"Walk Worthy" | Ephesians 4:1–16 | Jake Porter

During the week, I get to work as a licensed professional counselor.

And particularly, I work with couples that are in crisis.

And as a psychotherapist, particularly in my work with couples, and I see couples that are recovering from traumas, one of the challenges that I frequently encounter is helping two people remain deeply connected without either person losing themselves in the relationship.

How do you maintain a meaningful connection with someone who's different?

Married people, is your spouse different from you?

A single people?

You've been through that with some relationships, or coworkers.

This isn't just marriages, coworkers, family members, siblings, parents, right?

How do you maintain a meaningful connection with someone who thinks differently, feels differently, sometimes wants very different things than you do?

So in psychology, we call this differentiation.

That's a fun word.

That's one you can use to impress people at the water cooler this week, maybe.

Differentiation is the ability to maintain a clear sense of ourselves while remaining emotionally connected to others.

When differentiation is lacking, relationships tend to move toward one of two healthy extremes.

And I've got some little graphic images here.

So the first is fusion.

Look at that.

There's fusion for you.

Fusion happens when people try to preserve connection by minimizing their differences.

Like there's this unspoken assumption that for us to be okay, we need to think alike, feel alike, agree with one another.

Eventually, somebody, if that's your mindset, somebody has to surrender part of themselves to keep the peace.

When sameness becomes a requirement for connection, being different becomes dangerous.

Right?

Now that's that's one ditch you could fall into.

The other ditch, the other extreme, is cut off.

All right?

Cut off.

Instead of sacrificing individuality to preserve connection, we sacrifice connection to prevert to preserve individuality.

We decide that, you know what?

If we can't agree, we can't be close.

Okay?

We decide that, you know, sometimes that distance is necessary.

Whether it's emotional distance, you know, that can be there even when we're physically in the same room.

So while distance is sometimes necessary, you know, for different reasons, safety reasons, whatever in relationships, cutoff as a relational pattern prevents meaningful connection.

If you can't agree with me about this, we can't be connected until you do.

So that's the other ditch you fall into.

Now there's this third possibility.

It's what I described at the beginning: differentiation, healthy differentiation.

We can remain fully ourselves while staying genuinely connected to another person.

We can have different personalities, perspectives, and experiences, even disagreeing about some important things without those differences threatening our relationship.

And in fact, our differences can become a source of strength rather than conflict.

Now, if you've ever been married, or really if you've ever tried to maintain any kind of close relationship with another human being, because you know, dogs actually do a pretty good job of not making this challenging cats, that's another story, right?

If if if you've ever tried this, you know how difficult this is.

You know.

But imagine bringing hundreds of people together into a church.

Right?

We wouldn't have any struggle with unity in the church, would we?

Surely not.

Different backgrounds, generations, personalities, experiences, convictions, and somehow all of these people are supposed to function as one body.

Now, how's that supposed to work?

How can we, as a church, as neartown church, be genuinely united without becoming exactly the same?

And what if the very differences that make unity difficult are actually part of what God intends to use to make us stronger?

That's where Paul takes us in this first half of Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So the main idea today of this sermon is that God has made us one and he calls us to live like it.

He's already made us one, he's called us now to live like it.

And what we're going to discover is that the unity God calls us to, it's not something we manufacture through better relationship skills or greater human effort.

It begins with something that God has already done for us.

And so look there at chapter 4, verse 1, and those first couple words, I therefore, and I'm going to stop right there on that word therefore.

Okay?

That's a significant word, meaning everything that's about to follow that word, therefore, is based on what became before that word, therefore.

Okay.

So anytime this is kind of corny, but anytime you see therefore in the Bible, you need to ask your quote yourself, what's it there for?

Okay?

It's important.

So before we go any further, we need to remember what we've seen up to this point in Ephesians.

So in chapter one, and consider these, I'm gonna I'm gonna move really fast, but I want you to try to really take all of these in as I go through.

In chapter one, we see that God chose us in Christ, adopted us as his children, redeemed us through the blood of Jesus, forgave us of all our sins, and sealed us as his inheritance by giving us his Holy Spirit.

