The Secret of His Purpose

Chapter 11: Grace and Gifts

Chapter 4:7-16 brings us to a most important and practical section of the epistle. Here we have the divine provision for the upbuilding of the assembly, and also the foundation upon which alone that provision can function effectively. Gift of itself is not sufficient. The Corinthian assembly came behind in no spiritual gift, but the life of the church was in a sorry state of degeneracy and confusion. What then is it that must come first? Paul tells us in v. 7. It is grace. Where there is gift there must also be grace, otherwise gift is useless. Grace is the foundation of our salvation. Grace is the foundation of the life of the church.

Grace was one of the two things which summed up the character of God manifest in the flesh. "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us full of grace and truth," says John (John 1:14). Grace is the practice of love; truth is the practice of holiness. God, looking down upon the sin of the world, did not love the world with a mere passive benevolence. His love moved Him into action. He so loved that He gave His Son. He poured out of Himself that we might be redeemed. He did not cling to the heavenly splendour which was His right, but emptied Himself of the last vestige of glory. He gave all that He had and was for us, for grace takes no account of self. The self-emptying of Christ, His suffering and death, is the supreme manifestation of the grace of God. Grace is selfless and triumphant. In his letter to the Romans Paul elaborates on the grace of God triumphing over the sin of man.

But the end of the grace of God is not simply that it should express His love to a fallen world. As we have already seen in our consideration of chapter three, any of the characteristics of the Christ life are incomplete unless they reproduce themselves in others. The love of God had to produce love in others or end in frustration and defeat. Love which does not find an echoing response in another heart brings not joy but sorrow. The purpose of God's grace, likewise, is not only to lift man out of the mire of sin, but to reproduce in him that same grace towards others. This is what Paul means in writing to the Corinthians when he says, "God is able to make all grace abound unto you; that ye, having always all sufficiency in everything may abound unto every good work" (II Corinthians 9:8). Unless the abounding of God's grace unto us produces in us an abounding of grace unto the household of faith, the use of the gifts becomes a fiasco, and the functioning of the assembly in life an impossibility.

How much havoc can be wrought in the church by gifted people who feel their talents can be useful to God, but who have never come to a practical realisation of His grace, who have never learned to spend and be spent for God's people. When our hearts yearn for the assembly as the Lord yearned over Jerusalem, when every sacrifice becomes a joy as the Lord rejoiced in going to the cross, when the grace of God fills us and, by divine compulsion, floods forth in a thirst-quenching, life-giving torrent, then and then alone can spiritual gift have any meaning, and the assembly be built up to fulfil its divinely allotted function. To use God's gifts we need to have God's character of grace transferred to us.

Not infrequently, people attempt to draw too hard and fast a distinction between natural and spiritual gifts, a distinction which Scripture never attempts to make. God, after all, is our Creator, and every natural talent we owe to Him. Each human ability in itself is a gift of God. We can never, therefore, afford to discount natural capabilities as of no account in the service of God. On the other hand, we know that human talent of itself is not equal to spiritual gift and can never do the work of God. The missing and all-important factor is grace. Natural gift plus grace may equal spiritual gift, but where grace is absent spiritual gift is dead.

The direct speech of v. 8 is a quotation from Psalm 68:18 to which Paul obviously refers as prophetic of the work of Christ. The parenthetic verses 9 and 10, inserted as a comment on v. 8, directly refer to the incarnation. The point here is that Christ, the Head of the church, is supremely equipped to give gifts unto men, since He knows the need from actual experience. The writer to the Hebrews deals with this subject at length, describing how our Lord became subject to all the limitations of mankind, and does, therefore, know every temptation with which His people may be confronted. Moreover, He fought and conquered Satan on his own ground and, having gained the victory, ascended to the right hand of the Father from where He rules as the church's Head. Thus God does not look down upon this earthly scene from a completely 'detached' standpoint. He feels for us as one who has been in the situation Himself. He has an intimate understanding of the needs of the assembly, and knows exactly what is necessary that the church might develop and be victorious in a world in which every power of earth and hell is arrayed against it. The Lord's provision is to 'fill all things' (v. 10) and in the gifts which follow we have everything that is required to meet the need of the growth of the church in every age. God has not left the church half equipped. If only we learn to use aright what He has given, we will find there is no lack.

