There have been men in my life whose influence had such a profound effect upon my life that had they not been a part of it, I would not be the man that I am today. These men include men whose lives continue to shape my life, men like Ralph Robinson and Ed Hardesty—Ralph is home with Jesus and Ed is still faithfully teaching the Bible at a Bible college and faithfully preaches and shepherds at the church he planted years ago. There are others who I will leave unnamed who started out in ministry so well, but were derailed from ministry due to sexual immorality, some are out of the pastorate due to their own arrogance, and others have walked away from the faith all together.
There are multiple examples of the way men and women of faith made a mess of their lives throughout the Bible, of all that have done so, none are more notable than King Solomon who turned his heart from God by chasing after the idols of his heart. As an old man, Solomon reflected upon his sins and his reflections are recorded for us in Ecclesiastes, a book that begins with these words: “And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom about everything that has been done under heaven. It is a sorry task with which God has given the sons of mankind to be troubled. I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is futility and striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted” (Eccl. 1:13–15). Here is how Solomon concluded in Ecclesiastes:
Remember your Creator before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the spring is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it…. The conclusion, when everything has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. (Eccl. 12:6-7, 13–14)
You, dear Christian, have something that Solomon did not have. You have Christ! You have been chosen before the foundation of the world by God the Father for Jesus the Son to be holy and blameless (1:4-6). You have been redeemed through the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins (1:7-12). You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit through Christ as a child of God (1:13-14). You who were once dead in your sins, are now alive with Jesus and have been raised up with Him and seated with Him in the heavenly places… all because of Christ! You are, “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (2:10). Therefore, you are to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called…” (4:1).
How do you walk in a manner worthy of your calling? You do it within community as a member of the body of Christ who has been gifted to, “encourage one another in love and good deeds, not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24-25). By doing this, we are better prepared to engage God’s mission to redeem the nations with the Gospel as His Church.
We Live Rightly Under the Guiding Light of the Word of God
How do we guard against the kinds of dangers we are warned about in the Bible such as apostatizing, which is a turning away from the one faith that unifies us… that is the one faith in Jesus the Christ. In Christians circles the word apostasy has been sanitized and rebranded with a new word known as “deconstructing.” This is the very thing the apostle John warned about in his epistle: “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be evident that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19).[1]
So, how do we guard against falling away? How do we protect ourselves from the dangers of apostasy? The answer is before us in Ephesians 4:11-16. We already looked at verses 11-13 but let me briefly remind you why these verses are so helpful.
Last week, I pointed out to you that the list in verse 11 is a list of five offices that Christ gifts to His Church, these offices are filled by those who are spiritually gifted persons, whose sole purpose has to do with the administration and distribution of the Word of God to the people of God. I explained why I believe the offices of Apostle and Prophet are offices no longer being filled today for they ceased with the death of the apostles. I showed you that based on what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:19-22, the offices of apostles and prophets are gifts we still benefit from through the foundation of the Word of God in the Old Testament (prophets) and New Testament (apostles and prophets). The offices of evangelists, pastors, and teachers are still being filled by Jesus with spiritually gifted people, “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ” (v. 12).
For how long are those called to administer the Word of God to the People of God? The answer is in verse 13: “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.” The goal is that the people of God would become full of the true and incomparable Jesus, and it is done through the faithful teaching and preaching of the Word of God! On this point, Sinclair Ferguson said of the ministry of the Word of God: “Its goal is not merely educational but transformational; it informs the mind in order to touch the conscience, mold the will, cleanse the affections and sanctify the whole life. The Word is thus allowed to do its own sanctifying work, as our Lord himself prayed: ‘Sanctify them in the truth; your Word is truth’ (John 17:17). This requires intensive treatment.”[2]
We Live Rightly When We Grow into Maturity in Christ
I believe what I am going to say next may be the most important thing you will hear today regarding your life as a Christian. The reason why Jesus has gifted His Church with Apostles (New Testament), prophets (Old Testament), evangelists, pastors, and teachers is so that you will not remain, “children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming…” (v. 14).
The apostle Paul warns of the great danger we all face related to your growth and maturity as a Christian. The Greek word that Paul uses for “children” is nēpios, which is used to describe a nursing infant. When you become a Christian, you are what Jesus described as “born again” (see John 3:1-21). In Hebrews 5:13, the same Greek word Paul used in Ephesians 4:14 is used,
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the actual words of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unacquainted with the word of righteousness, for he is an infant (nēpios). But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil.” (Heb. 5:12–14)
When you were made alive with Christ (2:5), you were born again. Like any newborn child, the only food that can be digested at first is milk, but if you never mature and move on to other types of food you will become sick and weak. According to Hebrews 5, the “elementary principles of the actual words of God” are the fundamentals of the Christian faith, necessary for a person to receive the good news of the gospel such as: “The belief in Jesus Christ, as God’s only Son as our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.”[3]
However, if you do not grow up as a Christian and you continue to remain an infant that cannot handle anything other than spiritual “milk” you will be at severe risk of: 1) being carried about by every wind of doctrine, 2) the trickery of people, and 3) the craftiness in deceitful scheming.
