Dennis Tuuri

# Spiritual Gifts and Maturity

Today in our sermon series on spiritual gifts, today’s topic is spiritual gifts and maturity. The sermon text is Ephesians 4:1-16. This text stands in relationship to that particular epistle in the same way the first sermon text we used in this series, Romans 12, does with Romans. Romans 1-11 explains theological truths in the gospel. Chapter 12 calls for response to the gospel. Ephesians 1-3 is the credenda part—what you’re to believe. Chapters 4-6 explain what you’re to do. We looked at this section of Ephesians, of course, when we did our series on marriage. But prior to marriage, prior to talking about marriage and children and other things like that, comes chapter 4 with its emphasis on the church and the work of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts. So, please stand for the reading of Ephesians 4:1-16. This is the response part of the epistle to the Ephesians.

“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

“But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore, it says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness, and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we wish to be this growing body building ourselves up in love. Bless us then, Father, with an understanding of this basic response to the gospel of Jesus Christ, that understands that gospel and the fullness of it in our lives. Bless us, Lord God, and transform us by this text. Challenge us anew to be those who attain to maturity. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

The church gets Mars Hill audio CDs every quarter, I think. Ken Myers has been doing this—this is not Mars Hill in Seattle. This is Mars Hill before Mars Hill got started. This is Mars Hill audio. A guy named Ken Myers. He used to work for NPR, a Christian man, an excellent thinker. He interviews several people every quarter, puts out CDs, and they’re really good. We have a number of them in the library. I got the latest one this week, and I looked at it and I thought, “Oh, wow. That certainly relates to my sermon topic.” The last interview he does is with a man who’s written a book called *The Juvenilization of American Christianity*. I put out a little Facebook status update a couple of days ago with a link to the trailer for the book, which is interesting—got trailers for books now.

The basic premise of his book is that American Christianity has become juvenilized. It’s related to the lack of significance of the church. R.J. Rushdoony wrote a book thirty-five years ago called *Revolt Against Maturity*, which says at a much more scholarly level, dealing specifically with psychology and humanism, but pretty much the same thing—that we’re in a context where fallen man is always in this context, but in America right now there’s a tremendous movement that he saw happening then and has happened up to this day and age of a kind of revolt against maturity. The idolization of a youth culture that we’ve heard about for decades now.

The book *Juvenilization of American Christianity* doesn’t say it’s all bad. It talks about some of the benefits of what’s happened. There has been new life brought into the church, into various—he looks at four different kinds of Christianity in America, and there’s been new life that’s happened as a result of some of this juvenilization. There’s been some spiritual dynamics that are going on. I went—I’m sure I mentioned this—to the Justice Conference last year. Incredible thousand young people, you know, jazzed about social justice. So you got that kind of energy and stuff that’s happened as a result of this.

However, it’s also had some downside effects. This kind of rejection of the idea of maturity, and as a result you’re, for instance, always on a spiritual quest and you move from church to church. The institutional church itself becomes less important. Churches have less intergenerational community at work. So churches are more and more characterized by youth culture, youth music—what I used to call pegged jeans, which are skinny jeans now. But when I was a kid, they were pegged. Now they’re skinny jeans, etc.

When that happens, when the attempt is made to get kids to get serious about their faith by putting on a facade around the thing or the trappings around it that are youth culture-oriented, then it has these other effects that are not good, not beneficial for the culture.

Interestingly, the author of the book points out that a lot of this emphasis that began in the thirties in America was a response to Hitler youth and then the Communist Party youth programs. People were afraid that America would become fascist or communist unless we took American youth and made them really good, solid American, freedom-loving people. So one of the big impetuses behind the youth movement was to make sure they didn’t become communists and fascists. As a result of that, although there’s been a lot of positive effects of some of this emphasis on youth, some of it has just drained away into a kind of quasi-patriotic view of things rather than anything necessarily Christian.

So we live in the setting today, and it’s so obvious you hardly even need to talk about it, right? I mean, it’s quite obvious. Just as an example, the songs we sing here are very unusual for churches today because most churches are now singing pop choruses that were intended—I don’t think they really do this, but they were intended—they are intended to reach youth. So the trappings of the worship service have become youth-oriented. And one of the other side effects of that is that the average person in the pew is being reinforced to immaturity, not to maturity, right?

