Summary
In this sermon at Christ Church DC (Washington, DC), Rick Davis begins with Jesus’s final approach to Jerusalem, noting how the followers’ fear grew as they neared centers of power, and uses that moment to exhort Christians to walk in humility, patience, and love, trusting Christ’s kingship amid pressure and uncertainty. He calls the church to “keep the unity of the Spirit” by bearing with one another, forgiving, encouraging, and serving, so that faith is expressed not just in private conviction but in a communal life that displays Christ’s glory to the world. The message moves from gospel narrative to practical application, ending in prayer for grace to honor Christ together.
Transcription (May have mistakes!)
As Jesus traveled toward Jerusalem in the last days of his earthly ministry, we are told that those following him were afraid.
Because they knew the religious leaders who hated Jesus and wanted him dead held political power in Jerusalem.
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It had been easy to feel confidence in the coming of the kingdom of heaven in the relative safety of Galilee.
And to be filled with hope for the glory that would be revealed when Jesus claimed his kingdom.
But the farther from safety they went, the harder it was to feel that same confidence.
Even though Jesus was with them, they became afraid.
We are often like these followers.
When we feel safe, secure in all our circumstances, we find it easy to feel confident and to trust in the Lord.
But when we see troubles start to gather, financial troubles, health struggles, besetting temptations, and hostility from the world around us as we see in our nation today, we become fearful.
Remember that God has promised not to lead us away from the valley of the shadow of death, but to comfort us while we are going through it.
God hasn’t promised that we will have no enemies.
He promised to prepare us a table in the midst of our enemies.
So take heart, people of God.
If troubles have made you feel anxious and fearful about your future, repent now and look toward Jesus, whom you are called to follow.
Our sermon text today is Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6.
There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in 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 you all.
Our Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you for your spirit who is here ministering to us today.
We pray, Lord, that the spirit would give us ears to hear, eyes to see your truth, hearts to understand it, and wills to obey, that you would attend the preaching and hearing of your word, that we might honor and please you in all things.
Back in 1976, the theologian Francis Schaeffer produced a book and documentary series titled How Should We Then Live?
It was about the history of Western Civilization and the Church and how Christians in the modern world should engage the culture around them.
Living as I do in Lynchburg, Virginia, I have firsthand experience with the fruits of Schaeffer’s work because it was Schaeffer’s work that had a great influence on Jerry Falwell.
Schaeffer argued that Christianity could not be confined to the private or spiritual realm.
Christians had a duty to influence culture, law, and public life.
This was pivotal in giving Falwell the theological and intellectual justification for engaging in politics, which resulted in the formation of the moral majority in 1979.
It is, in fact, a very important question that the Church must continually answer.
Given the current state of our culture, our nation, our world, our city, what is our response as the people of God?
But before we’re able to answer that question, there is a more foundational, closer-to-home application of the question that we need to address.
Given who we are as the Church, who we are as Christ’s covenant people, how should we live in relation to one another and to God?
Before we think about engaging the culture, how do we engage ourselves?
And that’s the question that Paul is answering in this passage today.
If you look at the scripture we read this morning, you’ll see that Paul begins with the words, I therefore.
Now, I’m sure many of you hopefully know what pastors are contractually obligated to say when they see that in the sermon text.
If you don’t know, whenever you see the word therefore, you have to go back and see what it’s there for.
That’s, you have to, in the passage we read today, Paul starts with I, therefore, and he’s drawing a conclusion based on everything that has come before in his letter.
The first three chapters of Ephesians, as you well know, are a doctrinal tour de force.
Some of the richest, loftiest theology in all of the New Testament can be found in the first three chapters of Ephesians, telling you what God has done for you in Christ, who you are in Christ, and the great mystery that God has brought Jew and Gentile together as one in Christ Jesus.
I have the great benefit of being able to preach this passage today to you, knowing that for the last few months, week after week, you’ve had different preachers unpacking the riches of that theology in the first four or the first three chapters of Ephesians.
One thing that’s important to note, in those first three chapters of Ephesians, there is one direct command given to the readers.
One command in the first three chapters, and that is absolutely fitting, because how we live as Christians, how we work out our faith and our day-to-day life, is grounded in our doctrine, in what we believe about Jesus and sin and salvation and God’s purpose for his church.
But having laid the groundwork in those three chapters, Paul turns his attention in chapter four to how should we then live, and he gives 39 commands in the last three chapters of Ephesians.
One command in the first three chapters.
39 commands in the last three chapters.
And the first of those commands appears here in verse one of chapter four.
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called.
Paul beseeches the Ephesians that they walk worthy of the calling with which they’re called.
Now, when we hear the word calling, we often think of a job or a career, but that’s not what Paul is talking about here.
He’s talking about your calling as a Christian.
