The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Ephesians

by George G. Findlay

III. A third line of measurement is supplied in the last word of verse 8, and is drawn out in verses 11 and 12. “He gave gifts to men—He gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, with a view to the full equipment of the saints for work of ministration, for building up of the body of Christ.” Yes, and some martyrs, some missionaries, some Church rulers and Christian statesmen, some poets, some deep thinkers and theologians, some leaders of philanthropy and helpers of the poor; all given for the same end—to minister to the life of His Church, to furnish it with the means for carrying on its mission, and to enable every saint to contribute his part to the commonwealth of Christ according to the measure of Christ’s gift to each.

Comparison with verse 16 that follows and with verse 7 that precedes, seems to us to make it clear that we should read, without a comma, the second and third clauses of verse 12 as continuations of the first. The “work of ministering” and the “building up of the body of Christ” are not assigned to special orders of ministry as their exclusive calling. Such honour have all His saints. It is the office of the clergy to see that the laity do their duty, of “the ministry” to make each saint a minister of Christ, to guide, instruct and animate the entire membership of Christ’s body in the work He has laid upon it. Upon this plan the Christian fellowship was organized and officered in the apostolic times. Church government is a means to an end. Its primitive form was that best suited to the age; and even then varied under different circumstances. It was not precisely the same at Jerusalem and at Corinth; at Corinth in 58, and at Ephesus in 66 A.D. That is the best Church system, under any given conditions, which serves best to conserve and develope the spiritual energy of the body of Christ.

The distribution of Church office indicated in verse 11 corresponds closely to what we find in the Pastoral epistles. The apostle does not profess to enumerate all grades of ministry. The “deacons” are wanting; although we know from Philippians i. 1 that this order already existed in Pauline Churches. Pastors (shepherds)—a title only employed here by the apostle—is a fitting synonym for the “bishops” (i.e., overseers) of whom he speaks in Acts xx. 28, Philippians i. 1, and largely in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, whose functions were spiritual and disciplinary as well as administrative. Addressing the Ephesian elders at Miletus four years before, St Paul bade them “shepherd the Church of God.”

In 1 Peter v. 1, 2 the same charge is laid by the Jewish apostle upon his “fellow-elders,” that they should “shepherd the flock of God, making themselves examples” to it; Christ Himself he has previously called “Shepherd and Bishop of souls” (1 Pet. ii. 25). The expression is derived from the words of Jesus recorded in John x., concerning the true and false shepherd of God’s flock, and Himself the Good Shepherd,—words familiar and dear to His disciples.

The office of teaching, as in 1 Timothy v. 17, is conjoined with that of shepherding. From that passage we infer that the freedom of teaching so conspicuous in the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 26, etc.) was still recognized. Teaching and ruling are not made identical, nor inseparable functions, any more than in Romans xii. 7, 8; but they were frequently associated, and hence are coupled together here.—Of apostolic evangelists we have examples in Timothy and the second Philip;[102] men outside the rank of the apostles, but who, like them, preached the gospel from place to place. The name apostles (equivalent to our missionaries) served, in its wider sense, to include ministers of this class along with those directly commissioned by the Lord Jesus.[103]

The prophets,[104] like the apostles and evangelists, belonged to the Church at large, rather than to one locality. But their gift of inspiration did not carry with it the claim to rule in the Church. This was the function of the apostles generally, and of the pastor-bishops, or elders, locally appointed.

The first three orders (apostles, prophets, evangelists) linked Church to Church and served the entire body; the last two (pastors and teachers) had charge of local and congregational affairs. The apostles (the Twelve and Paul), with the prophets, were the founders of the Church. Their distinctive functions ceased when the foundation was laid and the deposit of revealed truth was complete. The evangelistic and pastoral callings remain; and out of them have sprung all the variety of Christian ministries since exercised. Evangelists, with apostles or missionaries, bring new souls to Christ and carry His message into new lands. Pastors and teachers follow in their train, tending the ingathered sheep, and labouring to make each flock that they shepherd and every single man perfect in Christ Jesus.

Marvellous were Christ’s “gifts for men” bestowed in the apostolic ministry. What a gift to the Christian community, for example, was Paul himself! In his natural endowments, so rich and finely blended, in his training and early experience, in the supernatural mode of his conversion, everything wrought together to give to men in the apostle Paul a man supremely fitted to be Christ’s ambassador to the Pagan world, and for all ages the “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.” “A chosen vessel unto me,” said the Lord Jesus, “to bear my name.”

Such a gift to the world was St Augustine: a man of the most powerful intellect and will, master of the thought and life of his time. Long an alien from the household of faith, he was saved at last as by miracle, and utterly subdued to the will of Christ. In the awful crisis of the fifth century, when the Roman empire was breaking up and the very foundations of life seemed to be dissolved, it was the work of this heroic man to reassert the sovereignty of grace and to re-establish faith in the Divine order of the world.

Such another gift to men was Martin Luther, the captive of justifying grace, won from the monastery and the bondage of Rome to set Germany and Europe free. What a soul of fire, what a voice of power was his! to whose lips our Lord Christ set the great trumpet of the Reformation; and he blew a blast that waked the sleeping peoples of the North, and made the walls of Babylon rock again to their foundation. Such a gift to Scotland was John Knox, who from his own soul breathed the spirit of religion into the life of a nation, and gave it a body and organic form in which to dwell and work for centuries.