Ephesians 4:1-6 | "Called to Unity"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

You guys sound good today.

Man.

Oh.

How come you guys don't sin like that every week?

You do, you do.

There's just more of you here today, and it's wonderful.

Oh, thank you for lifting your voices.

If you would please turn your Bibles to the book of Ephesians, chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

As you turn, allow me to pray for us as we begin.

Father, we come to your word this morning.

Giving thanks, giving praise and giving glory to your name for your wisdom, for your grace, for your power to save.

Lord, would you give us clarity of mind, openness of heart, and strength of spirit to comprehend together.

To comprehend together the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth.

And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge until we all are filled with all the fullness of God.

Do this we pray, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 1.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Here we go.

Follow along with me as I read.

I, that is Paul, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

This is the turning point in the whole letter of the book of Ephesians.

We're dropping in at a pretty pivotal moment here in chapter 4, verse 1.

Notice how chapter 3 ends with an amen.

Chapter 4 begins with a therefore.

This isn't unique to Ephesians.

Paul does this exact same thing in Romans 12, 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Timothy 2.

Peter does it in chapter 5 of 1 Peter.

It signals a shift in the letter from how things are to how we should respond and how we should live in regard to it.

And Paul doesn't just mean the things right before, he means all of the truth of the letter thus far.

And the word worthy here, it's a key word.

It's the word the whole idea hangs on in many ways.

It's a word that can be used in the marketplace to describe a fair price, right?

Is three bucks a gallon a fair price for a tank of gas?

I don't know.

But it's exactly the kind of question Paul is asking of the Ephesian church, of their life together.

He's speaking to all of them as one group.

These you's are plural, they're y'alls.

I know y'all don't say that up here, but they're y'alls.

He's talking to the whole group.

Does the life we lead, as some translations render it, does the life we lead represent a fair price, a balanced response with the glory of our calling?

That's our question this morning.

It's the question Paul asks.

And then he writes, to which you have been called.

That last verb, you have been called, reads an awful lot to my reading, like the Greek word for church.

Ecclatheta, we have here in Ephesians 4, sounds a lot like ekklesia.

And it should, right?

Because the Greek word for church means called out ones.

It means people who've been gathered together as an assembly, and that's what it came to mean in Greek.

Everybody was called out to the auditorium, and so they gathered, and that's the word the church chose for herself.

Or the people called out and gathered.

Or rather, the word Jesus chose for her.

And it makes sense, right?

So catch this.

Paul is saying, walk worthy of the calling which made you all into a church, which made you all into a gathered group of people, which made you into called out ones.

Walk like called ones, Paul says.

In a way that's worthy.

He's calling them all, the Ephesian church, to walk, to walk like a church should.

To walk like a church should.

And if you look back with me at chapter 2, verse 14, excuse me, the coffee was really good this morning.

And better than the coffee was the singing.

So forgive me if I speak too fast.

Y'all have me pretty excited.

Chapter 2, verse 14, Paul writes, For he himself, that is Jesus, is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create and himself get this: one new man in the place of two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

And he came and preached peace to you who were far off, that's the Gentiles, and peace to those who were near.

For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father.

Sounds a lot like our text for this morning, doesn't it?

The very nature of what it means to be a church, in the way Paul's telling them in the book of Ephesians, it means to be part of that one new body, that one new man, no longer Jews and Greeks, but Christians, Jesus followers, the church.

This is a huge deal.

And so do you see how it just doesn't make sense for a church founded, began and rooted on bringing people together to be divided.

As Paul will say here in a moment with the word unity.

It makes no sense.

It's like a circle with corners or a guitar with no strings or a Christian without Christ.

It doesn't add up.

A church, a local church, like the church in Ephesus or our church here, which is kind of fun that we're all in one room today, at its very core, is united.

So it's just very counterintuitive.

It's very backwards, very dissonant to use another musical illustration.

To have divisions amongst true Christians in one local body.

Doesn't add up.

And I mean that.

Paul is writing to just one local body.

He's writing to Ephesus.

He's not saying that the Ephesians must walk in unity with the Corinthians here.

He's saying that the Ephesians must walk in unity with one another here.

And then what he says to them translates to us, right?

That's the apostle's desire for a local church, because that's how a local church ought to be.

It just makes sense.