Back in Ephesians chapter one, he told his readers that God had chosen them in Christ before the foundation of the world that they would be holy and without blame before him.
That is your calling as a Christian.
God has brought you into Christ.
He has placed Christ’s name upon you.
This is a little bit like the idea of maintaining your family honor.
You don’t want to do something that causes your family name to be disgraced.
To a greater degree, and in the same way, you are named with Christ’s name.
And you want to bring honor, not shame, to the name of Christ.
When the third commandment says, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, we tend to think, don’t use God’s name as a swear word.
And you shouldn’t do that.
That is taking his name in vain.
But the commandment encapsulates more than just that.
That commandment means that since you are named with God’s name, since you bear the name of Christ, if you live like a heathen, you are taking God’s name in vain.
The name that’s been placed upon you.
And given everything that God has done for you in Christ, given that he loved you so much that he sent Jesus to die for your sins, and he saved you by grace through faith and that not of yourselves, you ought to walk according to the calling that he has given you.
What does that look like?
Well, in our passage today, Paul says it looks like loving one another and being in unity.
That’s what it means to walk worthy of our calling, unity and love in the body.
And in these few short verses, Paul is going to give us first a description of the character of our walk.
Second, instruction for how to practice the walk.
And then finally, an explanation for the basis of our walk.
Starting in verse two, the character of our walk as Christians is that of lowliness, meekness or gentleness and long suffering.
Lowliness, lowliness is the foundational virtue for loving one another in the church and maintaining unity.
This is the same word that Paul uses in Philippians chapter two, verse three, when he says, let nothing be done through selfishness or vain ambition, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself.
Here’s what that lowliness of mind means.
It means recognizing that everything you have and everything you accomplish, you accomplish by the grace of God through Christ Jesus.
And the gifts that you have been given in the church are not so you can puff yourselves up with vain glory, but so that you can serve and minister to others in the body.
The truly humble man doesn’t go around wondering if he’s being humble enough.
The truly humble man doesn’t go around thinking about how humble he is.
In the words of C.S. Lewis, the truly humble man will not be thinking about himself at all.
He’s going to be thinking about how he can serve and help others in the kingdom of God.
I hope you can see why Paul puts this at the very top of his list, because all the other character traits flow from a humble, lowly spirit.
If our importance is low in our own estimation, then we will treat those around us with gentleness.
And that’s the next thing with lowliness, gentleness.
This is one of the misunderstood virtues of our modern world.
The word here is meekness or gentleness.
And we generally think meek means weak.
But remember, Moses was called the meekest man who ever lived, the meekest man on the face of the earth.
Think about how he treated the Israelites from time to time.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, flipped over the temple, the tables in the temple and drove out the money changers.
Meekness is not weakness.
Meekness is moderation of temper.
Meekness is the willingness for the sake of your brothers and sisters to let go of your own rights and to trust God with the outcome.
That sort of meekness leads you to long-suffering patience with your brothers and sisters in Christ.
When you’re in conflict with a brother or a sister, do you insist on being right?
Do you know that you are in the right?
You’ve got the right answer.
You’ve got it figured out.
Do you know that you’re right?
Or are you willing to put your personal grievance aside for the sake of peace in the body?
That’s what gentleness looks like.
It leads to patience, long-suffering.
So here’s the key to all of this.
How do you esteem yourself?
Are you constantly comparing yourself to other people?
Are you pleased when you see others blessed more than you?
To be pleased when you see others blessed more than you, especially if that person being blessed is someone who has wronged you in the past, someone you think, I am better than them.
Why is God blessing them more than me?
Do you really desire God’s blessings on them, even if that blessing means that they surpass you in the kingdom?
Because the important thing is Christ’s kingdom, not you.
If so, that’s the type of lowliness, gentleness, and long-suffering that represent the character of your worthy walk before the Lord.
Paul then turns from the character traits of a worthy walk to the actual actions that are performed.
What does that mean to bear with one another in love?
To bear with one another means to persist together, to endure one another.
This is something you don’t need when everything is going well.
When life is good and church events are happening and everyone is getting along with each other, there’s no need for forbearance.
And right now, I would say, you guys are still in the honeymoon phase of this new church plant.
You don’t really need this forbearance now, but you should be preparing for it because disagreements and conflicts inevitably arise in every single church that has ever existed from the beginning of the church.
Disagreements and conflicts arise.
So what do you do when people don’t get along with each other?
When there are folks in your church who are getting on your nerves, people who maybe are extremely opinionated and often, whether intentionally or unintentionally, are insulting to you.
It’s easy to be happy in the body of Christ when everyone around you is a blessing.
It’s a little bit harder when the people God places around you are a trial.
What are you supposed to do then?
Well, you’re supposed to bear with them in love.
You are to bless them, encourage them, and exhort them in Christ.
