I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Show the surrounding paragraph
Ephesians 4:1-3 sits inside this longer paragraph.
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, even as you also were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all, and in us all. But to each one of us, the grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
Parallel Translations
-
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called,
with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
-
I therfore which am in bondes for the lordes sake exhorte you that ye walke worthy of the vocacion wherwith ye are called
in all humblenes of mynde and meknes and longe sufferynge forbearinge one another thorowe love
and that ye be dyliget to kepe the vnitie of the sprete in the bonde of peace
Show all 3 translations
-
I therefore, being prisoner in the Lord, praie you that yee walke worthie of the vocation whereunto yee are called,
With all humblenesse of minde, and meekenesse, with long suffering, supporting one an other through loue,
Endeuouring to keepe the vnitie of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Cross-references (70)
- Colossians 1:10 (v1) that you may walk worthily of the Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of…
- Philippians 1:27 (v1) Only let your way of life be worthy of the Good News of Christ, that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your state,…
- Colossians 3:12-13 (v2) Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance; bearing…
- 1 Corinthians 13:7 (v2) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
- 1 Thessalonians 2:12 (v1) to the end that you should walk worthily of God, who calls you into his own Kingdom and glory.
Show all 69 cross-references
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 (v2) Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its…
- 1 Corinthians 1:10 (v3) Now I beg you, brothers, through the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions…
- Colossians 3:13-15 (v3) bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do.…
- Matthew 11:29 (v2) Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you will find rest for your souls.
- Romans 15:1 (v2) Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:1-2 (v1) Finally then, brothers, we beg and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, that…
- Galatians 5:22-23 (v2) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things…
- 2 Peter 1:3 (v1) seeing that his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by…
- 1 Timothy 6:11 (v2) But you, man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.
- 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 (v3) For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For in one…
- 2 Timothy 1:9 (v1) who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to…
- Matthew 5:3-5 (v2) “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are…
- John 13:34 (v3) A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another.
- Romans 14:17-19 (v3) for God’s Kingdom is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these…
- 1 Corinthians 4:16 (v1) I beg you therefore, be imitators of me.
- 2 Thessalonians 1:11 (v1) To this end we also pray always for you, that our God may count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire of goodness and work…
- Hebrews 12:14 (v3) Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord,
- Proverbs 3:34 (v2) Surely he mocks the mockers, but he gives grace to the humble.
- 2 Corinthians 13:11 (v3) Finally, brothers, rejoice! Be perfected. Be comforted. Be of the same mind. Live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.
- Numbers 12:3 (v2) Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all the men who were on the surface of the earth.
- Ephesians 4:17 (v1) This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind,
- 1 Peter 3:15 (v2) But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is…
- Psalms 138:6 (v2) For though Yahweh is high, yet he looks after the lowly; but he knows the proud from afar.
- John 17:21-23 (v3) that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that…
- Galatians 6:2 (v2) Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
- James 3:17-18 (v3) But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and…
- Genesis 17:1 (v1) When Abram was ninety-nine years old, Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.
- Romans 12:1 (v1) Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your…
- Ephesians 1:4 (v2) even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without defect before him in love,
- 2 Timothy 2:25 (v2) in gentleness correcting those who oppose him: perhaps God may give them repentance leading to a full knowledge of the truth,
- Proverbs 16:19 (v2) It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor, than to divide the plunder with the proud.
- Zephaniah 2:3 (v2) Seek Yahweh, all you humble of the land, who have kept his ordinances. Seek righteousness. Seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden…
- James 3:15-18 (v2) This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition are,…
- Romans 8:28-30 (v1) We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose. For whom he…
- 1 Thessalonians 5:13 (v3) and to respect and honor them in love for their work’s sake. Be at peace among yourselves.
- 1 Peter 5:10 (v1) But may the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, perfect,…
- Ephesians 4:4 (vv1, 3) There is one body and one Spirit, even as you also were called in one hope of your calling,
- Acts 20:19 (v2) serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears, and with trials which happened to me by the plots of the Jews;
- 2 Corinthians 6:1 (v1) Working together, we entreat also that you do not receive the grace of God in vain,
- Philippians 3:14 (v1) I press on toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
- Colossians 2:6 (v1) As therefore you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, walk in him,
- 1 Peter 3:9 (v1) not rendering evil for evil, or insult for insult; but instead blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a…
- 2 John 1:5 (v1) Now I beg you, dear lady, not as though I wrote to you a new commandment, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one…
- Genesis 5:24 (v1) Enoch walked with God, and he was not found, for God took him.
- Galatians 4:12 (v1) I beg you, brothers, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong,
- Ephesians 3:1 (v1) For this cause I, Paul, am the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles,
- Ephesians 5:2 (v1) Walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance.
