Ephesians 4:8 Commentary and Bible Study

The Apostle Paul now tells us about the purpose of pastors and other office bearers exercising teaching functions in the church of Jesus Christ, and he quotes from Psalm 68:18 to show that these offices are rooted in prophecy: ‘Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.’ God speaks through David in that psalm, and it is a psalm about victories. At first reading, it may seem to be about one particular significant victory, but then it speaks in a general sense of all the great victories which God has given to his people in olden times in answer to prayer, to deliver them from oppression and difficulty. Of course, they were not always delivered, because much of the time they were disobedient. But it particularly reviews from the very beginning, from the gathering of the people, through the wilderness journeys, mentioning Mount Sinai and other events. It gathers together in a general way all the great victories brought about by the Lord. It looks at the distant past, it looks at King David’s present, and then it looks to the future and becomes a prophetic psalm.And the highlight of the prophetic part of the psalm is the 18th verse quoted here in Ephesians 4.8 – ‘Wherefore he saith,’ God says through David, ‘when he ascended up on high.’ That is clearly moving into the future from David’s perspective. It is a prophecy of the coming Redeemer, of Christ, and it is about his ascension. Of course, it is in the language of the psalms. It is about his resurrection as well as his ascension. When he ascended, when he had that great victory on Calvary’s cross and he is raised from the dead and then he ascends into heaven, ‘he led captivity captive.’ The first captivity, it is a selective noun, he led, as some of the modern translations put it, a host of captives. Our King James Version sticks to the Greek and it translates it ‘captivity captive’ which is what you find in the Old Testament.He led all that he had captured captive. Who had he captured? Well of course, some people say (and they are probably right in this) that he captured in a sense the hosts of darkness. But that is not what is in view here. What is in view here is that through Calvary, through his atoning death, he captured to himself from the world a host of sinners down the running centuries. He died for them to redeem them, and he delivered them from the punishment of sin and in the course of time drew them to himself. So the picture of the psalmist is that as Christ left the cross of Calvary, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, he took as it were a host of captives with him, ransomed people, saved people. He took unbelievers from among the Jews, he took unbelievers from among the Gentiles, and he bore their sin and he saved them. And out of them he formed believers and some of them, in New Testament times, were apostles, and some of them were New Testament prophets. Then in New Testament times and on down the history of the church, many of them were evangelists and pastors and teachers. They were rebels, they were transformed, and they were given to the church, even to the rebellious, which probably means the Gentiles from David’s perspective. They were given to the New Testament church as gifts to minister the word, to preach the Gospel, to nurture the saints and so on. And so the ministry of the New Testament is rooted in prophecy.