Part 6 of Ephesians: Unity in Christ

Ephesians 4:1-16 (CSB)

1 Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope at your calling— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

7 Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 For it says:

When he ascended on high,he took the captives captive;he gave gifts to people.

9 But what does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower parts of the earth? 10 The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, to fill all things. 11 And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness. 14 Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. 15 But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head— Christ. 16 From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part.

Before we jump into this chapter, what have we learned so far? If you remember, Paul is writing to Gentile Christians, and he began the letter by giving thanks for their faith and reminded them of their old life before they followed Christ. He prayed they would be strengthened in faith, and he explained how he sees his imprisonment as an administration of God’s grace. Then he explained that God’s mystery was hidden but has now been revealed: Gentiles are welcome to be full members of God’s family. It was a mystery how God could make a way to include all people into His family: but He revealed the answer by showing us it happens by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. All who believe are made part of God’s family. There is no difference now between Jews and Gentiles- all who come to faith in Jesus are brought near to God.

Those first three chapters were not only an introduction of sorts, but a refresher in doctrine. Paul needed to be sure they were clear about all those key ideas before he could move on to the practical part of the rest of the letter. Now, in light of these doctrinal truths, how should they respond? This is the stuff of the next three chapters; it’s the practical outworking of this doctrine. He’s finally getting to the point of the letter, for he says, “Therefore.”

Verse 1 says, “Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received.” The ERV translates this as, “live the way God’s people should live.” I really like that, because that correctly infers that there is a standard by which we Christians should act and behave. We should live differently than the world lives.

Not only should we live the way God’s people should live, but we should live in a manner worthy of the calling we’ve received. When Paul says “calling,” I think he means what he talks about in Ephesian 1:18, which says, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling.”

God’s calling begins with His call to salvation, and then it grows to include God’s specific call on our individual lives. If we submit to God, as His prisoner like Paul says he is, then no matter what we are doing, no matter our job assignment, we are fulfilling God’s ultimate calling on our lives, which is to be like Him.

So, Paul is saying, you’ve been welcomed into the family God, you are no longer dead in sin, so live a life worthy of this new life and new family status which you’ve received.

The word worthy is important, too. The Greek word is axiōs. That means, according to Strong’s Concordance, “appropriately, as becometh.” I would add that it means- as is fitting and proper. Paul started off Ephesians by saying that they have been given “adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:5). If they are sons and daughters of God, part of God’s family, then there is an innate expectation of proper behavior befitting those children. When I was a child, my parents drilled into my head that they wouldn’t tolerate misbehavior at church because I was my dad’s daughter. He was on staff at the church and therefore I had to be a good example to other kids. I had to act in a manner worthy of my status as his daughter. When we Christians behave according to God’s standards, it helps set us apart and designates us as part of God’s family. We also become an example for others to follow.

Then he tells them what this looks like as we strive to live in the way that God’s children should live. Verses 2-3 say, “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

Not only should we individually live in a worthy manner, but collectively, we should get along with one another. Paul says that we should try to keep unity within the body of Christ. The first step to achieving unity with other believers is by being humble and gentle. Humility and gentleness- anybody else besides me feel like Christianity is lacking in this department? If you spend any amount of time on the internet, I think you’ll observe a lot of pride and harshness, and very little humility and gentleness. If we want to have unity, this is a good place to start. It’s easy to be prideful, thinking we know it all. It’s also easy to respond with harshness to someone we disagree with. It takes a lot more time to be gracious and kind than blunt and direct, doesn’t it? If we want to open dialogue and encourage conversation and understanding, then we have to be committed to humility and gentleness, because how can we have unity if we don’t understand what our fellow believers think? We should look for the common ground that we share with other believers, focusing on our commonalities rather than our differences. Paul also tells them to be patient. This goes right along with humility and gentleness, doesn’t it? We should be patient, not rushing ahead to judgement or disagreement. We should bear with one another in love. In other words, we should have patience with one another. He adds, “making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Again, that speaks to the need to look for common ground. The opposite of peace is war. Paul is stressing the role of peace in maintaining unity.

Then, in verses 4-6, he explains why unity is important and why we are to make every effort to keep unity. It says, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope at your calling — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

Unity is important for all believers in Christ are collectively the body of Christ. Just as there is only one Holy Spirit, there is only one body of Christ. Within Christianity, we have many denominations. Yet despite all our differences, we are all one body of Christ. Even those who might think they alone are the true body of Christ and nobody else is included, even they are part of the collective body of Christ. Despite what they imagine, they are not their own body of Christ. Anyone who is a true Christian is a member of the body of Christ. There is only one.

