Ephesians 4:11-16

Christ appoints people into positions in the church to encourage believers to build up the Body of Christ. Together in unity we can accomplish the good works which He planned for the Church before the world began. The truth of the salvation given to us in Jesus Christ, God’s ultimate love gift to mankind, will set us free.


Apostles, meaning “envoys,” or “ambassadors,” in its strict sense refers to those who saw Christ in resurrected form, performed miracles, and were specially chosen by Christ to tell others about Him from their eyewitness accounts. Prophets delivered direct revelations from God. They foretold God’s actions in the future, and they proclaimed what God had already said in the Scriptures. Evangelists are gospel preachers who help bring people into the body of Christ. They do so by presenting Christ’s offer of free salvation by grace through faith. Pastors do all for the church that a literal shepherd does for sheep: feeds, nurtures, cares for, and protects them from enemies. A shepherd’s task is not to acquire sheep. While the Greek ties the two titles teachers and pastors closely together here, elsewhere they are listed separately.

11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.