Ephesians 4:7-10

The beautiful thing about the Christian life is that it should be balanced. There’s beauty in balance. And the beautiful thing about the Bible is that what it teaches is balanced. In Ephesians 4:1-6 Paul talks about the unity of God’s people. There is one body, there is one Spirit. We should endeavor to keep, to maintain this unity of the Spirit. But unity by itself could become uniformity. That’s why in Ephesians 4:7 he says, “But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” And now he’s talking about diversity. You say that sounds like a contradiction! Of course not. There is unity and diversity in every body. He compares the Church to a body.

If my body were all a foot or all a hand, what would I be able to do? Paul uses the body as a picture of the Church. What does the body picture? Unity in diversity. Each part of my body belongs to the body but each part is diverse. It has its own special gifts, its own special task, its own special performance. First the unity, then the diversity. Now diversity without unity is anarchy. If every part does what it wants to do, you have chaos. But unity without diversity is uniformity. I fear that many Christians and many churches today have gotten into uniformity. It’s become a very hard, brittle thing. Oh how we need this diversity! Paul is telling us that each of us has a special gift or gifts from the Lord. These gifts are given by the ascended Lord through His Holy Spirit. Even though we practice the unity of the Spirit we must exercise the diversity of our gifts.

And that’s our lesson for today. Are you discovering and disciplining and dedicating your gifts? Are you doing the task in your church that God has called you to do? The best way to promote unity is by practicing diversity and the best way to build the body of Christ is for each of us to do the job that God has called us to do.