There is also only “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” There are not multiple ways to multiple gods. There is only one way. This repetition of the word “one” is significant and intentional. In Paul’s time, Ephesus was “second only to Rome as a cosmopolitan center of culture and commerce” (www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/ephesus). Ephesus was a pluralistic society. There were many religious ideas and practices in that city. So, when Paul emphasizes that there is only one God, I believe he is doing so to stress the uniqueness of Christianity. He doesn’t want the Ephesians to become syncretistic and blend their faith with other religions or belief systems.

We also know from other letters of Paul that already among the early Christians there was a lot of division. The unity that the early believers experienced, as written in the beginning of the Book of Acts, didn’t seem to last very long. In 1 Corinthians 1:10-12 Paul writes, “Now I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree in what you say, that there be no divisions among you, and that you be united with the same understanding and the same conviction. For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers and sisters, by members of Chloe’s people, that there is rivalry among you. What I am saying is this: One of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’”

Paul wrote Corinthians a few years before he wrote Ephesians. Perhaps he wanted to keep what happened in Corinth from happening to the believers in Ephesus. Or they, too, were also arguing over these same things. I don’t know from the text, so it’s a guess, but obviously, unity is of great importance to Paul.

Then Paul says in verses 7-10, “Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. For it says: When he ascended on high, he took the captives captive; he gave gifts to people. But what does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower parts of the earth? The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, to fill all things.”

In some translations, verses 9-10 are in parentheses, for Paul is asking a rhetorical question that he answers. Interestingly, these two verses have caused a lot of theological debate. My guess is that even in Paul’s time there was confusion about Psalm 68:18 which is what Paul quotes in verse 8, when he says, “When he ascended on high, he took the captives captive; he gave gifts to people.” I think Paul is addressing that confusion and so he answers it. Unfortunately for us, he answered in typical Paul fashion and from our modern point of view, it’s not very clear. I see two possible explanations for this section. On one hand, Paul could simply be saying that Jesus came down to earth and then Jesus went back to Heaven; these captives that Jesus took are all of us believers, for we were on the enemy’s side until Jesus took us captive and brought us over to His side; and these gifts that were given are grace, and the other gifts He has given to the body of Christ. On the other hand, Paul could also be alluding to the time after Jesus’ death when Jesus descended into the lower part of the earth, meaning into Sheol or Hades, as it’s called interchangeably. He was there for three days on the side of “paradise,” then He set the captives free, taking them captive to Himself, and ascended when He was resurrected. Either or both are possible. I think it’s both.

But then Paul gets back to the original point he was making, which is that Jesus, through His triumph over death by His resurrection, has given gifts to His people. This becomes clearer as we keep reading what he says next in verses 11-13, which say, “And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.”

Jesus ascended into Heaven, but when He left we were given the Holy Spirit. And through Him, we are equipped for “the work of ministry.” We all need one another to use our spiritual gifts within the body of Christ, to help us attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Remember in chapter 3 what Paul said? Ephesians 3:19 says, we need “to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” We won’t be filled with the fullness of God unless we grow in maturity in our faith. We grow through careful study of God’s word, and through the help of people whom God has gifted to be teachers and leaders. They help us mature.

The reason we need to become mature is so that we won’t run into the problem he mentions in verse 14. He says, if we mature, “Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.”

We really need this, don’t we? So many people are so deceived! They have completely become swamped in the waters of deception. They aren’t even trying to bail the water out of their boats anymore. Others have sunk beneath the waves of the enemy’s lies and have drowned. Is there any hope? In verse 15, Paul abandons his waves metaphor, but he offers the solution. He says, “But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head— Christ.”

The way to help those who are being blown about by false teaching is for those of us who are mature to speak the truth in love. Without love, it’s really hard to receive truth. I think that’s why Paul started off talking about humility and gentleness and working toward unity. Love lays the groundwork for truth to be heard.

