Time to Take the Training Wheels Off

Ephesians 4:7-16

7But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is what it says:

“When he ascended on high,
          he took many captives
          and gave gifts to his people.”

9(What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

14Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Time to Take the Training Wheels Off

Do you remember what it felt like to take the training wheels off your bike? Do you remember that first time you ventured out into the deep end of the pool without your floaties? Do you remember unloading all your stuff into your college dorm or your own apartment for the first time? Or maybe the first time you went solo at work without supervision or backup? It’s exhilarating and terrifying; it’s empowering and anxiety-inducing all at the same time.

In some ways I have to imagine that’s what the disciples were feeling when Jesus’ feet left the earth.

They had been properly prepared. They had spent 3 years following Jesus as he traveled throughout the towns and villages of Galilee and Judea. During that time, Jesus had even sent them out on their own side missions to gain some practical experience in ministry. They had gone through the roller coaster of emotions that was Holy Week – the triumphal entry, the crucifixion, the resurrection – and had survived and were better off for it. They even got a 40-day intensive experience with Jesus after Easter where he reviewed everything they had learned and experienced, and opened their minds to understand Scripture even more. The disciples’ preparation was more thorough than many university educations are today.

But there they were standing on top of a hill staring at the space in the sky where Jesus had been a moment ago, but wasn’t anymore. I imagine that the thrill in their hearts was not unlike that feeling when your dad let go of the seat of your bike for the first time.

Jesus’ ascension into heaven was the coming-of-age moment for the Christian Church. From that moment on, there would be no more training wheels, no more floaties, no more hand holding. In a sense, the disciples were on their own, but Jesus didn’t leave them empty handed or alone.

What did Paul say to the Ephesians today?

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is what it says: “When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.”[1]

By going away, Jesus was clearing the way for these gifts of grace to be given to his people. And I want you to pay attention to the recipients of Jesus’ gifts here:

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.[2]

Jesus’ departure from this earth was not just meant to benefit the 12 Apostles. It was meant to be – and is – a blessing for every single Christian, i.e. for every one of you. Look at what Paul says is the purpose of all those pastors and teachers:

So Christ himself gave… pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.[3]

The reason God gave me to you was to equip you for works of service – not to do all the work for you, not to hold your hand every step of the way, but to equip you to do it, so that you could put to work the gifts that God has given each of you.

And the gifts that God has given you are going to be different because you’re different. These gifts have been given as Christ apportioned it, which means that they’re not all the same. One of you may be good at starting a spiritual conversation with a stranger. Someone else may be good at thinking about the people who often get forgotten. Someone else might be a good listener or a faithful encourager or a solid teacher or thoughtful planner. God gives different gifts to different people in different amounts.

But Jesus gives gifts to everyone, and everyone is equipped for works of service. Which means two things that are both immediately practical for you: 1) none of you is so insignificant that the body of Christ can get along fine without you. We probably don’t say it enough – I know I don’t say it enough – you, every one of you, are a vital, essential part of this body. We might be able to limp along without you, but we’d be limping, hurting, suffering without you.

And there may be some of you who are watching online right now, or listening at home, to whom that applies too. We are better with you than without you. And if I haven’t called you personally and told you that, it’s not because it’s not true, it’s because of my own failing and my own fear. So don’t let my failures or your own false sense of humility stand in the way of us being built up together into the body of Christ.

Jesus gives gifts to every member of the body, and that means that none of you is so insignificant that the body can get along fine without you. It also means that 2) none of you is so important that the body of Christ would fall apart without you.

It is so tempting to cast judgment. It is so tempting to keep receipts, i.e. to maintain a mental record of who’s been helping and who hasn’t and in what way. But it is impossible for you to know everyone else’s circumstances or acts of service. Not all service is the same and not all service is even visible. But all service has been created equal and no one servant is more vital than another.

