The Church Edified and Edifying Itself.
I. There are various outward appliances all meant for the edifying of the body of Christ. These may be regarded as comprehending generally all the spiritual instrumentalities and gifts brought to bear upon the Church and its members from without and from above. For the Apostle is not here laying down the platform of Church government, or determining formally and authoritatively what offices had been or were to be owned and sanctioned in the Church. He is not thinking of that, but of something else. He merely names the ministries then in exercise. He names them simply to bring out their variety of function in connection with their unity of aim. They are all of them, as then subsisting, among the gifts which when He ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, Christ received from the Father, that He might give them unto men. They are widely different from one another in respect of their inherent nature and their official use; but all their differences tend to one result: the drawing of the whole together, the edifying of the body of Christ.
II. In this process of edification the body of Christ is not passive. It has inward vitality, internal vital impulses and movements. And these also are various, yet tend in one direction and to one issue: the edifying of the body of Christ. Oneness and faith and knowledge as regards the Son of God is the great terminus ad quem, the meeting point for all the members of the body. There is ripeness or maturity of manhood among Christians in proportion as there is oneness of faith and knowledge about the Son of God. To that we are all to come at last; to that we are all coming now. But our coming implies the fulfilling of two conditions. (1) There must be an end of all childishness or infantile imbecility; (2) there must be wrought in us an active energetic principle, bent on doing the true thing and doing it lovingly.
R. S. Candlish, Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians,p. 94.
References: Ephesians 4:8. Archbishop Benson, Sundays in Wellington College,p. 243; S. A. Tipple, Sunday Mornings at Norwood,p. 5; J. Kennedy, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 9.