Did you notice the second part of that verse? Looking at it again, verse 15 says, “But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head— Christ.” Only Christ is the head. I think some people think they are the head. No one else but Jesus is the head. I referenced 1 Corinthians 1:10-12 a moment ago. Verse 13 says, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in Paul’s name?” That means we shouldn’t look to any person to be the head. Our leader is Christ. He is the head. I think this is an important distinction. While we are to speak the truth in love, we should only speak what Jesus has spoken in His Word. Some people think they can speak for God. The Catholic church thinks that the Pope is the head of the Church at large and can speak for God. Other people will say that the Lord has given them a new revelation. I don’t think anybody is supposed to speak for God. We can and should speak what God has said, but we don’t speak for Him. He has spoken. He is still speaking today, but through Scripture. And God can speak through people because He has in the past and He still does today, but the way to tell if someone is speaking what God is saying is to see if it lines up with Scripture. If it contradicts Scripture, then God is not speaking through that person.

Paul concludes this section of his letter with verse 16, which says, “From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part.”

This reminds me of 1 Corinthians 12:21-26 when Paul said: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ Or again, the head can’t say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that are weaker are indispensable. And those parts of the body that we consider less honorable, we clothe these with greater honor, and our unrespectable parts are treated with greater respect, which our respectable parts do not need. Instead, God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the less honorable, so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other. So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”

Maybe that verse is why some people think they are the head of the body of Christ, because Paul references that part here. They would be wrong, though. I think he’s simply using the head as an example. He does not state that some of us are the head. The point he is making in 1 Corinthians 12 goes along with the idea he is trying to communicate here in Ephesians. There is only one body of Christ and there should be no division in the body. We should be equally concerned for all the members of the body. We believers are joined and held together by each other with Christ as the head. We will grow and build ourselves up, Paul says in “in love, as each part does its work.” This is important because if we don’t work together, if we fight and harm one another, then how will our body be healthy? How will we grow and build ourselves up?

I want to be clear about something though. There are people who claim to be Christian and use the term Christian but are not Christians. These groups are not to be included in the body of Christ. I don’t think we are supposed to work together with them. I think when we include groups that do not acknowledge Jesus as God or who believe in other paths to salvation, they actually hurt the body of Christ. We should not try to include them, but we should speak the truth in love, as Paul says. When we don’t speak the truth, it keeps the body of Christ from being as strong and built up as it should be. These false Christians have damaged it. Earlier I said that some denominations claim to be the only Christians and now here I am sounding a bit like those exclusionary types. The difference is they want to exclude people for their use of drums or speaking in tongues. I am saying we should not seek unity with those who deny the deity of Christ or preach universal salvation. They are not members of the body of Christ. The ultimate criterion for membership is what Paul tells us in Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.”

Faith in Christ’s work on the cross is required. For it is Christ who holds the whole body together. He is the head, and from Him, we are sustained and joined together.

Does that mean we should get rid of denominations? I don’t think so. Just as we cannot be a body made up entirely of toes, we should not have a single local church. Remember what Paul said about the gifts? God has given gifts to His people. Just as we need some people to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, I think different Christian denominations actually need one another. For we cannot reach the entire world through one style of worship. Some people respond to loud and emotional, some people respond to somber and reserved. Some people believe in infant baptism and others are convinced of believer’s baptism. These differences are ok. Our unity should be focused on our shared love for Jesus Christ and our desire to see the whole world come to faith in Him. Paul is saying that when we reach unity in the faith and become mature, then we will attain to “the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

I’ve been thinking lately about how dark and hopeless our society is. It feels so often like evil is winning on all sides. But the darker our world becomes, doesn’t that mean the brighter our light can shine? What if the body of Christ used this opportunity to come together? What if we who have put our hope in Jesus set aside our differences and worked together? Scripture tells us that if we, as the body of Christ, reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of Jesus and become mature, then we will look like Jesus! Isn’t that a goal we should be working toward? If, or should I say when, that happens, the Church will be an unstoppable force in the world. If the collective body of Christ could attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, our world would certainly be a different place.

Next week, we will look at the rest of this chapter. Paul will get into more specifics of how we are live if we want to, “walk worthy of the calling” we have received. For now, let us put these words into practice. Let us strive to walk worthy of our calling by being humble, gentle and patient, and let us speak the truth in love as we seek unity with fellow believers.

Pray: Heavenly Father, we confess that we have not always sought unity within Your body of believers. Please forgive us, and please help us to be humble, gentle and patient, and bear with others in love. Help us to seek unity instead of division. Please grow us and mature us in our faith so we may be filled with the fullness of Christ. Help us to be discerning so we do not get taken in by false teachings or ideas. Please give us the courage and the words to speak the truth in love. Help us stay true to Your unchanging Word. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.