- Philippians 3:17-18 (v1) Brothers, be imitators together of me, and note those who walk this way, even as you have us for an example. For many walk, of whom I told…
- Hebrews 3:1 (v1) Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession: Jesus,
- Hebrews 13:21 (v1) make you complete in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom…
- 1 Peter 2:11 (v1) Beloved, I beg you as foreigners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;
- Isaiah 61:1-3 (v2) The Lord Yahweh’s Spirit is on me, because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the broken…
- Jeremiah 38:20 (v1) But Jeremiah said, “They won’t deliver you. Obey, I beg you, Yahweh’s voice, in that which I speak to you; so it will be well with you, and…
- 2 Corinthians 10:1 (v1) Now I Paul, myself, entreat you by the humility and gentleness of Christ, I who in your presence am lowly among you, but being absent am…
- Philemon 1:9-10 (v1) yet for love’s sake I rather beg, being such a one as Paul, the aged, but also a prisoner of Jesus Christ. I beg you for my child, whom I…
- Psalms 45:4 (v2) In your majesty ride on victoriously on behalf of truth, humility, and righteousness. Let your right hand display awesome deeds.
- Isaiah 57:15 (v2) For the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy, says: “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also who is of a…
- Zechariah 9:9 (v2) Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King comes to you! He is righteous, and having salvation;…
- Mark 9:19 (v2) He answered him, “Unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me.”
- Acts 9:31 (v1) So the assemblies throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace, and were built up. They were multiplied, walking in the fear of the…
- 2 Corinthians 5:20 (v1) We are therefore ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us: we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
- Colossians 4:12 (v1) Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, salutes you, always striving for you in his prayers, that you may stand perfect and…
- Titus 2:10 (v1) not stealing, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior, in all things.
- James 1:21 (v2) Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your…
69 distinct cross-references across this passage (70 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (31 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Private notes
Saved on this device only — never synced or sent anywhere.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–3 The three remaining chapters consist entirely of practical exhortations.…
The three remaining chapters consist entirely of practical exhortations. Mutual agreement is the first subject, in the course of which a discussion is introduced respecting the government of the church, as having been framed by our Lord for the purpose of maintaining unity among Christians.
1. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord. His imprisonment, which might have been supposed more likely to render him despised, is appealed to, as we have already seen, for a confirmation of his authority. It was the seal of that embassy with which he had been honored. Whatever belongs to Christ, though in the eyes of men it may be attended by ignominy, ought to be viewed by us with the highest regard. The apostle’s prison is more truly venerable than the splendid retinue or triumphal chariot of kings.
Read full note →
That ye may walk worthy. This is a general sentiment, a sort of preface, on which all the following statements are founded. He had formerly illustrated the calling with which they were called, and now reminds them that they must live in obedience to God, in order that they may not be unworthy of such distinguished grace.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Another part of the Epistle containing precepts of Christian…
Another part of the Epistle containing precepts of Christian life, the sum whereof is this, that every man behave himself as it is meet for so excellent grace of God.
By this is meant the general calling of the faithful, which is this, to be holy, as our God is holy.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1 I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech…
1 I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,
Ver. 1. Worthy of the vocation] There is a το πρεπον, a seemliness appertaining to each calling; so here. We must walk nobly and comfortably, as becometh the heirs of God and coheirs of Christ. Scipio, when a harlot was offered him, answered, Vellem, si non essem Imperator; I would if I were not general of the army. Antigonus being invited to a place where a notable harlot was to be present, asked counsel of Menedemus, what he should do? He bade him only remember that he was a king’s son. So let men remember their high and heavenly calling, and do nothing unworthy of it. Luther counsels men to answer all temptations of Satan with this only, Christianus sum, I am a Christian. They were wont to say of cowards in Rome, There is nothing Roman in them: of many Christians we may say, There is nothing Christian in them. It is not amiss before we be serviceable for the world, to put Alexander’s question to his followers, that persuaded him to run at the Olympic games, Do kings use to run at the Olympics? Every believer is God’s firstborn; and so higher than the kings of the earth, Psa 89:27. He must therefore carry himself accordingly, and not stain his high blood.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–3 The prisoner of the Lord; in the Lord, a…
The prisoner of the Lord; in the Lord, a Hebraism: it is as much as, for the Lord: see Eph 3:1.
Beseech you that ye walk worthy; proceed constantly and perseveringly in such ways as suit with and become your calling, 1Th 4:7; 1Pe 1:15; see the like expression, Rom 16:2.
Read full note →
Of the vocation wherewith ye are called; both your general calling, whereby ye are called to be saints, and your particular callings, to which ye are severally called, as Eph 5:1-33 and Eph 6:1-24.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv1–2 As if he had said, "Seeing the riches of…
As if he had said, "Seeing the riches of God’s grace in Christ have so abounded towards you, who were once Ephesian idolaters, but now converted Gentiles, I Paul, who am a prisoner for preaching the gospel, and for declaring this grace to you, do most affectionately exhort you, that ye live answerably to your profession, and according to the great obligation of your high and holy vocation from heathenism to Christianity."
