Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-january-21-2025
Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16
Unity in the Body of Christ
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope when you were called – 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.
11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 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.
14 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. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 For in 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.
As you might remember, the apostle Paul was called by Jesus and assigned a specific task – to go into the world beyond the borders of Israel to tell people the story of Jesus. He was the perfect choice for that role, since he was educated in Greco-Roman philosophy and rhetoric as well as the Hebrew scriptures. He apparently spoke several languages and he was a citizen of Rome. So for ministry among the gentiles, Paul had all the skills.
As part of his role in the church, Paul was supposed to start communities of faith – mostly in the form of house churches – in the towns and cities he visited. That part of his ‘commission’ is pretty well known. But there’s another part of Paul’s commission that we sometimes overlook. He also needed to teach people how to ‘live like Christians,’ to teach them what life was supposed to be like in the Jesus movement. When you think about it, the people who were coming to faith in Jesus – and especially people who had grown up as gentiles – those new believers had no pattern for what ‘Christian life’ was supposed to look like.
It seems that the actual teachings of Jesus were being passed along by those who had known him and followed him in person – the apostles, like Peter and James and John. Those teachings would later be written down in the gospels. But as he was organizing churches, it fell to Paul to show new Christians how they were supposed to apply those teachings of Jesus in their everyday lives and in their life together.
Those who had been Jews before they became followers of Jesus at least had some idea about the outlines of the life of faith, based on the traditions of their people. Those traditions gave them some guidance, although they didn’t really fit the new movement Jesus had founded. People wound up arguing about how much like Jews the Christians were supposed to be. That’s probably what Jesus had been talking about when he warned about the futility of putting ‘new wine in old wineskins.’
But people who had been gentiles – who had been raised offering sacrifices to the pagan gods – they had no pattern at all for life in the community of faith. So the apostle Paul, as the founder of so many congregations, had to teach people what being a follower of Jesus was supposed to mean. That’s what he’s doing in this part of his letter to the church in Ephesus.
Paul begins by writing that the followers of Jesus should be “completely humble and gentle,” and “patient, bearing with one another in love.” The members of the church are to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
Sadly, it’s all too common to hear people who call themselves Christians criticizing and judging one another with a degree of bitterness and self-righteousness that must grieve God’s heart. That kind of bitter discord apparently went on in Paul’s own time (as you can tell by his letters to the Corinthians), and sadly, it’s still going on today. Some Christian leaders seem to think that tearing others down is the best way to build up your own standing in the church.
Of course, in fairness, it has to be said that the apostle Paul himself sometimes got a little too worked up in his theological disagreements with people in the church. His letter to the Galatians, for instance, has some seriously overheated rhetoric. But in our passage for today, Paul points out that followers of Jesus should be working in a gentle and humble way to foster a sense of unity among ourselves.
And since a part of Paul’s commission was helping people put the teachings of Jesus into practice, this part of Ephesians offers some guidance on something important that Jesus told his disciples on the night of the Last Supper. Jesus had told them, “A new command I give you: Love one another . . . by this all people will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Of course, loving one another can be tricky in any movement where people have different roles to play. But Paul points out that it’s Jesus who gives each of us the various roles we play in his earthly body, which is what we understand the church to be. So whatever role we’ve been given in the church, we’re supposed to be treating each other with respect and patience and generosity. We’re supposed to show the character of Jesus to the world. And this can only happen, Jesus said, when the world looks at us and says, “See how they love one another.”
The church is meant to be different from any other organization. In spite of the way we usually think of it, in God’s eyes the church is not an organization of volunteers. We’re supposed to understand ourselves to be ‘draftees’ – to have been called into it by God. The New Testament Greek word for the church is ekklesia, which means ‘those who have been called out of the world.’ And when we get on one another’s nerves, or when we disagree about a point of doctrine or governance, we’re not supposed to respond the way people do in the world outside the church. We can’t claim to be faithfully following the teachings of scripture if we get into shouting matches or puff ourselves up with so-called “righteous indignation.” Or gossip bitterly about one another. Or question one another’s motives. Nobody looks at that kind of behavior and says, “Look how they love one another!”
Instead, even in times of discord, we’re called – commanded, actually – to demonstrate patient, humble, gentle love for one another so that even those times of discord become opportunities to foster the unity God calls us to. If the world sees that even when we disagree with one another, we conduct our disagreements with love and humility and mutual respect, then the world really does see the image of Jesus being displayed in us. And that’s what Paul is urging us to work toward.
Let’s pray. Lord, we ask you to nurture within us a spirit of gentleness and patience, especially toward other believers, so that we can serve you together gracefully and model your love for the world to see. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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