There are three passages in the New Testament which deal specifically with the giving of spiritual gifts: Romans 12, I Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4. Of these, Ephesians 4 occupies a special place, for here we are dealing with a principle which is good for all time. The ascended Christ, as Head of the church, is establishing the spiritual pattern whereby the church is meant to function. The gifts of Ephesians 4 remain as the essential foundation upon which the superstructure of the assembly must be built. At varying times and in varying circumstances the Spirit may adapt these gifts to meet peculiar needs, but the five gifts enumerated in v. 11 form the complete and basic provision of God for the growth of the assembly. Nothing more is required, and nothing less is sufficient.

Romans and I Corinthians, on the other hand, deal with different aspects of spiritual gifts. In Romans, the emphasis is not on the nature of God's provision, but on the way in which the gifts can function effectively in the assembly. In I Corinthians the gifts are given not as directly from the ascended Lord, but as from the Spirit through whom God actually accomplishes His purposes on the earth. The gifts of I Corinthians 12, therefore, are the application of God's eternal provision by the Spirit to meet specific needs in a particular situation. This explains the long and varied list of gifts recounted in this latter epistle, and also explains their impermanence which Paul specifically states in I Corinthians 13:8.

The Spirit of God is not bound. He is ever ready to work in fresh ways in order to meet the varied requirements of any given situation. But we must not assume that an enabling granted by the Spirit to meet a particular need constitutes a spiritual gift which must be evidenced for all time. This is not so, and it is precisely here where many of God's people have gone astray. God, in the Ephesian epistle, has revealed the basic provision He has made for His church, and the Spirit of God can apply that provision in any way He pleases. (A cursory comparison of Scripture will show that every one of the gifts mentioned in Romans or I Corinthians can come under one of the gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4). We are on safe ground only when we do not seek more than the Lord Himself has provided, and that provision, as the Word itself tells us, is 'to fill all things' (v. 10). It is complete.

Of the five gifts mentioned in v. 11 we need to be careful against attempting to draw too hard and fast lines of distinction between them. There are aspects of them all which are included in the others. While it may be obvious that one brother has a special gift of evangelism and another a gift of teaching, yet there is also a sense in which evangelism includes teaching and teaching includes evangelism, and the development of one gift may lead to the development of the other. We shall see more of this and its application a little later.

The five gifts can be divided into two groups: the first two, apostles and prophets; and the last three, evangelists, pastors and teachers. The authority we have for making this distinction is in ch. 2 v. 20 where we are told that the church is 'built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,' and also ch. 3 v. 5 where Paul says that the apostles and prophets were the special recipients of God's revelation. To understand aright the place of these two gifts, therefore, we must keep in mind their connection with the foundation of the church and the completion of the canon of Scripture with the revelation of the mystery. Paul obviously gives them a special place as foundational ministries, and it is equally obvious that, in this respect, they do not exist today. The principle of I Corinthians 13:10 comes into operation, "but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." That does not mean, however, that apostleship and prophecy are dead. By no means. They still have a very important place in the divine plan as we shall see more clearly as we go on to consider the nature of the individual gifts more specifically.

In seeking to determine the separate ministries of the apostle and the prophet we need to remember the warning sounded in the previous paragraph, for there is considerable measure in which the functions of both overlap. On the other hand, they each emphasise a distinctive and important facet of God's order.

The word 'apostle' means 'one sent forth.' It had a particular reference to the twelve as we read in Luke 6:13. "He (Christ) chose twelve, whom also He named apostles." Yet Paul was also an apostle although he had not been personally chosen by the Lord. "Am I not an apostle?" he exclaims to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 9:1) and on more than one occasion he rises in strong defence of his claim to this title. What pre-eminently distinguished the apostles was their calling and authority. There is no mistaking the ring of authority in Paul's writing, for example, to the Corinthians or to the Thessalonians (cf. I Corinthians 5:3; II Thessalonians 3:6). The exercise of this authority was accepted and brought life because it was of God. It was no blustering despotism. It was an authority wielded in much humility as we have already amply seen from Paul's experience.