Here note, 1. The person exhorting and beseeching, I Paul, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you; I that am in bonds for Christ, I that am imprisoned for preaching the gospel to you, and for proselyting you by it to Christianity. Nothing can more oblige a people to hearken to the exhortations of the ministers of Christ, than this consideration, that the truths which they deliver to them, they stand ready both to suffer for and to seal with their precious blood: I, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you.
Read full note →
Note, 2. The comprehensive duty exhorted to, That ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called; worthy, that is, beseeming and becoming your holy profession, answerable to the dignity and obligation of your Christian name; or, as he exhorteth the Philippians, Php 1:20, "walk as becometh the gospel of Jesus Christ."
But when may we be said so to do:
Ans. When we walk according to the precepts and commands of the gospel; answerable to the privileges and prerogatives of the gospel; answerable to that grand pattern of holiness which the gospel sets before us, the example of Jesus Christ; answerable to the helps and supplies of grace which the gospel affords.
Finally, to walk worthy or our vocation, is to walk answerable to those high and glorious hopes which the gospel raises the Christian up to the expectation of.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1–2 This is a general exhortation to walk as becomes…
This is a general exhortation to walk as becomes our Christian profession. Paul was now a prisoner at Rome; and he was the prisoner of the Lord, or in the Lord, which signifies as much as for the Lord. See of this, Eph 3:1. He mentions this once and again, to show that he was not ashamed of his bonds, well knowing that he suffered not as an evil doer: and likewise to recommend what he wrote to them with the greater tenderness and with some special advantage. It was a doctrine he thought worth suffering for, and therefore surely they should think it worthy their serious regards and their dutiful observance. We have here the petition of a poor prisoner, one of Christ's prisoners: "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you," etc. Considering what God has done for you, and to what a state and condition he has called you, as has been discoursed before, I now come with an earnest request to you (not to send me relief, nor to use your interest for the obtaining of my liberty, the first thing which poor prisoners are wont to solicit from their friends, but) that you would approve yourselves good Christians, and live up to your profession and calling; That you walk worthily, agreeably, suitably, and congruously to those happy circumstances into which the grace of God has brought you, whom he has converted from heathenism to Christianity. Observe, Christians ought to accommodate themselves to the gospel by which they are called, and to the glory to which they are called; both are their vocation. We are called Christians; we must answer that name, and live like Christians. We are called to God's kingdom and glory; that kingdom and glory therefore we must mind, and walk as becomes the heirs of them.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–3 I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you,....…
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you,.... Or "in the Lord"; that is, for the Lord's sake; See Gill on Eph 3:1. Some connect this phrase, "in the Lord", with the following word, "beseech": as if the sense was, that the apostle entreated the believing Ephesians, in the name of the Lord, and for his sake, to take heed to their walk and conversation, that it be as became the calling by grace, and to glory, with which they were called: and this exhortation he enforces from the consideration of the state and condition in which he was, a prisoner, not for any wickedness he had been guilty of, but for the Lord's sake, which seems to be the true sense of the word; and that, if they would not add afflictions to his bonds, as some professors by their walk did, he beseeches them, as an ambassador in bonds, that they would attend to what he was about to say; and the rather, since such doctrines of grace had been made known to them, which have a tendency to promote powerful godliness; and since they were made partakers of such privileges as laid them under the greatest obligation to duty, which were made mention of in the preceding chapters.
That ye walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye are called; by which is meant, not that private and peculiar state and condition of life, that the saints are called to, and in: but that calling, by the grace of God, which is common to them all; and is not a mere outward call by the ministry of the word, with which men may be called, and not be chosen, sanctified, and saved; but that which is internal, and is of special grace, and by the Spirit of God; by whom they are called out of darkness into light, out of bondage into liberty, out of the world, and from the company and conversation of the men of it, into the fellowship of Christ, and his people, to the participation of the grace of Christ here, and to his kingdom and glory hereafter; and which call is powerful, efficacious, yea, irresistible; and being once made is unchangeable, and without repentance, and is holy, high, and heavenly. Now to walk worthy of it, or suitable to it, is to walk as children of the light; to walk in the liberty wherewith Christ and his Spirit make them free; to walk by faith on Christ; and to walk in the ways of God, with Christ, the mark, in their view, and with the staff of promises in their hands; and to walk on constantly, to go forwards and hold out unto the end: for this walking, though it refers to a holy life and conversation, a series of good works, yet it does not suppose that these merit calling; rather the contrary, since these follow upon it; and that is used as an argument to excite unto them: but the phrase is expressive of a fitness, suitableness, and agreeableness of a walk and conversation to such rich grace, and so high an honour conferred on saints.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord - Imprisoned…
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord - Imprisoned for his sake and for your sakes; for the sake of the gospel which he had preached amongst them. This was therefore a powerful motive to them to comfort him under it by their obedience.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–3 The apostle exhorts them to walk worthy of their…
CHAPTER IV.
