The Purpose of Christ Gifts

We're continuing on in our journey in Ephesians chapter four. Obviously, with chapter four, it started off with with Roger got to teach about a whole bunch of ones. As a software developer with ones and zeros matter to me a lot. I don't understand them, but I like them. So Roger got to talk about ones, then Bob, by God's divine providence, got to teach on the fun passage there, the tricky part of chapter four, I would say.

And then last week we talked about God's establishing things from apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. And then today we're going to take a look at some consequences of that. The difficulty of what we're going to be talking about is that Paul's going to talk about some things with imperatives. So that's going to be an exciting part of our discussion this morning.

Normally I don't spend a huge amount of time talking about the Greek. I find the translators have done a really good job most of the time, so I don't spend too much effort talking about the Greek unless there's something worth calling out. but this morning I got three verses that are just full of little Greek nuggets so you'll forgive me I'm going to talk about some Greek geek stuff this morning. Let's go into the text here and let's actually start back at verse 11 and really as is always the case we could go back many many verses but we're going to start in verse 11 here and move forward.

Paul writes, And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the Head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love."

So there's a whole lot of material from last week that Paul's continuing on in this lesson. So I want to emphasize that there's a continuity here. As it turns out, When we look at this, the last thing we ended with last week was this really lofty goal Paul states about being like the head Christ. That's a pretty lofty statement. The whole body is going to mature up until Christ-likeness. That's lofty. That's big. So, I think what he does in this second set of verses here is he actually kind of connects the dots on what that looks like. So, we're going to see some practical doctrinal things here in what goes on here.

So, as is always the case, anytime we get into these kinds of verses where we have imperatives, and there's some in here, how do we handle imperatives? What does an imperative tell us? An imperative could be a command. I'm going to say could because there's the possibility in certain cases of things being asked that are impossible, there's the possibility you'll disobey anyways. But an imperative is a command, right? How do we handle commands in a New Testament grace-based way? Do we just ignore them? How do we handle this? This is important, because if we don't know the answer to this, we've got all kinds of troubles.

If we're abiding, these should be outcomes. The logical imperative of the way we look at this is that God is through Paul telling us this is what's supposed to happen. But the precondition, if you will, the scenario that Paul is assuming is that the church body is walking by the Spirit. If we don't have walking by the Spirit, everything after this would be legalism. It would be just rules. But Paul's not talking about rules, and in fact, very specifically, he's talking about life principles here. So this is good, but I just want to start there. So Paul finished 13 by talking about all of these roles that God had put in place here, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, that would lead to something.

And so he says, as a result. Okay, and so this is, as a result, is actually in the subjunctive case. And again, this is that nerdery with the Greek stuff here. Subjunctive case is a relationship to potential. There's a potential, but it's not a guaranteed thing. And so when we look at this, Paul is saying, here's the possibility for the church in Ephesus. This is possible. But it's also possible for us today as well. As a consequence, these things are also possible.

There's a relationship to reality here that is a consequence of us abiding and listening to this instruction. So he says, as a result, we are no longer to be children. And the question I've got there is, how would we describe behavioral and discerning characteristics of children?

Don't worry about it. My blue letter Bible does that to me all the time, usually when I'm in the main service. At least it was in Scripture. Yeah, it was good. It was Greek, I think. Yeah, it was. This is my colleagues, actually. How do we expect the behavior and the characteristics of children to play out? What does that look like? Children are still learning. They're not fully informed. They're not grown up. There's a lot to learn.

One of the things that I remember growing up as a kid is being told by many adults, usually in very scary stories, to not accept candy from strangers. And it's because kids are like, you have candy? That seems like a good deal. What do I have to do for the candy? Get in the van? I can do that. I get in vans or cars. You have candy, right? And their discernment is real low. And their ability to think through and reason through scenarios is pretty hampered.

They haven't developed those skills yet. what study you read, there's somewhere between 23 and 28, the human body finally kind of finishes maturing into kind of a relatively stable mental state. And of course, children are not 23, right? Children are youthful and and so they have they have some some ignorance that comes with this now there's two words for children in the greek there's technon and then the one here which i forgot to paste in here and which i have uh forgotten to pronounce it thank you and and this one means literally to not speak to not talk to not be able to speak so it'd be like an infant um Usually the older is the technon. So Paul is specifying here that we are no longer to be infantile. Not just children, but infantile. But let's pause for a moment, and I have drawn out here babies, kids, teens, adults, and then experienced adults.

