Therefore Be One

Eph. 4:1-16

Good morning! Today we return to the second half of our series on the book of Ephesians. The title of the series is “Therefore”, and today we will see the reason for this title. Because it has been about a month since we were in the series, I think it will be useful to provide a little background and a brief review of the first three chapters. 

Paul’s initial visit to Ephesus is described in Acts 19, which tells us that Paul first went to the synagogue so as to try to reach the Jews, as was his usual practice. He spoke boldly in the synagogue about Jesus for 3 months. But, although some came to faith, others became opposed to his teaching, and as their opposition grew, Paul left the synagogue and began teaching daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus, where many Jews and Greeks heard his message as he spoke for two years. 

God did great miracles through Paul. Acts 19 says that people were healed by simply touching handkerchiefs that had touched Paul. Many people came to faith in Christ. 

There were seven brothers, sons of an important Jewish priest, who went around trying to invoke the name of Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. Did they themselves have genuine faith in Jesus? No. And one day, a demon in a demon-possessed man called them out on it, saying, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” And then the demon-controlled man thrashed these men thoroughly. This event caused many Jews and Greeks in Ephesus to be filled with fear, and this healthy fear led many to publicly repent of sins they were practicing in secret. A number of people had been practicing sorcery, and they brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly, and in this way, faith in Jesus in Ephesus continued to grow. 

The growth was so significant that people who made idols became quite concerned about the future of their business. One of them in a speech whipped up the others into a frenzy, which spread throughout the city. Paul’s traveling companions were grabbed by the crowd. Paul wanted to speak to the crowd, but the disciples would not let him, because they saw how great the danger was. A city clerk was able to quiet down the crowd and have them disperse, and soon after, Paul left Ephesus.

At a later point in time, after being imprisoned by the Romans, Paul writes and sends his letter that we call Ephesians to the many believers in Ephesus. Chapter 1, after its opening verses that explain who the letter is to and from, begins with an extended passage of praise to God for what He has done through and in Christ. He explains that he and the other early believers were predestined for being given the revelation of the gospel, redemption through Christ’s blood, the forgiveness of sins, and that they were chosen to put their hope in Christ, thereby receiving this redemption and forgiveness. In the same way, he tells his listeners, they too were included in Christ when they heard the gospel message of salvation, and that when they believed, they were marked in Him with a seal, the Holy Spirit, who serves as a kind of deposit guaranteeing the fulfillment, the completion, of our future redemption. By extension, we too, as modern-day readers of Paul’s letter, are also included in Christ when we hear the gospel message and believe. 

Paul goes on to explain how thankful he is for them and prays for them, asking for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they would know Christ better. He says that he prays that they would know the hope to which God has called them, their incredible inheritance they now possess by faith, and the power of God that is available to them. He says that this power is one and the same power that raised Christ from the dead. 

In Chapter 2, Paul reminds them that, before coming to faith in Christ, they were dead in their sins, slaves to their sinful desires. But, he tells them, even while they were in this dead state, God made them (and us) alive with Christ. His point is that it is by faith we have been saved, not by any works we did in that dead state (which weren’t truly good works anyway). He says that we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ to do good works that God has planned for us to do. In other words, good works don’t save us, but the saved versions of us does do good works, to the glory of God. 

In the second half of Chapter 2, Paul focuses in on the Gentiles and their relationship to the Jews. He reminds them that, prior to hearing and responding in faith to the good news about Jesus Christ, they were separated from the covenants given to the Jews, separated from being in any way a part of the Jews, and because the promises were only given to the Jews, separated from any kind of promise of redemption or salvation. 

But Christ has changed all this. He didn’t only die for the Jews. He died for all people, Jew and Gentile. By fulfilling the Law in Himself, He effectively set the law aside, so that Jews and Gentiles are in the same position in Christ. By doing this, He brought both groups together, not only making peace between us, but making us brothers of one another. God, who at one time was only accessible to the Jews, who lived in some sense in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple, is now accessible to all through and in Christ.  As a result, Paul says, Jews and Gentiles alike are like stones set in a single building, one in which Christ Himself is the cornerstone, a building in which God through His Spirit now lives. 

I find this a beautiful truth, a powerful metaphor. I often wonder what it was like to be in the presence of the Spirit of God in the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle or the Temple. I imagine how thrilling, but also how scary, that must have been. What would it be like to be a fly in the inner room, sitting on a stone? Or, if stones could be alive, what would it be like to be one of those stones? Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is saying that this is exactly what we are – we are stones that make up this inner room with other believers, both Jew and Gentile, and there among us is the awesome Holy Spirit of God.