The apostle exhorts them to walk worthy of their vocation, and
Read full note →
to live in peace and unity, 1-6.
Shows that God has distributed a variety of gifts, and
instituted a variety of offices in his Church, for the building
up and perfecting of the body of Christ, 7-13.
Teaches them the necessity of being well instructed and steady
in Divine things, 14.
Teaches how the body or Church of Christ is constituted, 15, 16.
Warns them against acting like the Gentiles, of whose conduct he
gives a lamentable description, 17-19.
Points out how they had been changed, in consequence of their
conversion to Christianity, 20, 21.
Gives various exhortations relative to the purification of their
minds, their conduct to each other, and to the poor, 22-28.
Shows them that their conversation should be chaste and holy,
that they might not grieve the Spirit of God; that they should
avoid all bad tempers, be kindly affectioned one to another,
and be of a forgiving spirit, 29-32.
NOTES ON CHAP. IV.
Verse 1. I therefore] Therefore, because God has provided for you such an abundant salvation, and ye have his testimonies among you, and have full liberty to use all the means of grace;
The prisoner of the Lord] Who am deprived of my liberty for the Lord's sake.
Beseech you that ye walk] Ye have your liberty, and may walk; I am deprived of mine, and cannot. This is a fine stroke, and wrought up into a strong argument. You who are at large can show forth the virtues of him who called you into his marvellous light; I am in bondage, and can only exhort others by my writing, and show my submission to God by my patient suffering.
The vocation wherewith ye are called] The calling, κλησις, is the free invitation they have had from God to receive the privileges of the Gospel, and become his sons and daughters, without being obliged to observe Jewish rites and ceremonies. Their vocation, or calling, took in their Christian profession, with all the doctrines, precepts, privileges, duties, c., of the Christian religion.
Among us, a man's calling signifies his trade, or occupation in life that at which he works, and by which he gets his bread; and it is termed his calling, because it is supposed that God, in the course of his providence, calls the person to be thus employed, and thus to acquire his livelihood. Now, as it is a very poor calling by which a man cannot live, so it is a poor religion by which a man cannot get his soul saved. If, however, a man have an honest and useful trade, and employ himself diligently in labouring at it, he will surely be able to maintain himself by it; but without care, attention, and industry, he is not likely to get, even by this providential calling, the necessaries of life. In like manner, if a man do not walk worthy of his heavenly calling, i.e. suitable to its prescriptions, spirit, and design, he is not likely to get his soul saved unto eternal life. The best trade, unpractised, will not support any man; the most pure and holy religion of the Lord Jesus, unapplied, will save no soul. Many suppose, because they have a sound faith, that all is safe and well: as well might the mechanic, who knows he has a good trade, and that he understands the principles of it well, suppose it will maintain him, though he brings none of its principles into action by honest, assiduous, and well-directed labour.
Some suppose that the calling refers to the epithets usually given to the Christians; such as children of Abraham, children of God, true Israel of God, heirs of God, saints, fellow citizens with the saints, c., c. and that these honourable appellations must be a strong excitement to the Ephesians to walk worthy of these exalted characters But I do not find that the word κλησις, calling, is taken in this sense any where in the New Testament but that it has the meaning which I have given it above is evident from 1Co 7:20: Εκαστος εν τη κλησει ᾑ εκληθη, εν ταυτῃ μενετω· Let every man abide in the calling to which he hath been called. The context shows that condition, employment, or business of life, is that to which the apostle refers.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1–2 Eph 4:1. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord…
Eph 4:1. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord — Imprisoned for his sake and for yours; for the sake of the gospel which he had preached to them and other Gentiles: see note on Eph 3:1 : this was therefore a powerful motive to them to comfort him under his sufferings by their obedience; beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation, &c. — That is, in a manner suitable to the privileges which you enjoy, and to the state of grace and favour with God into which you have been brought by hearing and believing the gospel. As if he had said, Let there be nothing in your spirit or conduct beneath the dignity to which you are raised, and the illustrious hopes which are set before you; but show that the crown of glory is ever in your eye, and that your hearts are duly impressed with it. Thus we see the great discoveries in the foregoing part of this epistle, to which the apostle has given the appellation of the mystery of God and of Christ, were set forth by him, not merely for the purpose of enlightening the Ephesian believers in the knowledge of these sublime truths, and fixing them in the belief and profession thereof; but also to give him an elevation of sentiment and affection becoming those to whose minds such glorious discoveries were made; and at the same time to lead them to a proper behaviour toward God, one another, and all men, and that in every circumstance and relation of life wherein they were placed; the various particulars of which are specified in the very excellent summary of practical religion contained in the remaining chapters of this epistle.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–3 I, therefore - In view of the great and…
I, therefore - In view of the great and glorious truths which God has revealed, and of the grace which he has manifested toward you who are Gentiles. See the previous chapters. The sense of the word “therefore” - οὖν oun - in this place, is, “Such being your exalted privileges; since God has done so much for you; since he has revealed for you such a glorious system; since he has bestowed on you the honor of calling you into his kingdom, and making you partakers of his mercy, I entreat you to live in accordance with these elevated privileges, and to show your sense of his goodness by devoting your all to his service.” The force of the word “I,” they would all feel. It was the appeal and exhortation of the founder of their church - of their spiritual father - of one who had endured much for them, and who was now in bonds on account of his devotion to the welfare of the Gentile world.
