In the last segment, we saw how Paul broke off at the beginning of ch. 3 so as to slot in a comment on the significance of his own apostleship, and then picked up the train of thought again at v. 14.
He picks it up again at the beginning of ch.4. Try and see it with me.
Ch. 3 began, "For this reason, I Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles ..." then he broke off to talk about his apostleship to the Gentiles, and picked up the thread again at v.14, "For this reason I pray that you may find the strength to love in the love of Christ for you" ... that's what we touched on in the last chapter. But now notice that as he began ch. 4 he picked up the same thread a second time, "I therefore (same as "for this reason"), for this reason, I, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you" ... and so on.
Both the second half of ch.3, and the first of half of ch.4 grow out of the last bit of ch.2. The phrases, "for this reason" and "therefore" are all rooted in what he said there. What he said there was: "You're all members together in God's family; like living stones (he uses exactly the same figure of speech Peter used in I Peter 2.5 ...) like living stones, be yourselves built into a spiritual house whose foundation is Christ, the prophets and His apostles, so the whole structure grows into a harmonious whole as you each take your place in it alongside all the others."
The thing he started out to say in 2.19-20, he won't finish till he reaches 4.15-16.
Read both those passages one after the other, so you get a feel for their repetition: Read 2.19-20, and 4.15-16
It's the growth of the fellowship that's in view the whole way through - Paul never loses sight of it. From beginning to end of Ephesians that's the one controlling thought that holds everything together. In our very first study we saw that community is God's Master Plan for His entire creation, and the church is to be the living demonstration of it in every age.
It's our "togetherness in Christ" that Paul is on about from first to last.
Our "growing up" is Paul's whole theme - but not just our growing up as individuals ... rather, our growing up as a fellowship. He has our congregational maturity in view. It's how we grow up in our "togetherness" that he's concerned with.
That's the thrust of all that now follows: it's our life together as the Church that we shall be thinking about now, right on through to the end of Ephesians.
It's important to see that, because we normally hear the exhortations to a Christian life-style as if they were addressed to us individually - as though our private, personal growth into Christ-likeness is the beginning, the middle and the end of all Christian living ... and it isn't. It's our shared, corporate growth into Christ-likeness that is the beginning, the middle and the end of all Christian living. It's the sort of Church we all are that matters ... more than the sort of Christian each of us is separately. What we're like as a fellowship of believers matters more than what we're like as individual believers.
That's why ... (to launch into ch. 4 now)
v.2 - lowliness and meekness must
characterise our lives, along with patience and the ability to be
forbearing of one another in love; that's why ...
v.3 - we must be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace.
And then Paul digresses again! - to underscore, the moment he makes it, the point he's at such great pains to make, that it's in our life together that we must grow up; for what he then goes on to say in verses 4-16 is that fellowship - togetherness, unity, community - is of the very essence of the new life in Christ we were given when we believed. Unity is an essential part of the very givenness of our life in Christ.
"There is only one body ...
"There is only one Spirit to animate the one body ...
"There is only one hope (only one end in view) to be embraced by us all ...
"There is only one Lord, whom in our obedience we're to serve as one man ...
"There is only one faith to be expressed in our living ...
"There is only one baptism; that is to say, we were all launched on the one path together ...
"There is only one God and Father of us all, so we're to be a united family. "
Congregational, denominational and inter-denominational unity are all implied; ecumenicity in principal is of the very essence of the Gospel.
Now let's look at some of these qualities that are required of us in our togetherness if we're to reflect in our shared life the truth as it is in Jesus.
With all lowliness, note: it means a willingness for others to come out above you ... for others to be invited to sing a solo, or play the piano, or teach a Sunday School class, or read the Scriptures in church, or be elected President, or be asked to do this or that ... and not mind ... and not mind at all! ... because we are truly convinced that we are in the church to serve it, and not that the church is there to serve us. The fellowship is not there to serve our interests - we're in the fellowship to serve its interests.
The Church, in the purpose of God, matters more than you do. It's in the Church's life, more importantly than in your personal life, that Christ is to "appear" - to be "embodied".
Meekness is the quality of "others-centredness".