You must act like a church, a group of united, reconciled people, called out and called together.

Right?

And so the life of our church, the life we lead, is the way some people render the word to walk.

The life we lead must reflect that fair price, a balanced response with what it means to be a church.

One commentator puts it it's a call to that corporate humility, gentleness, and patient, forgiving love that exemplifies reconciliation.

That word exemplifies is the word for the day.

Does the way we live together make an example out of the glory of reconciliation?

With all humility and gentleness with patience, Paul writes in Ephesians 4 and chapter 2.

He's telling us what that looks like, right?

To walk in a worthy way looks like humility.

It looks like gentleness.

It looks like patience.

The one who walks with all humility walks in a worthy way with his redemption.

The church who walks in a humble way walks in a way that accords with what made them a church.

Church Father Chrysostom calls this humility the basis of all virtue.

It's first because it comes first.

You cannot be gentle until you're humble.

And you cannot be patient until you're gentle.

Calvin writes, it's pointless to ask for patience if people's spirits have not been tamed first.

Or to preach gentleness without humility.

And when Paul mentions love, in the next verse here in Ephesians, when Paul mentions love, he means what he says elsewhere, that the true nature of love lies in patience.

Love is patient, Paul writes.

But notice that extra comma and the extra with in your Bibles at verse one, verse one, verse two, excuse me.

With patience.

It's dead on.

It's faithful.

Paul wrote an extra with there.

And commentators argue and disagree about whether that means the patience is supposed to go with the bearing together or the humble gentleness.

I don't know what the answer is to that, but it does seem clear that Paul has set humility and gentleness together in a special way.

In a special way.

And I have at least one idea why he might have done that.

Jesus says, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I am gentle and humble.

It's the same word, same root words.

Gentle and lowly, gentle and humble in heart.

And you will find rest for your souls.

Paul tells the church to be gentle and lowly too.

It's simple stuff.

Walking worthy of the calling is to walk like Jesus.

Be like Jesus, Paul tells the Ephesians church.

Imitators of God as dearly beloved children, all of you together, all of us together, as a church collectively.

Paul tells us to walk like a church, walk like Jesus.

Because that's what a church should do.

And we do that by bearing with one another in love.

Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

He doesn't leave us with just these qualitative examples of gentleness and humility.

But he tells us how.

He gives us verbs, right?

Bearing with one another is this picture of holding one another up, of lifting one another up.

But it's also this picture of tolerating, of putting up with one another.

Jesus uses this word when he says, How long shall I put up with you?

To the disciples.

We read that with a lot of anger.

I think we ought to read it with more humility, more patience than we do.

How long shall I put up with you?

Jesus says to the disciples, and Paul speaks of bearing under persecution.

It's a word that speaks to the stuff of endurance.

Imagine with me, if you would, the way a rope twisted together of many strands spreads that tension across all the strands.

So that when one of them is stretched, they all bear it together as one rope.

They all feel it.

When our church is stretched, do we all feel it?

Do you feel it?

Do we rise to the challenges together?

Do we bear them with one heart?

I think it makes sense that if you're bearing with your brothers and sisters in Christ, you'll be tired.

The Christian life is hard work.

It's exhausting stuff.

It's not easy.

If the creation groans, then how much more should we?

Often we seem to shirk away the difficulty.

Like, well, this should be easy.

And it is.

His yoke is easy.

It's still work.

It's joyful, life-giving work.

But you should feel tired if you're bearing with your brothers and sisters.

And I have one way to check yourselves.

One way I check myself.

You know if you're bearing with your brothers and sisters in Christ, if you feel relief when you hear them sing.

It's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

If you're walking with each other, then you'll feel that burden.

You'll feel the burden of your brother and sister's sin.

You'll feel the weight of their worry, of their circumstances, of the relational difficulties in their homes and in the church and in their workplaces.

You'll feel that weight.

And when you hear people sing, when you see them rejoice in their Savior, cry out to Him for help.

When you hear that after you've been praying for them, all of a sudden you know they're going to be okay.

All of a sudden you know they know the same Jesus you do.

All of a sudden you have hope.

And you feel this relief.

I see it on some of your faces on Sundays.

I really do.

It's one way to ask yourself Am I bearing with the people I'm singing with?

You see, it's hard to be divided.

