Text:           Ephesians 4:1-13

By:              Henry Damatie Ikuku (Deacon)

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As the body of Christ, the church should measure up to certain standards of spiritual health.

You need to know these standards so that you can help the church to which you are committed grow in health.

Sometimes a friend will move and ask if you know of a good church in the new location.

You need to have some biblical criteria by which to evaluate which churches are healthy and which are not so healthy.

Just because a church calls itself “Christian” or by an appealing name does not mean that it is a place that will nourish you spiritually.

There are many churches that promote serious and damaging errors. You need to know how to spot them and avoid them.

The early church placed a strong emphasis on maintaining the purity of this teaching, as seen in Acts 2:42, where believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, in breaking of bread and in prayers.

This underscores the importance of doctrinal integrity and dangers of deviating from the foundational truths of Christianity.

 A HEALTHY BODY HAS DOCTRINAL DISCERNMENT – Verse 14

The phrase tossed to and fro is rendered from a nautical term in Greek meaning “to be waved-pitched; to move abruptly here and there due to the violence of waves.”

God has given ministry gifts to His church to form a stabilizing anchor that will keep us from being tossed to and fro like immature, gullible infants, susceptible to every flashy new human teaching and clever trick of the enemy.

We can avoid being thrashed about and shipwrecked in our faith like tiny, untethered boats if we stay plugged into the body of Christ, receiving encouragement and strength from fellow saints gifted to equip us and build us up in Jesus Christ.

Paul taught the Colossians to stay rooted and established in the faith so that no one would deceive them with “well-crafted arguments” (Colossians 2:4, NLT).

Mature believers understand that, to follow Christ, they must continually feast on God’s Word as they remain in fellowship with other believers: “Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ” (Colossians 2:4, 6-8, NLT).

Only when we are secure in God’s truth and committed to the body of Christ can we learn to recognize false teachers and steer clear of their dishonest doctrines.

James said, “Be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6, NLT).

Jude warned of the false teachers’ cunning: They are like trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots” (Jude 1:12, NLT; see also Acts 20:29-31; Romans 16:17-18; Hebrews 13:9; 2 Corinthians 11:3-4).

Paul here says that false teachers use trickery. The Greek word is kubeia, from which we get our word “cube.”

It referred to cheating at dice playing. In his many travels, Paul had probably watched some salty old sailors use loaded dice to fleece some unsuspecting victim.

Paul also says that these false teachers use “craftiness in deceitful scheming.”

Craftiness is used of Satan deceiving Eve (2 Corinthians 11:3).

Deceitful scheming indicates that there is a deliberate plan.

The word scheming originally had the idea of tracking someone as a wild animal tracks its prey (Lloyd-Jones, p. 236).

That is exactly how the cults work, going after unsuspecting, untaught young believers, purporting to explain the Bible in a better way!

ILLUSTRATION

We will not be surprised if a child plays in the dirt.

But wouldn’t you be surprised if you see a 40-year-old man playing in the dirt in your street?

Or wouldn’t you be surprised if you saw a 50-year-old keep his thumb in his hand?

Unfortunately, many Christians are still immature in their faith.

A lack of knowledge of God’s word leads to immaturity.

If we are immature in God’s word, we will be like children who are tossed to and fro by the waves and fall to deceitful schemes by the false teachers    (1 Peter 2:1; 1 John 4:1-3;             Jude 4; Revelation 2:2).

We will be unstable and easily fall prey to false teachers.

The craftiness of false teachers easily deceives some Christians.

They fall into the trap of the prosperity gospel or hyper-grace teaching or Jehovah’s Witnesses because they are still immature in their faith.

Many Christians don’t even know the basics of the faith.

But the mature can distinguish between truth and error.

So how do you protect yourself from the trickery of men and the schemes of the devil? You have to be grown. 

A HEALTHY BODY PRACTICES TRUTH BALANCED WITH LOVE

VERSE 15

The Greek phrase can be literally translated as “truthing in love.” It means that, when you present the gospel it is without abusing those with whom we disagree.

Paul always carefully explained the Christian position, and if an opposing view had to be overthrown it was done, but not by contempt and ridicule but by Scripture and understanding.

Jesus said (John 17:17), “Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth.”

A healthy body must hold to, proclaim, and practice the truth of the gospel.

Some Christians fiercely defend the truth, but they lack love.

Truth must always be presented in love.

One of the marks of Christian maturity is speaking the truth in love.

Truth is like medicine and love is like sugar.

When the truth is spoken in love, that truth becomes palatable.

Then, the truth will lead to spiritual maturity. We will grow up.

Let me share with you one of the secrets of Christian ministry:

Longevity in ministry requires that we maintain healthy relationships with others.

