified and resurrected, but the great goal is becoming like Jesus Christ is now—ascended and at God's right hand!
We are still mortal and physical, but we are in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), not just in form and shape. The image of God that He is concerned about is the fact that we have the power of mind. Because of this, and with the help of the gifts of God, particularly His Spirit, we can come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Sometimes, circumstances conspire to scatter Christians into small groups or even from all contact with other believers and from the ministry Jesus Christ gives to the church to equip them and encourage their growth—in the biblical metaphor, leaving the sheep without a shepherd. However, if sheep should choose to become "without a shepherd," they are rejecting one of the Chief Shepherd's major gifts to His flock, willfully taking themselves outside of His established order.
Sheep may choose to do this, reasoning that Christ is their Shepherd, which is certainly true. It is likewise true that our relationship with God is individual, without a man in the middle. Nevertheless, none of this nullifies the fact that Christ has gifted human shepherds to aid in bringing all the sheep "to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). By implication, the only time a sheep of His pasture does not need an under-shepherd is when he has grown completely into the image of the Lamb of God.
Our Savior oversees the under-shepherds, holding them accountable for failures in their responsibilities, which there will be simply because they are human. However, to purposefully become a "sheep without a shepherd" is to put oneself in serious danger, for the Christian is then likely to turn to his own way, develop bad spiritual habits, become stuck in a rut, make himself a prey for Satan, and ultimately become malnourished and spiritually diseased. He may not even realize his life is in danger—until it is too late.
Christ clearly establishes that, rather than wandering away from God's shepherds, the sheep have the responsibility to submit to the godly shepherds, not considering them infallible, by any means, but comparing their instruction with what God has already established in His Word. As I Corinthians 11:1 teaches, sheep are to follow a shepherd's faith only as it complements and corresponds with the teachings of Jesus. As Acts 5:29 points out, "[W]e ought to obey God rather than men," whenever the two are not in alignment.
David C. Grabbe
The Shepherd's Guidance (Part Three)
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Ephesians 4:11:
Numbers 18:21
Psalm 1:1-3
Matthew 13:52
Matthew 25:15
Luke 12:42-47
Luke 19:22-27
John 8:31
Acts 11:19-21
1 Corinthians 3:6-9
1 Corinthians 12:15-21
1 Thessalonians 5:21
1 Timothy 2:12
Hebrews 5:9
1 Peter 5:1-3
1 John 2:27