And in chapter two, we saw that even while we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ and brought us together into one family, one new people.

And then chapter three, that Pastor Russell covered last week, Paul reveals that God's eternal purpose, his mystery for the ages, was to display his wisdom through the church, and he prays that we would be filled with all the fullness of God as we walk out that mission.

So then comes I therefore, Paul says.

So this marks a major turning point in the book.

Chapters one through three describe what God has already done for us.

Chapters four through six describe how we're called to live in response.

Not to earn God's grace, but because we've already received it.

So actually, the first main point of this passage, verses one through three, show us that our lives should match the calling we carry.

Our lives should match the calling we carry.

Look again at verse one.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called.

Now, the Greek word there, translated worthy, is axios.

Axios.

And it carries this idea of corresponding weight or value.

And I'm about to ask y'all to do something that when I'm sitting in your seat and another preacher's up here, I like roll my eyes and groan.

But let's just try it anyway.

If you're willing, put your two hands out in front of you like a scale.

There you go.

Now, I can't do this because of this, okay?

But imagine I got this other hand over here.

Okay?

Two hands out in front of you like a scale.

This axios word is about balance of a scale.

So, on one side, in your left hand, I want you to just imagine the weight of everything God has done for you that I just outlined.

He chose you, he adopted you, he forgave you by the blood of his son, he rose you from the death of sin to be alive in Christ.

He made you a part of his eternal family.

All of it, an undeserved gift of grace.

Now, in your right hand, imagine the way you live.

Just your daily, your daily walk in life, your attitude, your priorities, your decisions, the way you treat other people.

Does the way you live correspond to?

How is it weighted with the value of the calling you've received?

You can put your hands down.

Y'all actually did that way longer than I thought you would.

Think about that.

I I actually did that while I was kind of thinking through this passage this week, and I was like, I was convicted.

I was convicted.

I'm like, whoa.

No.

Now, of course, we can never repay God's grace.

We can never earn what he's given us.

He doesn't ask us to.

But our life should reflect the reality of what he's done from a place of gratitude.

Now, look where Paul goes next.

Verses 2 through 3, he describes what this worthy walk looks like.

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

Notice that Paul's first concern is how we treat one another.

Isn't that interesting?

Humility, which means seeing ourselves accurately before God, not needing to prove that we're better than anyone else.

Gentleness, which is which is not weakness, gentleness is strength exercised without harshness.

Even when we disagree.

Or patience.

Here's one I was convicted of in the last few days.

Patience.

I like the old King James translation, it makes it really clear.

Long suffering.

Long suffering means extending grace to people who don't move at our pace.

That's a big one for me.

Or see things our way.

And then bearing with one another in love means remaining committed to people even when they're difficult, frustrating, or just different from us.

Bearing with one another in love.

And all of this leads to verse 3 where Paul tells us to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Now, notice that word maintain there.

This is interesting.

Paul doesn't tell us to create unity, but to maintain it.

And that's because Jesus has already made us one.

Now, we don't always feel it, we don't always live it, but it's there.

Remember back in chapter 2, I preached this a couple weeks back.

Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, and he's brought us together into one family.

Our responsibility is to guard the unity that he died to establish.

But that's easier said than done.

It's relatively easy to be humble and gentle and patient with people who are like us and agree with us.

But what about those who don't?

So, in a world where disagreement is so often, you know, easily leading us to division, how do we maintain genuine unity without just becoming clones?

Which would be incredibly boring.

How is this kind of unity even possible?

Well, Paul answers that it's not better communication techniques or conflict resolution strategies.

He takes us somewhere much deeper and he points us to the very nature of God.

So in verses four through six, what we see is that our unity is rooted in the God we share.

Our unity is rooted in the God we share.

Look at verses four through six.

There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to the 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.

I'm sure you are all counting the number of times the word one appeared there, and you notice that it's seven.

Seven times.

Paul uses that word.

In the Bible, seven is a word that represents perfection, wholeness, completion.

We are one, right?

