1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Eph. 4:1-3)
Paul urges us to “lead a life worthy” (4:1) of our calling as Christians. Last week, we began to look at how we should do this. We can begin to live out our calling by imitating Jesus’s humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance. Today, I want to consider another way we can express our calling in action. In addition to being humble, gentle, patient, and forbearing, we should “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (4:3). Quite clearly, this unity can be experienced in Christian community because it comes from the Spirit. Notice that we are exhorted to maintain (the Greek verb basically means “to keep”) the unity that comes from the Spirit. We don’t create church unity through our own efforts. Rather, we strive to protect and preserve the unity that God gives us through the Holy Spirit. Why does unity matter so much, and what does it have to do with our calling? The answer comes from the previous chapters of Ephesians. In chapter 1, we discover God’s grand plan for the cosmos: namely “to bring unity to all things in [Christ]” (1:10). In Christ, God will ultimately bring to unity the divided, shattered world. God has already begun to do this work of uniting broken things. In Ephesians 2, we learn that God is at work bringing together divided peoples, in particular, Jews and Greeks. Through His death on the cross, Christ broke down “the dividing wall of hostility” that separated these two peoples. His did so “to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace” (2:14-15). Because of Christ, all Christians are “joined together” in unity (2:21), becoming “a dwelling” for God” (2:22). The unity of Christians, therefore, is an essential element of “the calling [we] have received” (v. 1). Unity isn’t spiritual extra credit. It doesn’t show up only in the fine print of the Gospel. Rather, Christian unity is an essential result of the work of Jesus on the cross. But this unity isn’t merely some theological abstract, something to be thought about but not actually experienced. On the contrary, who we are as the united body of Christ is something we, followers of Jesus, ought to experience in real life and real time. Unity is so central to our calling, Paul tells us that we will walk worthy of our calling by making “every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (v. 3). The Greek verb translated in the NIV as “make every effort” could also be rendered as “being zealous or eager.” Unity is something every Christian should be zealous or eager to maintain. Seeking unity is essential to living our calling. Unfortunately, many Christians have overlooked Ephesians 4:3. We have a knack for dividing up over things, often things that aren’t really all that important. If we don’t like something our church is doing, even if it isn’t theologically objectionable, we tend to complain, deride, and divide. Left to our own devices, we’re not very good at living humbly and gently, exercising patience and forbearance, and making every effort to preserve unity. We need the clear exhortation of Scripture, such as we find in Ephesians 4; the strong support of our fellow Christians; and the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit to help us yearn for and work to maintain Christian unity. If we want to live out our Christian calling, we can start by speaking and acting in ways that support the unity of our church, even if that requires plenty of humility, gentleness, patience, and putting up with things we don’t like. Help us, Lord, to be zealous for unity and to live out this unity in tangible ways as we embody humility, gentleness, patience and forbearance! Comments are closed.
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