Jesus didn’t leave this world and leave us gifts so that we could play the comparison game and either be discouraged when we see the gifts and talents of others, or swell with pride when we think about how great we – and the contributions we make to the body – are.

After all, what is God’s purpose for all these works of service?

So that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.[4]

The explicit purpose for each of our service is unity, maturity, and Christ. Christ is our goal. Christ is what we strive to be. And who is Jesus? He is the almighty, all-knowing, all-loving Son of God, who, as Paul says to the Ephesians, descended to the lower, earthly regions[5] – who gave up his status, who did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage,[6] but who took on the very nature of a servant[7] to serve you in your need.

Jesus was God’s greatest gift of grace to sinners like you and me. He took advantage of every opportunity to show love and compassion. He made use of every ability he possessed in all the small ways, but especially in the biggest. He showed humility in allowing himself to be manhandled and murdered by men who had manufactured false charges against him. He showed true and selfless love as he prayed for people who were in the act of harming him. He demonstrated the depth of his commitment to you by giving everything – even his life on a cross – to provide your greatest need, to wash away your sin, to forgive you, to remove your guilt and to build you into his church and make you a member of his body.

That’s not very good teambuilding philosophy. Usually you want the brightest and best on your team to give you the best chance at success. But God chose you – a sinner, a failure, someone who still stumbles and falls – and he made you integral to his family. He forgave your failures and faults and he gave you gifts of grace to empower you to make a meaningful difference as a member of his body, without whom the body of Jesus your Saviour does not function at full capacity.

The explicit purpose for each of our service is unity, maturity, and Christ. Christ is our goal. Christ is what we strive to be. Of course we can never reach that goal, but it shouldn’t stop us trying. And in the process of attaining to the whole measure of Jesus, we can achieve unity and maturity.

When we each understand our place and the pivotal role we play in the body of Christ, the whole body benefits. I have this twinge in my knee right now. My paranoia makes me wonder whether I’d blow out my ACL if I tried to play basketball right now. Then I’d be limping for a long time. The ACL is not one of the – pardon my French – “sexy” muscles in the body. It’s not a bicep or even a quad or a calf. It’s even relatively small. Point of fact, it’s not a muscle at all. It’s a ligament. But it is vitally important for the health of a moving body.

And so are you. And so are the gifts that God has given you. He has placed you here and now, and given you the gifts you have, so that you – in unity with every other ligament and tendon, bone and piece of cartilage we have here – can make the whole body better. Stronger – more able to stand up against the lies and empty philosophies that we hear from the world. More active – not waiting for people to come to us or ask for help, but taking the initiative and taking the Gospel out into the world we live in. More loving – toward each other as members of one family under Christ, but also to those who don’t know the love of Jesus at all yet.

That’s why we’re here – to be equipped for works of service so that the whole body of Christ might be built up.

Were you afraid of taking the training wheels off your bike or jumping into the deep end without your floaties on? Maybe. But how did you feel after you did it – after you learned how to ride your bike or swim without having to hold your mom or dad’s hand? Amazing! That’s what Jesus is doing for you even now from heaven. He has given each of you gifts to use for the benefit of his body, the church, and he’s training you and preparing you to use them for the good of his kingdom and the glory of his name.

God empower you to attain unity, maturity, and the whole measure of Christ. Amen.

[1] Ephesians 4:7,8

[2] Ephesians 4:7

[3] Ephesians 4:11-13

[4] Ephesians 4:12,13

[5] Ephesians 4:9

[6] Philippians 2:6

[7] Philippians 2:7

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Don't Be a Liar; Love with More than Love-Song Love

1 John 4:7-11, 19-21

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

19We love because he first loved us. 20Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. 

Don’t Be a Liar; Love with More than Love-Song Love

I have a music trivia question for you today: What do the Beatles and Taylor Swift have in common? They both have exactly 11 songs with the word “love” in its title. That’s a lot, right? Even for those songs that don’t have “Love” in the title, many more not only mention but also focus on the concept of love. Love is a very common subject for music.