True spirituality is now seen as having a significant amount of emotion involved, whereas in the past, mature Christianity—certainly there was emotion, but more than that—it was a set of commitments to do particular things and to have a deep sense of joy. It’s the difference between maybe—this is not a good comparison—but between an affair and a thirty or forty-year marriage. The affair pops up, big emotion, big charge. The marriage doesn’t have that, but it has a much deeper—I think Tim Keller relates modern views of romance to a babbling brook. Makes a lot of noise, but it’s about three inches deep. A Christian marriage that goes on for years is like a deep-running river that has lots of interesting things going on in it, not so much noise, but far more power and effectiveness and much deeper than the babbling brook.

That’s a good illustration for what Christianity seems to be becoming more and more in America today.

So what we want to do today is say: what do the scriptures say? The scriptures say that in terms of these basic passages on spiritual gifts, today’s text talks about the purpose of spiritual gifts—the gifts that Christ gives to the church. The purpose of them is to get the church to grow up and to be mature, to desire maturity, and to make use of the methods and the things that God has given us to mature us as a people. You know, you can think of it in terms of vocation too, right? There’s something positive to want a vocation that has passion attached to it. But you know, work is work. It’s work. It isn’t necessarily the most emotionally high-producing thing you can do. But when vocation is seen in relationship to the dominion calling, you man, then work takes on a tremendous significance and a tremendous sense of accomplishment, even though it may not be passionate for you that day.

So everything is kind of changing in our culture through the effect of this juvenilization, which I think is certainly true, this revolt against maturity, a youth-oriented culture. And now if you’re youth here, we’re not against you. We’re happy you’re here. Some of those youth movements—Youth for Christ, for instance—had some very significant positive impacts on youth, calling them to make commitments to become mature for Jesus. But the point of the book is the accoutrements around it to draw kids to it have become to dominate American Christianity, and as a result are now reinforcing not maturity, not a sense of deep theological knowledge, for instance, but rather just a kind of pop relationship to Jesus—being in love with Jesus rather than really knowing a whole lot about what Jesus says.

Okay. I’ve belabored the point, I suppose, but that’s the introduction to what I want to talk about today in terms of spiritual gifts in this third section. Remember, we’re here because these are the sections—Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12-14, but primarily 12, and Ephesians 4—where spiritual gifts are specifically talked about. What we tried to do is say, well, what’s the emphasis, the overriding emphasis of each of these particular sections?

In Romans 12, it seems to me that the major emphasis is the love, the kind of stuff that surrounds the ministration of spiritual gifts. The emphasis in 1 Corinthians 12 was everybody engaging in some kind of ministry. Everybody’s got a spiritual gift, an enablement or a ministry to do in the context of the Christian church. Everybody’s got one of those, and without everybody doing it, the body suffers. So it’s about comprehensiveness of spiritual gifts.

Now in this text, it seems like the whole point of this particular section on spiritual gifts, which are men who built the church, the whole point of it is maturity. That’s what I’ve decided to focus on with this particular text.

As I said at the beginning, the context for this is that this is the response to the gospel. Paul’s response in Ephesians 4 to the gospel that he’s presented in the first three chapters. Before we get going, I’ll make this point again in a little bit, but if it’s the response to the first three chapters, well, the first three chapters have included, as most of the New Testament epistles do, the unity of Jew and Gentile. Most of the epistles in the New Testament are concerned with the relationship of Jews and Gentiles that are now brought together in one body.

So when we get to the stresses on unity here, read that in the context of the unity of Jew and Gentile, which is a prefigurement of the unity of humanity which was shattered in the fall and was continuing to be shown—humanity was split through Mosaic law that kept Jew and Gentile apart to a certain degree. All that’s been done away with. So we have true unity now. In that true unity of the human condition, maturely serving Jesus is absolutely ultimate.

One last point of introduction to this: we were talking about Job 38-42 in Sunday school class today. The question is, you know, what are you saved for? If you’re just saved to live out a life, a kind of normal life until you die and then get to go to heaven, that’s one thing. But if salvation is more comprehensive—if you’re saved from your sins and from damnation through the saving work of Jesus Christ in your life—like with Leah today, you know, Leah has to ask herself: to what end have I been saved?