And he organizes these statements around the three persons of the Trinity: the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

Then he moves to Jesus Christ our Lord, and he concludes with God the Father.

This is the foundation of Christian unity.

Okay?

We are one because we share one Spirit.

We have one hope because we belong to one Lord.

We are united by one faith and one baptism, and we are members of one family because we have one Father God.

Now think about what Christians believe concerning the Trinity.

And if you're new to church and this is a kind of a new idea to you, let me just tell you, it's a mystery.

You won't understand it when I say it.

None of us do.

Okay?

This is part of faith, right?

If we understood it all, it wouldn't be faith.

But here's what Christians have historically taught about God, who God is, and this idea of the Trinity.

We believe in one God who eternally exists as three distinct persons Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Father is not the Son.

Okay?

And the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father.

Yet they're not three gods, but one God.

The distinctions between the persons are real, but they do not compromise the unity of God's being.

And while the unity of the church is not exactly the same as the unity within the Trinity, there's something really profound that Paul is getting at here.

Listen, if that is true about who God is, what that means is that unity does not require the elimination of distinction.

Just think about that for a second.

I know it's kind of jargony.

Had my professor hat on in this section a little bit.

Unity does not require the elimination of distinction.

The God who has brought us together is himself eternally one without the distinctions among the Father, Son, and Spirit being erased.

And then Paul pushes his point even further.

Our unity isn't just like modeled after God, it is established by him, rooted in him.

The Holy Spirit indwells us.

Jesus Christ the Lord has redeemed us, and the Father has adopted us into his family.

We don't have to manufacture unity by finding enough things in common.

We already share something far greater than anything that might distinguish us from one another.

Now that doesn't mean truth and doctrine don't matter.

Paul identifies one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

Our unity has a real theological substance.

Today there's a Discover Neartown Church where people are going to come learn about our church and what it means to become a member here, or what we call a mission partner.

One of the things we're going to go over is this is what we believe, and we do ask you to believe these things if you are part of this body.

Okay?

But it doesn't mean we have to agree about everything, about every secondary issue.

There are lots of things we disagree on at this church.

We don't have to share the same preferences or approach life in identical ways in order to belong to one another in Christ.

Think back to those three pictures at the beginning on the slides, right?

Fusion assumes we must become the same to stay connected.

Cutoff assumes our differences make connection impossible.

But the gospel gives us another possibility.

We can remain genuinely different while living in the unity that God has already established.

And here's where Paul's argument takes a fascinating turn.

After emphasizing our oneness seven times, look at how he begins, verse 7.

He says, But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gifts.

Did you catch that?

Paul moves from one to each one.

We share one God, one faith, one spirit, one hope, but Christ has not given every one of us the same gifts.

And as we're about to see those differences, they're not obstacles to our unity.

They are actually part of God's design for our maturity.

So the rest of this passage we're covering today, verses 7 through 16, we see that our maturity grows through the gifts we receive.

Hear this clearly.

I could get on a tangent here, but I kind of got a bet going with my family about how long my sermon is today, so I'm not going to do it.

But in verses eight through 10, Paul draws from Psalm 68.

And you can go geek out to this later if you want to.

But what he's doing here is he's describing Christ as this victorious king who came from like a king who goes off to a distant land, conquers, and comes home with the spoils of victory for his people.

Christ is the victorious king who left heaven and descended to earth.

And so our differences aren't accidents in God's design, they're part of his provision for the church.

And then in verse 11, Paul identifies some of those gifts.

Look at verse 11.

Apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers.

Now, notice he's not naming abilities.

Teaching.

And there are other places where he talks about teaching or administration or leadership or discernment or serving or what.

No, no, that's not what he does here.

They're people.

People Christ gives to his church.

And verse 12 explains why.

To equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ.

The responsibility of pastors and church leaders isn't to do all the ministry while everyone else watches and receives.

It's to equip you.

God's people.

So that the whole church participates in ministry.

Every believer has something to contribute, and the body is missing when some missing something when its people aren't.

Participating and and I just I just want to brag on you right now.