It's hard to be critical of one another when we're singing the same truths at the same time.

Sing.

And then sing louder.

For your brothers and sisters, share your burdens.

Carry each other.

For if Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree, as Peter writes, surely a church called by his name ought to bear with one another in love.

Before chapter 4 ends, Paul will write, Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

A church that walks worthy of its calling is a church that walks like Jesus.

Right?

That's what a church should do.

But not only that, not only bearing with one another, but eager to maintain or striving to guard the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

It takes work, it takes zeal, it takes effort.

We have to want it.

We have to want it.

Too often, friends, you and I, and me most of all, are reactive towards matters of unity.

We respond after something comes up.

One commentator translates that word eager as making every effort, every last effort.

You aren't making every effort, and I'm not making every effort.

If we wait to do something until something comes up.

Another commentator writes, Unity and peace are two of the central achievements of Christ through the blood he shed on the cross.

God has created one new man in Christ, thus making peace.

And so we see that this unity of the Spirit Paul writes about, it's our unity.

It belongs to us.

But we didn't make it.

We didn't make it, we didn't create it, we didn't generate this unity out of thin air.

It's essential to what it means to be a church because the Spirit made it.

Can you and I return what Jesus Christ bought with his own blood?

No.

Of course not.

Of course we can't.

John Stott writes of this passage the unity of the church is as indestructible as the unity of God himself.

It is no more possible.

This is a little bit of a stretch, it feels like a stretch, but it makes sense.

It is no more possible to split the church than it is possible to split the Godhead.

It cannot be done.

It cannot be done because the Spirit made it.

The true Christian cannot expel the Spirit of God from his own heart any more than he could force the Spirit to indwell him in the first place.

And we know, we know this is true of Christian unity as well.

We do.

Because even the most painful estrangements we feel, and we've all felt some, even the most painful breakdowns of relationship and unity of heart between Christians, so long as we're still willing to say that the other person is a Christian, we're still family.

Unless you're going to say somebody's still in their sins, then you can't break that unity.

It cannot be severed.

But this is a big but.

It can be scorned, it can be trampled underfoot.

It can be scoffed at.

Dare I say blasphemed.

It can't be broken.

But we can choose not to honor the unity we've been given.

And we do.

But even when we remain faithless, God remains faithful.

And the promises of God can never be broken.

And this just makes sense, right?

This just makes sense.

We should love the things that Jesus loves.

We should love the things that Jesus loves if we've been called by his name.

And Jesus made abundantly clear how much he loved our unity when he prayed for it in the garden, died for it on the cross, and rose to secure it for all eternity.

It's natural and right and good and worthy of our calling, as Paul says, to defend the glory, to defend the glory of the things most precious to Jesus.

Thomas Brooks, a 17th-century pastor, just nails it when he says, discord and division, become no Christian.

It's unbecoming.

Just doesn't, it's not right.

For wolves to worry the lambs is no wonder.

But for one lamb to worry another, this is unnatural and monstrous.

Strong, strong language.

Unnatural, he says, it goes against the way things ought to be.

Such division is unworthy of the calling.

Because it doesn't add up.

It's just not how a church should walk.

But count this with me on your fingers.

Verse 4.

There is one body and one spirit.

Just as you recall to the one hope that belongs to your call.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God.

If I passed kindergarten, I think I did, I got seven.

Seven ones.

Seven ones, and that the word unity sounds a lot like the word one.

It's only used in the New Testament here in Ephesians 4.

I think because Paul wants it to sound like the word one.

There are other words for similar things.

One.

Perfect oneness.

That's what seven hints at in poetic language.

Perfect oneness.

Some argue that Paul is quoting an early Christian hymn or creed, maybe even a baptismal confession.

No, I think Paul is writing something glorious that would become hundreds of hymns.

We have no reason to think there's anything before.

Paul's writing something beautiful and notice that the Trinity, that eternally glorious triunity.

That's what Trinity means.

Notice how Paul draws out each member, each person of the Godhead's role in establishing and sustaining the unity of the church.

One spirit binds us together in one body.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13.

1 Corinthians 12:13

Verse 12 and 13.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body.

Jews or Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.

In chapter one of Ephesians, Paul writes, In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance, our hope, until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

We just sang it.