But what we must particularly note is that what the apostles said and wrote (or that amount of it which is set down for us in Scripture) was directly from God. It was God's word, and God spoke directly through man until His revelation was completed in the unfolding of the mystery of the church (Colossians 1:25). Now that completed revelation has been recorded for us in the Bible, and this book, therefore, has superseded the apostolic position as the basis of divine authority. The fact is easily illustrated. A servant of God may write a letter of exhortation to a local assembly. It may be a good letter and a means of spiritual blessing, but however true and profitable it is, it can never be placed on a par with any of the New Testament epistles as God's Word in the same way. Its worth has to be judged by the standard already laid down in Scripture, and its only authority is the authority which Scripture allows. Thus the place of the apostle today is taken by God's Word, and we must ever look beyond man to the written revelation which is the basis of his calling, for no man's word is final; finality rests only with Scripture, and it is God through His Word who founds the church, not the human vessel, however much he may be used. We have already remarked how the Ephesian assembly was not built around the man Paul, apostle though he was. (If it had been it would have soon faded out.) It was built in a spirit of divine compulsion to obey the Word.

Although apostles do not exist today in the same manner as we find them in the New Testament, yet the ministry of apostleship is very definitely with us. It is, however, inextricably linked with the written Word. The apostolic authority and calling are seen wherever there are servants of God who are completely abandoned to His will and who give undivided allegiance to His Word.

The ministry of prophecy is familiar to the Old Testament, "He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets which have been since the world began," says our Lord (Luke 1:70) showing how prophets have existed from the very beginning. In Scripture, people whom we do not normally consider to be prophets are reckoned as such, for example Enoch (Jude 14), Abraham (Genesis 20:17), and Moses (Deuteronomy 24:10). There is a popular idea that prophecy has to do with the foretelling of the future, but this has very little to do with the prophecy of Scripture, apart of course from the fact that any understanding of the will of God must also bring with it a realisation of the future consequences of obedience or disobedience. The prophet was not a foreteller of the future, but a forth-teller of the Word of God.

One of the clearest Old Testament pictures of the function of a prophet is found in Exodus 7. Moses, in an attempt to side-step God's commission for him, pleads his lack of eloquence, but God gives him Aaron, his brother, as his spokesman (Exodus 4:10-16). In the narrative that follows, all the speaking is actually done by Aaron, yet under Moses' direction. "And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet" (Exodus 7:1). The prophet is to God what Aaron was to Moses. He is God's spokesman.

The heathen had their prophets--for example, Balaam--and Scripture also records instances of a debased form of prophecy among the people of God as, for example, with Saul (I Samuel 19:24), and of prophecy which was a result of dreams and visions. Prophecy at its highest, however, was the result of close communion with God. Again we find this most clearly expressed in the life of Moses. God specifically reveals His dislike of the revelation communicated through visions and dreams as over against the revelation granted through close communion with His servant. "And He said, Hear now My words: if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak with him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, he is faithful in all mine house: with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches: and the form of the Lord shall he behold" (Numbers 12:6-8).

It is also well to remember that prophecy is more than simply an expression of God's will. It is a revelation of God and has, therefore, a depth beyond the prophet's own understanding of it. Peter makes this clear when he tells us that the grace of salvation was revealed through the prophets, who yet never themselves entered into the full enjoyment or understanding of it (I Peter 1:10-12).

The characteristics of true prophecy, then, are a spirit of revelation along with a spiritual insight into the mind of God. As we have shown, this once came directly from God Himself, but now it is dependent upon the written Word. There can today be no revelation or spiritual insight apart from the completed revelation of Scripture. What we have found true of the apostles is true also of the prophets. The prophet of the Old Testament or of New Testament times exists no more, yet the ministry of prophecy is still with us, inseparable from the written Word, apart from which no true word of prophecy can be spoken. The spirit of prophecy exists wherever there is a servant of God imbued with the gift of spiritual insight into Scripture.