Neartown church has many, many people serving.

I mean, this is something that I'm proud of our church for.

There is another side to this that I want us to think about.

We often think about spiritual gifts in terms of what we have to offer other people, what we have to offer the church.

Paul wants us to understand that Christ has also given other people gifts that we need.

Your strengths compensate for my weaknesses.

Your perspectives challenge my assumptions.

Your contributions will accomplish things I could never accomplish on my own.

This is important.

Sometimes, hear me out.

Sometimes what we experience as a burden in another person is actually a gift we haven't learned how to receive.

Let me make a confession, and I'm not gonna tell you who.

There are a few of you here that I didn't really like you at first.

I'm like, yeah, I'm not gonna be that person's friend.

And I've come to really appreciate some of those folks.

I'm working on the others.

She caught the sum.

I'm just being honest.

Now look at where all of this is headed in verse 13.

Paul says the goal is that we would attain the unity of the mature, the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Notice that Paul's not simply talking about individual Christians becoming more mature here.

He's not talking about your growth individually in this passage.

The picture is of the whole church growing together into one mature body, reflecting the fullness of Christ.

We already possess unity through the Spirit, but we're still growing into the maturity that unity is intended to produce.

And what does maturity look like?

What does it look like to be mature in this way?

Verse 14 says, We're no longer children.

What does it mean to act like a child?

Is my did yeah, she left.

No?

Is MJ there?

She's gone?

Okay.

Think about your children.

Kristen just got home from being gone for a few days.

All right.

So I've.

You don't get what you want.

Ah, you know, frustration.

I mean, my goodness.

Listen to how Paul describes no longer children.

Verse 14, we're no longer children tossed around by every wind of doctrine, vulnerable to every deception.

I maybe it was a mistake.

Introduced my girls to the original Ghostbusters movie yesterday.

And MJ looked at me at one point when I was thinking this was a mistake, and she said, Daddy, is this real?

No, baby, this is not real.

Can you maturity means I'm not blown around.

I don't believe the fluff out there.

I don't believe it.

Instead, verse 15 calls us to speak the truth in love, growing up in every way into Christ, who is the head.

Maturity does not mean avoiding difficult truths or topics in order to preserve harmony.

That is a very shallow understanding of what love is and maturity is.

Nor does it mean using truth as an excuse to treat people harshly.

Maturity means having both.

We need both truth and love, and we need people who will help us grow in both.

And then Paul brings everything together in verse 16.

From Christ, the whole body is joined and held together when each part is working properly.

The body grows and builds itself up in love.

Think back again to those three pictures from the beginning.

Fusion would demand that every part of the body would become the same.

Cutoff would leave every part disconnected from the others because there is some difference there, right?

But a healthy body requires something different.

Distinct parts contributing, what each part contributing what it has been given, all remaining connected under one head.

A body, think about a body made entirely of hands.

Or a body that existed as one big eyeball.

Paul uses that illustration elsewhere.

That wouldn't wouldn't work, it wouldn't function.

The body becomes strong precisely because its different parts work together.

And this is where I think Paul's vision becomes especially powerful for the world we're living in.

We live in a culture where differences can so often immediately become reasons for division, right?

We increasingly surround ourselves with people who think like us, agree with us, see the world the way that we do.

And when someone is different, it is often so much easier to dismiss them than to remain connected.

And I'm not gonna launch out on this tangent too much, but I'm just gonna say we are, we, if you are not aware, if your eyes aren't wide open to this, you are a prisoner.

Social media algorithms don't help as they quietly wall us into an echo chamber meant to reinforce whatever you believe and appeal to your most base instincts.

But imagine a church where people with genuinely different backgrounds, personalities, perspectives, and gifts remain deeply committed to one another because of their shared life in Christ.

And rather than merely tolerating differences, they recognize these differences as gifts from God for the good of the whole body.

What a testimony and a contrast in the midst of a divided world.

And isn't that exactly what Paul has actually been telling us throughout Ephesians?

Back in chapter three, last week we saw this, he said, God's manifold wisdom is being displayed through the church.