Some of you are more experienced at adulthood than others. But there's a process here. that for the most part, unless there's a syndrome or some kind of disease, that's what we expect as a normative development process. When we come to believers, how many of you have been in legalistic churches or legalistic scenarios where the consequence of salvation is suddenly this expected great perfection and righteousness? I have perpetrated that kind of garbage back in the day, so I am guilty of such terrible thinking. But Paul says because we have this foundation in the church that God has put in place, he is expecting to see growth, that we don't stay as children.

Everybody who becomes a new believer comes in as a baby. They come in infantile. They come in not knowing. I mean, literally, to become a believer, you have to know and understand the gospel, and that's it. And then other people come in and they start telling you about all kinds of other tangential, connected doctrines and things, and of course, you get the people who say you should read Romans first, and the people who think you should read John first, and you go through, and you're exploring the Bible, and it's a whole world that maybe you knew almost nothing about. But you're a baby. And then you sin, like a real good humdinger sin after you're saved. And then what do you do? Because you're a baby. A lot of people doubt their salvation. Oh no, was I really saved? I screwed up really bad this time.

So we have all kinds of things that we could correlate with infantile or childlike behavior, but that's not the expectation. The idea is that those who are mature are coming alongside and building on the established doctrine from the Apostles and the Prophets and the Old Testament to build on those things. So then Paul does something that I think would be easy to miss if we were not to slow down. He says he doesn't want us to be or the believers in Ephesus to be tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.

Why does he use this analogy of being tossed back and forth? This was a seaport. This was a seaport. And y'all have been to Ephesus, haven't you? So even though it's six miles inland now, I understand the silt has backfilled it. But it was a seaport, and so what happens to a boat, how many of you have ever seen what happens to a boat if it's unanchored, and it's untethered, and it's unmanned? And even sometimes it can be manned, and that won't help because the storm is bad enough. But what happens is very destructive.

And so Paul's concern for destruction here may not be apparent up front because we kind of read it and we go, oh, well, he just doesn't want us to be confused by the doctrine. but the analogy is actually the destruction because of the confusion in the doctrine. And so he wants to have clarity of doctrine be taught as part of the maturing process. But one of the questions we have to ask here is how would the saints receiving this letter be getting winds of doctrine? Where are they getting winds of doctrine and why maybe is even a good question.

Okay. Paganism. Oh my goodness, yeah. Paganism and the old school staunch Judaistic, the Judaizer type folks, the Jews that were there, the Pharisees. Athens was just a cross. So there was all that stuff that was going on also in Athens and all of that area too. So there's lots of secular external influences.

But the other thing that we have to consider is that this is a brand new church and they don't have the New Testament. So if they don't have a New Testament and somebody comes in and they say, hey I was over in, pick a church, and somebody said a thing, and it wasn't Paul, it wasn't one of the apostles, and somebody said, somebody said, that could be pretty traumatic or difficult. Even today, if you think about it, how many of you have seen on social media where somebody will share, I'm going to name names here, they'll share a Joel Osteen quote or something like that in the name of Christendom. But it's really absurd, right?

It's one of those health and wealth, name it and claim it. God wants you to live your best life with the most American prosperity possible. Where is that in the New Testament? Where is the American prosperity in the New Testament? It's not that American prosperity by itself is evil, it's just that it's not Paul's focus.

But that's a wind-up doctrine and it's easy to click like or share or whatever else and it spreads. And heaven forbid you say this is bad theology because then you might get unfriended on Facebook. But it's worth considering, and I've got a list here of possible doctrinal sources.

They could have gotten ideas from the Old Testament, particularly the law, which could be troublesome. There's traditions. We already know that there were two court systems within Judaism. Well, if there's two court systems, there's the liberal and the conservative. That's a tradition problem within Judaism. And then there's the broader culture. There was special revelation through the apostles and the prophets. And then there was teaching and letters from the prophets. If Paul's in your town and he comes to you and he tells you something, if nobody's writing it down, that's no good.

