Do you ever look around, considering the state of the world, considering the state of ourselves, and think:

“If there was only something that would unite us!”  In the middle of so much polarization, so much division, if only there were something or someone in whom we might be united.  If we have ever had such thoughts, let us hear the good news from Paul.

Of course, it’s not so much news today from Paul for the church.  We may have heard it before. May we grasp it in a new way?  This is the point in his letter – a letter being written to the church, to followers of Jesus – where Paul turns from mainly speaking about who God is and what God has done, is doing, and will do.  Paul now turns to what this means in terms of how we, as followers of Christ live.  He starts with the church.  He’ll go on to talk about our households, our jobs.  Paul starts with the church.  If we’re not getting it right in the church, with one another, we’ll hardly be getting it right out there.  “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” writes Paul.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we turn to God’s word here.

We said in the beginning of this series that Paul wants the church in Ephesus (and by extension every church) to come to a deeper understanding of who they are in Christ and who and what they are called and enabled to be and do in Christ.  God is always where we start and it is with God that Paul has started.  We have heard of what it means to be in Christ.  Not simply holding Jesus somewhere out here as an object of belief, but living life in fellowship/communion/ connection/oneness in God through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit in us.  So we have heard over three weeks of being adopted in the family of God and living in the privilege of being daughters and sons of God.  We’ve heard of being given a purpose – to live for the praise of God’s glory.  To live in such a way that every word we speak and every action we take may reflect God’s love and mercy and compassion and justice and grace.  We have heard and given thanks for being brought from death to life in Christ.  We have heard about Jesus breaking down dividing walls of hostility within his church.  Jesus as our peace.  Jesus is our peace.  We have heard about another purpose of the church – to be a visible sign of the Kingdom of God in the face of spiritual forces that would promote and propagate hate, fear, division, greed, the kingdom of the self.  We heard that wonderful prayer of Paul that speaks of us having the power to comprehend, to grasp, to truly take hold of, all of us together, what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ.

So we’ve been sitting with these truths the last three weeks and I pray it’s been a blessing for us to sit with these truths.  Paul now turns to what these truths mean in our lives.  Some people would call this the application section, but I don’t.  Paul is not merely teaching here.  Paul is not simply seeking to impart a lesson and then give us some takeaways – like this were a seminar he’s giving.  Here’s the lesson, here’s the application.  We said three weeks ago that to follow Jesus, to live in Christ, is to have your story grafted into or caught up in or bound up in God’s great redemption story.  This is my story, this is my song. (We find out today that we all have a part to sing in this song!)

I prefer to think of it this way.  These truths that Paul is laying down in chapter 4 or not things that we take to apply to our lives.  We are called in Jesus to apply our lives to the truths that Paul has been laying down for three chapters (and which we just went over).  When we apply our lives – and I mean all that we are and all that we have, Paul does not call himself a prisoner in the Lord for nothing; when we name God as “the God to whom I belong” as Paul once did, it’s going to look like something in our lives, and it’s going to look like something in our life together.

“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg of you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” v1.  Paul is not simply teaching and he’s not ordering either.  There’s nothing coercive about this Christ following life, you see.  Paul is pleading.  Begging.  Exhorting.  Parakaleo.  Same word that’s still used in Greek for “Please.”   One of the first words I learned in Greek as I was meeting Nicole’s family all those years ago.  Life a life.  Walk worthily in the calling to which you have been called.  I like this idea of walking.  Someone has said it’s not fly or rush or sprint or run.  Walk.  We can do that.  We are united by the Spirit of God in the bond of peace.  Jesus is our peace.  We are united in the Spirit of God. 

The unity that we have is a gift. It can’t be manufactured and we don’t need to call it up from within ourselves (or fake it for that matter).  We are called to make every effort to maintain it.  To keep it. To guard it because there are forces at work who would take it away.  He is our peace.  Jesus is our peace.  May the church be a place of peace.  To be so we need ongoing maintenance together.  So – “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.” (1b-2)  Remember the One in whom we live.  Remember the One who said “I am gentle and humble in heart.”  Humility, patience, gentleness. 

An aside - Let me speak to the men for a few moments.  There’s a lot of talk in the culture about masculinity, toxic or otherwise.  What it means to be a man.  How men are voting etc.  We have to ask ourselves “How are we going to live?  What kind of men are we going to be?”  A focus on others or a focus on self?  Patience or a short fuse?  Being short-tempered (and isn’t anger an emotion that men are allowed to get to right away?) or long-tempered.  Aggressiveness (asserting my way and my rights and my lane and how dare you try to cut in front of me?) or gentleness – the power of God in us under control.  What’s the power of God in us for anyway?  To let us get our own way or to smite our enemies?  Or is the power of God in us to bring life, to restore, to repair, to bless even? – end of aside.

For all of us, the call here is to humility.  True humility that is other-valuing and other-serving.  True humility in which we recognize that we don’t have all the answers or that we’re not always right.  True humility that recognizes when we mess up and seeks to learn from it and rectify it if we can.  I’m often struck this phrase that people use when they win an award.  It happens all the time.  “This is so humbling.”  I wonder what’s humbling about it.  Maybe it’s just me, and maybe it’s good that I don’t win many/any awards.  I could see it being gratifying.  Why is it humbling?  If I were to give an award speech I might say something like “The temptation to pride is strong!”  Tue humility that recognizes our need for God.  True humility that recognizes that the One in whom we live came not to be served but to serve.