I think the answer in the scriptures is to serve Jesus, to be a disciple, and to affect dominion in the world. God asks Job a series of questions in those four chapters. A lot of times those questions are taken to emphasize the creator-creature distinction. But a different way to look at those questions is God preparing Job to do a lot of those very things and to produce a humanity ultimately united to Jesus that can do all kinds of things.

So God says, “Have you mapped out the depths of the oceans?” Not yet, but we’re getting there. Why? Because mankind has become mature, in union with Jesus Christ at his ascension. Today’s text talks about this. He brings humanity into the right hand at the right hand of the Father to rule with him in the world. Since the resurrection and ascension, mankind has taken on tremendous knowledge, tremendous ability because of its basic right relationship with God.

So each of us individually, we’re called to exercise dominion. We’re called to do good things in our homes, in our churches, in our state, and in our businesses. If you’re called to act in a dominion fashion, that requires maturity. If all you’re called to do is just live out a life of loving Jesus, whatever that might mean, that doesn’t require a lot of maturity. That’s just kind of, you know, you just do whatever you want to do, and it isn’t all that significant except for your personal, private devotion time.

Okay. So the great context for this discussion is Jesus bringing humanity to unity—and a unity that exists now in maturity in the second Adam, Jesus. He starts his book by talking about how Adam was created a mature man. If mankind begins as a child, then the child’s state becomes very important to everything. The evolutionary mindset is inevitably linked to the idea that to figure out who you are, we’ve got to think about your childhood. You see the connection?

If, on the other hand, man has been created a mature man and he’s created in relationship to God, then a true biblical psychology of what’s going on in your heart, head, and soul has to do with your maturity or lack thereof and your relationship in that maturity to God and the task that he’s called you to do. It makes all the difference in the world.

All right, so let’s go to the text and see how the text stresses this. The text begins and ends with bookends. This is what we did with Romans 12, and I think it’s significant here as well. It begins, first of all, with a summary call to discipleship. Remember in Romans 12, you know, you’re going to be transformed, not conformed. You’re going to be dedicated to serving God in Romans chapter 12. I urge you therefore to engage in this service. So it’s a summary call to discipleship.

And we have the same thing in verse one of Ephesians 4: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Okay, so that’s it. What are you supposed to do in response to the gospel? You’re supposed to live a life that is worthy of the calling for which you have been called. And Paul puts that in the context of him being a prisoner for the Lord.

What he’s saying is: I’m in prison for the Lord. And if that’s where it ends up, that’s okay. And you’re a prisoner for the Lord. Whatever it is you’re doing in your life, you should see it all in relationship to the Lord. Whatever you do—rising, waking, eating, drinking, sleeping, talking—whatever it is, you’re a prisoner for the Lord. That’s your calling. Your calling is to discipleship. Your calling is to serve as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is absolutely comprehensive. It involves, right from the get-go in this text, maturity.

You’re asking me to be a prisoner. You’re telling me to be a prisoner for the Lord. Wait a minute. That’s not what kids want. Kids want to run free. Okay. Now, there’s a lot of freedom in Christianity, but Paul is telling us here to take up the mantle of mature discipleship. Isn’t that what he’s saying? I think he is.

Now the end of this section is the goal. You take this—this is what you’re supposed to do. Commit yourself. And the goal of this is in verse 13: “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood.” So what’s the purpose of this maturity? You begin with a commitment to maturity. You apply yourself to the particular means that he’ll talk about in the center of the text. And the end result of this is to attain maturity, mature manhood.

I think that refers both to corporate maturity and to individual maturity as well. By the way, maturity is not stumbling on a word like “manhood.” You know, we can’t talk about manhood anymore in America because that somehow is not politically correct. It implies that women are inferior. And the Bible, of course, uses this kind of language all the time because the Bible says the reality is that women are represented covenantally by man. We’re all represented covenantally by one man, actually—Adam. And in Jesus, we’re all represented by one man, Jesus Christ. Okay? You can either agree to look at things the way the Bible says or you can trip and stumble in immaturity. It’s immaturity to think that somehow Paul was some sort of masculine chauvinist. No, this is the way the world is. Mature manhood is the goal, and that manhood is the measure of the stature of the fullness of Jesus Christ.

So he is the maturity of mankind. He’s brought mankind to maturity. He is the goal, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness, and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. So there’s the goal: mature manhood. Don’t be like children. Grow up in every way. That’s the goal that Paul lays out here. This is the basic response to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to him saving us by his grace and love and mercy. This is what we’re supposed to do. That’s the call.