So you want to keep those things. So winds of doctrine, there's a lot of stuff that can happen. I worked at a Christian bookstore back, now coming on 20 years ago. I worked at a Christian bookstore and we sold a lot of Winds of Doctrine books, if I'm honest.

We had a lot of Jesus junk. It was a lot of stuff where it was, let's say it was inspiring or inspirational, but it wasn't based on the scriptures. It wasn't based on good teaching. And the consequence of that was, well, we all had really cool shirts that said, let's talk about Jesus and things like that. But there was no real doctrinal integrity in what was there.

Look at also, Randy, that whole phase that went, all these churches went through the purpose-driven, the purpose-driven church, the purpose-driven marriage. Forty days of this and purpose-driven. That was just like, it just took Christendom by storm, that whole series of books and thought process. It's one of those things where in today's church, the idea of verse by verse exposition and studying and growing over time and looking at that as the, and the discipling and the coming alongside that are part of these roles here, is foreign. We're just going to give people a book or a video series, and you're good. Go listen to this mp3, you're set. Now you know everything.

Whereas if we look at this, and we look at Paul's letter to Timothy, like 2 Timothy 2.2, where he says, teach these things to other men who will be faithful to teach these things to other men. It's almost like he wants you to have relationships. and come alongside. So we'll keep going here because I could rabbit trail on relationships and spiritual growth maybe a bit more than we need to. So the Ephesians were in this pork town and Paul wanted instead of being tossed around, he wanted maturity and he wanted stability and he wanted anchoring in truth.

Time for the next Greek geek thing. He says to watch out for this trickery. He says, and there waves carried about by every one of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. The word trickery there is literally dice. The idea was with loaded dice. Having grown up in Nevada, I can tell you right now that will get you in a lot of trouble. You don't want loaded dice, or at least if you want loaded dice, you don't want to get caught with loaded dice. That's bad business and you're going to have lots of trouble.

But Paul says the trickery or the loaded dice of these people that come in, these deceivers, What's interesting is that in Greek, and this is again more technical stuff, in Greek there's a thing called a Granville Sharpe rule. Granville Sharpe was a theologian who studied and he said when you have two words that are nouns that are singular, that are side by side, they're talking about the same thing. Okay, so that's super technical. But right here where he says deceitful scheming, in the Greek it's the deceitful the scheming.

And he's talking about this idea, this one idea where they're integrated. Bob? Yeah Randy, is this within the body or outside the body or both? What do you think? Well, he's concerned about it impacting the body, but the deceitful schemers, like if we look at Galatians, this is people from outside the body trying to bring in and force legalism from the outside in, but obviously we have to watch out for it on both sides.

I think if we look at the principle of shepherds from the earlier verse in verse 11, the shepherds have to be watching out for that because the winds of doctrine internally When I've watched the body of different churches that I've been in, if another church in that area breaks up, something terrible happens, they have a church split, a pastor steals money, somebody slept with somebody, whatever happens, right? And the church split happens, you get this new influx of people. And they come in and they may have been taught really terrible things by the person who is doing terrible things.

So it can be inside the body. And sometimes it's deceitful on purpose, and sometimes it's deceitful because they don't know they've been deceived. But they're reproducing those winds of doctrine. The example you gave before was your Christian folk stories. Mostly kind of within the body presumably, but maybe not. But we're good.

It's funny because when we consider this, the deceitful man is something Paul warns Timothy about, he warns the Galatians about, he warns the Ephesians about it, he warns the Corinthians about it. There's a lot of warning about this deception and these people making power plays for what's there inside this body. So it's a big deal. This is a rabbit trail question. but I think worth following.

How do we have discernment? How do we know that what we're being told, how do you know what I'm saying is even legitimate? If you question Randy, which you should, let's be honest, we should all question Randy. If you question me, how would you know that what I'm saying is legitimate? That it's reflective of biblical truth? versus just Randy's opinion. We have a standard here. And it's rightly dividing the word of truth. It's not simply picking your favorite passage. And so we have an individual ability, but we also have the shepherds. We have the elders or the pastors that are also listening.

It's really important to me that Roger doesn't come up after the lesson and say, hey Randy, We don't really believe that if you give a 10% tithe, God's going to bring it back a hundredfold. If he comes to me and he says, this is erroneous, I don't want him to do that on account of not social pressure. I don't want to be teaching bad things. I want to be teaching truth.