It is easily seen how these two ministries overlap. The calling and the authority of the apostle are an essential part of the prophet, and the spiritual insight of the prophet is an essential part of the apostle. The prophet must also be an apostle, and the apostle a prophet, yet each of the two ministries carries with it a distinctive emphasis on a particular facet of truth.

If, as we have seen, no man can of himself today be called an apostle or a prophet, but apostleship and prophecy are ministered primarily through the written Word, what part do these two gifts actually play in the building up of the church? It is this. The spirit of apostleship and prophecy, the call and authority, the spiritual insight, all in relation to the Scriptures, are the life-giving factors in the three following gifts through which God's spiritual order for the church is completed. Without the spirit of apostleship and prophecy, the ministries of evangelists, pastors and teachers will remain cold and ineffective. These three gifts form a complete provision for the establishing, nurture and growth of the church, provided each one of them is based upon apostolic calling and authority, and prophetic insight, through the Word.

Evangelists, pastors and teachers belong to the ministry in every age. The word 'evangelist' means literally 'to announce' and has particular reference to the preaching of the gospel of redemption, which is the first stage of church planting. The proclamation of the great facts of redemption from sin and reconciliation with God through Christ constitutes a particular commission specially given to some of God's servants. Paul had this spiritual commission of an evangelist. Timothy also was an evangelist, as we can gather from Paul's exhortation to him in II Timothy 4:5, "Do the work of an evangelist, fulfil thy ministry." A reading of the book of Acts, especially chapters sixteen to twenty-one, will give a good picture of evangelism in action.

The word 'pastor' means 'to shepherd' and has particular reference to fatherly nurture and care. Both Paul and Peter use this term in their exhortations to elders. "Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit hath made you overseers," says Paul at Miletus to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:28). "The elders, therefore, among you I exhort, who am a fellow elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, who am also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Tend the flock of God which is among you," says Peter (I Peter 5:1-2). This does not mean to say that the gift of pastors was limited to the use of elders in local assemblies, but elders did need to have the heart and concern of a shepherd in the fulfilling of their spiritual duty.

It should be emphasised that the terms elder, overseer or bishop, which are used interchangeably in Scripture, are always found in the plural. Never do we find that any local church or group of churches was presided over by one bishop or overseer. (Incidentally, the notes appended to II Timothy and Titus in the English authorised version of the Bible, and which denote Timothy as 'ordained the first bishop of the church of the Cretians,' are no part of inspired Scripture. They are later additions.) Pastors, in the setting of the local church, were part of a plural eldership. It must be strongly stated that there is no scriptural foundation for the almost universal one-man pastoral system of today, or for the heading up of the government of a number of local congregations in one 'bishop.' This was completely unknown to the New Testament, and has been recognised by later Christian teachers as an interpolation. The great teacher Jerome who died in A.D. 420, commenting on the epistle to Titus in reference to the times of the apostles says, "Elders were the same as bishops, but by degrees, that the plants of dissension might be rooted up, all responsibility was transferred to one person."

The three examples most often brought forward in defence of what we might call the 'pastoral system' are all misplaced. First there is the case of Paul. Did he not, we may be asked, stay at Ephesus for three years as pastor of the church? That he remained in Ephesus for approximately that period is clearly stated in Acts 20:31, but when we read the more detailed account in Acts 19 of how he spent these three years, it becomes obvious at once that the ministry he exercised was very different from that of a modern pastor. Paul was, in fact, exercising the ministry of an evangelist, first for a short time in the synagogue, and then for about two years in the school of Tyrannus. It was not till practically the end of his stay in the city that, through the power of the Word, the assembly really took shape at all. Paul left, and the church, although from exactly what point we are not sure, was administered by elders.

The remaining two examples often quoted in defence of the pastoral system are those of Timothy at Ephesus and Titus in Crete. The position of these two men was unique and has no other parallel in the Word of God. There is uncertainty as to the order of events during the last few years of the life of the apostle Paul, but after his departure from Ephesus as recorded in Acts 19 Timothy was with him for a period during his imprisonment some few years later in Rome. This we see, for example, in Philippians 1:1, Colossians 1:1, and Philemon 1, where these letters, written from prison, are addressed as from both Paul and Timothy. It is clear, therefore, that during this period the Ephesian assembly was functioning under the oversight of the elders chosen of God, and the strength and maturity of the assembly we can gauge from the Ephesian epistle itself, another of the letters written by Paul during his imprisonment. It was after this time that Timothy went to Ephesus because of difficulties and declension which had set in. Paul besought him to remain at Ephesus for a while in the hope that God might use him as a means of spiritual blessing, and to put right some of the evils into which the Ephesians had been trapped. There is no indication that he was ever 'pastor' of the Ephesian church.