This call to maturity is repeated in various places in the scriptures. 1 Corinthians 14:20: “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking, be mature Christians.” Colossians 1:28: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ, in Messiah.”

Hebrews 5:12-14: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers. . .”—Now remember the spiritual gift of, and in fact it’s described here in Ephesians 4, of teacher. So some people are called to be teachers in the church, but we’re all called, according to Hebrews 5, to be you know, little-t teachers. You know, some people have a gift of hospitality, but we’re all to be hospitable. Some people have a gift of evangelism. They can really witness for Christ and bring people to him. But we’re all supposed to talk about Jesus, right? We’re all supposed to be evangelist—little-e. Well, the same thing’s true here. We’re all to be teachers.

This is a sermon written to a church like this church, okay? And he says, “By now, you should all be teachers. But you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have the powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

To distinguish good from evil—this is the mature tree’s fruit. A knowledge of good and evil. A knowledge of ability to rule. Adam, what was his sin? Well, from one perspective, it was immaturity. He acted like a child even though he was created a mature man. Instead of waiting patiently to become king, he seized at it. In that immaturity, that’s our basic sin. That’s our fault.

So in Hebrews, it says, “Look, you’re should all be teachers by this time. But you need to be taught again because you’re like children.” He says, “But understand that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. If you apply yourselves to know the word of God and based on the word of God—not your own word, based on the word of God—to distinguish what’s good and what’s evil,” well, you’re going to grow up. You’re going to do what you’re supposed to do. You’re going to be mature.

Okay? So we’re all called to maturity. Maturity happens through the use of the means of the word and training our senses based upon that word, according to Hebrews 5.

So the basic bookends are: you’re called to be a disciple. You’re to walk worthy of your calling, a prisoner for the Lord in that sense of the term. And the way you’re going to do that is by pointing toward and trying to attain maturity.

Okay. Second, three means of attaining maturity from this text. Now, there are other things laid out in other texts, but from this text, the first is the exercise of godly character, verses 2 to 6. Called to be disciples, purpose is maturity, not childlikeness. Grow up. And in the middle, he’s going to give us some secondary means that really will help us move toward maturity. He’s going to give us three things here. First, he’s going to talk about these character qualities. Then he’s going to talk about the spiritual gifts. And then he’s going to talk about speaking the truth in love. So these are all means that he’s laying out for us so that we can attain to that maturity and make it actually happen.

All right. First, the character qualities. This is found in Ephesians 4:2-6: “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”

He lays out a series of character qualities. I have these on your handout, and in several places on the handout under these character qualities, I’m giving you citations from WBC, which is the Word Biblical Commentary series. I thought the commentator did a pretty good job on some of these characteristics, so I thought it might be good for you to have those there.

Okay. So the first is all humility. “All humility” emphasizes the completeness of it. It’s a basic characteristic that’s required for maturity. Now, that right away is completely at odds with our culture that seeks immaturity or at least reinforces immaturity, because our culture reinforces immaturity by telling you that you need to have a sense of pride. The whole thing is about pride, pride in who you are. The whole thing is about self-esteem. It’s the opposite of how God begins. He begins by saying, “No, your problem isn’t that you need more self-esteem. Your problem is you have too high a view. You’re too haughty in your sin, and you need to have lowliness of mind.” That’s what this particular text means: humility, a lowliness of mind. So you consider yourself not to have attained much, but a lowly state of mind.

Romans 12:16 says, “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.” One way to determine whether you’re haughty or not is: who do you hang out with? If all you hang out with are people that you think are cool, you’re probably haughty, right? You’re developing a haughtiness. But if you’re willing to hang out with people that need help and that are not the lovely people, the beautiful people, right?—that’s an indicator to you that, you know, you’re probably on the right track. You’ve got this lowliness of mind thing going on, according to Romans 12.

Philippians 2:3: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.” Are you humble? Well, do you count the person you’re having some kind of interaction with in the church, involving some ministry, some community group meeting, whatever it is—do you regard that person as more important than yourself? The Bible says you’re supposed to. In fact, the Bible says that’s the beginning point. That isn’t attained maturity. That’s how you start to move toward maturity, okay?

