With no real way of knowing how the American civil war would end, President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863; the most important part of his proclamation stated the following: “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
The war began with shots fired at 4:30 a.m. in South Carolina at Fort Sumter, on April 12, 1881. The war ended 4 years, 1 month, and 2 weeks later on April 9, 1865, at the great cost of at least 620,000 American lives. Five days later, on April 14th, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth while watching a play at Ford’s Theater; Lincoln was pronounced dead the morning of April 15th. In his eulogy of Lincoln, Senator Charles Sumner said, “Mourn not the dead, but rejoice in his life and example…. Rejoice that through him Emancipation was proclaimed.”
Walt Whitman admired Lincoln, and although he never had the opportunity to meet Lincoln, he said of the president: “Lincoln gets almost nearer me than anybody else.” Whitman shared the same views on slavery that Abraham Lincoln had; after the president was assassinated, Whitman penned what would later be considered a masterpiece of a poem titled: “O Captain! My Captain!”, which served as a metaphor about the death of the president he dearly admired and loved. Whitman’s poem was first published on November 4, 1865; consider Whitman’s first verse:
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
As great as Abraham Lincoln was, he was only mortal, and a flawed one at that. But dear Christian, we have a Captain who is no mere mortal. A captain of a boat or ship is the person with the highest rank; as the Head of the Church, there is no authority greater than Jesus! Think about it, all things have been placed in subjection under the feet of Jesus; He is head over all things to the to the church (Eph. 1:22-23).
Our Captain, Jesus, is the fully divine Christ who descended in humility by also becoming fully human. Our Captain is the Lord of Life, who is the only begotten Son of God the Father Almighty. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; descended into the grave; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.[1]
When I read Ephesians 4:7-10 and sat at my desk in front of my Bible staring at verses 8-10, I could not help but rejoice over what these verses mean. After reading Walt Whitman’s poem, I wrote two verses of my own poem in response:
Our Captain and Great Redeemer,
His divine arms spread great and wide!
Upon the Cross, He bleed for sinners,
For our freedom, the Lamb of God died.
From earthen wood to the stone carved tomb,
Redemption’s Prince laid cold and dead!
Three Days Later, Christ had risen,
Death and sin: swallowed up by the Living!
So, I have spent much of our time this morning setting up Ephesians 4:7-10, but I believe it was time well spent for reasons I hope will become clear.
The Church is Equipped by Christ for Her Mission (v. 7)
If I can get you to see how encouraging verse 7 is, I believe you will gain a healthier and deeper understanding of how you can, “…walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called” (4:1). I also believe you will discover the “secret sauce” for how you can urgently, “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (v. 3). To do this however, you have got to see the relationship between Ephesians 4:4-6 with verse 7; for this reason look carefully at these verses: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you also were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4–6).
Now we come to verse 7, “But to each of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” Wait a second Paul, what happened to all this talk about us being “one”? We, who make up the body of Christ under His Lordship because we have been sealed by His Holy Spirit… have each received, “grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” The “grace” and the “gift” mentioned in this verse is not referring to the gift of salvation in the same way Ephesians 2:8-9 is referring to the gift of salvation. The “grace” and the “gift” that is given by Jesus to those He has redeemed is given so that those who have been saved are able to function as “one body” for the purpose of serving one another in the Church and to engage Christ’s mission in the world as the Church.
The word used for “grace” is charis from which we get the word “charismatic” from, and the way it is used here in verse 7 is not “saving grace” but “equipping grace.” The “gift” that belongs to Christ is His to give and He does so freely to whomever He chooses who make up His Church for good of the one body. Listen, “Christ’s gift” are spiritual gifts that He distributes among His people diversly through the power of the Holy Spirit to build up those who make up His Church. The gift is what Jesus promised His disciples hours before His crucifixion: “But I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I am leaving; for if I do not leave, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you” (John 16:7). The gift is given not by some force, but by the One Jesus promised in Acts 1:8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
If you are still confused what verse 7 is describing, there are two scripture passages that I believe will help you make sense of this verse. In 1 Corinthians 12:4-7, we learn a little more about what each true Christian has been given according to the measure of Christ’s gift: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” What this means for you Christian, is that Jesus has uniquely and supernaturally gifted you through the Holy Spirit (the Helper) to live out Ephesians 2:10 for the good of His people and mission He has called us to, and in case you forgot what Ephesians 2:10 says, here it is: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
I will come back to how our gifting through the Holy Spirit works diversly for the purpose of unity in my next sermon, but what I want you to know for now is that Jesus gave His Church a greater mission than what drove the North and the South into war on April 12, 1861, for we live in a world where all people are born under the tyranny of sin and are bound to a nature to sin, “indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind” and stand condemned before a Holy God as, “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:1-3). We who have been set free from the tyranny of sin and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb have been given our marching orders: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19–20). The good news about our orders is that our Captain has not only uniquely gifted each of His people to accomplish His mission, but He promises to go with us!