The prisoner of the Lord - Margin, “in.” It means, that he was now a prisoner, or in confinement “in the cause” of the Lord; and he regarded himself as having been made a prisoner because the Lord had so willed and ordered it. He did not feel particularly that he was the prisoner of Nero; he was bound and kept because the “Lord” willed it, and because it was in his service; see the notes on Eph 3:1.
Read full note →
Beseech you that ye walk worthy - That you live as becomes those who have been called in this manner into the kingdom of God. The word “walk” is often used to denote “life, conduct,” etc.; see Rom 4:12, note; Rom 6:4, note; 2Co 5:7, note.
Of the vocation - Of the “calling” - τῆς κλήσεως tēs klēseōs. This word properly means “a call,” or “an invitation” - as to a banquet. Hence, it means that divine invitation or calling by which Christians are introduced into the privileges of the gospel. The word is translated “calling” in Rom 11:29; 1Co 1:26; 1Co 7:20; Eph 1:18; Eph 4:1, Eph 4:4; Phi 3:14; 2Th 1:11; 2Ti 1:9; Heb 3:1; 2Pe 1:10. It does not occur elsewhere. The sense of the word, and the agency employed in calling us, are well expressed in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. “Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel.” This “calling or vocation” is through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and is his appropriate work on the human heart.
It consists essentially in influencing the mind to turn to God, or to enter into his kingdom. It is the exertion of “so much” influence on the mind as is necessary to secure the turning of the sinner to God. In this all Christians are agreed, though there have been almost endless disputes about the actual influence exerted, and the mode in which the Spirit acts on the mind. Some suppose it is by “moral persuasion;” some by physical power; some by an act of creation; some by inclining the mind to exert its proper powers in a right way, and to turn to God. What is the precise agency employed perhaps we are not to expect to be able to decide; see Joh 3:8. The great, the essential point is held, if it be maintained that it is by the agency of the Holy Spirit that the result is secured - and this I suppose to be held by all evangelical Christians. But though it is by the agency of the Holy Spirit, we are not to suppose that it is without the employment of “means.” It is not literally like the act of creation. It is preceded and attended with means adapted to the end; means which are almost as various as the individuals who are “called” into the kingdom of God. Among those means are the following:
(1) “Preaching.” Probably more are called into the kingdom by this means than any other. It is “God’s great ordinance for the salvation of men.” It is eminently suited for it. The “pulpit” has higher advantages for acting on the mind than any other means of affecting people. The truths that are dispensed; the sacredness of the place; the peace and quietness of the sanctuary; and the appeals to the reason, the conscience, and the heart - all are suited to affect people, and to bring them to reflection. The Spirit makes use of the word “preached,” but in a great variety of ways. Sometimes many are impressed simultaneously; sometimes the same truth affects one mind while others are unmoved; and sometimes truth reaches the heart of a sinner which he has heard a hundred times before, without being interested. The Spirit acts with sovereign power, and by laws which have never yet been traced out.
(2) The events of Providence are used to call people into his kingdom. God appeals to people by laying them on a bed of pain, or by requiring them to follow a friend in the still and mournful procession to the grave. They feel that they must die, and they are led to ask the question whether they are prepared. Much fewer are affected in this way than we should suppose would be the case; but still there are many, in the aggregate, who can trace their hope of heaven to a fit of sickness, or to the death of a friend.
(3) Conversation is one of the means by which sinners are called into the kingdom of God. In some states of mind, where the Spirit has prepared the soul like mellow ground prepared for the seed, a few moments’ conversation, or a single remark, will do more to arrest the attention than much preaching.
(4) Reading is often the means of calling people into the kingdom. The Bible is the great means - and if we can get people to read that, we have very cheering indications that they will be converted. The profligate Earl of Rochester was awakened and led to the Saviour by reading a chapter in Isaiah. And who can estimate the number of those who have been converted by reading Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted; Alleine’s Alarm; the Dairyman’s Daughter; or the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain? He does “good” who places a good book in the way of a sinner. That mother or sister is doing good, and making the conversion of a son or brother probable, who puts a Bible in his chest when he goes to sea, or in his trunk when he goes on a journey. Never should a son be allowed to go from home without one. The time will come when, far away from home, he will read it. He will read it when his mind is pensive and tender, and the Spirit may bear the truth to his heart for his conversion.