This is like ABC stuff here. You’re supposed to be humble. In Philippians 2: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.” Remember that in Philippians 2, the great model or example of this is the Lord Jesus Christ, right? He came to earth and died for Leah and the rest of you—not because you’re such great people. He came and died for you to make you great people, not because you were great people, right?

So our attitude should be to try to encourage people. We’re not going to choose our friends by who are great people that we can hang out with. We’re going to put estimations upon people to help them attain to greatness, you know, like Jesus. So we hang out with people that need help, not just the people that reinforce us in our sense of our own pride and security. Count others more significant than yourselves.

1 Peter 5:5 says this: “Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” You know, clothe yourselves with humility. Now, you got up this morning going to church, going to wear nice clothes. Even if it’s jeans, it’ll be the ones that don’t have holes and that look pretty good. You know, you clothed yourself with some degree of honor, right? That’s a good thing to do. That’s what God did with Adam and Eve after they sinned. He brought them, you know, garments of honor—big, heavy, you know, power coats—because he forgave them and they began to exercise dominion for him again. That’s a good thing.

But as you get dressed tomorrow morning, let me put this in your head. As you clothe yourself for the day, think of this verse. Clothe yourself with humility toward other people, toward one another. Next time you get ready for church, put on the attitude of humility. That’s what is leading us toward maturity—is humility. When you get dressed in the morning, you know, you’ve got the tie you’re putting on and the shirt and stuff. You’re getting your hair ready, think to yourself, “This is good, but what I really need to do today is to have an attitude of humility toward other people and to go to church, not to be served, but to serve, right? And not to serve the people that are cool and hang out with them so I get some of their glory, but rather to see who I can help that really needs the help, who needs encouragement today. Associate with the lowly,” the Bible says.

Okay, so humility—that’s the first one that’s listed here. It’s stressed because it’s “all humility.” So it says “all humility and gentleness.” The term “all” references both humility and gentleness. So the second term also has essentially the word “all” attached to it: “all gentleness.”

And here I’ve given you a quote from the WBC: “It involves the courtesy, considerateness, and willingness to waive one’s rights that come from seeking the common good without being concerned for personal reputation or gain.” Let’s read it again and think about it. Think of yourself. Courtesy, considerateness, willingness to waive one’s rights—and what’s this coming from? From seeking the common good, without being concerned for personal reputation or gain.

So yeah, you’ve got humility toward people, but then if you don’t treat them gently, well, you’ve missed the second step. The second step says: this is how you’re supposed to interact with people. You’re supposed to be gentle—gentle. Again, this is placed in a lot of places in scripture.

2 Corinthians 10:1: “I Paul myself entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. I who am humble when face to face with you but bold toward you when I go away.” The point of that text is this: when we put on gentleness, you know, willingness to waive our own rights to serve other people, not to insist that we get help but rather helping other people in gentleness—when we do that we’re becoming like Jesus. And Jesus is the model of maturity, right? So maturity is the goal, maturity in Christ, and here Paul says Christ had this whole gentleness thing going on. So if you want to know what it looks like, read the Gospels. Read the Gospels.

Galatians 5:22 says that gentleness is one of the fruit of the Spirit. So you can’t manufacture this stuff, but Jesus does send gifts to us. He sends manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Specifically, according to Galatians 5, one of those manifestations is this gentleness toward other people.

1 Corinthians 4:21: “What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” Sometimes rods are required. But what he tries to get them to see is that a rod only happens when you reject gentleness. A spirit of gentleness is what Paul says they should choose for his coming to them.

2 Timothy 2:24-25: “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.” So gentleness doesn’t mean the truth is unimportant. In fact, gentleness in the manner you deal with someone that you’re correcting improves the correction, right? You’ve all had teachers that just kind of shout at you and don’t really care for you, right? And you don’t really learn all that much from them. You might learn some, but a teacher who cares for you and who can tell you—who can correct you with gentleness—and you know that’s speaking the truth in love, which Paul will later say in the same text, who has concern for you, who likes you, you know, he’s gentle toward you. This is a person you’ll hear correction from. So Paul says this is what it is. The opposite of it, he tells us, is being quarrelsome.

Quarrelsome. So gentleness is not being quarrelsome. It’s not being a doormat. You’re supposed to correct people, but you’re supposed to correct people with gentleness.

Galatians 5:22-23: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” So the point there is again, from Galatians 5, this gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit.