But if I screw up and I say something that's erroneous, Roger has a role within our body as one of our co-elders or as a pastor to be checking and listening and making sure that what comes out of Randy's mouth isn't trickery or deception or scheming or just error as a whole.

So we have these things that he's saying, you know, watch out for these ideas that are arowing us. And his goal for that is to see after that, starting in verse 15, he says, but speaking the truth in love, where to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, Christ. And so he moves into this body growth principle, and he does it in the plural. And I think it's worth calling out that it's plural. One of the difficulties of the body is that each one of us is going to grow, but Paul's expectation is not just individual, it's corporate. So if you're growing, and you're the only one growing in a church body, that's a problem.

I've had arguments with theologians, and I'm not bragging about that. I've had arguments with various theologians where I say it's important that if you're the pastor that you are not the lone pastor. That you're raising up other elders that can co-shepherd with you if you happen to come in and you realize that there's no other people equipped, that you get them equipped as quickly as possible and help build them up and give them opportunities to be teaching and opportunities to be fulfilling those requirements we read last week in First Timothy chapter 3.

Because you might get sick. You might want to take a vacation. You might have the church body grow. And if everything funnels down to the one point of one person, I mean he needs other people to be hearing what he says so that everybody is on the same page. Yes, and so there's lots and lots of reasons including that and so I was going to, you've stolen my lesson for just one person, I'm just kidding. But it's important to recognize that these things come through and body growth is important but it shouldn't be one person carrying that in most cases. because this verse takes you to Christ, the head. But I think, according to John, half a century later, they did a pretty good job keeping the deceit out, but they did lose their first love. I think that's really prophetic in terms of what they're called to, in terms of their doctrine. If you're pursuing just teaching, just doctrine for the sake of collecting the whole set of doctrine.

I can write a better systematic theology than you can, but there's no relationship there. When I went to seminary, I thought, I'm going to be so equipped, it's going to be the best. I left seminary at twenty-three and a half, and it was about when I was thirty. We'd been at Holly Hills for a while before I could finally study the word again and see the relationship aspect of it. Because it had become so technical and every doctrine was worth arguing about rather than understanding the relationship side of. And it is important that we don't lose our first love, that relationship aspect. Let's continue on here. Sorry, we're rabbit trailing to the bigger topic here of body growth.

But he says, but speaking the truth in love. Now, how many of you can tell me what the Greek literal translation for that is? Because every Bible church I've ever been in, somebody knows that this is supposed to say, truthing in love, but truthing in love. I've heard that so many times. First of all, that's not wrong. But it's one of those things where I've heard that in more Bible churches than almost any other Greek factoid.

This is truthing in love. But the translators in several translations say, but speaking the truth in love. And I believe that that is accurate based on context. Because what are the deceivers doing? They're speaking, right? The deceivers are speaking, and so this is in contrast to that.

So it's not an unreasonable translation to say, speaking the truth in love. But it's an important thing to recognize that this is a principle of a truthful life. These people are living out a truthful life. It's not just words, although words are an important element of this.

So he says, but speaking the truth in love, why is it so important that Paul contrasts the deceivers? If the deceivers are outside and they're inside, then we need to have contrast to that, right? But the other thing that's interesting Is he talking about just the pastors and teachers doing this truthing? This is for the whole body. And I think that's important.

Not everyone is called to be a teacher. Just like not everybody is called to be an evangelist, or not everybody is called to be an elder, or not everybody is called to be a deacon. We all have different giftings, right? But we are all called to be truthing in love.

It's not just a speech thing, it's a lifestyle thing. We're loving one another and it's based on truth. So we have this principle of truthing in love and everybody now has their Greek factoid that when you go to other Bible churches throughout your travels and journeys in life you'll be able to recognize that and go, okay, truthing in love, got that. But the other thing that's important to recognize here is that this is all part of the body's growth. The focus of this truthing in love is not just so that we can have truth by itself. It's not truth unto truth, it's truth unto growth. So if it's not true, you can't grow spiritually and towards maturity in it.

If it's false, you could still grow in the falsehood, right? You've got lots of degrees in that. You can go to university and get a degree in all kinds of philosophical garbage. And you'll grow in your philosophical garbage and you will be able to pontificate even more than the average person who's deceived, right? But it's not spiritual truth that you can grow in.

