Thank you father for calling us! As we talk about growing in unity and building each other up, we’re going to need you to fill us up where we lack. Fill us up because all of us know deep down inside we’re works in progress. Give us grace and wisdom this morning because you created each and every one of us with a purpose. You called us to this place to be with these people so that you can do something amazing in each of us.
Inspire each and every single one of us to live into a calling greater than ourselves. Anoint us with your spirit and let it flow from every facet of our being. Let there be loving truth in my words, and keep me out of the way so your message can touch your people. Lord, let your glory be known to us now and forever. In Jesus name. Amen.
We’ll be in Ephesians 4:1-16 today.
We’re in a brand new series today titled, “Community in Action.” From now until Easter, we’re going to examine the practical, day-to-day actions that we should embody as Christ followers today. The practice of living out the gospel has never been more important in our fractured and divided society. We believe that when we move together in living the gospel that our community will experience revival.
This passage we’re going to look at today builds on understanding the theme of Ephesians 1-3. That theme being that you are now a child of God through faith in Jesus Christ. What you did in your past, the color of your skin, your educational attainment, your income level… None of that matters. What matters is whether you received Jesus Christ as your lord and savior and are now united with him in new life.
Here is an outline of what we’re about to read because it’s a lot to take in.
- In verses 1-2, you’re going to see Paul build off the theme from chapters 1-3 and talk about our calling and how to embody that calling
- Verses 3-6, he moves to how that calling unites believers together
- Verses 7-11, then addresses our diversity
- Verses 12-16, you’ll see Paul marry unity and how that is benefited by our diversity
Ephesians 4:1-16.
1I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 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 grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore it says,
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”
9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
(Ephesians 4:1-16 ESV)
Let’s look to verses 1-2.
1I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love…
Here’s the translation: Now that you’re saved through faith in Jesus, go live it out. Don’t be a hypocrite. Walk the talk.
This is the defining the relationship sermon. Some of us, we’re not all-in with our faith. We believe and practice only when it’s convenient.
Paul is being a little tactful here and says he “urges” you. I’m going to sound more like that cousin you avoid during the holidays because he doesn’t have the social graces to give you the pleasantries first.
You admitted you were sinner, you believed Jesus died for your sins and was resurrected on the third day, you confessed it with your mouth. But you don’t want to live a life that reflects your new life?
Some of us, confess this on Sundays and we say we have been saved when we were then do nothing else when you leave. When we were doing drugs, cheating on our wives or girlfriends with porn, lying, and stealing, Jesus gave you victory from those sins. So go do something with your life that reflects a new found life in Jesus!
If you’re not sure how to start, Paul gives us four verbs that you can embody every single day that will cause us to live out the faith we confess: humility, gentleness, patience, love.
Let me define these words for us, because I don’t want this to be just Christianese:
- Humility: When we act in humility, we are
considering others at our own detriment—attack that pride.
- Are you smarter than the other person? Do you know better? Are you more righteous, a less crazy? Probably! And that’s my point!
- If you thought that, then you need to start being humble. Humble like Jesus died for us on the cross when we were still wretched.
- Gentleness: in the old king james, this word is
translated as meekness. I think that’s a better word than the word gentleness
here. Meekness means not demanding what we know is due to us.
- Sure you could have been wronged, and you could have taken matters into your own hands because you have strength, but in your meekness, you stand down. It’s an intentional act.
- Patience: is bearing troubles and
long-suffering.
- Some of us have a problem with long-suffering. We got hot tempers and all we want to do is curse out the other guy.
- Love: Love isn’t tolerance. Love isn’t putting up with somebody. Love is covering for a person’s weirdness, and annoying behaviors.
Let’s be honest, I don’t naturally have these characteristics, just ask somebody. We need God’s help to embody these characteristics, they are not natural tendencies. It’s why last week, we concluded we need to pray bigger. Because if we’re going to do something worthy of our calling, we need to pray bigger just to embody the characteristics of our savior, through the strength of the Spirit of God.
With this impossible task at hand, I’m going to give you how those verbs help us take three specific actions in doing something worthy with our calling.
First action:
Humbly maintain unity in the body
Let’s go to verses 3-6
3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
To explain this, I’m going to just read from a Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s sermon preached in 1956, “Paul’s Letter to American Christians.” The context of this sermon is Dr Martin Luther King reading a modern day letter to the churches in America from the perspective of the Apostle Paul based off of the idea of unity in the body found in verses 3-6.