Titus 3:2: “Speak evil of no one, avoid quarreling, and you should be gentle and show perfect courtesy toward all people.” So once more, Paul opposes gentleness and quarreling with people. And then finally, Matthew 11:29: Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, learn from me. I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Gentleness and humility are the two aspects of what Jesus says it is to take upon you his yoke.

Okay. Third quality: patience. Literally it means “long-tempered.” To make allowances for other people’s shortcomings, not blow up, not ruin your gentleness in discussing things with people. To make allowance, to be patient when other people demonstrate shortcomings.

Galatians 5:22. Again, this is a fruit of the Spirit.

1 Thessalonians 5:14: “We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.” So in spite of the different manners you deal with particular people at particular stages of their life, undergirding all of your relationships with one another is patience—a bearing up with each other, not having a long temper, which means not having a short-tempered perspective.

1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient and kind.” It’s the lead attribute of who God is. God is love, and who we are to be like.

Colossians 1:11: “May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience.” So God strengthens us to the specific end of having patience.

Colossians 1: “Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints.” So we are empowered or strengthened by God not to overwhelm people, not to overpower them, but to the end that we might be patient and gentle, even while bringing correction.

Colossians 3:12: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Kindness, humility, meekness, and patience—you’re to put that on. Again, when you dress, putting on humility of mind, putting on a gentleness that seeks to serve other people, and putting on patience toward people in the context of the body.

Now, remember, one of the reasons we’re going through all this is that we’re ramping up community groups. We’re ramping up, hopefully, intentional maturity and discipleship amongst all of us. We’re ramping up people’s involvement in service ministries in the context of the church or the church extended into the community. As we do that, we’re going to have more interaction with each other, not less. And as we have more interaction with each other, then these qualities of patience, gentleness, and humility become quite important.

Now, as I’m speaking about these things, hopefully what you’re doing is you’re thinking, “Huh, how do I rate zero to ten on patience? Gentle? How do I rate on humility?” And not just some abstract thing, but how are my interactions with people at this church, particularly the people that are not my close friends and they’re not like me? Am I patient? Am I kind? Am I gentle? Do I have humility? And you know, it’s sort of like with husbands and wives. The best a husband can do has something to say to the wife about how well he thinks she’s being submissive, and the wife should be the one who asks the husband: am I loving you or not in the ways you want?

So if you were to ask the people you interact with: am I humble?—what would they say? What would they say?

Okay, next: bearing with one another in love. The Word Biblical Commentary says: “fully accepting them in their uniqueness, including their weaknesses and faults, and allowing them worth and space.” So giving glory to people in spite of their difficultness, okay? This is the fourth character quality that’s moving us toward maturity: bearing up with one another in love.

Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Now, there’s a good one. Think about it. When you have interactions with people—even if they’ve got stuff they’ve got to tend to, they’re kind of messed up in some way—you might think: the question is, have you encouraged them? Have you evidently showed to them your bearing with them in kindness, in service, in humility? Are you avoiding people? That would be wrong, of course. Or in the interaction with people, are you impatient? Are you not bearing up with even their weaknesses but getting upset? Trying to control a thing, getting mad at them, losing your patience, losing your cool? Are you kind of prideful—your way or the highway?

You know, what are you doing? What are you doing? Depending on what you’re doing, you’re either evidencing a movement toward maturity and Christian maturity, or you’re acting like a child, right? If these are the things that move toward maturity, the opposite of these things are exactly what you see with little kids.

We’ve got a four-year-old back in the house these days at the Terry home. This is the sort of thing you see: you see impatience, you see not gentleness toward other people. You see kind of a roughness at times when there’s toys being threatened, all that sort of stuff. There’s an insistence upon the four-year-old’s way because he’s the center of everything. Now, that’s just the way they go. That’s immaturity. But when we’ve got that among grown men and women in a church, and we do have that to some degree, that’s bad. Now we’ve got a bunch of people acting like kids, and it’s not good.

No matter what our culture is telling us, you want to be mature. You want to be perceived as an older man or woman. That is a positive thing. That gray head comes as a badge of honor from God for maturity, but you put shame on it when you don’t exhibit these kind of character qualities.

And then finally: eagerly maintaining the unity of spirit and the bond of peace. Now we’re transitioning from love to the unity section here. And again, I’ve got a quote here from WBC: “not to the congeniality of some social grouping but to the unity which God’s Spirit gives and which is the ground of the Church’s existence.”