And this is why we need to cultivate that meekness and patience in our character.
And what does this bearing with one another, this forbearance, what does it do?
That’s the second thing Paul talks about.
It maintains the unity of the spirit.
He says here, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
There are two aspects to that charge.
The first thing I want you to notice is that the unity of the spirit is not something you are called to create.
You’re endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit, not create it.
The unity of the spirit is an objective reality based on the fact that each one of you, as believers in Christ, are filled with the Holy Spirit.
And so there’s a natural, rather a supernatural unity that already exists among everyone in the world who believes in Christ, who’s filled with the Holy Spirit.
But in another sense, that unity is not automatic.
Paul tells the Ephesians they need to endeavor.
They need to be diligent to maintain and keep that unity of the spirit.
In other words, we are all united in one spirit in Christ.
But you have to work out that truth in practice.
When you sit alone with your Bible, praying and reading, thinking about the church of God, the people of God, the bride of Christ, it’s really easy to have a lot of warm, fuzzy, devotional, sublime thoughts about God’s people.
It’s when you actually interact with those people in real life and the rubber hits the road that conflicts arise.
So it’s not enough that there is a unity of the spirit.
You have to endeavor, be diligent, work hard to maintain that unity of spirit.
Paul says you do it in the bond of peace.
What holds together unity in the local church is peace.
Where do we get this peace?
Well, it’s given to you by Jesus Christ.
And then you maintain it through lowliness of mind and gentleness, forbearing one another, refusing to be easily offended.
And when you are offended, being eager and quick to forgive one another.
My pastor, Virgil, he was here preaching to you about a month ago, I think.
He once asked this question.
I’ve heard him actually say it a few times, and I think he may have stolen it from Doug Wilson, but I’m not sure.
But he said, how many items can you drop and still have a clean living room?
How many items can you drop on the floor and still have a clean living room?
And the answer is, there’s no limit.
You can drop as many things as you want, because as long as you pick them up when you drop them, your living room stays clean.
But if you don’t pick things up, if you don’t pick them up, it doesn’t take very long at all before you have a real mess on your hands and you don’t even know where to start cleaning up.
That’s how forgiveness works in the church, in your local body.
How many times can someone sin personally against you and still you have a relationship of peace with them?
And the answer is, there is no limit.
Peter said, Jesus, how many times if my brother sins against me, shall I forgive him?
And Jesus says, 70 times seven.
And Jesus was saying daily, right?
As long as the person who sins repents and the person who has sinned against forgives with a true heart, the relationship can stay clean and peaceful.
The problem is, in relationships, people often don’t repent and they don’t forgive and they simply act like everything is okay.
Two people have a conflict with each other.
And then they say, we’re just going to pretend it’s okay.
We’re not going to talk about it.
But it’s still laying there.
It hasn’t been dealt with.
And a thousand little things over the years, none of which were big enough to cause a problem individually, all together become a mess in a church that’s too big to figure out how to fix.
This happens in marriages.
I’ve seen people who have been married for decades and then they call it quits.
And rarely, in that case, when they’ve been married for a very long time and get a divorce, it’s rarely because something big has happened.
It’s little annoyances, little sins that have not been picked up and forgiven for 30 years.
So continually work on peace with your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Don’t let little annoyances turn into grudges that sour relationships and lead to bitterness of heart.
If someone has wronged you, God calls you.
He commands you to forgive them.
That’s a command from God.
Well, I’m not going to forgive them because what they did was really bad.
No, you’re commanded to forgive.
And if you don’t, if you repeatedly harden yourself, if you justify your anger, well, I was in the right and he was in the wrong.
And I’ve got I’ve got Bible verses to prove it.
I can prove that I was right and he was wrong.
And you justify your anger and you cling to your bitterness.
Then you will be a miserable person.
You will never have peace.
You’ll lose that unity of the spirit.
So be at peace with one another.
So you’ve seen the character of our walk.
We’ve seen the actions that we take to maintain that walk.
The next thing we’re going to see Paul turn his attention to is the basis or foundation of that unity that we have together.
He gives us a list here of seven things in verses four to six.
That undergird our unity as Christians.
One body, one spirit, one hope of our calling, one faith, one baptism, one God.
Starting with the first, there’s one body.
The body of Christ is the church, not this individual local church, but the church, capital C, all throughout the world who profess the name of Christ.
In Ephesians one, Paul told his readers that the father put all things under Jesus’s feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body.
It’s important to remember that Christ only has one body.
He doesn’t have a lot of different bodies all over the place.
There’s one body in our reality right now.
That one body is made up of many different churches and many different denominations, but we are one body in Christ.
And it’s this unity that we see when we take communion.
As we take communion later, we see that unity.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 that the bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ.
And just as there is one loaf, so we who are many are one body.