Americans I must remind you, as I have said to so many others, that the church is the Body of Christ. So when the church is true to its nature it knows neither division nor disunity. But I am disturbed about what you are doing to the Body of Christ. They tell me that in America you have within Protestantism more than two hundred and fifty-six denominations. The tragedy is not so much that you have such a multiplicity of denominations, but that most of them are warring against each other with a claim to absolute truth. This narrow sectarianism is destroying the unity of the Body of Christ…. God is bigger than all our denominations…
There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church. You have a white church and you have a negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11 o’clock on Sunday morning to sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” and “Dear Lord and Father of All Mankind” you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America…
Martin Luther King Jr (Montgomery, AL 11/4/1956)
The lesson Paul has for the Ephesians is no different than what Martin Luther King Jr was echoing in the fifties, and no different than it is now, in the 21st century – it’s easier for people to be disunited over small things, physical things, temporal things, than it is for us to be united under the spiritual power that saves us from death.
Sure, at Woodside, we may not be dealing with the level of racism and segregation like Dr King was in the 50s when he preached this sermon, but we are dealing with the same types dangerous divisions caused by ideology—whether that’s political, or philosophical. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, democrats/republicans, immigration, evangelicals, Wolverine, Spartan, Buckeye. Some of you have disowned your own flesh and blood based on who they did or didn’t root for last November, I mean, vote for.
We got bigger things that we are called to than worthless, separatist polemic. There are people dying every single day without knowing the saving power and love of Jesus Christ and they need us to reach them united together in humility, gentleness, patience, and love. This is a worthy calling!
We are the body of Christ, and we must be eager to maintain the unity of the body in the Spirit of Jesus Christ because there is only one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and one father who is over all and through all. The hope we all have is in Jesus Christ, that is what we were all called to, there is no space for disunity because of our politics, or philosophies.
Again, this is not something that we can do on our own. We need Jesus to do this.
- We need him to give us humility and consider other people’s interested more than our own.
- We need gentleness because when we create unity, we’re definitely going to have to swallow our pride even though we have rights to retaliate.
- We need Jesus to give us patience, because you will be offended.
- We need love because there is no point in unity if we don’t truly love the people we’re united with.
Here at Woodside, we have a thing called church membership and before you get all anti-commitment twitchy, listen to my rationale. Making a commitment to the local church, is you, intentionally taking a step toward humbling yourself to be part of something other than yourself. You are bringing unity.
Let me define the relationship for you: in becoming a member, you are committing yourself to be unified with the people of God in a local church. That’s because members are committing to regularly gathering with their brothers and sisters to be united with them on Sundays for worship and during the week in groups so that we can equip each other and build one another up.
When you become a member, you are committing to being a part of something bigger than yourself.
In your bulletins, you received this card. It’s our next steps card. Fill it out and drop it off at the connect desk to register for the Next Steps class that will be taught here next week (March 1) at our 10:30 service. In the class you will learn what it means to be a part of Jesus’ family and also a member here at Woodside. Stop waiting around. If March 1 doesn’t work for you, then scan that QR code and sign up for the next one. Don’t be that person that skips out on a date.
Second action we can take that is worthy of our calling is to:
Actively minister to the body
Let’s go to verse 7-11. Keep in mind now, we’re going from unity, to celebrating that unity by talking about our diversity.
7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”
9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…
The grace that was given to each of us is faith. He saved us in faith. That was Christ’s gift—freedom from the bonds of our sins. That’s not to say that you will have all things figured out and that you have no more issues because of your faith. I’m justing that if you’ve followed Jesus for longer than 5 minutes, then you can do something to actively minister to the body of the church. It’s a 5 minute wait period because people usually need 5 minutes to collect and gather their thoughts after receiving a gift so great.
When we look at verses 8-12, you should have picked up two things:
First, is in verse 8, Paul says, “he gave gifts to men…” Plural: there is more than one gift. You can translate that into there is more than one type of skill, insight, experience, or talent. Jesus unleashes those gifts within us when he ascended into the heavens, that he might fill all things.
Second, he tells us what we’re supposed to do with them in verse 12. Underline that verse, verse 12. The reason we have different types of gifts is because we are called to build up the body of Christ. We need to equip each other for the work of ministry.
Ministry is not only for the church staff, notice that in verse 11? He specifically lists out the types of church staff, and he says these people, they are here to equip you for your ministry. You can impact way more may people from your positions and places in life than I can from this stage. I am here, Jon is here to equip you to impact those people.
You are neglecting your calling if all you do is grace us with a warm seat at one of our church services. You’re wasting your time! You were called to your ministry based on your gifts! There is a specific group of people that only you can reach with your specific giftings and they need you to act!
Your hurt, your scars, your depression, your loss, you think you’re the only one in this church going through those things? Come on now, you think you’re the only one with a secret addiction that you think nobody knows about? It boggles my mind sometimes when people act like they’re the first person in the world to face hardships. There are other brothers and sisters who faced hardships or are facing hardships. Maybe, just maybe, we can get out of our heads that woe is me mentality and start ministering to people in our vulnerability. Don’t you think you’d be stronger together?
