Ephesians 4:11

Note

The noun "evangelist" occurs only three times in the New Testament: of Philip in Acts, in Paul's charge to Timothy, and here. Among the gifts the ascended Christ gave His church are those who bring the good news.

Ephesians 4 begins with a plea for the church's unity: one body, one Spirit, one Lord. Then Paul says that "to each one of us grace has been given according to the measure of the gift of Christ" (Ephesians 4:7), and quotes Psalm 68: "When He ascended on high, He led captives away, and gave gifts to men" (Ephesians 4:8). Verse 11 names the gifts, and they are not abilities but people. They are given "to equip the saints for works of ministry and to build up the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:12).

The word is euangelistēs, formed from the verb euangelizomai, "to bring good news": a bringer of good news. Here it stands in the accusative plural, euangelistas, one of the objects of edōken, "He gave." The other two places are "Philip the evangelist, who was one of the Seven" (Acts 21:8) and Paul's word to Timothy, "do the work of an evangelist" (2 Timothy 4:5). Philip went down to Samaria and "proclaimed the Christ to them" (Acts 8:5), and on the desert road "told him the good news about Jesus" (Acts 8:35). From these the evangelist seems to have been one who did not stay with a single congregation but carried the first news of Christ to places that had not yet heard it. Later the church gave the same name to the four writers of the Gospels.

The KJV and the BSB agree on "evangelists"; the LSV turns the word back into plain English, "proclaimers of good news." The larger difference lies in the last pair. The Greek puts one article before both nouns, tous de poimenas kai didaskalous, and many read "pastors and teachers" as one office seen from two sides: the one who shepherds the flock is the one who teaches it. The LSV keeps the picture of the first word, "shepherds and teachers," for poimēn is a shepherd before it is a church title.

Wesley divides the list into "extraordinary officers," the apostles, prophets and evangelists, and ordinary ones, the pastors and teachers. "A prophet testifies of things to come; an evangelist of things past," he writes, "and that chiefly by preaching the gospel before or after any of the apostles" Wesley. Calvin likewise held, in the Institutes, that the first three offices belonged to the time when churches were being founded where there had been none, while allowing that God had since raised up apostles, or at least evangelists, at times, and had done so in his own day Calvin, Institutes 4.3.4. Some Pentecostal and charismatic Christians read the verse instead as a ‘fivefold ministry’ that God still gives to the church in all five parts. On every side the purpose is agreed: these gifts are for building up the body of Christ. Matthew Henry begins his reading of the passage: "Unto every believer is given some gift of grace, for their mutual help" Matthew Henry.

Telling the gospel is not something the church happened to take up, but a gift of the risen and ascended Christ. If someone has brought you the news of Him, that person was, in that moment, part of that gift.