As I said, when we think about this unity, think Jew and Gentile—completely separated by God through various mechanisms for a long time, right? A couple thousand years, a thousand, two thousand years. And so now all that’s been done away with. Unity has come. You cannot overstate the amount of unity that Jesus has brought as the Savior of the world.

You know, men and women, they began fighting in the garden, and Jesus has now unified them in a way they never were unified before. This is very important to understand. This unity—it’s a central demonstration, a central aspect of the gospel of Jesus Christ—that we can get along, that we need one another, and that we’re to exist in a peaceable and effective community.

So it doesn’t just say “maintaining the unity.” It says “eagerly maintaining the unity.” Going out of your way, striving hard to keep unity in the church and to not let divisions—either interpersonal problems that break up in divisions, groups or sects that break up into divisions, whatever it is—work in double time not to let that happen.

So when you feel some degree of disunity with someone else in this church, you ought to be eager to try to get back to a place of unity. It shouldn’t take weeks or months. It shouldn’t take a week. You should be eagerly maintaining the unity. What does that mean? It means that we don’t achieve unity—God has given that to us as a gift. But we can destroy it, okay? And then we can eagerly seek to maintain it and grow it back. But unity is one of the great gifts of the gospel. People you can actually get along with, people you can have a common sense of identity with in the local church. Okay, that’s unity, and it’s a gracious gift of God to us, and we are to strive diligently to maintain that unity.

And again, if you want to see what immaturity is like, go to, you know, a preschool and see the kids breaking up into little groups and not getting along, all that stuff. That’s childishness. That’s immaturity. Maturity goes out of its way to maintain that unity because we know that we’re the body of Christ and that unity is absolutely essential to who we are called to be, absolutely essential to our maturity and effectiveness for the Lord Jesus.

We can’t claim to be doing our basic calling to Christ—to being a prisoner for the Lord—if we’re not doing these things. These are the things that God says start us on the path. These are the ABCs reaching up to maturity.

Galatians 5:22 again: this unity is a fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit has come to create it.

All right. So then we have in verses 4 to 6 statements of inclusion: “There is one body, one spirit just as you were called in the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

And this has echoes of the great Shema here: “O Israel, the Lord God, the Lord is one.” So this unity thing is really stressed here, and it culminates in this great declaration of the God who is both transcendent and yet also immanent. He’s way different than the creatures. He’s Creator. But he’s directly involved in everything that we’re doing, everything that we’re doing.

Now, again, this statement of unity is what Paul has transitioned to, and it has to be seen as an essential part of the good news of Jesus Christ—the unity that’s been produced.

And then he talks about the functioning of the spiritual gifts. Okay, so you’ve got that stuff—all those characteristics. And secondly, the functioning of the spiritual gifts.

Okay, so you’ve got unity. But “grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above the heavens that he might fill all things.”

Well, you know, a lot of people like to talk about those verses and where did he ascend to and where did he descend to, and is it talking about Hades? Is it talking about the incarnation? What’s going on? And why is it that this citation from the Psalms looks different from Psalm 68 where it comes from? Why is that translation so different? And they get into all these discussions. But the basic point being made is quite clear, isn’t it?

Jesus ascended. He didn’t just die for your sins and get raised up—and that was it. He ascended to the right hand of the Father. Because the gospel, the full gospel, culminates in the rule of Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father, having brought mankind into maturity and into the throne room of God. To see that maturity work its way out in the body, upon his ascension, he sends gifts to us—okay?—spiritual gifts that we’ve been talking about. This is now week number three.

It’s funny, you know, people get so hung up in all the discussions about this verse, these couple of verses. And of course they spend like two minutes on gentleness, patience, eagerly maintaining the unity of the Spirit. I mean, the stuff that bothers us, not because we don’t understand it, but because we do understand it and we know it’s an indictment against us all too often.

Well, in any event, so the point here is that spiritual gifts are given from He ascended. Jesus—the mature man, now Adam has come to maturity at the right hand of the Father, second Adam. Humanity is linked with Jesus, right? And so we sit in the heavenly places. We’re ruling over everything. And so ruling with a rod of iron is Jesus, but it’s also according to Revelation us in him. The mature Jesus then sends forth these gifts of which the list will be given here in just a minute.