11 songs with “Love” in its title. That’s a lot. But it doesn’t even hold a candle to the 20 times that that same word appears in the 8 verses we read in John’s fist letter earlier today. 20 times in 8 verses! John has a lot to say about love – what it is, what it looks like, what it does, where it comes from – how central and necessary it is for our faith and life as Christians.

Of course there’s a big difference between the kind of love that inspires love songs and the kind of love that we find in the Bible. Love songs are emotional. God’s love, though, is volitional, which means that it is a matter of choice. In love songs, love happens to you. In the Bible, you who and when and how much you love.

Love songs are ethereal and ephemeral, which means that the love they talk about is delicate and fragile and short-lived; the slightest change in the wind could scatter it to smithereens like dandelion seeds. God’s love, though, is indomitable and enduring – no outside force can corrupt or compromise or conquer it; it can and will survive anything.

Love songs are transactional and conditional. If your love isn’t returned, then either it turns into an unhealthy obsession or it dissolves into a memory. God’s love, though, is selfless and one-sided. He continues to love unlovable people even though/when his love goes unrequited.

My question for you is, do we love with love-song love, or do we love with God’s love?

I know a 3-year-old, who shall remain nameless, who, when he’s feeling upset with someone, will say, “I don’t love you.” In the case of this particular 3-year-old, I happen to know that his parents don’t play any Taylor Swift for him. So where does he get this highly emotional form of love from?

It’s born in him. It’s born in all of us. Selfishness is natural. Bitterness and resentment come to us as easily as breathing does. Maybe you’ve had conflict with people you love (or loved. Maybe it was something serious. Maybe it was something silly, like a well-intentioned but poorly-executed joke. Do you act like a 3-year-old and – if only internally – say something like, “I don’t love you anymore”?

If you do then this thing that had once been beautiful and precious is shattered and broken beyond repair – not only because of what that other person did, but because of how you reacted emotionally instead of selflessly and volitionally.

Sometimes we treat love like a Faberge Egg – a delicate, precious thing that is priceless in no small part due to its fragility. And there’s some truth to that. Words hurt. Actions scar. People sin against us and do serious damage not only to our relationship with them, but to our own psyche and the way that we think or feel about ourselves. A loving relationship is fragile and easily broken.

And when it is damaged, the temptation is to react with disbelief and anger and indignation. “We had a good thing going and you ruined it!” It’s so easy to let resentment spread like a cancer throughout our bodies - not only in our hearts but also in our minds and in our mouths, and our feet and our hands. It’s so tempting to seek retribution or give in to the Schadenfreude and shamefully rejoice in any and every bad thing that happens to them.

In other words, we hate them. We block them. We shut off communication with them. We close off our hearts to them. We smother whatever embers of love are left, and instead we breathe life into the bitterness that is waiting in the wings. We hold grudges. Maybe we even seek retribution; we speak ill of them; we poison other people’s perspectives of them.

When this emotional, ethereal, ephemeral version of love gets broken, it can get ugly and quickly.

But that’s never what love was meant to be.

Love is an Otterbox. Love is a fireproof safe. Love is one of those airbag vests that inflates when it senses a fall. But the thing inside the phone case, the fireproof safe – the thing the airbag is protecting – is not your fragile emotional state. It’s your conscious, deliberate goodwill toward that person.

Now, I get it. It’s hard to love other people. But have you ever put that shoe on the other foot? Have you stopped to think how hard it is for God to love you?

John points out a problem that was not unique to the Christians living 2,000 years ago. He says:

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.[1]

Imagine how disingenuous that looks to God. It’s like carving, “I love you,” into the side of his car with your key. You might think you’re making this grand gesture of your love to the Lord, but you’re destroying something else that he loves. In the same way, if you say that you love God, but you express hatred – in attitude or action – toward your neighbour, you’re destroying something else that he loves, e.g. your neighbour’s well-being, the relationship he wants you to have with each other.