In Ephesians 3, Paul further develops the truth of God’s marvelous work of bringing Jew and Gentile together in Christ. He talks about how incredible this revelation of God is, and how, although there was nothing in Paul worthy for this honor, God chose Paul to be a central person in preaching this revelation to the Gentiles. He calls this a “grace.” 

I find this also a beautiful truth, one that I don’t often think about. When I think about grace, I think about how it is totally by grace that I have been saved. But it is equally and totally by grace that I get to be used by God in some way to further the kingdom of God.  It is by grace that I get to tell some unbelievers the gospel. It is by grace I have been able to tell my wife and kids more about Jesus. And it is by grace that I am here today, and on other Sundays, encouraging other believers and explaining the Word of God. It is equally by grace that you get to serve Him in various ways. When it comes to sharing the gospel, I think we all get nervous because we don’t feel like we are capable of doing something so important. Well, we aren’t capable! That’s an important part of what “grace” means! It is by God’s grace that we can open our mouths, and reasonably coherent words can come out. And thinking about things in this way makes me want to get out there, because I want to see the power of God’s grace at work.    

Paul goes on to say that, in effect, this grace Paul has experienced to be one who shares the gospel with Gentiles is so wonderful that his many trials, his frequent sufferings, are nothing to be discouraged about. Paul looks at the total package, grace to share and sufferings, and sees the combination is one million percent positive. 

Again, this is a powerful lesson for us. The joy of knowing Jesus, and the privilege of encouraging others, believers and unbelievers alike, in Jesus, is so incredible that the hard things of this life, even the super hard things, simply do not compare. Paul tells us not to be discouraged when looking at Paul’s hard life, and by extension, we should not be discouraged by looking at own lives, no matter how hard they become. 

And then, in the second half of Chapter 3, Paul makes an absolutely beautiful prayer for the Ephesians. He prays that God would strengthen them with power in their inner beings so that Christ would dwell, would live, would reign, in their hearts through faith. And given that their lives in Christ have been rooted and established in love, He prays that they, along with all God’s holy people, which includes us, would grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. He prays that we would know this love, not just know about it, a love that surpasses knowledge, and in so doing that we would be filled with the fullness of God. And then He praises God and says to Him be the glory. Amen!

I feel like we could all go home now. But this letter of Paul has a second half, and we will start to explore this second half today. Now the two halves and joined together, by a single word, and you guessed it, that word is the Greek word for “therefore.”

By way of analogy, at the Jewish funeral I went to for my dad when I was in California a few weeks ago, we were given a little prayer booklet, which I have brought with me and will pass it around so you can look at it. One of the things to notice is that the page numbering is backwards. This is because Hebrew reads right to left rather than left to right, as English reads. But the booklet contains both English and Hebrew, and lots of Jews don’t really know Hebrew, so it is confusing to people to try to find things in such a booklet. The rabbi leading the service knew this. We only used a small number of prayers or passages from the booklet, but the most important prayer is a prayer of mercy for the departed. I love the way he told us how to find this prayer. He said to just go to the middle of the book, to find the staples. Well, this “therefore” in Ephesians is the “staples” in the letter. On one side is the first half, which we just went over. And on the other side is the other half. The second half of the entire book of Ephesians is the answer to the question, “What are the practical applications of what we have learned?”  And so, let us dive in to Chapter 4. 

As a prisoner for the Lord, then [therefore], I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. – Eph. 4:1

This verse is the staple of the booklet. It is what holds the whole booklet together. Without it, you have a bunch of loose thoughts, loose pages. So let’s go deeper into this verse.

First Paul describes himself as a prisoner for the Lord. Is he speaking figuratively? In what sense is he a prisoner for the Lord? Well, to use a well-worn quote, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” People attribute this quote to Sigmund Freud, but like many funny sayings, he didn’t actually say it. But it is directed at him and his work, because he viewed everything as symbolic in some way. Well, sometimes a prisoner is just a prisoner. Paul was a literal prisoner; that is, he was in prison. And viewing himself as a prisoner for the Lord is something he did elsewhere in his writings and when he spoke, and it was true. It was because of his love for and obedience to the Lord that he was in prison. And this fact was relevant to the rest of the message of this verse – it was proof that he himself had lived a life worthy of the calling that he had received. 