The Mission of the Church Guaranteed by Christ’s Victory (vv. 8-10)
What confidence do we have that the Church (the community of called-out-ones) will be able to finish the mission Jesus has given Her? It is right here in verses 8-10! Paul begins with the word “Therefore…” to indicate how it is we can have any confidence to remain unified as one body, under one Lord, sealed and empowered by one Spirit, and he does so by quoting from Psalm 68! What is so remarkable about Psalm 68 is that it is in the category of Psalms known as the enthronement psalms that celebrate the kingly reign of God Almighty! Psalm 68 celebrates God’s triumph in leading His people from Mount Sinai in the desert to Mount Zion in Jerusalem as God and King over His people! Permit me to highlight some of the verses in Psalm 68 before we look specifically at the verse Paul quotes from so that you can appreciate the significance of what Paul does in Ephesians from this Psalm:
“May God arise, may His enemies be scattered, and may those who hate Him flee from His presence. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melts before a fire, so the wicked will perish before God. But the righteous will be joyful; they will rejoice before God; yes, they will rejoice with gladness.” (Psalm 68:1–3)
“Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, the God who is our salvation. God is to us a God of salvation; and to God the Lord belong ways of escape from death.” (Psalm 68:19–20)
Tucked into the middle of Psalm 68 is verse 18, and it is this verse that Paul quotes from, and does so with a twist. But before I show you why He did this, you need to see Psalm 68:15-18 together:
The mountain of Bashan is a mountain of God; the mountain of Bashan is a mountain of many peaks. 16Why do you look with envy, you mountains of many peaks, at the mountain God has desired as His dwelling? Indeed, the Lord will dwell there forever. 17The chariots of God are myriads, thousands upon thousands; The Lord is among them as at Sinai, in holiness. 18You have ascended on high, You have led captive Your captives; You have received gifts among people, Even among the rebellious as well, that the Lord God may dwell there.
Here is what you need to know to appreciate why Paul quotes Psalm 68:18 with a twist: The mountain of Bashan represented the gateway to the evil underworld in Israelite and Canaanite thought.[2] What is being celebrated in Psalm 68:15-18 is that God defeated the evil that threatened His people at Mount Bashan and not only defeated them handedly, but led captive the captives by putting His triumph over the enemies of His people on full display for all to see. When the Psalmist wrote of God: “You have led captive Your captives…” he was describing the victory procession of a returning king that was common in the ancient Near East; in his commentary on the Psalms, Gerald Wilson said of the victory procession, “Captives were paraded as a visible representation of the king’s far-flung conquests. As the victorious army returned home through various subject nations, the parade of captives drove home to any who might entertain notions of rebellion the power of the king and how he had defeated those who had resisted his authority.[3] Those conquered were quick to offer gifts to prove their loyalty to the conquering victorious king.
Okay, now we are ready to appreciate what Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote in Ephesians 4:8-10, and it will not take long to do so! So here is what Paul wrote: “Therefore it says, ‘When He ascended on high, he led captive THE captives, And He gave gifts to people.’ 9(Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.)”
What the apostle does with Psalm 68:18 is that he summarizes all of Psalm 68 by drawing our attention to verse 18 to show us how every enemy has been defeated through the way Jesus descended into the lower parts of the earth which He did by humbling Himself, “by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. And being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5-8). Jesus was buried and three days later rose from the grave! After He rose from the grave, He ascended to heaven, but before doing so, promised his followers: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). What does it mean that Jesus, “ascended far above all the heavens”? After Jesus descended, we read in Philippians 2:9-11, “For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Do you see what Paul is saying here? Oh, dear Christian, Jesus died to liberate us from the bondage and curse of sin, and He was then buried in the tomb. However, because death had no power over Him, he defeated sin and death by rising from the grave, and we rightly hail Him as the Risen Lord of Life! But wait… that is not all! Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, which means that He is enthroned as the ascended King of kings and Lord of lords! Now, against the backdrop of Psalm 68 and Ephesians 4:7-10, consider Colossians 2:13-15,
And when you were dead in your wrongdoings and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our wrongdoings, having canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
As the victorious and ascended King, Jesus triumphed over sin, death, the demonic powers, the devil, and hell itself! Jesus is the fulfillment of Psalm 68, and the gifts He gives is through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit that both He and the Father have sent to seal His redeemed and ransomed Bride (the Church) for the purpose of dispensing gifts upon those who make up His one body! Martyn Lloyd-Jones said of these verses that they serve as, “a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ leading in His triumphal train the devil and hell and sin and death—the great enemies that were against man and which had held mankind in captivity for so long a time. The princes which had controlled that captivity are now being led captive themselves.” He concludes by driving home the apostle’s point that we dare not forget: “He is the great heavenly Captain and we are His people. Having routed His enemies, He dispenses and showers His gifts upon us. But all the gifts, ever, always, come from Him.”[4]
You, who have been ransomed, redeemed, and forgiven through the triumphant victory of Jesus Christ upon the cross and over the grave—now that you who have received the promised Holy Spirit and are empowered by Him—how are you walking in, “a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called”?