(5) The Spirit calls people into the kingdom of Christ by presiding over, and directing in some unseen manner their own reflections, or the operations of their own minds. In some way unknown to us, he turns the thoughts to the past life; recalls forgotten deeds and plans; makes long past sins rise to remembrance; and overwhelms the mind with conscious guilt from the memory of crime. He holds this power over the soul; and it is among the most mighty and mysterious of all the influences that he has on the heart. “Sometimes” - a man can hardly tell how - the mind will be pensive, sad, melancholy; then conscious of guilt; then alarmed at the future. Often, by sudden transitions, it will be changed from the frivolous to the serious, and from the pleasant to the sad; and often, unexpectedly to himself, and by associations which he cannot trace out, the sinner will find himself reflecting on death. judgment, and eternity. It is the Spirit of God that leads the mind along. It is not by force; not by the violation of its laws, but in accordance with those laws, that the mind is thus led along to the eternal world. In such ways, and by such means, are people “called” into the kingdom of God. To “walk worthy of that calling,” is to live as becomes a Christian, an heir of glory; to live as Christ did. It is:
(1) To bear our religion with us to all places, companies, employments. Not merely to be a Christian on the Sabbath, and at the communion table, and in our own land, but every day, and everywhere, and in any land where we may be placed. We are to live religion, and not merely to profess it. We are to be Christians in the counting-room, as well as in the closet; on the farm as well as at the communion table; among strangers, and in a foreign land, as well as in our own country and in the sanctuary.
(2) It is to do nothing inconsistent with the most elevated Christian character. In temper, feeling, plan, we are to give expression to no emotion, and use no language, and perform no deed, that shall be inconsistent with the most elevated Christian character.
(3) It is to do “right always:” to be just to all; to tell the simple truth; to defraud no one; to maintain a correct standard of morals; to be known to be honest. There is a correct standard of character and conduct; and a Christian should be a man so living, that we may always know “exactly where to find him.” He should so live, that we shall have no doubts that, however others may act, we shall find “him” to be the unflinching advocate of temperance, chastity, honesty, and of every good work - of every plan that is really suited to alleviate human woe, and benefit a dying world.
(4) It is to live as one should who expects soon to be “in heaven.” Such a man will feel that the earth is not his home; that he is a stranger and a pilgrim here; that riches, honors, and pleasures are of comparatively little importance; that he ought to watch and pray, and that he ought to be holy. A man who feels that he may die at any moment, will watch and pray. A man who realizes that “tomorrow” he may be in heaven, will feel that he ought to be holy. He who begins a day on earth, feeling that at its close he may be among the angels of God, and the spirits of just men made perfect; that before its close he may have seen the Saviour glorified, and the burning throne of God, will feel the importance of living a holy life, and of being wholly devoted to the service of God. Pure should be the eyes that are soon to look on the throne of God; pure the hands that are soon to strike the harps of praise in heaven; pure the feet that are to walk the “golden streets above.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v1 Here begins the second part of this epistle, in…
Here begins the second part of this epistle, in which he exhorts them to the practice of Christian virtues. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 Ephesians Chapter 4
Ephesians Chapter 4
The faithful were to seek-in the dispositions mentioned above-to maintain this unity of the Spirit by the bond of peace. There are three things in this exhortation: first, to walk worthy of their calling; second, the spirit in which they were to do so; third, diligence in maintaining the unity of the Spirit by the bond of peace. It is important to observe, that this unity of the Spirit is not similarity of sentiment, but the oneness of the members of the body of Christ established by the Holy Ghost, maintained practically by a walk according to the Spirit of grace. It is evident that the diligence required for the maintenance of the unity of the Spirit relates to the earth and to the manifestation of this unity on the earth.
Read full note →
The apostle now founds his exhortation on the different points of view under which this unity may be considered-in connection with the Holy Ghost, with the Lord, and with God.
There is one body and one Spirit; not merely an effect produced in the heart of individuals, in order that they might mutually understand each other, but one body. The hope was one, of which this Spirit was the source and the power. This is the essential, real, and abiding unity.
There is also one Lord. With Him was connected “one faith” and “one baptism.” This is the public profession and recognition of Christ as Lord. Compare the address in 1 Corinthians.
Finally there is one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.
What mighty bonds of unity! The Spirit of God, the lordship of Christ, the universal ubiquity of God, even the Father, all tend to bring into unity those connected with each as a divine centre. All the religious relationships of the soul, all the points by which we are in contact with God, agree to form all believers into one in this world, in such a manner that no man can be a Christian without being one with all those who are so. We cannot exercise faith, nor enjoy hope, nor express Christian life in any form whatever, without having the same faith and the same hope as the rest, without giving expression to that which exists in the rest. Only we are called on to maintain it practically.