So Paul is very concerned about the spiritual truth that's there. The other thing, and we said earlier that there were a lot of Jews, or at least some Jews, but it seems like from what we can tell because of the way that this was a Roman colony, there was a substantial Jewish population there. What would the Jews be doing if they were following the law and they had truth in the law? So this is pre-New Testament truth. What does the law say to do with that truth?

You live it. You practice it all the time. And you're talking about it, and you're interacting with it. So if you looked at Deuteronomy 6-7, you'd read, You shall teach, and he says these things, but the 613 laws, diligently to your sons, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You got the 613 laws constantly bombarding your brain.

How is that different from truthing in love? This is an important contrast, so we want to draw that out. Because the truth is Christ's life in us, and it's not outward necessarily in following the law. It's not about that. It's a life that we live because he's in us. He's living his life through us. So that's the life. The 613 things is a limited subset of what God may possibly want. I should be careful how I say that. I don't want to say it that way. The law is 613 things that were meant to separate Israel unto God.

Whereas in what God is doing in the New Testament church with evangelism, with a move past the temple system, the temple is not at one place, it's you. That's a big difference. schoolmaster, right? The legal system is never capable of being obeyed entirely.

But when you're truthing in love, when you're speaking the truth in love, when you're walking in that truth, that's a very different contrast to speaking the law all the time to remind yourself that you're under the law. Love is a different thing to be under. God's love and his life in us is a different system. So he says, but in contrast to the deceivers, be speaking or living the truth in love.

And he says, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, Christ. Again, that's just a lofty target. He says, we are to And I've got here, it sounds like legalism. How can we handle this? How are we going to handle this? We are too. It's an imperative that we do this. And like we said earlier, this isn't about legalism. This is about the expectation that this is a logical consequence of the life of Christ in us. But it's who we are. It's who we are. And so it's an important thing for us to recognize here that when he's saying this, he's not presenting us with a new set of laws in the New Testament, but these are expectations because of who we are in Christ that these things would be a consequence. So because of who we are in Christ, we are to grow up in all aspects. And again, that's the plural. We are to grow up, plurally, in each interacting with one another, in all aspects, into him who is the head.

But it's interesting too that the Jewish tradition was built on religious law tradition for decades and centuries. But the other flip of that is that were instructed to build on the foundation of apostles, prophets, evangelists, so on and so forth. So first there was law, systematic and very foundational, but now that shifted to not just our quinsical understandings, but there's a whole tradition through apostles, prophets, evangelism, and so on and so forth that solidifies that process. We are blessed to have the canon of the New Testament, the scriptures that are there that we can learn and grow in. One of my favorite things to ponder is in several of the letters you get this idea where Like in the book of Hebrews, we're talking about milk things that you need to grow so that you can handle the meaty things. I always wonder, did we get all the meaty stuff? Were there other meaty things? The Holy Spirit preserved His words, so I'm not questioning the integrity of the New Testament. But it's always like, what else was there?

That would be cool. Bob? Randy, very quickly, I think grow up is subjunctive. Yes, it is. I thought you said it was imperative. We are too, and then grow up is subjunctive. So the idea is, one thing is carrying with it, this is the expected thing that you're going to do, but it's subjunctive in the sense of... You've got to act by faith.

It's the potential of what could come. Seek the things that you're above, right, kind of story. Yeah. Good. And so those things fit together. We have a larger imperative tied to the subjunctive potential of these things happening. And the reason why it's potential, let's pause for a minute and see why is this a potential thing.

And it's because God is establishing the church. He's working on these things and He's putting together long-term pastors and teachers. But if they don't fulfill their role that they have been gifted to fulfill, what's the consequence of that? You've got babies and kids and teens and adults, and let's say for the sake of argument that the elders are experienced adults and they have learned and grown and they've reached a point where they can be entrusted with shepherding the body, then they can come alongside and carry out those duties.

But if they abdicate that, which has happened in Ephesus, They did. There's really not a church there. There's a tourist church there. You can come see these historical places, but it's not really a living church that's there. At some point in time, the elders abdicated their role.

