Recap
The first half of this chapter, verses 1-16, connects Paul’s teaching about the mighty work of God in Christ, in raising him to the highest, most powerful, place and seating his people there beside him in the heavenly places, with the practical outworking of these things in the second half of his letter.
It is a key passage, full of important teaching about the essential unity of Christ’s body—which is also his holy temple—and how he will bring our damaged and broken lives into conformity with Christ.
He wants to challenge the roots and motivations behind our attitudes and actions—and these things are the product of who we think we are. They flow out of our identity. If we claim that our identity is in Christ, then Christ must be the very core of who we are.
This is where we begin.
Ephesians 4: 1-16
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. 7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. 8 Therefore it says,“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.”
9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
vv.1-3
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Paul urges these followers of Jesus to Walk in a manner worthy of Christ’s name. You call yourself a Christian? Be Christ-like. ‘What would Jesus do?’ is not a silly question.
- What does Paul mean by, ‘walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called’?
They are Christ’s body, his holy temple. This calls for a holy attitude. which he spells out for them: Paul told the Philippians, Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus (Phil 2: 5 NKJV), and here he says something similar
v.2
…with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love…
None of these attributes would have been admired in ancient Rome, where they would have been regarded as weaknesses … but in God’s upside-down kingdom, weakness is strength (2 Cor 12: 10).
Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Love.
Each of these qualities comes from laying down the self. Not in some Buddhist sense of ‘obliterating’ it, but in conscious self-denial and the choice to elevate Christ and give way to others.
- Compare this with Matthew 16: 24, Romans 8: 13 and Romans 12: 10.
Another Christ-like attribute is this [eagerness] to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v.4). God is uniting all things in Christ, so they must desire unity.
vv.3-6
eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all
- How does this unity work in practice?
In a nutshell, Paul says this: God is one—so be one.
They are to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v.3).
We often read this verse without the context of the previous three chapters, where Paul has been showing how all things are united in Christ (Eph 1: 10, 11, 22)—specifically, how the Jewish and Gentile believers are united into ‘one man’ (Eph 2: 15) as the wall separating them is torn down. And we have seen how that can extend to the great diversity of people that make up ‘the Gentiles’ (Romans 12: 5; Galatians 3: 28; Colossians 3: 15).
Here are two far-reaching truths.
- In spite of strong evidence to the contrary, the people of Christ are not, and cannot be, divided, because Christ is not divided.
- Furthermore, as we hinted a few weeks ago, all things are, or shall be, united in Christ.
This is one of the most crucial teachings in Christian doctrine, and, historically, the church has been rubbish at it.
- Can the people of God really be in unity?
Paul breaks it down for us.
There is:
- One body. The Body of Christ. Christ has only ever had one body.
Here’s the thing: the full power of God’s incarnation—his becoming flesh in Jesus—is that his body was broken. He allowed his body to be abused and slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb.
When Paul taught the Corinthians on this he pointed to many people eating, sharing in, ‘one bread’ (1 Cor 10: 17), but necessarily, the bread is divided, it is broken up so they can all participate (1 Cor 11: 23, 24).
Christ has one body but, essentially, it is broken. The KJV of 1 Cor 11: 24 says:
this is My body which is broken for you…
We look and see Christ’s body on earth broken, sown in weakness and dishonour—but it shall be raised in glory and strength! (1 Cor 15: 43).
The truth of Christ’s body is that it is one. This is what we declare.
- One Spirit, who is the immanent presence of God. His breath.
John 14: 16, 17
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
The Body of Christ is indwelt by the Spirit of God. In the same way that there can only be one body, there is one Spirit. The Holy Spirit promised by Jesus. The Spirit of Truth is the same Spirit who moved on the face of the waters in creation.
There is:
- One hope, which is in resurrection. Christ overcomes death—he abolished it (2 Timothy 1: 10).
As Christ is raised from the dead, so are we (1 Peter 1: 3 and 4), as Paul has already explained. Christ is raised and seated at the right hand of God (Eph 1: 20); we are brought to life, raised with Christ and seated there with him (Eph 2: 5, 6). This is the common hope of all Christ-believers. We may have different emphases and expressions—we may look and sound different, and we might believe all sorts of other strange things—but the thing that defines us is the testimony of the resurrection and the hope of eternal life.
We may not be very sure what eternal life is, but we are positive that it is. In the words of the Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in…
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
That is the single unifying hope of the church.
- One Lord.
The defining statement of Israel was the Shema in Deuteronomy 6: 4:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
This separated them from the surrounding pagan nations. There is only one God, not a pantheon; also, all the attributes of any possible pantheon are subject to the one God—the Lord (see Psalm 82: 1 and Job 1: 6).
The Lord, whose name is YHWH—I am that I am (Exodus 3: 14).
In Acts 2: 36, Jesus Christ is identified with the Lord.
Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ.
In Revelation 1: 17, 18, John sees a vision of Christ, who declares:
Fear not, I am the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive for evermore
This ‘I am the first and the last’ statement, along with other similar statements in revelation (Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End), are word-plays on I am that I am, clearly identifying the Lord Jesus Christ with Yahweh and with God the Father. They are statements of being independent of the passage of time and superior to it.
Jesus is Lord!
Paul makes this more explicit.