We may remark, that the three spheres of unity presented in these three verses have not the same extent. The circle of unity enlarges each time. With the Spirit we find linked the unity of the body, the essential and real unity produced by the power of the Spirit uniting to Christ all His members: with the Lord, that of faith and of baptism. Here each individual has the same faith, the same baptism: it is the outward profession, true and real perhaps, but a profession, in reference to Him who has rights over those that call themselves by His name. With regard to the third character of unity, it relates to claims that extend to all things, although to the believer it is a closer bond, because He who has a right over all things dwells in believers.[17] Observe here, that it is not only a unity of sentiment, of desire, and of heart. That unity is pressed upon them; but it is in order to maintain the realisation, and the manifestation here below, of a unity that belongs to the existence and to the eternal position of the assembly in Christ. There is one Spirit, but there is one body. The union of hearts in the bond of peace, which the apostle desires, is for the public maintenance of this unity; not that there might be patience with one another when that has disappeared, Christians contenting themselves with its absence. One does not accept that which is contrary to the word, although in certain cases those who are in it ought to be borne with. The consideration of the community of position and of privilege, enjoyed by all the children of God in the relationships of which we have now been speaking, served to unite them with each other in the sweet enjoyment of this most precious position, leading them also, each one, to rejoice in love at the part which every other member of the body had in this happiness.
But, on the other hand, the fact that Christ was exalted to be in heaven the Head over all things, brought in a difference which appertained to this supremacy of Christ-a supremacy exercised with divine sovereignty and wisdom. “Unto every one of us is given grace [gift] according to the measure of the gift of Christ” (that is to say, as Christ sees fit to bestow). With regard to our position of joy and blessing in Christ, we are one. With regard to our service, we have each an individual place according to His divine wisdom, and according to His sovereign rights in the work. The foundation of this title, whatever may be the divine power that is exercised in it, is this: man was under the power of Satan-miserable condition, the fruit of his sin, a condition to which his self-will had reduced him, but in which (according to the judgment of God who had pronounced on him the sentence of death) he was a slave in body and mind to the enemy who had the power of death-with reservation of the sovereign rights and sovereign grace of God (see Eph 2:2). Now Christ has made Himself man, and began by going as man, led by the Spirit, to meet Satan. He overcame him. As to His personal power, He was able to drive him out everywhere, and to deliver man. But man would not have God with him; nor was it possible for men, in their sinful condition, to be united to Christ without redemption. The Lord however, carrying on His perfect work of love, suffered death, and overcame Satan in that his last stronghold, which God’s righteous judgment maintained in force against sinful man-a judgment which Christ therefore underwent, accomplishing a redemption that was complete, final, and eternal in its value; so that neither Satan, the prince of death and accuser of the children of God on earth, nor even the judgment of God, had anything more to say to the redeemed. The kingdom of Satan was taken from him; the just judgment of God was undergone and completely satisfied. All judgment is committed to the Son, and power over all men, because He is the Son of man. These two results are not yet manifested, although the Lord possesses all power in heaven and in earth. The thing here spoken of is another result which is accomplished meanwhile. The victory is complete. He has led the adversary captive. In ascending to heaven He has placed victorious man above all things, and has led captive all the power that previously had dominion over man.
Now before manifesting in person the power He had gained as man by binding Satan, before displaying it in the blessing of man on earth, He exhibits it in the assembly, His body, by imparting, as He had promised, to men delivered from the enemy’s dominion gifts which are the proof of that power.
Chapter 1 had laid open to us the thoughts of God; chapter 2 the fulfilment, in power, of His thoughts with regard to the redeemed-Jews or Gentiles, all dead in their sins-to form them into the assembly. Chapter 3 is the especial development of the mystery in that which concerned the Gentiles in Paul’s administration of it on earth. Here (chap. 4) the assembly is presented in its unity as a body, and in the varied functions of its members; that is to say, the positive effect of those counsels in the assembly here below. But this is founded on the exaltation of Christ, who, the conqueror of the enemy, has ascended to heaven as man.
Thus exalted, He has received gifts in man, that is, in His human character (compare Act 2:33). It is thus “in man,” that it is expressed in Psa 68:1-35, from whence the quotation is taken. Here, having received these gifts as the Head of the body, Christ is the channel of their communication to others. They are gifts for men.
Three things here characterise Him-a man ascended on high-a man who has led captive him who held man in captivity-a man who has received for men, delivered from that enemy, the gifts of God, which bear witness to this exaltation of man in Christ, and serve as a means for the deliverance of others. For this chapter does not speak of the more direct signs of the Spirit’s power, such as tongues, miracles-such as are usually termed miraculous gifts. But what the Lord as Head confers on individuals, they are the gifts, as His servants for forming the saints to be with Him, and for the edification of the body-the fruit of His care over them. Hence, as already remarked, their continuance (till we all, one after another, grow up to the head) is stated as to power, by the Spirit; in 1Co 12:1-31 it is not.