It's not the same thing as mildness. We tend to associate the two words "meek and mild" together (you must beware of letting hymns shape your theology - too often truth is stretched or distorted to fit the needs of rhyme and rhythm: truth is sacrificed to literary style - it's terrible). Both Jesus and Moses were meek - Moses is described as the meekest man in all the earth (Numbers 12.3), but he was anything but mild the day he came down from the Mountain with the Tables of Stone in his hand, and saw the people given up to profligacy. Jesus was anything but mild the day he cleansed the Temple Courts. His anger that day was nothing short of awesome.
The meek man can be kindled to real indignation - but over wrongs done to others, not over wrongs done to himself.
In the Greek the word for meekness is the word used to describe an animal that's been well and truly "broken in". To be meek means you don't kick and buck like a rodeo animal, but you're submissive to the reign. A broken-in animal is not an animal which has had all the spirit knocked out of it - it's an animal whose spirit, unimpaired, is disciplined. It can still gallop like the wind, but under it's rider's reign. Its energies all serve it's rider's interests, not its own. That's the point. We're to serve our rider's (Christ's) interests in the fellowship - not our own interests.
In other words, it means, the man in whom self has died; he is God's gentleman
The Greek word is makrothumia.. It is the ability to bear insult and injury, injustice and misrepresentation, misunderstanding and jealousy without retaliation ... without getting "riled up" by it. It is the ability to soak up the illwill of others without letting it turn you resentful or sour or bitter or retaliatory. It is to be as Jesus was, Who, "when He was reviled, did not revile in return, when he suffered did not threaten ... but bore the sins" of others in a spirit of love that was never defeated by what they did to Him.
It's no use a Christian protesting that that's asking too much of him - that it's more than any man can reasonably be expected to give. As the parable in Matthew 18 tells us, that's exactly how we're forgiven by God, and if we won't forgive the same way we've been forgiven, then we forfeit our own forgiveness. We have to be like this, or we simply won't be saved.
This quality is absolutely vital if we are to do the next thing Paul says is required of us, and that is to ...
It's the attitude in which the bad things we do to each other never provoke us into rejecting one another, or having contempt for one another so we destroy fellowship. It should simply never happen in a church fellowship that two members so fall out with each other that they can't be civil to one another.
It is a sin against Christ and the very love by which you're saved.
It is a sin - it is not a weakness.
The strength to love like that is what marks a Christian out as different from others - and if this quality is missing in him, he's simply not a Christian at all. As John said, "the man who says "I love God", but hates his brother all the while, is, quite simply a liar." He has deceived himself. He thinks he's saved, and he's not saved at all. He's not.
If the love of Christ has mastered you, a man of love you'll be; if a man of love you're not, then the love of Christ has not mastered you, and you're not a Christian.
All these are necessary qualities if we are to be "eager" ... the word is spoudalontes - it means to be committed whole-heartedly to the maintenance of peace and goodwill in the fellowship: to be really motivated to "maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace".
That's what we have to be fired up to do.
And why? Because - and here's the point - God means the Church to be a living demonstration of His eternal purpose, which is ... the reconciliation of all things in a unity which is all-embracing.
The Church has got to display this unity in its life, or it's a lie upon the truth - it's a denial of the very Gospel it preaches.
To put it quite bluntly - hear me now - the Church matters more than you do. If it doesn't, you're not yet in sympathy with Christ - you're not grown-up - you're still a bawling infant when you should by now be a responsible adult. The Church's interests must come before our own. You and I have to promote the church's welfare, if need be, at the expense of our own.
If we don't do this, we're at loggerheads with Christ. We're scattering, not gathering, with Him.
In verses 4-6 Paul is concerned that we should see why this is so. "This is the way it has to be", he says, "not for the sake of what the church ought to be, but by reason of what the church is."
It is one body, since we're all reconciled to God in one body through the Cross, 2.16;
... there is one Spirit animating us all, since "we all have access in one Spirit to the Father", 2.18;
... there is one hope that belongs to our call ... the hope of an eternal shared inheritance, 1.14, 18;
... there is one Lord - who in all things directs us in His Father's Name. If we really are fulfilling His will, all things will work together under His direction - they must, or someone is simply disobeying Him somewhere;
... there is one faith - one basic body of truth on which the whole church rests, the way a building rests on a foundation stone whose lines determine the way every part of the building goes;
... there is one baptism, for we're all launched on the same path together; and there is one God and Father of us all, above us all, in us all and working His one work through us all.