And the purpose of those gifts is maturity, is to get us to grow up into a mature manhood, okay?

“He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

This tells us very explicitly that the spiritual gifts, the ministries of grace that make manifest the grace of God, are specifically given to enable us to be mature, to enable maturity. So you can measure right—to what effect we’re being useful and effective in our spiritual giftedness here—by how mature the church becomes. That’s the purpose of it.

Now the particular gifts he looks at, by the way, are all offices of the church, right? These are all men. They’re not abilities. They’re men. So the gifts he gives are men in this particular list. Many of these men are in the other lists as well. So when we talk about spiritual gifts, you know, don’t think of it as some kind of abstract quality that you might be given from God. That may be true, but in this case at least, it’s very explicit that the spiritual gifts are the ministries that these men fulfill. In fact, it’s the men themselves—it’s Spirit-empowered men who will build the church, plant the church, do missions, you know, go out and plant a bunch of churches like the apostles did, apply the word of God to your situation as the prophets would do, teach you intellectually what the word of God is as the teachers would do, as the shepherd teachers would do, evangelize people and bring them into the body of Christ.

These are the foundational sort of ministries. They all continue in some way. We’ll talk about that in future weeks, but these are the foundational gifts to build the church. And specifically, they’re said in the context of what’s being said—they’re doing that to attain mature manhood.

All right, last thing: speaking the truth in love. “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way.”

Speaking the truth in love really is a combination then of those character qualities, the description of love, and the truth that those men will bring to us in their teaching and evangelizing and prophesying and apostleship—declaring and setting up churches and ministries. That truth is combined with love. So speaking that truth in love is another—the third mechanism by which maturity is made available.

Then we’ve got some evidences of a lack of maturity given in verse 14. So we’ve got maturity. And then we’ve got examples of immaturity. And then finally, we have the summary conclusion of Christ’s body in the last couple of verses.

We’ve seen this in the other gift passages, most notably in 1 Corinthians 12, but Ephesians 4 also has this aspect where the idea is that we’re one body in the Lord Jesus Christ. So maturity can be seen in terms of each of us individually, but it very specifically has this context of being attained with a mature congregation.

All right. Well, the application is easy. Thanksgiving for knowing the plan. It’s easy to overlook in these sort of texts, but isn’t it nice that God says, “Okay, now I’ve explained the gospel in these first three chapters. Now, here’s what you’re supposed to do. Here’s your proper response to it.” That’s great. It’s good to have a manual. You know, you’re not always looking at the manual, but it’s good to have the manual to know: what is it I’m supposed to do? Leah becomes a Christian, gets baptized—what do I do now? Well, there it is. See, there’s a nice summary statement here in Ephesians 4 of what we’re supposed to do. So: Thanksgiving for knowing the plan.

Secondly: A commitment to maturity. It’s quite easy. It’s quite obvious, right? A commitment to maturity. If we all leave today recognizing that what we want to do, and it’s going to be hard, is to try to establish, promote, engage in maturity, that’s a good thing. Now, it’s hard because our culture is moving in the other direction.

Then finally: A commitment to the means of maturity—to both the character qualities that are described and to the ministries of the local church that bring the word of God to us, that speaking the truth in love, we might attain to mature manhood, that we might grow up.

Be a good exercise at community groups, you know, to talk about maturity. What does it mean? What does it mean to you? Which one of these particular things would you like to really work on better this year? Which of these character qualities do you think you really need to kind of focus on more and work harder at? Or, you know, maybe it’s listening, finding out more about the Bible, being a better listener of sermons, or maybe going to Sunday school class to learn about the Bible. So maybe it’s that second aspect of these various men and women that teach the word of God to us, right? Maybe it’s that.

I don’t know what it is, but that’s a good topic for our community groups—is to encourage one another through the proper use of ministries and spiritual gifts to attain to mature lives and being mature disciples of Jesus.

All right, let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this clear chapter that lays out so nicely and concisely for us our response to the gospel. Help us not be foolish. Help us not walk away from this, forgetting what we’ve learned, how you’ve convicted us in particular areas or encouraged us. Help us to walk away, Father, from your word today, intending to continue to build our lives on the rock that is Jesus and his word. Bless us, Lord God, as we seek to recommit ourselves to maturity and to the attaining of maturity in our lives and in this church. Bless us as we also commit ourselves to the means you’ve listed by which that happens. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.