So it's possible. There's a potentiality there. But the command to do it is an imperative. The outcome is subjunctive, is the way to look at that. So we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head Christ. And what's important is that Paul is shifting to body language. When we look at the next couple clauses here, he says we are to grow up from the whole body being fitted and held together by every joint. supplies according to the proper working of each individual part, causing the growth of the body. So he's moving into body vocabulary, and it's important to grasp what he's doing with that.

How many of you have the word even in your translation? And I don't, I'm just going to be honest with you, I don't know why the word even was put in there by the translators. It showed up in the King James, and it's not in the Greek. It's in italics. Yeah, and NASB also carries that over. And it's a weird thing, because I was like, even? Even is a weird word to put there. I just wouldn't personally, as a translator, I don't think it adds clarity. In fact, it just tends to make it seem a little mixed up. So I would just say, I'm not going to tell you to cross out words in your Bible, that's not what I'm saying, but I would just say, even is not theirs, and I don't think it adds to the translation.

So we're to grow up in all aspects, just like he said earlier in verse 13, we're to grow into the fullness of Christ. So that's the target, that's where we're going. So the question I've got here next is, what does a mature body look like? How do we know that we're part of a mature body or a maturing body? We'll say it very carefully that way.

How would we know? Is it because there's a lot of people with gray hair? Is it because it's got a nice building program? Is it because the children's program is just so full they can't keep all the kids in the rooms? How do we know? Paul is going to tell us here what this looks like, but it's important that we ask that question and kind of delve into what does this maturity look like.

He's going to describe the maturing body in the next few clauses, but the principle is that the body is holding itself together and causing growth within one another. So if the body's falling apart, that's not mature, right? That's at the very least entropy. And if they're not causing growth within one another, then Those are part of Paul's criteria that he's digging into here.

So since he's going to dig into it, we'll dig into it as well. He says, from the whole body. So the first thing is, he says, from the whole body, which we know there's one body, right? From earlier in this passage. The whole body. Who gets to be left out of participating in the body when you say the whole body? Nobody. That means that we're all important to one another, at least theoretically, subjunctively. That's not in the Greek.

That's me making a statement now. We're theoretically important to one another. So if maybe we're not viewing one another as important, there's an opportunity for our growth to get to know one another so that we can grow some more. Because you are, as it turns out, very important. So whole body, that includes you. Nobody gets out. We're all important. From the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies.

Now how many of you have had to memorize in school, and of course Bob's a doctor, so I know his answer is yes on this. How many of you have had to memorize all the parts of the body, all the bones and the joints and the names for all of those things? I had to memorize a subset of those when I was in school. Thankfully, just a subset. You've got bones and you've got muscle groups and all these things that you have to learn.

And so when you hear about joints here, you jump to biology. All right, we've got biology, we've got anatomy and how those things fit together. But they're held together. And we've got gravity. Gravity's doing the thing. But Paul's using an analogy here. So what's the analogy for us? What does this look like if we're describing these and we're saying this is the church body, not a physical human body?

We need each other. There's a dependence on one another. And that's one of those things where when we get to, and I don't know if we're ever going to teach Philippians in a Sunday school class, but if we get to Philippians chapter 4, Paul says, my God will supply all my needs. And for a long time I always thought that God is going to fulfill the needs. But the reality is that God actually also supplies the need. He actually often creates need within our lives so that He can grow us and build us.

But if the joints aren't connected, if there's no dependency, if there's no leaning on one another and saying, hey, I have intimacy with you on a personal, spiritual, and intellectual level, a sociological interaction would be a carnal description. This is a spiritual interaction. then I can share a need and God can fulfill it. I've seen it happen in this body. How many of you have ever had that experience in your life where the need was fulfilled by someone else in the body?

But if you never shared it, no one would know and it wouldn't have been fulfilled that way. I like to joke that the Holy Spirit is not needed in the church in the United States because we have the Discover Card Corporation. That's heresy, okay? I don't literally mean that.

The reality is that we have needs and the analogy of the joint is we come together and we know one another and we have these dependencies on one another. When we're praying, if I say, what's a prayer request? I often end fellowship time with other believers with, what can I be praying for you about? And in doing so, it's amazing what I get to pray about. And sometimes I even get to know somebody who knows somebody.

