If you have your Bibles please turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4. We’re going to be looking at verses 7-10 during this time in God’s Word.
At Christmas and on birthdays we give gifts to our family and loved ones. Think of Christmas morning. We all do not receive the same gifts.
One gets a football, one a video game, another receives clothes, someone gets a book, and another a power tool.
Yet, although we each do not receive the same gifts as the others, the intent is for the gifts to be enjoyed and used. We see here that Christ has given gifts to His Church.
And the same is true of the gifts Christ gives to us. We do not all have the same gift, but the Lord wants us to use our gift for the good of all in God’s family.
Imagine how a parent would feel if on Christmas Day when the gifts for their children were handed out, the children just took them, said “Thank you,” and laid them aside with no attempt to open the gifts, not even to find out what they were.
But then imagine how the Lord must feel when He has given gifts to us by grace that He intends for us to use, and yet we never take the time or give the effort to find out what they are, and never put them to work for His glory. The Lord gave us spiritual gifts for us to use for the Church’s benefit and His glory.
Ephesians 4:7 reads, “But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.”
The apostle has been speaking of the Church as a whole and “all” the Body as you see in v. 6. Now he turns to focus on the individuals in the Body, to speak of “every one of us.”
And to “every one of us” in the Body, has been given “grace.” The core of the Gospel and this dispensation and the Christian life is bound up in the word “grace.”
God is the God of all grace. Grace is an expression of what God does and gives and what we freely receive. Grace by definition is an act of giving. “Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift.” God in His grace gives. What He gives is unmerited, unearned and undeserved and free as a gift is.
Ephesians 2:8 says that salvation is by grace and is the “gift of God.” Here we learn that there is something else that God gives freely to us by grace: spiritual gifts.
They are called “gifts” because they are a gift given to us by grace from Him. Being in Christ, you gain things from God’s hand: such as heaven, eternal life, the Holy Spirit, all spiritual blessings, and as we see here, spiritual gifts.
Pastor Don Webb gives these gifts the following definition, they are: “a ministry, talent, or ability given by God through the indwelling Holy Spirit for the building up of the Body of Christ.’ These callings, abilities, talents are by grace and thus undeserved, unmerited, unearned.
Paul says, “Unto every one of us.” There’s no believer that’s left out. There is no such thing as a non-gifted believer.
“Every one of us” has been given a spiritual gift. We each have some God-given spiritual ability with which to serve Him, a gift which is to be used for the good of others.
And we are each “given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” It is not unlimited and without rule or measure. Each one of us has a measured out gift, a certain definition with certain parameters and capabilities.
And Christ’s grace which enables us to use our gifts is measured out in exact proportion to and according to the gift He has given, that we might use our gifts to their fullest extent for the glory of Christ, as we exercise these gifts by grace thru faith.
Rom. 12:6 says we have “gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.”
Pastor John MacArthur writes “We are gifted according to God’s plan, His purpose and measure. We do not determine or deserve our gift. God has His own individualized plan for each of us and has individually gifted us accordingly. Every believer is…strategic in God’s plan, with his own unique skills, position, and responsibilities.”
God is a God of distinction and diversity. We each are gifted in different areas. We each have our own unique combination of gifts, strengths, and abilities. We each are a unique member of the Body.
When it comes to His church, God does not just stamp out a whole bunch of carbon copies. We’re not cookie cutter Christians. Though this is how the legalist thinks it should be. There’s no two believers the same. Every believer is a spiritual snowflake.
No two of us is ever alike. Just like your fingerprint is like no other fingerprint of anyone in the world, you are 100% unique within the Body of Christ.
Each member has a particular role assigned by Christ, the Head of the Body of Christ. No two members are alike. You bring your own perspective, personality, and strengths to each gift, making it and you unique.
Many have more than one gift. And the limitless combination of gifts along with your own uniqueness as a person makes each member distinct and different in the Body.
The combination of giftedness areas that the Lord blends together to make you what you are a makes you absolutely necessary and strategic to the Body of Christ.
This is by His design. His wisdom in differing gifts for each believer teaches us that the Church cannot fully function the way it was meant to function without you.
We need you and what you bring to the church because there’s nobody else in the whole Body of Christ like you. Nobody brings what you bring to the table in the church.
The beauty of the church is in God gracing people with differing gifts, who each are necessary and unique and who need each other. The Body of Christ is a team and it needs everyone to do their part and pull together.
As Christ’s gifts are used by faith, the diversity in the Body makes the Church a force in this world as a witness for Him, in showing His loving and sharing His truth.
And the gift, the enablement, that God’s given you is “the gift of Christ,” it is from Him. We are being taught something by these gifts being the “gift of Christ.” This is God’s Word putting pressure on us by grace to do something with it. I.e., it’s a slight against the kindness and grace of Christ not to use the gift He gave me.
When Christ by His grace gave you His gift, and blended together certain areas of enablement, along with your own unique personality & strengths, it was an act of love.
It shows He sees you as different, as individually unique. Christ sees you like He sees nobody else in this whole universe. Giving you your spiritual gift shows He knows you. In His wisdom, He knows you could live out His gifts to you powerfully by faith.