Infant Christians are gullible and unstable on their own feet. They can be easily knocked over, easily distracted, and are easily deceived because they lack discernment. Cults and false teachers will prey on the immature and will waste little time on the Christian who understands and knows the word of God. The Christian who remains an infant in his/her faith is usually unable to see through the deception of false teachers who pride themselves on things they claim have never been seen before or things in the Bible that have been long covered due to some crazy conspiracy. Behind every false teaching is the great deceiver of whom Jesus said, “…was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him… because he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
To the Corinthian church, Paul warned the immature Christians: “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his trickery, your minds will be led astray from sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3). Now listen to 2 Corinthians 11:3-4 in the New Living Translation, it does not comparatively do the best job with translating these verses, but it does really help us understand the danger that faces Christians who never grow beyond infancy: “But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent. You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the one you received, or a different kind of gospel than the one you believed” (2 Cor. 11:3–4, NLT). Later in Ephesians Paul tells the Ephesian Christians to put on the full armor of God to stand against the same “scheming” that threatens Christians still in their infancy: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:10–12).
The focus of the enemy is deceive you into believing in a different Jesus and to isolate you from those within Jesus’ Church who can help you grow in the hope of your calling, which is, “one body, one Spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (4:4-6). The only way you will be able to stand on your own two spiritual feet is through a maturity that can only come by understanding the truth of God’s word within the community of God’s people. The goal in verse 13 is that “…we all attain 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.” This is why Jesus gifts through the Holy Spirit apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to the body of Christ so that we will grow as His body:
- The unity of the faith: That you, Christian will continue to grow in your knowledge and understanding that Jesus is both redeemer and Lord of His Church.
- The knowledge of the Son of God: That you, Christian will continue to grow in your knowledge and understanding that Jesus is all that He is as the Son of God, and any other Jesus presented outside of the scriptures is a Jesus who cannot save.
- Maturity as a follower of Jesus: That you, Christian will grow into a mature follower of the King of kings and Lord of lords and see Him for who He really is: “The Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13). The head of the Church has declared: “I am… the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades” (Rev. 1:18).
- To become full of Christ: That you, Christian, will grow in such a way that you will become full of Christ, so that you are able to say with John the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
So how do we grow up in one faith? You do it by “truthing in love” together. Let me explain what I mean. Notice what Paul writes in verses 15-16: “but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is Christ, from who 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.”
If we are going to grow up as Christians, we must be people of the truth of God’s word! You will not grow as a Christian apart from the truth of His word as it is read, studied, and received from the foundation of the apostles and prophets (the Bible) and administered through the faithful preaching and teaching of God’s word by evangelists, pastors, and teachers (4:11). However, the goal is not to fill your head with knowledge, but for the knowledge of God’s word to shape the way you live your life! There is one Greek word used for “speaking the truth” (alētheuō), and it literally means, “be truthful.” A better way to translate is, “but truthing in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head…”. What is the point? The point is that the goal of understanding the Word of God is not only to grow in your understanding of the Bible but to live out that truth through your life as a follower of Jesus within the community of the body of Christ. According to verse 16, this is the ONLY way to grow as a Christian!
Every person in the body of Christ has been called by God, redeemed by Jesus, and empowered by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of living within the community of those God has called, those whom Christ has redeemed, and those whom God has sealed with His Holy Spirit, and we live within the community of the redeemed while “truthing in love.”
Listen, there is coming a day when the Church will be gathered in glory when every tribe and every tongue who experienced redemption through the precious blood of Jesus as the Lamb of God will celebrate Him not only as the Head of the Church, but the triumphant Lion of Judah, and we will celebrate His song that all of heaven will sing:
And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the scroll and to break its seals; for You were slaughtered, and You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation. You have made them into a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth.”
Then I looked, and I heard the voices of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing.” And I heard every created thing which is in heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth, or on the sea, and all the things in them, saying, “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing, the honor, the glory, and the dominion forever and ever.” (Rev. 5:9-13)
What other way is there to live in light of the reality of that truth but to do it by “truthing in love” together as His people and as the body of Christ?