Philippians 2: 9-11
God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
And, as we read recently in Ephesians 1: 20-22
He [God] raised him [Christ] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet…
Jesus is Lord, and through his resurrection and ascension, he inherits the position of universal supremacy.
Jesus is the Lord of Heaven and all its powers.
He is also the Lord of earth, because every knee must bow before him. The kings of Babylon and Persia, the two greatest Old Testament tyrants, are both referred to as God’s servants. All authority derives from him, including Caesar’s and every tin-pot Caesar-figure who happens to come along.
Jesus is Lord of the earth and all its powers.
And the Lordship of Christ binds us together in worship and service.
There is:
- One faith.
This is easy to misunderstand. Nowadays we tend to use ‘faith’ as synonymous with ‘religion’. A faith. We speak of ‘faiths’.
We might think that Paul is saying that there is a particular codified way to approach God, an ‘orthodox’ set of beliefs and practices that God respects, like the Law of Moses.
But this is almost exactly what Jesus came to dispense with, in the sense of a rule-based, authoritative priestly system.
We come to the Father through Jesus Christ … and we come to him by faith.
What does Paul mean by faith, here?
John 3: 16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Acts 3: 16 (NKJV)
And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.
‘Faith’, in this sense, nearly always means the complete commitment of a person to Jesus Christ. It isn’t an intellectual or an emotional state. It is a decisive action.
By ‘one faith’, Paul means that all believers in Christ are bound together because they have made a common act of submission to the love of Jesus Christ. They may describe this in different ways depending on their cultural background, their doctrinal structure or their personal experience. But, however they describe it, that submission is common to all of them.
We can only come to the Father by the Son after John 14: 6; we can only come to the Son by faith.
There is:
- One baptism.
Again, it’s easy to misunderstand because we are invested in our particular understanding of ‘baptism’, which is tied to our church background and our denominational stance, etc.
I remember when people in the prisons wanted to get baptised by immersion. Believer’s baptism. If they were coming from an Anglican or Roman Catholic background it was always complicated. Catholics, in particular, would believe that if a person who is baptised as a Catholic undergoes believer’s baptism in later life, that they are effectively recanting their Catholicism. That’s a big issue—we are talking excommunication, no less. Also, chaplains from the various faith-groups were employed in proportion to the number of adherents they had in the prison. So, people ‘converting’ from one ‘faith’ to another was a political matter too.
Where church institutions are concerned, it is always complicated.
Besides, which baptism, anyway? Are we talking babies or adults; dipping, immersing, pouring or sprinkling; is it still water or flowing; is it once or three times? And is it the ‘Name of Jesus Christ’ or the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?’
(I strongly suspect that none of these things matter all that much.)
Some people at Corinth were even getting baptised on behalf of dead people.
What does Paul mean by One Baptism, then, because even in his own time, there was more than one possible way of doing it?
I don’t think Paul is talking about the actual practice of ‘baptism’.
If someone in First Century Ephesus were to be baptised as a follower of Christ, this would be a bold public declaration that Jesus is their Lord.
o To their family.
o To their community—especially their religious community if they were Jews or members of a pagan cult.
o To the Roman authorities.
A baptismal rite doesn’t save you; it only makes you more or less wet, but:
Romans 10: 9if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.That single verse points to one hope, one Lord and one faith, and indicates one baptism…… which is why we always baptise people following their confession of faith. One baptism means the confession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
There is:
- One God
Paul clearly identifies ‘God’ as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, in case there should be any doubt, who is also the father of all, from whom every family in heaven and earth derives its name. That God. Just to be clear.
Previously, in Ephesians, God is:
1: 2: God our Father.
1: 3: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1: 17: the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory
2: 18: through him [Christ Jesus] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
3: 14-17: I bow my knees before the Father [so that …] he may grant you to be strengthened through his Spirit, … so that Christ may dwell in your hearts.
4: 6 (this verse): one God and Father of all.
5: 20 and 6: 23: God the Father.
In v.6, Paul is quite specific. God is the Father of all; he is the source of all life. Every living thing in heaven and earth gets its life from God the Father. Before he’s King or Judge, or even worshipped as ‘God’, he is Father.
Psalm 36: 9
For with you is the fountain of life.
He is the giver of life.
God is above all. Specifically, Jesus Christ is above all, as we saw in Eph 1: 20 and 21, when
He [God] worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
And in Phil 2: 11, Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
As we’ve seen, there is one Lord.
God is through all. God didn’t create the world and set it going like some machine. We are not controlled by an algorithm. God is all through his world, guiding, sustaining, loving. We see this, for example in Psalm 2.
God is not absent.
God is in all. As he is the Father of all, the source of all life, if follows that his life is manifested in what he has made, albeit in a manner distorted by sin.
Paul implores the believers—and us—God is one, so be one. Be united. Be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Where we fail to do this—and we often fail to do it, we compromise our testimony, because our testimony is to one body and one Spirit; one hope; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all.
Or maybe it isn’t.
- Is this our testimony?
The single biggest thing that stops unbelievers coming to Christ is the sad fact that his followers are—or appear to be—divided. It is one of the Devil’s greatest weapons and one of our biggest stumbling blocks.
Where we are, or appear to be, divided, we lose credibility in out testimony.
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