The case of Titus is largely similar. He was, in fact, not sent to any particular congregation, but for a ministry among the already existing groups throughout Crete. His efficiency had already been proved in the blessing which had attended his visits to Corinth (II Corinthians 8:22-23). The reason for his going to Crete is clear from Titus 1:5. Paul writes, "For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that were wanting, and appoint elders in every city, as I gave thee charge." This gives no indication of Titus exercising the ministry of a 'pastor' or 'bishop' in the modern and traditional sense. Actually, it could hardly be said that churches existed in Crete at all. How the groups came into being we do not know, but the work certainly never prospered, and it may well be questioned whether Paul was right in sending Titus to Crete with the commission to appoint elders, for it does not appear that it was attended with God's blessing. We need to remember that although Paul was an apostle, he was not infallible. He made mistakes.

This picture of Paul, Timothy and Titus which emerges from Scripture, rather than being one of men who for certain periods remained in sole 'pastoral' authority over a local church, is one of men with evangelistic, pastoral or teaching gifts who, under God's guidance, moved among churches functioning according to the divine spiritual pattern, and exercised a ministry of edification according to the various needs. There is one simple way by which any doubtful ecclesiastical practice can be put to the test. We can ask of it three questions. Was it instituted by our Lord? Is it recorded as practised in the book of Acts? Is it taught in the epistles? When we can answer each of three questions in the affirmative, we have every right to feel that the practice is well founded on solid scriptural ground. If we apply this test to the modern pastoral system it will at once be evident that it rests on a very poor foundation.

Pastorship is the second stage of church building. It is the work of 'upbringing,' giving the instruction, exhortation, advice and rebuke which go along with parental care, or the encouragement, comfort and sustenance which is required in times of particular trial or spiritual sickness. It leads naturally to the ministry of teaching.

The gift of teachers refers to the building up of the church through the strong meat of the Word. It is the third stage of assembly building, and corresponds largely to the ministry of the church which Paul claimed in Colossians 1:24-25 was given to him. We have already examined the nature of this ministry in a previous chapter.

As with pastorship, so also with teaching, an aptness to teach is recorded by Paul as a mark of eldership. To Timothy he says, "The overseer therefore must be without reproach....apt to teach" (I Timothy 3:2). To Titus he writes, "The overseer must be blameless as God's steward....holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound teaching, and to convict the gainsayers" (Titus 1:7-9). Again, this does not imply that the gift of teaching is limited to the use of elders in a local assembly--it has a very much wider application than that--but the ability to teach the Word of God must be found permanently within the local church if it is to be built up according to the divine intention.

It will be well to repeat once more that the functioning of the three gifts is based on the apostolic calling and the prophetic insight. Otherwise they become simply a mechanical recitation of spiritual truth which is devoid of life and vitality. As we go on to look a little more closely at the relationship between these three gifts, the fullness of God's provision for the church in them will become increasingly evident. The general terms used for those who function in the capacity of evangelists, pastors and teachers within a local church are 'episkopos' and 'presbuteros,' meaning 'elder' or 'bishop.' These terms are interchangeable, but there is also a much wider sphere of ministry for such gifted people where they do not own the position of eldership in any local assembly. In this latter sense, they are the gifts of God to the churches, and belong to the body of Christ wherever it is expressed. Vs. 12-13 set no arbitrary limit to the sphere of their ministry, but rather indicates the reverse. Any ministry of edification, however, in however wide a field the servant of God may exercise his gift, must contribute to the upbuilding of the local church as the only expression of the body of Christ upon the earth, so it is here that our attention must centre in the practical outworking of the principles laid down for us.

Next: Chapter 12: Unto Edifying