From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: I would like to call your attention once more to the words which are to be found in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians in the second chapter reading verses 20, 21 and 22: "And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit."

We return once more to a consideration of this picture which the apostle gives us in those words of the nature and the character of the Christian church and therefore of our position and status and condition as members of the church. The apostle here is rejoicing in the fact that the Ephesians, who were so outside the commonwealth of Israel and so far removed from God, are now not only reconciled to God but have been made one with the Jews who have believed the gospel.

And so here they are all together, Jews and Gentiles, as members of the church of Christ. He is anxious that they should realize therefore the privilege of their position and that they should understand the character of this unity that now obtains between them and all others who are likewise believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And in order to do this you remember he uses his three pictures. First, the church is compared to a state, a kingdom. Secondly, to a family. And here thirdly, to a building.

Now we're looking at this third picture. We've taken a general view of it, but we have also noticed that the apostle is not content with a mere general statement. That is important and never perhaps was it more important than today. But in addition to giving us a general description of the building and therefore of the nature and the character of the unity in the church, the apostle also comes down to the details of the plans and specification.

Now last Sunday we began a consideration of this detailed account of the actual structure itself. And of course we began, as one must always begin with a building and as the apostle does here, with the foundation. That's the first thing he tells us, that we are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. I don't go back over that this morning, but surely we all must realize that a foundation is of absolute central importance.

We must never take any risks with a foundation. Our Lord has established that once and for all in his parable of the two houses, one upon the rock and one upon the sand. A foundation is absolutely vital. And we considered together last Sunday morning what that foundation was and how in it the Lord Jesus Christ himself is the chief cornerstone, binding all the subsidiary foundation stones together, binding all the walls together, therefore supporting and uniting the entire structure.

Now then, having done that, the next thing he tells us and the next thing of course we obviously are interested in is this: Where do we come in into all this? We are built upon that. We are parts of the walls that are going up in the erection of this great temple which God is building for himself and for his own habitation, this holy temple in the Lord.

In other words we come then, I say, to a consideration of our part and our place and position in this amazing building of God. The apostle, I say, rejoices in the fact that the Ephesians are being built into this. The thing had started before they came in but they're added to it, they're put in and so the building goes on. Others, many others, have come in since. You and I as Christians are in.

Well very well, then I say we must be careful therefore to observe what the apostle tells us about who is built into this and how they are built into it. Those are the two things that matter. Who is it that has a place and a position and a part in this great structure? How did they ever come there? How are they put there? Well now you notice he tells us all about this very, very clearly.

Now the three things that we've got to bear in mind are these. Obviously every part of this structure must bear a particular relationship to the foundation. I think that goes almost without saying and yet it's such an important point that I must emphasize it again. In a temple such as this which is being built, in any great magnificent building, there must always be a kind of correspondence between the various parts.

You can't put shoddy material here and there into a perfect building. No, if you're going to erect some unusual building, some great holy temple, well every part must correspond with every other part. And so I say that it is vital for us to remember that we as individual parts in this great temple of God must correspond to the foundation, must be truly and rightly related to that foundation.

This I say is something which is of obviously crucial importance. I needn't keep you, let me just remind you of how the apostle Paul has put this in that third chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians that we read just now. And this is particularly a word perhaps for those of us who are privileged to preach and to be pastors. We are the builders under God, laborers together with him.

And this is what the apostle says: Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid. But let every man be very careful what he buildeth thereon. You can build on it he says gold or silver or precious metals. That's all right. But there are also people who want to put in wood and hay and stubble, and that is not all right. Wood and hay and stubble are not consistent with the foundation that has been laid.

The foundation is so precious, the chief cornerstone itself, that nothing but gold or silver or precious metals is adequate. And to put in wood and hay and stubble is unworthy. Not only that he says, it won't last, it won't stand because this work is going to be tested. The day will declare it and it'll be a testing by fire. And when the fire comes the wood and the hay and the stubble and the shavings all vanish in a second and there's nothing left.

Jerry-building never passes the test. And there are people who are so anxious to run up a building quickly, they're not careful as to what they put into the walls. Anything to run up a building and just to cover it over with a little paint and it looks marvelous. And the ignorant and the uninitiated are taken in, they say, "How wonderful!" And there's somebody else building so slowly, they say he's doing nothing at all.

Ah, but the day will declare it. We are building not for time but for eternity and the chief architect is God himself who sees everything that's being done and will test it at the end. And there are going to be men, says the apostle Paul, who seem to have done wonders but when the day comes they will find that all their work has been destroyed. There'll be nothing left at all.

They themselves if they are truly Christian will still be saved though all their work is lost. But they will be saved only so as by fire. Let every man therefore says the apostle take heed how he buildeth on this foundation. In other words it comes to this, you see, that the business of this underbuilder is not simply to rush up a wall but to make certain that everything that goes into the wall is in correspondence with the foundation.

In other words you build into the church not merely members on paper or on a roll, but those who are really established on the foundation in their faith. It isn't everybody who just wants to be a Christian to get certain benefits that can go into this wall. No, no, it is only those who realize as we saw last Sunday that they are dead in trespasses and sins and utterly, absolutely hopeless and helpless and who are solely dependent upon the grace of God in Christ.

Who realize that had he not shed his blood for them and for their sins, they are still lost and who are resting only upon the finished, perfect, sacrificial, substitutionary atonement of Christ and the power of the Spirit. It is they alone who go into this wall. Not those who have been brought up just simply to go to a place of worship or who like to be moral up to a point. No, no, there must be this definite relationship to the one and only foundation.