Speaking the truth in love also means that we know who we are in relation to the one to whom we’re speaking.

If I’m speaking to an older man, I am to speak to him as a father. If I’m speaking to a younger man I speak to him as a brother. If an older woman, as a mother; if to a younger woman, as a sister (I Timothy 5:1,2).

In other words in order to speak the truth in love I must correctly perceive who I am, who they are, who I am in relation to them, what the occasion is, and what is needed.

The very tone of my words and the posture I adopt as I speak to them is meant to serve the truth, meeting the ‘need of the moment’, which means that they are to be suited to the situation, giving ‘grace to the hearer’ (Ephesians 4:29).

Paul includes himself when he writes, “we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the Head, even Christ.”

Growing in Christ is a lifelong quest. Even after Paul had been a Christian for many years, he said that he had not yet arrived, but he pressed on toward the goal of maturity in Christ (Philippians 3:12-14).

Ministry is all about people, not just doing some tasks.

If we learn to handle relationships, we will be successful in the Lord’s work.

Apostle Paul restates the idea of maturity mentioned in verse 13 by using the imagery of Christ as the head of the body in verse 15b. 

A HEALTHY BODY HAS EVERY MEMBER CONTRIBUTING TO THE GROWTH OF THE WHOLE

Verse 16

For growth to happen, we must remain involved in the process by which the whole body is “fit together perfectly.

As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love” (Ephesians 4:29, NLT).

Loner Christians cannot minister to others or be ministered to by others.

God’s gifts of equipping and building up cannot be exercised in isolation.

Paul used “fitted together” in Ephesians 2:21 to refer to us as stones in the temple being joined together.

To fit those stones together, the mason has to chip off the rough edges.

For us to be fitted and joined together, God has to chip off our rough edges and teach us to show forbearance to one another in love (Ephesians 4:2).

God saved you to serve Him in some capacity. The goal of all ministry is “the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”

Since Christ is the Head of the body, He is the source of nourishment for the body, that is, the church.

Jesus is the goal of growth as well as the source of growth.

The church cannot grow without Jesus. He is the source of all growth!

The terms “together,” “every,” and “each” emphasizes that every member in the body of Christ has a crucial role in the growth of the church.

Just as the body is healthy when all the parts work properly, the church will grow and be healthy when all the members serve together.

God has promised us that we will do greater work when we work together (John 14:12).

The church has the great task of fulfilling the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20).

This cannot be done alone. God doesn’t give all gifts to one individual.

He gives different gifts to different people so that we can work together.

When we serve God together, we do far more than what an individual can do.

True Christian ministry is impossible without love because all ministry must flow out of love for God and people (cf. 1 Corinthians. 13).

IGNORANCE, HARDENING, AND SENSUALITY

Verses 17-20

Paul describes three downward steps: ignorance, hardening, and sensuality, and apart from the grace of Christ, each leads to the inevitable next step down.

Paul more thoroughly describes this downward spiral in Romans 1:21-32.

Ephesians 4:17-20 contains the first part of Paul’s instructions on how to achieve this.

These verses begin to tell us how to Walk in Purity. The Ephesians culture was just like our, and if they could walk in purity, so can we.

Instructions for walking in purity are found in Ephesians 4:17-32. Verses 17-19 tell us where to begin.

Ephesians 4:17 – This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk.

Paul, with that word, therefore, is providing instructions on purity based on what he has just said about unity.

And remember, we looked in great detail at God’s Blueprints for Church Growth and how we are all to be ministers to each other using the spiritual gifts God has given.

Now Paul is going to show us that purity of life is vitally important if unity and church growth is going to happen.

These are not just Paul’s instructions. These are not just the commands from some narrow-minded preacher of days gone by.

Paul says here in Ephesians 4:17 that what is about to say are God’s commands as well, as indicated by that phrase and testify in the Lord.

The verb walk characterizes the second half of Ephesians. This verb refers to our manner of life, our conduct, the way we behave, the way we think.

Rather than telling us right away how we should walk, which is what he’ll do in Ephesians 4:20 and following, Paul begins by telling us how we should no longer walk.

The phrase no longer implies a couple of things. It implies that we once used to walk in the way he is about to describe, and it implies that even though we are Christians, it is still possible for us to continue to walk in the way he is about to describe.

When you became a Christian, things should change. But they don’t change automatically or easily.

No longer living the way we used to – is hard work changing old habits and old ways of thinking.

In this world, in these bodies, it takes a lot of effort to come out from among them and be separate.

Paul is talking here to Gentile Christians in Ephesus, and so he says no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk.

When both Jews and Gentiles started becoming Christians, these Christians began to think of themselves as a “third race” (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:32).

So now, rather than there being just two races, there were three – the Jews, the Gentiles and the Church.

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