I don’t want anybody to think that they aren’t good enough for ministering to the body of believers because they lack a degree, or an experience, or because their previous sin disqualifies them.
Your sin may have disqualified you from being part of the family of God, but the blood of Jesus qualifies us to be a part of this body and to actively minister to the body of Christ.
Let me stop for a second. We had our first night as a warming center last night. We served dinner, provided a warm place to sleep, and then sent people out with breakfast and lunch. To the people who served last night and this morning– Thank you! You are living out part of your calling in ministering to people with all humility, gentleness, patience, and love. To those who have donated goods and clothing. Thank you—you sacrificed so others can have.
To those of you who signed up to help at the warming center: we’re looking forward to the unique gifts that you are bringing to the rest of the week because the truth of the matter is that this warming center is not the pastors’ ministry – its ours, all of us who are united as part of this body of believers here at Woodside Royal Oak.
Don’t’ just sit around when you should be doing something to minister! You may think that because we’re such a big body, if you go missing, we won’t notice, but we do notice! We need you to actively minister, that’s what you’re called to. Believe in the strength of God!
Here’s my final point.
Lovingly speak truth to the body
Let’s go to verses 13-15.
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…
The purpose of us using our gifts to actively minister to the body is to lovingly speak truth to the body. But when I think about what it means to lovingly speak truth, I could only think of saying hard things in a nice way. So here’s an example of what I’m thinking: like if I’m going to fire somebody, I may have to do the tough work of telling them the truth, but doing it in love to soften the blow. I’d say something like this: you suck at your job and so I’m firing you, but you have good personality, and another company will pick you up soon. Anybody ever dumped that way?
But that’s not all Paul is talking about. When you look at this verse in light of verses 13 and 14, the purpose of lovingly speaking the truth is so that we can maintain unity through our diversity.
Lovingly speaking truth means we need to confront the people we’re building up with truth about life as God sees it.
I know some of you, when I said, lovingly speak truth, your mind immediately got the green light to debate Calvinism and Arminianism. We’ll find out who was right when we all die, and you can ask God, he can end your debate there. Debating theological ideas that add no value whatsoever to a person’s salvation or calling in life is a waste of time. We need to lovingly speak into people’s lives with the loving truth of who Jesus is and what he did for you and me and how that applies to our life right now.
So here’s an example: you see somebody who is messing up their lives because they are sleeping around, or drinking too much, or skipping out on the job or family responsibilities, then you need to confront that person about it and speak truth from a gospel perspective. The reason for their sleeping around, drinking, or skipping out on their responsibilities may have a real cause from a hurt or a pain, but that’s where you need to actively minister and speak in love.
Because we’re such nice people, we don’t want to address the issues head on. We pretend it’ll all disappear. Closing your eyes, won’t make the sins go away. You need to confront it.
I just spoke a lot of truth to you because I love you enough to be united with you in this body of faith and because I need you to be equipped to do a work with your life that is greater than yourself. Here’s the big idea today:
The body flourishes when the body is built up.
Let’s go to verse 16.
16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Everybody plays a part in the body. We all have a job to do here at the church. Don’t abscond on that job. You are far too valuable. You have too many experiences. You have too many gifts. There are too many people who need you need to lovingly speak truth into their lives.
Jesus understood that he had to pay the price in love so he could build us up to realize our value. He died on the cross for our sins, so that we can become united with him in the death of sin so we can be united with him in a new life. Not a new life in some areas of our life, but new life in all the areas of our life.
If you never believed in Jesus Christ to do this for you, I want to tell you that this is truth: God loved you so much that he had to send his one and only son to die for us, so that he could resurrect him from the dead and give us victory. He did that so that he could be a part of his body.
You were never meant to live alone. God put brothers and sisters around you to help you carry the burden of life, so you can be built up to do your best work. So grow into the fullness of Christ by living a life worthy of the calling on your lives.
If you want to live a life worthy of the calling on your life in Jesus, pray with me right now. Because we’re all united in our diversity, and because we want to lovingly speak truth to our body, let’s all pray together:
Father, thank you for uniting us with your son, in one body. We didn’t deserve the gift of life, but you gave it to us. You sent Jesus to save me from my sin so that you can call me to do a work that is beyond my natural abilities or desires. You call me to equip my brothers and sisters, just as they are here to equip me. If there hard truths that need to be heard about our lives, let us embrace them, so we can grow in you.
God help us commit ourselves to having a united hope in you that is rooted in humility, gentleness, patience, and love that surpasses our own abilities, and knowledge. You tell us to maintain unity, to actively minister, and to lovingly speak truth so that we can see our church body built up to do work of gospel ministry. Empower us to this cause. Thank you for calling us your own and giving us new life. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
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