Let us leave that at that and go on to the second thing. I mention this separately because the apostle goes on repeating it. We must not only be related to the foundation in that way, we must be specifically related to the chief cornerstone. Everyone who is truly a member of the Christian church then is not only related to this faith of the apostles, he is in a very definite relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

And what I mean by that of course is this. You noticed I started with the faith, with the apostolic faith, with the apostolic creed, with the apostolic confession if you like, with that irreducible minimum of Christianity which we've got here in this one chapter, this second chapter of Ephesians. But I don't stop at that because to give an intellectual assent to that is not alone enough.

If you don't give an intellectual assent to it you're not in the building at all for certain, that is essential. But merely to subscribe to these tenets is not enough. We must be in Christ. We must be joined to Christ. We must be in Christ. We must know this vital union and relationship to him. Because the chief cornerstone I say holds everything together and that is why the apostle goes on repeating it: "In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded."

I mustn't stop with this. The whole chapter has been emphasizing this. We have been quickened together with Christ, we have been raised together with Christ, we are seated together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. You see, this is something that cannot be evaded nor avoided. We not only believe and accept the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, we must be engrafted into him.

We must be in vital union with him. "I am the vine, ye are the branches," he has said himself. That's it. It's the same idea. So that as members, as parts in this great edifice we're all related to the foundation and we're all in this vital, mystical manner related to him. Now some of the other illustrations the apostle uses bring that out still more clearly.

The illustration of the body which we've already glanced at, that does it of course still more perfectly. As I'm never tired of putting it, a body is not a collection of parts stuck together. The whole essence of the unity of a body is that it's vital and organic. A body isn't formed by sticking on fingers onto hands and hands onto forearms and forearms onto arms etc. Not at all.

They're all vitally and intimately and organically related. So are we all related to Christ, in Christ, parts of him, belonging to him, all held together by him. Very well, that is also obviously of equal fundamental importance. But now that brings me to the third thing which is the one that we want to go into in detail this morning and that is our relationship to one another.

You see, think of a building and the stones in the building. They're all related to the foundation, they're all related to the chief cornerstone. Yes, but they bear a relationship to one another. You can't have a wall without the interrelationship of the parts. And this is the thing that the apostle brings out in this most important and picturesque statement here which is translated in the 21st verse by these words: "Fitly framed together."

In whom all the building (or as you may have it in your revised versions) in whom every building fitly framed together or all buildings fitly framed together. It doesn't matter. The important word is the "fitly framed together." Now this is a most important expression. You see, we've got it here as three words but the apostle Paul actually used only one word. It's only one word in the Greek.

And there's another very interesting thing I can tell you about this word. It is a word that is only to be found here and in the 16th verse of the fourth chapter of this epistle in the entire Bible. It's not found anywhere else in the entire Bible. Only here in Ephesians 2:21 and Ephesians 4:16. But I'll tell you something else that's still more interesting about it.

It's a word that was obviously made and invented and formed by the apostle Paul himself. He didn't borrow it, he hadn't seen it anywhere else. This is the first use of the word that is known. Now then, I make a point of saying all that for this reason, that obviously the apostle regarded this particular point as being an exceptionally important one, so much so that he coins a word, he makes a word in order to bring out his ideas.

And yet though the apostle took all that trouble it is indeed almost pathetic to notice the way in which some of the translations which are so popular at the present time have missed it altogether. Take for instance the Revised Standard Version. It translates it as just "joined together," missing the whole point of the word that the apostle invented. Joined together. The apostle could have used many words to bring out the idea of joined together.

Now Dr. Moffatt in his translation gets a bit nearer. He talks about "welded together," but even that is wrong. You don't weld stones together whereas the apostle's whole conception and picture is in terms of building with stones. Very well then, what does it mean exactly? Well it means harmoniously fitted together. Now this word that was used by the apostle is a double compound.

It's three words put together and made into one. The fundamental word is a word that means binding or joint. And of course the very idea of binding or joint suggests this coming together. But then he put a prefix onto that which means simply "together," *sun*, the same ideas you have in "symphony" or any one of such compounds. Joint together, together joint.

Now joint says together but he says together joint to make quite certain that we'd got it. And then he added a third word to this which is a word that really means to collect or to gather or to pick out. And he's now put these three words together. And this word, this third word which means to collect or to gather or to pick out, is a word that's often used for fitting together words in order to form a sentence or joining words together to form a sentence.

When a man speaks as he is speaking, he's thinking and he wants to form a sentence, he wants to convey a very definite idea and impression and this is what he does. As he's speaking or as he's writing, certain words suggest themselves to him, but he picks one and he rejects the other and he puts that one in. Then the next word he rejects some and picks another and he puts them together to form a sentence.

That's the sort of word the apostle used. So we've got together, join, choose, pick, select, take out. And he put these three words together to make one word which is here translated, and it's quite a good translation, "fitly framed together." Well now then, obviously there is some profound doctrine here. The apostle would never have taken the trouble to make a word like this and invent a word unless he wanted us to be very clear as to the ideas he was conveying.

Very well, what is his picture? I do trust that we all are able to follow his picture. Alas, we are living in days when buildings are made of bricks and not of stones and therefore perhaps some of us are too young to understand the apostle's picture as we should. Get rid of a brick building. Think rather of a great massive, mighty building of stone.

And there look at the man who is erecting or the number of men who are erecting this building. Have you ever seen a real craftsman, the old type of mason? Have you ever seen him building a wall? Have you ever seen him pulling out stones and looking at them and then looking at his wall, deciding it's no use, throwing it, picking out another and doing various things to it? That's the picture that the apostle is using. Fitly framed together, individual stones going up into that wall.