In our last encounter with the letter to the Ephesians, we heard the author, who I’ll call Paul for the rest of the sermon despite questions about his authorship, speak about Jesus tearing down the dividing walls of hostility. While there are many kinds of dividing walls in our world, I believe Jesus has called and gifted us to participate with him in tearing down these dividing walls.
Here in Ephesians 4, Paul begs us to maintain the “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” As we seek to maintain this unity, he speaks of the gifts of grace God pours out on the church that help equip us for ministry in the church and the world.
We begin this morning with a call to the Ephesians to “walk in a manner worthy of their calling.” They will fulfill this calling by living lives of humility, gentleness, patience, and love. That same calling has been given to us so that when we embody these virtues, we can “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Paul lays out a foundation for this work rooted in an early form of a Trinitarian theology. A full-fledged Trinitarian theology emerges several centuries later, but Paul gives us a few hints about the nature of the God who meets us as the one Spirit, the one Lord, and the one God, who is the “Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
These theological statements set up Paul’s word to the church about the gifts of God for the people of God. We often hear the words “the gifts of God for the people of God” in reference to the communion elements. The bread and the cup represent the gift of the crucified and risen Christ to the church. In the Gospel reading from John 6, Jesus tells the gathered crowd, who followed after him because he fed them, that God gives to the people of God the bread from heaven. He then informs them that he is “the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (Jn. 6:32-35). This gift is the foundation for the work of God in the world. With this foundation in place, which is symbolized by the communion elements, another set of gifts is given to the church. These are the gifts that equip the saints to live together in the unity of the Spirit, and then reach beyond to the world with the love of God.
The foundational gift is grace, which frees us from the bondage of sin so that we can receive the gifts of the Spirit that Jesus offers the people of God, gifts that will enable us to reach spiritual maturity. When it comes to these gifts of the Spirit, Paul lists five of them in Ephesians 4: Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, and Teacher. While we don’t have time to explore the meaning and purpose of each of these five gifts, according to Paul, they are designed to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry” and the “building up of the body of Christ.” When Paul speaks here of the saints, he means us, not just people like St. Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa. He’s not even speaking of “all the saints who from their labors rest.” Since we’re all counted among the saints of God, it’s important that we experience the unity of the faith, knowledge of the Son of God, and gain spiritual maturity so we can reach the “full stature of Christ.” When Paul talks about reaching the “full stature of Christ,” he means that Jesus is the measuring stick for determining what it means to be spiritually mature. The closer we are to the likeness of Christ the closer we are to spiritual maturity.
The gifts Paul mentions in Ephesians 4 all point to leadership roles in the church. Paul speaks of people who have been equipped and called to take responsibility for equipping God’s people to fulfill their calling to be ministers in Christ’s body. While we often call clergy ministers, in reality every Christian is called to be a minister. Some members of the body of Christ have been set aside for particular ministries, but all of us have been gifted and called to service in God’s realm. As Paul writes: “Each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Eph. 4:6). Then in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul writes: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). Each of these manifestations is activated by God, who decides which gifts go with each person. Although Paul focuses in Ephesians 4 on the equipping gifts, this list isn’t exhaustive. There are many other gifts and callings, vocations and services, all of which are gifts of God given through the Holy Spirit. Each gift plays an important role in maintaining a healthy body of Christ, as long as each member works in harmony so that together we can reach the full stature of Christ.
While we don’t know with any certainty, who wrote the letter and when it was written, the Christian community was still very young. Many of the members of this community came out of religious and social environments that were very different from the Jewish roots of the church. As we saw from our reading of Ephesians 2, this led to tensions within the church. So, if the church was to move toward the unity of the Spirit, it would need to achieve spiritual maturity.
One of the biggest concerns of church leaders like Paul was that people could easily be led astray if they weren’t well-informed about the things of God. That’s why Paul talks here about having “the knowledge of the Son of God.” We don’t know how the earliest Christians discipled new believers, but by the second century, the church often required a three-year period of instruction before people could be baptized and then admitted to the Lord’s Supper. Now, I have problems with limiting access to the Lord’s Supper to the well-informed, but I do believe that being instructed in the faith is important, whether before or after baptism takes place. Having knowledge of the things of God helps move us toward spiritual maturity so we’re not “tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:13).
You don’t have to get a seminary degree to be fully informed, but discipleship should include instruction in the faith, so we’re not tempted by ideas that run counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ. To put this in modern terms Paul wants us to be prepared spiritually so we don’t fall victim to spiritual scam artists. This is an important word for us at this point in history because there are numerous spiritual con artists out there pedaling versions of the Christian faith that don’t match with what Jesus embodied and Paul preached. These con artists offer gospels of prosperity and political power. They may offer a form of Christianity devoid of the cross. Therefore, we need to be discerning when it comes to what we believe. The key to discernment is love. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:
If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-3).
Paul ends that chapter in 1 Corinthians by telling his readers that in the end, “faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13).
So if you hear people selling a form of Christianity that is self-centered, hateful, angry, bigoted, seeks to gain power over the lives of their neighbors, spreads conspiracy theories, and is marked by an anti-intellectualism that rejects modern science, then they’re probably spiritual con artists. These con artists don’t represent the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is rooted in love and in service to others.
Therefore, the goal Paul sets out for the followers of Jesus is to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love” (Eph. 4:15-16).
When we are joined together as one body in Christ, we experience the unity of the Spirit, which is not the same thing as uniformity. There are and should be different expressions of the faith that reflect our journeys. However, they should also reflect the values that Jesus embodied and taught to his followers, which were then passed on to us. If we embrace God’s grace and God’s love then we can lives that are worthy of our calling. When we do this, we can more fully express God’s love for the world.
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