I want to say something about the word translated as “urge”. It is parakaleo. It is the same root as that of paraclete, a word for the Holy Spirit. It means to come alongside and call. I think a better word for the translation would be beg, because begging implies this personal involvement, a joining of the person, even to the point of embarrassment for the person doing the begging. Paul is saying, “I beg you – I’ll come down on my knees in front of you and do it – I beg you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” 

I want to also say something about the word translated as “worthy.” We can react to this because we know that we are not worthy. God is worthy to receive all praise and honor and glory. The Greek word is axios, and I think a better translation for our time might be “appropriate to” or “in keeping with”. We are to live a life in keeping with the calling we have all received, the amazing promises and realities described in Chapters 1-3. 

And so the supremely honorable Paul, gladly suffering the indignity of being a prisoner, gladly even goes further in throwing away his honor status by saying, “I beg you – please – you see that I have lived 100% for God, putting Him above my honor, even my life – I beg you, please, do the same. 

And so we hear this, and our response should be “How?” “How do we do this? What does it even look like?” “And how do we find the power to do it?” The answer to the power question is before the “staple” – God has given us this power, as it says in Eph. 3:20, God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or even imagine, according to His power which is at work within us! And as for the “what do we do” question, that is the main content of everything that comes after the “staple”. So let’s keep going, and see some of the answers to the “what do we do” question.

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. – Eph. 4:2-3

Paul has a long list of answers to the “what do we do” question, but he starts with one of the most important. I think about how different this is from what our culture teaches, if adventure stories and movies are any indication. Now, as often as not, the hero of the story is not even very nice, although he eventually does the thing only he can do. This is not really a new thing – I think of Han Solo and Ironman as examples. But there are countless others. Our society teaches that it is OK to be rude and brash and even mean, as long as you eventually get the job done.

But God teaches, through Paul, that our character is the job to get done. Humility, gentleness, patience, not letting disagreements lead to disunity – these things are the very calling that we have in Christ. These are hard things. Subduing a wild beast is easier than taming our own selves. But in the power of God, we can do even these.  

Paul then goes on to explain that unity is not the same thing as uniformity. In fact, true unity occurs through diversity. God purposely didn’t make us clones of each other, although He certainly could have chosen to do that. If we were clones of each other, it would probably be a lot easier to have unity. But no, He chose to make us all different, with different strengths and weaknesses, and different gifts of grace. Here is what Paul writes: 

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: “When He ascended on high, He took many captives and gave gifts to His people.” (What does “He ascended” mean except that He also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. – Eph. 4:4-13

Our unity runs deeper than we can understand. We are all, as we said earlier, bricks in His new building, the replacement, so to speak, for the Tabernacle and the Temple, and beyond this, we all share the same Spirit. The same Holy Spirit is at work in each of us. So we are not even any longer truly distinct entities. If I were to use Venn diagrams and draw one circle for me and one circle for one of you, there would be a large region of overlap, because the one Holy Spirit is in both of us. 

Let’s talk about the Old Testament scripture quote in here. This is from Psalm 68, verse 18. The entire Psalm seems to be describing a military victory procession, the result of God defeating all His people’s enemies. In the past, when there was a great miliary victory, the winners would take the valuable spoils of the losers with them. And as part of the celebration, when the soldiers came back to their people, they would throw some of these spoils of war, whether coins or other valuable items, into the crowds that were welcoming them. And so the picture here is of Christ the victor, being given everything, for dying on the cross and then being resurrected unto life. We know that, this makes Him uniquely worthy to open the seals of Revelation, and we know from other passages that in doing this, He has defeated even death, forever. And so the picture here is of us, gathered around like the crowds observing the victor coming home, and as He goes by us, He throws to us incredibly valuable gifts. He gives us apostles, the forerunners of the gospel, and prophets, who tell us what is to come and who rightly divide truth from falsehood, and evangelists, who continue to share the good news of the gospel around the world, and pastors, who shepherd believers and help them to grow together and keep them protected and rescue them when needed, and teachers, who help explain the Word of God so that all can understand and apply what it teaches. If you view these as people, these are the “captives”, or if you view them as abilities, these are the “gifts”. From my perspective, as one whom Christ has saved, I see myself as one who has been captured by Him from Satan, and I also see my ability to teach as His gift. 

And the point here is that these gifts are not for the benefit of the people that have received them. Indeed, these people are captives. They no longer live for themselves. Their gifts and indeed their very lives are for the body, to equip them for works of service, so that we can all live a life worthy of the calling we have all received. 

And as we are all being built up, we will grow. We will mature.  We will be built up. And it is through these processes, along with our individual devotion to God, that we will become increasingly humble, increasingly gentle, increasingly patient, increasingly bearing with one another in love, and increasingly unified in the Spirit through the bond of peace. 