The Spirit guarantees our hope until redemption's done, until we join in endless praise to God, the three in one.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

Well, there is only one Lord.

When Paul says one Lord, he doesn't mean that we all believe in the same Lord.

That's what he means by one faith.

When he says one Lord, he means that there is no other.

All authority in heaven and heaven and earth has been given to me, Jesus says.

All things have been handed over.

There is only one Lord.

But not only that, not only is there one Lord, but for the true church, we share in one faith.

There are not twelve different ways to believe in Jesus.

There's only one.

And it's faith.

There can be no half-belief, there can be no conditional belief.

There is either faith or no faith, mustard seed though it may be, belief or unbelief.

That's it.

And that binds us together.

And for each of us, for all of the calling out ones, there is a beginning.

There is a first.

One baptism.

There comes a moment in each of our lives when we find ourselves committed to following Jesus because there's nothing else adds up.

There's a day where by faith we came to believe that there was only one Lord, that there was no choice but to follow Him.

And so we did, and that's what baptism is all about, friends.

It marks our entrance into the Christian life, into one body, one unified body.

And in just a little bit, some half dozen or so people, unless Jeremy found ten more of you, are going to wade down into that water.

They're going to declare their faith in the triune God and commit themselves to his kingdom.

This is why it just doesn't make sense, again, for a Christian to not be baptized.

If we say we follow Jesus, if we say we love Jesus, then we will obey his commands.

And he's given you a very simple, kind of weird, kind of difficult, I get that, but simple nonetheless.

One simple first command.

We always want to launch out into great things for God.

I do.

We want to plant churches and spread the gospel and build ministries and end world hunger and mortify the sin in our flesh and preach the word, defend the faith.

Whatever it may be, we're always excited about all these great things.

Baptism comes first, Jesus says.

Baptism comes first because obedience is better than sacrifice.

If you want to be part of Christ's kingdom, you want to build Christ's kingdom, but you refuse to kneel before the king.

Bad news.

You're no knight in shining armor.

You're a traitor snuck in, a spy from the jump.

Baptism unites us because it reminds us that all of us started somewhere.

There's a beginning.

And more than that, just like how we can't be divided when we sing, it's really hard.

It's really hard to hold on to grudges or stick to divisions when as a body we welcome people into our fellowship through baptism.

When we say, come be a part of the one body, it's hard to hold on to division.

It's really hard.

You can't give a group hug unless you're part of the group.

Right?

Deuteronomy 6, verse 4.

Deuteronomy 6:4

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, right?

That verse is practically the mission statement of Old Testament Judaism.

And Paul, he's hinting at it.

Do you hear it?

He's hinting at it.

He picks up with it when he writes in verse 6: one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Paul isn't writing that God is the father of all people ever created everywhere on earth.

Don't use this verse to argue that we're all God's children.

That's not what it means.

The context of the book of Ephesians means he's clearly talking about the single fellowship of Ephesus, that one local church.

And many manuscripts even add the phrase, of us.

Of in through all and in all, of us.

Many people think that ought to be in your Bibles.

And it makes sense.

We all have the same Father.

Paul tells them, and Paul tells us.

Imagine the force of this argument from Paul toward the Jewish Christians who are being divisive with Gentile believers.

These would be Jewish Christians, Christians who believe that God sent the Messiah and that Jesus of Nazareth wasn't just a prophet, but God incarnate.

These are Trinitarian Jewish Christians.

Wrap your head around that for a second.

Trinitarian Jewish Christians, and Paul drives home to them that the Father, the Gentile Christians worship, is the same God from the Shema.

The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And that's what we all declare when we baptize people.

And that's what they declare when they are baptized.

There is one God and three persons.

We believe in Him.

We will follow Him as dearly beloved children.

And as they come up from the water, the rest of us, the rest of us get to welcome them eagerly with patience, humility, and gentleness into one united body.

Because that's what a church should do.

Let's pray.

Oh Father, we seek your forgiveness through our foolishness.

We seek your strength through our spirits.

Father, give us hearts full of love, full of your love, as your spirit sheds it abroad in our hearts.

Give us hearts full of your love to rejoice with those who rejoice this morning.

O Lord, may we declare your praises in song, in prayer, and in baptism as we continue our time in worship.

Please do that, Father.

It's in your name.

In your name alone we pray.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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