By Him personally giving the spiritual gift to you, He’s encouraging us to realize that everybody in the church needs you and He wants us to use it for the church’s benefit.
Haddon Robinson tells the following: A concert violinist had a brother who was a bricklayer. One day a woman began talking to the bricklayer about how wonderful it was for him to be in the same family as the noted musician.
But then not wanting to insult the bricklayer she added, “Of course, we don’t all have the same talents, and even in the same family some just seem to have more ability than others.”
The bricklayer replied, “You’re telling me! That violinist brother of mine doesn’t know a thing about laying bricks. And if he wasn’t able to make some money playing that fiddle of his, he couldn’t hire a guy with know-how like mine to build his house. If he had to build a house himself, he’d be ruined.”
If you want to build a house, don’t look up “violinist” in the yellow pages. And if you need someone to play the violin in an orchestra, don’t hire a bricklayer. No two of us are exactly alike, and no one possesses every gift. In that way, houses get built and music gets played.
In the church, God has gifted us in different ways too. Our responsibility is to know and exercise the spiritual gifts that He has given us. When we do, we build each other up in the faith, and the Body of Christ is enabled to serve and reach out more effectively.
One commentator once stated: “God gave me a gift, not for me but for you, and God gave you a gift, not for you but for me. If you don’t use your gift, you’re depriving me; if I don’t use my gift, I’m robbing you.”
Ephesians 4:8-10 says, “Wherefore He saith, When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things).”
Next we are shown why Christ had the right to give these gifts.
Paul quotes from Psalm 68 which reads in vv. 16,18, “…this is the hill which God desireth to dwell in; yea, the LORD will dwell in it for ever…Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men…”
Psalm 68 is a Messianic Psalm that will be fulfilled at Christ’s second coming when Christ, who is God and Lord, defeats Israel’s enemies and then returns, ascends Mount Zion to establish His kingdom forever and to reign from Jerusalem.
The picture is of how, in the past, when a king of Israel would go to battle, he’d go out to fight the enemy and if he would win, he would come back and when he came to the city, he would ride in and ascend the hill of Mount Zion or Jerusalem.
And he’s got all of the spoils and all of the captives with him in a triumphal procession and he receives gifts from men for his glorious victory on their behalf.
And he who would lead “captivity captive.” Or he would recapture the captives. Many times other nations had Israelites in prison. So when the kings of Israel conquered that nation, they freed those captives and brought them back to their own land.
It’s a future prophecy, of the Messiah as a conquering hero. It speaks of when He has been victorious over Israel’s enemy, the Anti-Christ.
And He’s got the spoils on the one hand, and He’s also got His own people who were held prisoner around the world at that time that He has released and set free. And He receives gifts of gratitude from Israel as He establishes their kingdom from Mt. Zion.
Paul, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, uses this Old Testament passage and adapts it to the truth he is expounding on. He tells us a couple of truths about Christ’s ascension to heaven in verse 8.
Instead of ascending Mount Zion to establish His kingdom, Paul uses this passage from Psalms to speak of how Christ ascended up on high to heaven, taking His place at God’s right hand where He at this moment now rules and reigns in His heavenly ministry.
To understand “led captivity captive” we need to know that before the Cross, both the lost and saved went to a place called Hades in the center of the earth when they died.
Luke 16:19-31 describes Hades as being divided between a place of paradise called Abraham’s Bosom, and a place of torment, with a great gulf fixed between.
Now when Abraham died, he is said to have been “gathered to his people,” and not unto the Lord (Gen. 25:8; same with Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, etc.). And in Luke 16 we find Abraham in Hades in the place of paradise, named after himself!
“…the beggar died, and was carried…into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died and was buried; and in [hades] he lift up his eyes, and seeth Abraham afar off” (16:22,23).
You’ll recall also that the Lord told the thief on the cross, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Paradise then was in the center of the earth.
As the Lord said in Matt. 12:40, “For as Jonas was 3 days and 3 nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be 3 days and 3 nights in the heart of the earth.”
When the Lord died He, as Paul says here in Eph. 4:9, “descended…into the lower parts of the earth” into hades and was in paradise or Abraham’s bosom between His death and resurrection.
In 1 Peter 3:18,19, Peter writes how our Lord after His crucifixion, “by the Spirit…went and preached unto the spirits in prison.”
Our Lord spent three days and three nights in paradise “in the heart of the earth,” in “the lower parts of the earth,” and while there proclaimed His victory to those in “prison,” in the place of torment, of their hopelessness and eternal judgment being sealed.
After His victorious cross and resurrection, when Christ ascended to heaven Paul says “He led captivity captive.” Like Psalm 68 where the captives will be Christ’s own in the future kingdom, the captives here that Christ took to heaven with Him at His ascension were His own, the O.T. saints, taking those in Abraham’s bosom to heaven.
And it explains why Paul writes that paradise is now “up.” In 2 Cor. 12:3,4, Paul says, “And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) how that he was caught UP into paradise, and heard unspeakable words…”
At our Lord’s ascension, with Christ’s blood having being shed they were able to reside in and were now welcome in God’s holy presence. They could not be taken into God’s presence in heaven until Christ had shed His blood and paid for their sins on the cross.