When you take communion, you’re not just taking communion and communing with the people in this room.
You are communing in the Holy Spirit with all Christians everywhere on earth and with all the saints who have gone before us into glory.
We are all one body of Christ.
And being one body, we also have one spirit, the Holy Spirit, who is the life of the body and who fills us all.
And being one body and spirit together, we have one hope of our calling.
There’s only one inheritance from the Father, and that inheritance belongs to Jesus.
He is the heir, and you all share in that one inheritance, that one hope, together as you are connected to Jesus.
There are lots of people today who don’t care for church, who think they can still obtain their inheritance while being cut off from the body.
They think they can be a Christian just reading their Bible alone at home in their house.
Brothers and sisters, that’s not true.
You are one body, and you need each other.
There is one spirit you all share, and so there is only one hope of your calling that you all share together as well.
Paul continues, one Lord.
Lord here refers to Jesus.
The unity we’re talking about is not some unity of all mankind.
It’s the unity of those who have faith in Christ and who submit to his lordship.
Just as there is only one Lord, everyone who serves him is on the same team.
So I want you to get that in your mind.
Christians are all on the same team if we serve the same Lord.
There is only one faith, one Lord, one faith.
This isn’t your personal faith that saves you.
This is the faith, the Christian faith, with all of the teachings and practices that that entails.
Again, just like the principle of Christ as the only Lord unites all Christians together, but separates us from all non-Christians.
So one faith is like a circle drawn around the people of God.
There is only one Christian faith.
Everything inside that circle of the Orthodox Christian faith are united.
But we’re not united with people outside that circle.
When Mormons, for instance, name the name of Christ, but then teach that he’s not the second person of the Trinity, but was rather created as a man and then became a God, we say, hold on a minute.
That is not the one faith in which we’re all united.
We don’t have unity together.
And finally, these two tie in with the next one.
We baptize people as Christ commanded in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Baptism in the name of the triune God.
We have all died together in Christ and been raised with him in baptism.
And finally, Paul caps it off by saying one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all.
This is the culmination of everything that has come before in this chapter.
We ought to walk worthy of our calling, which means having the right internal character and acting according to that character.
And we have many wonderful foundations for love and unity with one another.
But this final statement sums it all up.
How are we united by faith, by baptism, even by Christ’s lordship?
And he is the Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all.
I want you to pay attention here.
Paul is saying in you all.
He’s the God of you, the Father of you.
He’s not talking about the universal brotherhood of man.
We’re all God’s children.
That’s not what he’s talking about.
There is a sense in which that’s true.
Paul tells the men at Athens that we are all God’s offspring.
He means that only in the context of creation.
And so we are his creations.
And so in that sense, we’re all God’s offspring.
But that’s not what Paul is talking about.
Paul is talking about the special sonship that you have in Christ.
It’s the fatherhood that we see in John 1, verse 12.
As many as received him, to them he gave the power to become sons of God.
It’s what Paul told the Ephesians at the beginning of his letter in Ephesians 1, 5.
Having predestinated us to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself.
In Jesus Christ, we have been adopted into the family of God.
Jesus is our brother and we are co-heirs with him of all the promises of the covenant.
And that’s different from the idea that God created us all through all his children.
This is a special sin to which you are really part of God’s family.
He really is your father.
Jesus is your big brother.
And we all inherit the blessing together.
So when Paul says one God and father of all, he’s talking about all the church, all believers in Christ.
He’s the father of us all.
He is above us all, meaning he commands us by his word through us all.
He’s working through us in his providence to build his kingdom.
God, the Holy Spirit, indwells all his people.
And since this is the case, how can we not zealously pursue unity with one another in the bond of peace, which is the point of this whole section?
So how should we then live?
We’re to walk worthy of the calling in which we’ve been called.
And remember, that calling is not something we earned.
It’s what God freely gave us in Christ.
He chose us, redeemed us, and adopted us into his family.
He named us with his family name.
And now we are simply called to live in a way that fits that calling.
That means putting on lowliness of mind instead of vain glory.
It means showing gentleness instead of harshness.
It means patience instead of frustration.
It means forgiving instead of holding on to grudges and becoming bitter.
And it means making every effort to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
And what’s the foundation of all this?
That we are one body, filled with one spirit, sharing one hope, confessing one Lord, holding to one faith, baptized into one family, and serving one God, the Father of us all.
So then, brothers and sisters, let us live like who we are.
Let us walk worthy of Christ’s name, not bringing shame to it, but bringing honor to it in the way we love one another.
For in doing so, we show the world out there the glory of the one who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light.
Heavenly Father, grant that we, your children, may walk in humility and love, bearing with one another in patience and keeping the unity of the spirit.
Strengthen us by your grace that we may honor the name of Christ in our lives and show forth his glory to the world.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
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