[102] 2 Tim. iv. 5; Acts viii. 26–40, xxi. 8.
[103] In Acts xiv. 4, 14, Barnabas and Paul are “apostles”; 1 Thess. ii. 6, Paul and Silas and Timothy. Comp. Rom. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. viii. 23, xi. 13; Phil. ii. 25; Rev. ii. 2.
[104] Comp. ch. ii. 20, iii. 5 for the association of prophets with apostles.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.
“Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine in the sport of men, in craftiness, unto the scheme of error; but dealing truly, in love may grow up in all things into Him, which is the head, even Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together, through that which every juncture supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.”—Eph. iv. 13–16.
We must spend a few moments in unravelling this knotty paragraph and determining the relation of its involved clauses to each other, before we can expound it. This passage is enough to prove St Paul’s hand in the letter. No writer of equal power was ever so little of a literary craftsman. His epistles read, as M. Renan says, like “a rapid conversation stenographed.” Sometimes, as in several places in Colossians ii., his ideas are shot out in disjointed clauses, hardly more continuous than shorthand notes; often, as in this epistle, they pour in a full stream, sentence hurrying after sentence and phrase heaped upon phrase with an exuberance that bewilders us. In his spoken address the interpretation of tone and gesture, doubtless, supplied the syntactical adjustments so often wanting in Paul’s written composition.
The gifts pertaining to special office in the Church were bestowed to promote its corporate efficiency and to further its general growth (vv. 11, 12). Now, the purpose of these endowments sets a limit to their use. “Christ gave apostles, prophets,” and the rest—“till we all arrive at our perfect manhood and reach the stature of His fulness.” Such is the connexion of verse 13 with the foregoing context. The aim of the Christian ministry is to make itself superfluous, to raise men beyond its need. Knowledge and prophesyings, apostolates and pastorates, the missions of the evangelist and the schools of the teacher will one day cease; their work will be done, their end gained, when all believers are brought “to the unity of faith, to the full knowledge of the Son of God.” The work of Christ’s servants can have no grander aim, no further goal lying beyond this. Verse 14, therefore, does not disclose an ulterior purpose arising out of that affirmed in the previous sentence; it restates the same purpose. To make men of us (ver. 13) and to prevent our being children (ver. 14) is the identical object for which apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers are called to office. The goal marked out for all believers in the knowledge and the moral likeness of Christ (ver. 13), is set up that it may direct the Church’s course through dangers shunned and enemies vanquished (ver. 14) to the attainment of her corporate perfection (vv. 15, 16). The whole thought of this section turns upon the idea of “the perfecting of the saints” in verse 12. Verse 16 looks backward to this; verse 7 looked forward to it.