Paul goes on:

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. – Eph. 4:14-16

When I think about being blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming, my thoughts go back to my dad’s funeral, where I was given the booklet we have already talked about. At the funeral, my stepmom, my sister, and I were also given special candles, called Sheva candles. Sheva is the Hebrew word for the number seven. In Jewish tradition, when a close family member dies, those closest to the person are to “sit sheva”, which means to not leave their home for seven days. During this time, they are not to work, or cook. They are simply to “sit.” People are supposed to visit them throughout these seven days, to get things done that need doing, and also just to “sit” with them. If the person grieving wants to talk with them they can, and the person sitting with them will talk about whatever they want to talk about, but the “sitter” is not supposed to initiate conversation. Sitting in silence is fine too. The stricter versions of the traditions include covering up all mirrors, so you don’t look at how bad you look, and also includes having a short service every day, where they pray together the prayer at the staple in the booklet. During all this time, during these seven days, a candle, the Sheva candle, remains lit. It is large enough to burn for 7 days. 

I took my Shiva candle with me back to South Carolina, and the morning after our late night flight, I lit my candle and put it on the mantle. Whenever I walk into the living room of our house, I look at it. I watched it getting lower, and lower, and lower. When I first lit it, it was somewhat challenging moving it to the mantle, because moving too quickly would have blown the candle out. Symbolically, I think of that candle initially being potentially blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. But because the candle is enclosed by a cylinder, as the candle continued to burn, it went lower, and lower, and lower, down to where no wind could affect it. You could say that the candle has had to die to self in order to become able to resist the false winds. And this is not a Biblical analogy – it is my own – but I think it fits. We too need to allow God to burn us down – we need to die to self – in order for us to become what God wants us to be.

Perhaps I am stretching the analogy too far, but I like to picture a second candle growing larger, being built as the one in the jar burns down. This second candle is entirely unlike the first one. It is living, and growing, and becoming more and more beautiful, even as the original candle diminishes and becomes less and less presentable. Take what you will with this picture.

As for the Scripture itself, believers here start out with a Greek word this version translates as “infants.” I think perhaps a better phrase would be “little children.” Little children can be easily misled. And they are quick to become emotional, to break down, to cry. This is the picture we should have of ourselves, if we choose to not do what it takes to grow in Christ, if we don’t read our Bibles, if we don’t pray, if we don’t regularly fellowship with a church body. And of these three things I have mentioned, it is the third one which really gets the emphasis here in Ephesians. If you are not in a church body, how will you benefit from the teachers and pastors and others who God has placed among you to expressly help you to grow? 

Then we will become the body God calls us to be. It’s not really about us as individuals at all. There is very hard for us to accept or understand in our individualistic culture. But it is the clear message of Ephesians. 

I’ve been struggling the past week or two with foot pain. The pain is in a very specific place, below the second toe of my left foot, and it kind of feels like I am walking with rock in my shoe at that very place. What has happened is that the tendons and ligaments that support that one small, seemingly innocuous toe joint, have become inflamed, swollen, and weak. They are not supporting the joint correctly, so the joint kind of subtly sticks out under my foot, and then when I walk, excessive pressure is put on that point. This one tiny issue is affecting my entire body. It is hard for me to walk, and when I do walk, I compensate using muscles I should not be using in that way, and I get more aches and pains.  

As I was writing this message, I began to wonder if maybe this issue has happened solely for the sake of this sermon illustration. I can’t say that makes me particularly happy, but I will accept it. Again, here is the end of the passage: Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

I find that the phrase “speaking the truth in love” is often misused. People take it to mean permission to say hurtful things to people “for their own good.” But that is not the meaning here, which can be seen if you look at the context. The word “instead” means there is a contrast. To what is the phrase being contrasted? To being tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. In other words, the contrast to being told the truth in love is being told falsehood with evil intent. Is there ever a time for a hard truth to be told? Yes, but the spirit in which it is told is extremely important and can determine whether the truth is or is not received. I think of the phrase, “Come, let us reason together,” from Isaiah 1 as a better framework for speaking truth that is hard for someone to accept.   

I don’t think we should avoid having difficult “truth-telling” conversations with people, but I think they should be bathed in prayer, and we should ask for wisdom in how to share such things with as much love as possible. The word for “love” in “speaking the truth in love” is agape, the self-sacrificial kind of love, the kind of love used to describe Jesus’ love for us, exemplified by His death on a cross. It is in this spirit of dying to self that we should seek as we undertake not only hard truth telling, but also any activity that has as a goal the growing and building up of the body of Christ.