With Christ’s all-sufficient, finished work now a reality, and with their sins washed away by His blood, Christ “led captivity captive.” And they received a surprise of grace, as the O.T. saints were gloriously taken from Abraham’s bosom to heaven.
He flung open the doors of Abraham’s bosom and released and freed those godly captives confined to the center of the earth taking them directly into God’s presence.
In Christ’s ascension up on high to heaven there was a triumphal procession to glory, having triumphed over Satan. Christ came to earth to enter into a battle with our enemy, Satan and his demonic hosts. He completely won that battle by His finished work. After His resurrection, Christ at His ascension ascended in victory leading captivity captive.
And Colossians 2:15 says, “Having spoiled [demonic] principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”
After leading captivity captive, Isa. 5:14 says, “Therefore hell [or sheol/hades] hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure.” All of hades today is torment.
And all lost go to center of earth today and are being held there temporarily for the final judgment at the Great White Throne, after which they are cast into the Lake of Fire forever and ever.
But when it is time for the Second Coming “after the tribulation” Matt. 24:29 says, when Christ comes to fight for Israel and vanquish the Anti-Christ and his army, these prophetic kingdom saints in heaven will come with the Lord to the earth.
Jude 14 speaks of Christ at His Second coming and says, “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands [myriads] of His saints…” (cf. Zech. 14:4,5).
The hope of the prophetic saints is the kingdom of heaven on earth. They will come with Him and take their place in His eternal kingdom on earth at His 2nd Coming. But the Body of Christ will remain in heaven, because that is our eternal hope and calling.
Now unlike Psalm 68, where Christ received gifts from men, Paul says, having “ascended up on high…far above all things,” Christ “GAVE gifts unto men.”
These are the spiritual gifts He has given to “every one of us” in His exaltation and ministry as the Head of the Body of Christ.
Before Paul goes on to speak of some of these gifts, he digresses. Verses 9 and 10 are in a parenthesis. He speaks of how the ascension presupposes and implies a descension, and Christ, he says, descended even to “the lower parts of the earth.”
The descension down speaks to us of His incarnation, death and burial, and the 3 days He spent in the heart of the earth. His ascension up speaks to us of His resurrection, life, catching up to heaven and exaltation in heaven.
Paul shows by this how Christ rightly received the right and authority to bestow the gifts to the Church. And in doing so, Paul gives us a striking contrast. He gives the extreme range of our Lord’s condescension and exaltation.
In His condescension, He came to the earth and became a man, but even beyond this He humbled Himself and was obedient unto death even the death of the Cross, and descended even to paradise in “the lower parts of the earth” during His 3 days in the tomb.
But in His resurrection and ascension, He was rightly raised up high, to the highest heaven, and to highest of heights in His exaltation. “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name” Phil. 2:9 says.
As Paul says here, “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens.” Eph. 1:20-23 says how God has “set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all…and hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over…the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.”
So He has the right, every right, therefore to “fill all things” to fill “all” the Body with His life and power and in all ways and give His gifts according to His perfect will.
In His exaltation and by His victory over sin and death on our behalf, He has the right to rule His church and He has the authority to give gifts to it as He wills.
And the One who cared enough for you and me to descend from heaven to this earth, even to the lower parts of the earth, is the same One who cares deeply for our well-being, and the Church’s well-being and He has given gifts to it to equip it for its good and growth.
But we are taught in all this that we cannot treat the spiritual gift that you have lightly when you contemplate what price it cost for Christ to grant you that privilege.
We are challenged to know and use the spiritual gift He gave me to serve Him because He died and rose again which gave Him the right to give me my gift.
That’s how important it is to Him. You see infinite grace by His descension, victory, and ascension, and it’s by that infinite grace, that Christ has given you a gift, a gift that He wants you to know, develop and serve Him by.
When we stop to think of all Christ has given, that He has given me this gift and enabled me to serve Him based on His sacrifice for me, then my obedience to Him is not something that’s about following a rule, it’s something that springs out of a heart filled with gratitude.
It’s His grace that motivates us to obey, and transforms us, and drives us to want to do more for Him.
As one person said, “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”
It’s told that one time “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” showed a plain bar of iron worth a mere $5. It was shown that this same bar of iron if made into horse shoes would be worth $50. If it were made into needles, it would be worth $5,000.
If it were made into balance springs for fine Swiss watches, it would be worth $500,000. The raw material is not as important as how it’s developed.
God says we each have spiritual gifts, but their worth to the Church will be dependent on how and if they are developed.
We each have a God-given ability. In our own hand it is a plain bar of iron. But think what it could be if you turn it over to Christ, and allow Him to develop it by being available for His use and growing in Him.
Imagine the value of that gift to the Body and what could happen and how the Lord could use you, if you discover your spiritual gift, turn it over to Christ and allow Him to develop it for His honor and glory.
We hope you’ll join us next time when we look at the spiritual gifts that Christ has given His Church. Thank you for watching.