You can’t pretend that by coming to church on Sunday, it doesn’t matter what you do – or don’t do – on every other day of the week. You can’t pretend that because you’re working on your spiritual life, your earthly life doesn’t matter. It’s all one! Love reveals itself, not by what it says but by what it does. If your neighbour feels no warmth or light from you, then it’s a sign that something is dead somewhere inside of you.

If it’s hard to love other people when they hurt us, imagine how hard it is for God to love you.

But that’s exactly what God does. He loves you. He loved you first. He showed you what true love looks like by putting it into action. He sent his Son for you, to be a ransom for you.

John uses an interesting word here. It’s only used twice in the entire Bible and the other time was just a few verses earlier. It’s a strange word, but it shares the same root as the word God uses for mercy.

You know what mercy is, don’t you? Mercy is what I would cry in desperation when my brother was beating the living snot out of me for being a living snot to him. Mercy is what the police officer gives you when he doesn’t write you a speeding ticket even though he caught you going 15km/hr over the speed limit. Mercy is not giving someone the punishment that they deserve for their behaviour.

And do you know how God accomplished that mercy for the first several millennia of the world? Substitutionary sacrifice. A lamb or a bull or a dove would symbolically take your place and symbolically suffer the punishment for your sins by paying for them with its life. It would be sacrificed, i.e. killed, offered on the altar to appease God’s justice. But those sacrifices were just symbols, band-aids, temporary stop-gap measures.

Jesus, on the other hand, was the real deal. There was nothing symbolic about his sacrifice. He was your substitute. He took your place on the cross and suffered the penalty for your sin, so that you would be cleansed of it.

That’s the love of God for you. That’s what real love looks like. It’s not emotional, ethereal or ephemeral. It’s volitional, indomitable and enduring. It was a conscious decision. It couldn’t be swayed or compromised or conquered by adversity, anger or apathy. It was strong enough to survive our sin and endure into eternity. It’s a love that is self-sacrificing, i.e. that is willing to suffer inconvenience and even pain to bring benefit and blessing to you.

This love wasn’t easy. It wasn’t cheap. It cost God a great deal, but he was willing to give it because that’s what love is and does.

And that’s why John starts this section the way he does:

Dear friends [re: Beloved], let us love one another, for love comes from God.[2]

Love for one another is not a demand God makes of you to earn his love for you. Love is the condition you live in. Beloved is your status in his eyes. Love gives you confidence for life in heaven and purpose for life on earth – because God loves you, love one another.

It’s hard, but it’s simple at the same time. And, in many cases, it’s something you’re doing already. It’s something I’ve seen in that unnamed 3-year-old. If godly love is the willingness to inconvenience yourself to bring benefit to someone else, then love among Christians is a child sharing his snack or his toys even though it means that he won’t be able to enjoy them himself.

Love among Christians is not only staying in a marriage that has long since progressed past its honeymoon period, but being committed to be kind and compassionate and caring to the person who has the closest access to your heart (and sometimes hurts you more than anyone else could).

Love among Christians is giving up your holidays or a job opportunity or the years you meant to spend in restful retirement so that you can take care of your aging parents or assist in raising your children’s children.

Love among Christians is cheerfully spending your hard-earned income on school and sports and social activities for your spouse or children (without complaining about what it’s cost you – the rounds of golf you don’t get to play, the hobbies you put on hold, etc…)

You ask John, Paul, Ringo and George – you ask Taylor – what love is, and they’ll tell you one thing. God will tell you another. He’ll point you to his Son as proof of how selfless, volitional, indomitable and enduring true love really is. God didn’t just tell us that he is love. He showed his love by what he did for us. And he calls you to do the same. If you love him – because you love him who loved you first – love one another. Amen.

[1] 1 John 4:20

[2] 1 John 4:7

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