And we can fill that need. God can use us in that capacity. So there's an important part of what every joint supplies. And then what about the held together? What's holding us together? It's God. It's God holding us together. He is the one holding us together. But there is this principle of love that is carried through all of Ephesians, that God's love in his life is holding us together and bringing a bond with one another that's very real and experienced. That's the Holy Spirit doing it. And so when we close verse 16 here, we're going to see that love is kind of what he's tying together as the bond and the body.

But he says, according to the proper working of each individual part. Now this is super awesome because if there's ever anything that I have wrestled with in my own life, it's this idea that I'm not done yet, so how could I be fulfilling this proper working of individual part. But the reality is that if I'm abiding, then I will properly operate at this time in the place that God has for me to operate. It doesn't mean I'm spiritually perfect. But if I need you, and you need me, and we're abiding, then this properly working part is important. But what if something isn't working? What if someone, as their role in the body, isn't properly working? It can hurt the body, but we have pastors or shepherds who can come alongside.

Galatians 6.1, you who are spiritual, come alongside and restore such a one. And hopefully the consequence of that is that there's a proper working part there now.

Because Paul is bringing all these things together to this closing thought. He says that the body causes growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. And so we want to be careful that we don't get God divorced from this context, right? Because he says, causes the growth of the body for building up of itself. Oh, that would be easy for us to quickly lose context, except for that who's the head of the body? Christ. We don't get the body without Christ. So Christ is fundamentally in charge and guiding us as we abide to these results.

So causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself and love. It's not just building itself up to have more cells. Okay? He's not just saying building up of itself. That would be more cells. But it's building up of itself in love. And we ended chapter three with this multi-dimensional love, this geometry of love. And we got down here into the middle of chapter four, and we have this principle of love that carries through here. It's almost like, and I hesitate to say this with too much confidence, but it's almost like Paul wants us to love one another.

I'm not sure, but I think so. Maybe if we love one another, that's going to cause some growth. Maybe. I don't know. What do you think? Anybody confident of that? Tom? kind of love, and that's where you're probably ready to teach next. And what was that? Agape. Agape love. And why is it agape love instead of one of the other loves? Anybody have any guesses as to why it's agape love? Agape love can only come from Christ. I mean, we can't, we're not capable without Him to have that kind of love. It's unconditional. It's unconditional, and it's sacrificial, it's selfless.

There are times when I feel like the King James translation loses something after 400 years, right? But guess what? I think the translation for charity, for agape love, is actually a pretty solid translation there. So that we can be bound together in charity. That we can be bound together in a selfless benevolent love that is God's love. It's love that gets its definition in Him.

And that's a building up. Who is wounded by love? When we look at 1 Corinthians 13, is it 4 through 8 I think is the verses there that are talking about love? It could be 4 through 7. I'm going to have to go back and re-read that. When we take a look at that, we see the critical nature of love to cover wounds and sins and things like that, but it also builds. And that's a big deal here.

Paul wants the church to be building up. They've got a foundation. They have the apostles and the prophets, and the evangelists are preaching the word, and the pastors are teaching and shepherding and coming alongside and helping the the infants who maybe have stinky diapers. And the teachers are taking what's been provided and also sharing those things and teaching those things and carrying them on. And the conclusion of all these things with love, it's all the way through Ephesians. So if we go to Ephesians 2 and look at verses 4 and 5, what do we see there?

If you get there, somebody go ahead and read it out loud. But God being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And he keeps going, but it's one of Paul's run-on sentences, so I just clipped it and you'll forgive me, okay? God's love, that agape love, is that rooting love. It's the love that motivated sending a son, that motivated creating a gospel that violates any of our understanding because it's based on mercy and grace. And that's a powerful thing.

And it's what we can build into one another. through the Holy Spirit as we grow together until he returns. Theoretically, Holly Hills could be here as a body until the Lord returns. I mean, part of me wishes it was in five seconds and we could not even finish praying, but God has orchestrated a system that we get to be part of, and we need one another, and we love one another, and we grow one another. And that makes each one of our faces in this room and our presence and people in the other Sunday School classes way more important.

We need one another. Any other thoughts or questions? We'll close in prayer. All right. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the chance that we get to gather together this morning and study your word. We just pray for an abiding love in our own lives as we fellowship and interact this morning. We thank you so much for your life in us and that we get to reflect that to the world outside us as well. We just pray for the return of your son, our head, as well. In Jesus' name, amen.