With gentleness.  Try a little tenderness.  With patience.  You’re hearing echoes of 1 Corinthians 13 here of course.  Love it patient.  Love is kind.  Love keeps no record of wrongs.  This isn’t just for weddings.  This is how Christ loves us.  This is the One in whom we live, saints.  Bearing with one another.  Putting up with one another.  Sometimes, believe it or not, we are hard to put up with.  I am, anyway.  Bearing with one another in love.  This is a good message for the church today.  We may be tempted to walk away from people who are hard to put up, people who annoy us.  We may even be encouraged to do so in the name of self-care.  I’m not saying that we’re called to stand fast in the face of abuse.  Let us ask God for wisdom and the ability to bear with one another.  I read one article whose headline was “I thought I was cutting all toxic people in life.  Turns out I was the toxic one.”

Let us walk worthily.  If we’re not getting it right here, we’re not getting it right when we go from here.  Remember who you are.  Remember whose you are.  Remember the God to whom we belong.  Remember that in Christ Jesus we are one.  Is it any wonder that calls for unity are so popular?  They touch something inside us that yearns for truth.  The people united shall never be divided.  One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel alright.  One love, one light, we get to share it.  Why do these message touch us so?  This is how God made us.  Where might we find this oneness? This is who we are dear church.  “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”  (4-5)

And we’re going to get mad at each other because we don’t like the same kind of music, or the colour of the sanctuary carpet?  Come on!

Come on.  Walk worthily of our calling.  This is Paul in preacher mode here:

There is one body united by one Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of Christ in me is the Holy Spirit of Christ in you.

 We are united in the same hope, the same assurance, the same assured expectation.  The gathering together of all things in Jesus.  The renewal of things.  The new heaven and new earth.  The end of brokenness, injustice, separation, mourning, crying and pain.

One Lord.  One Jesus.  One Son.  One Christ.

One faith.  One trust that we share.

One God and Father of all, whose name we share, who is our authority and foundation, who loves us and carries us close to his chest like a shepherd carries a lamb, who is above all and through all in in all. How are we feeling about everything now?!

Let us walk worthily.  We are one.

Of course at the same time we’re different.  We’re diverse.  God has made us this way.  We are each and every one of fearfully and wonderfully made (some moreso than others!).  I like to look around a church gathering and consider all the different life experiences we have had, all the different places we have come from and have been, in order for God to have brought us all together in a particular time and space and place.  It’s amazing when you think of it.  The breaking down of divisions between us does not mean that we are absorbed into an amorphous blob or assimilated into a Borgian cube.  We’re different and we truly celebrate our differences because has gifted us differently. 

All is grace and God is grace and God is generous and God gives open-handedly.  Jesus descended and lived among us.  Jesus ascended to the right hand of the throne of his Father, and he gives us gifts.  We call them spiritual gifts because they’re gifts and they come from the Holy Spirit of God in us.  Different gifts are listed in different parts of the NT.  They can be divided into speaking gifts and acting gifts, and include things like teaching, mercy, administration, healing, prophecy, evangelising (telling the good news of Jesus).  We are not to compare ourselves favourably or unfavourably with one another as if we were in a spiritual gift competition.  The use of our gifts are for each and every one of us. 

Paul lists four gifts here and they all have to do with leadership in the church.  The thing is, they’re not so much gifts as people.  God has gifted us one another, and we’re all involved in being gifts to one another.  It’s not just to leaders we might say “Who do you think you are, God’s gift?”  We’re all God’s gift to one another in God’s grace.  Paul lists people here.  “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers…” (v 12)  While there may be debate about which of these roles were restricted to the earliest days of the church, the spirit of all of them is active.  Apostles as people who are went.  Prophets as people gifted to bring God’s word into various situations.  Evangelists as people gifted to spread the good news to those not in Christ (and we all have a role to play there surely).  Pastors as shepherds – providing food and protection for the flock, enabled by and modelled after The Good Shepherd.  Teachers teaching and encouraging others in truths of God.

The thing that I want us to pay attention to, however, is not just the function that these people who are gifts of God to the church perform, but the end goal.  Look at v 13 – “ to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…”  Someone has said that the church is not like a train, with all the passengers sitting inertly albeit comfortably being take to their destination, being brought there through the giftedness of their spiritual leaders.  The church is more like an orchestra or a choir, where all the players play or sing their part, contributing their part of the love song which is life lived in the grace of God and life lived in service to God – to make known the praise of his glory together.

We keep on living in this truth.  We don’t lose heart.  Until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.  Until then we’re all of us growing up, united in Christ like cells in a body.  Each of us crucial to the body’s healthy functioning.

Wouldn’t it be good if there was something or someone to unite us?  Church, this is who we are.  This is who we are called to be. Rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.  Bearing with one another in love.  Speaking the truth in love.  In Christ who is promoting the growth of the body which is his church in building itself up in love.

Let us walk worthily.  Let us love worthily with the same love and grace in which we live in Christ Jesus our head.  May this be true for all of us.  Amen.