That's what the Church is.
Be what you are, then!
Because ... the unity the church presents to the world is more important than the dedication of a single Christian life. Jesus said, "This is how the world will know that you are my disciples: that you ..." what?, "...that you live upright, sanctified lives?" ... that's not what He said; He said, "that you love one another."
It's the testimony we present in our togetherness, not the testimony we bear in isolation, that counts.
If what our life in fellowship says is at variance with what we say privately, we mustn't be surprised that no-one heeds us.
Now let's be realistic about this.
Paul knows very well that sin disturbs our life together every bit as much as it disturbs our lives separately. But it is precisely there that we have to demonstrate the power of Christ's love to overcome its divisiveness and maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, even so.
This passage does not say that sin must never disturb a congregation's life. What it does say is that a congregation must demonstrate the power of Christ to overcome the destructive effect sin has, and maintain its unity in spite of its sinfulness.
We must learn to live by the continuing forgiveness of God in our shared life the same way we learn to live by the continuing forgiveness of God in our private life.
A sinless church we shall not have this side of the Second Coming. But the church that demonstrates the power of Christ to overcome the effects of sin in its life so that it doesn't destroy the fellowship - that we may have. It must be seen in our life together that "where sin abounds, there doth grace much more abound."
Love must cover the multitude of our community sins.
In verses 7-13 Paul goes on to meet an objection to all this: the objection is that the sort of unity he's pleading for will produce a "manipulated togetherness", in which we're pressured to think alike, and dress alike, and look alike, and sound alike, all in a dull and boring uniformity.
"No! No!", Paul answers. The unity is expressed best in exciting diversities
God makes us all different. Vive la difference!
Stuart Briscoe once illustrated the point by remembering that once he was lecturing a class of students in Japan by a lakeside. Pointing at the trees through the windows of their class-room, he said, "Count the shades of green in the trees and the grass you see growing by the lake." They tried, but after a while they gave up. The green was unified, but the shades of green were infinitely diversified.
That's how God wants it.
We must not, in our quest for unity, press for a manipulated togetherness in every little thing - nor, on the other hand, must we fall into disarray by encouraging total freedom of individual expression, whether in the area of gifts and abilities, or beliefs and life-styles, so it's impossible to detect any underlying unity at all.
All gifts - however diverse - have one end in view in their bestowal by God, verses 11-13:
1. for the equipping of the saints for their work of ministry (there is no comma in the Greek between those phrases, as though 'the equipping of the saints' is one thing and 'the work of the ministry' another thing - they're both the one thing; the saints are equipped by diverse gifts for their one shared work of ministry);
2. for the building up of the Body of Christ to its full maturity.
In other words, we have a ministry to each other, the whole aim and purpose of which is to make us effective in our blended ministry to those outside.
Paul is under no illusion that this will come easy to us. It has to be worked at (v.13) ... "until we all attain to it".
Finally, note v. 13:
a. Unity of the Faith = doctrine
b. Unity of knowledge of the Son of God = devotion to Christ - to His person.
Doctrine and Devotion, both - they go together. Head and heart must be in proportion. God doesn't want men whose heads are too big in proportion to their chests, nor men whose chests are too big in proportion to their heads - but men in proportion, as Christ is ... tough-minded, but tender-hearted (not hard-hearted and soft in the head).
And note v. 16 - "when each part is working properly".
Each part = you and me ...
working ...
properly!
Too often the church is like a football team of eleven men desperately in need of a rest, surrounded by 11,000 spectators desperately in need of exercise!
In all this, do let's leave room for the unprogrammed element which is so vital to the freedom of the Spirit.
I have seen churches programme every member into organised functions - every member is on a committee and has a formally defined task and responsibility. I think that's dreadful. It's restricting, stultifying, falsifying. It makes, not for a fluid living body, but for a stiff-jointed mechanical doll.
Some programming there has to be indeed. But a shared vision and spirit that animates us all as one is what is wanted.
That is what God has provided. Receive and embrace it.
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