That is God's plan for how his manifold wisdom is shown in the world.

And he concluded the chapter with these words: To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

When the church lives this way, something glorious happens.

People who could never have made themselves one become a living testimony to the reconciling power of God.

This unity was so important to Jesus that on the night before his crucifixion, this is what he prayed for.

In John chapter 17, which is traditionally called the high priestly prayer, Jesus prayed that all who would believe in him would be one, just as he and the Father are one.

John 17 · chapter mention

And this is what he said, so that the world may believe that you, the Father, have sent me, Jesus said.

Think about that.

Like this is the these are the last moments before he's about to be betrayed and arrested.

On that night, the unity of his people was on his heart.

And the very next day, he was crucified.

And through his death, he accomplished the redemption that he prayed his followers would experience.

Because you see, our greatest problem isn't, and wasn't simply that we were divided from one another.

What do you think your biggest problem has ever been?

Our biggest problem was that our sin had separated us from the God who created us to love him and be loved by him.

And no amount of human effort or goodwill or better relationship skills could ever overcome that separation.

But Jesus lived the sinless life that I could never live, that you could never live, and on the cross, he took upon himself the judgment that we deserved.

And three days later, he rose from the dead, defeating sin and death, and opening the way for us to be reconciled to God.

And remember back to what Paul told us in Ephesians 2.

Jesus himself, he said, is our peace.

Jesus is our peace.

Through the cross, he broke down the dividing wall of hostility, reconciling us not only to God, but yes, also to one another.

The very things that once separated us no longer have to define our relationships because in Christ we have been made into one new humanity.

And this is why this vision of the church is possible.

If you have put your trust in Jesus, you are free.

Now, when I say you're free, where does your mind go?

I get to do whatever I want.

That's not freedom.

My dog does whatever he wants because we're terrible at training dogs.

That's not freedom.

In Christ, you are free.

You know what that means?

You are free to forgive others because you've been forgiven.

You are free to humble yourself because you no longer have to establish your own worth.

We are free to love people who are different from us because our deepest identity and belonging are already secure in Christ.

And when people who are genuinely different come together in that kind of love and freedom, contributing their gifts for one another's good, the world looks and gets a glimpse of something so different.

And they begin to see the reconciling power of Jesus Christ.

To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen, Paul said.

Perhaps you're here today, though, and you have never personally experienced that reconciliation with God through Christ.

Maybe you've been around Christianity for years.

Maybe you grew up going to church.

You've heard about some of this.

But you, you have never placed your faith in Jesus Christ.

You're still trying to earn that forgiveness.

You're still trying to secure your own worth.

You're still trying to find your own place.

The good news is you don't have to make yourself worthy of God's love.

Jesus has already done for you what you could never do for yourself.

And when you turn from self-reliance in your own way, and you place your trust in Christ, in his death, in his resurrection, what he has done for you, God forgives you and he makes you alive in Christ and He welcomes you into His family.

And if you've never taken that step, you can do it today.

You can do it right now.

You can just pray, Father, I trust in Jesus.

I turn from doing it my own way.

I trust in what Jesus has done.

And if you do that later, there are going to be people in the corners there to pray, to talk to you, and I want to encourage you to go to one of them and tell them, I want to trust in Jesus, or I just trusted in Jesus.

Tell them that.

If you're here this morning and you have crossed over the line of faith, you belong to Christ, I want to leave you with this practical challenge.

So here's our call to action this morning.

This week, identify one person whose difference you tend to experience as a burden.

And ask God to help you receive that difference as a gift.

And then move toward them, whatever that means.

Send them a text, invite them to coffee or to your loop group or something.

Maybe just praying for them would be moving toward them.

Think about someone whose difference you tend to experience as a burden.

Ask God to help you receive that as a gift.

So maybe you're going to initiate a conversation, invite someone to lunch, serve alongside someone you wouldn't naturally choose.

Maybe just simply take the time to understand a perspective that's different from your own, whatever it looks like.

Make it an intentional step.

Because God has made us one, and now He is calling us to live like it.