But let us pause here for a moment, to contemplate the import of that which we have been considering.
What a complete and glorious work is that which the Lord has accomplished for us, and of which the communication of these gifts is the precious testimony! When we were the slaves of Satan and consequently of death, as well as the slaves of sin, we have seen that He was pleased to undergo for the glory of God that which hung over us. He went down into death of which Satan had the power. And so complete was the victory of man in Him, so entire our deliverance, that (exalted Himself as man to the right hand of God’s throne-He who had been under death) He has rescued us from the enemy’s yoke, and uses the privilege which His position and His glory give Him to make those who were captives before, the vessels of His power for the deliverance of others also. He gives us the right, as under His jurisdiction, of acting in His holy war, moved by the same principles of love as Himself. Such is our deliverance that we are the instruments of His power against the enemy-His fellow-labourers in love through His power. Hence the connection between practical godliness, the complete subjugation of the flesh, and the capacity to serve Christ as instruments in the hand of the Holy Ghost, and the vessels of His power.
Now the Lord’s ascension has immense significancy in connection with His Person and work. He ascended indeed as man, but He first descended as man even into the darkness of the grave and of death; and from thence-victorious over the power of the enemy who had the power of death, and having blotted out the sins of His redeemed ones, and accomplished the glory of God in obedience-He takes His place as man above the heavens in order that He may fill all things; not only as being God, but according to the glory and the power of a position in which He was placed by the accomplishment of the work of redemption-a work which led Him into the depths of the power of the enemy, and placed Him on the throne of God-a position that He holds, not only by the title of Creator, which was already His, but by that of Redeemer, which shelters from evil all that is found within the sphere of the mighty efficacy of His work-a sphere filled with blessing, with grace, and with Himself. Glorious truth, which belongs at the same time to the union of the divine and human natures in the Person of Christ, and to the work of redemption accomplished by suffering on the cross!
Love brought Him down from the throne of God, and, being found as a man, [18] through the same grace, into the darkness of death. Having died, bearing our sins, He has gone up again to that throne as man, filling all things. He went below the creature into death, and is gone above it.
But while filling all things by virtue of His glorious Person, and in connection with the work which He accomplished, He is also in immediate relation with that which in the counsels of God is closely united to Him who thus fills all things, with that which has been especially the object of His work of redemption. It is His body, His assembly, united to Him by the bond of the Holy Ghost to complete this mystical man, to be the bride of this second Man, who fills all in all-a body which, as manifested here below, is set in the midst of a creation that is not yet delivered, and in the presence of enemies that are in the heavenly places, until Christ shall exercise, on the part of God His Father, the power that has been committed to Him as man. When Christ shall thus exercise His power, He will take vengeance on those who have defiled His creation by seducing man, who had been its head down here and the image of Him who was to be its Head everywhere. He will also deliver creation from its subjection to evil. Meanwhile, personally exalted as the glorious man, and seated at God’s right hand until God shall make His enemies His footstool, He communicates the gifts necessary for the gathering together of those who are to be the companions of His glory, who are the members of His body, and who shall be manifested with Him when His glory shines forth in the midst of this world of darkness.
The apostle shews us here an assembly already delivered, and exercising the power of the Spirit; which on the one side delivers souls, and on the other builds them up in Christ, that they may grow up to the measure of their Head in spite of all the power of Satan which still subsists.
But an important truth is connected with this fact. This spiritual power is not exercised in a manner simply divine. It is Christ ascended (He however who had previously descended into the lower parts of the earth) who, as man, has received these gifts of power. It is thus that Psa 68:1-35 speaks as well as Act 2:33. The latter passage speaks also of the gifts bestowed on His members. In our chapter it is only in the latter way that they are mentioned. He has given gifts unto men.
I would also remark, that these gifts are not here presented as gifts bestowed by the Holy Ghost come down to earth, and distributing to every one according to His will: nor are those gifts spoken of which are tokens of spiritual power suited to act as signs upon those that are outside: but they are ministrations for gathering together and for edification established by Christ as Head of the body by means of gifts with which He endows persons as His choice. Ascended on high, and having taken His place as man at the right hand of God, and filling all things, whatever may be the extent of His glory, Christ has first for His object to fulfil the ways of God in love in gathering souls, and in particular towards the saints and the assembly; to establish the manifestation of the divine nature, and to communicate to the assembly the riches of that grace which the ways of God display, and of which the divine nature is the source. It is in the assembly that the nature of God, the counsels of grace, and the efficacious work of Christ are concentrated in their object; and these gifts are the means of ministering, in the communication of these, in blessing to man.
Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers: apostles and prophets laying, or rather being laid, as the foundations of the heavenly building, and acting as coming directly from the Lord in an extraordinary manner; the two other classes (the last being sub-divided into two gifts, connected in their nature) belonging to ordinary ministry in all ages. It is important to remark also, that the apostle sees nothing existing before the exaltation of Christ save man the child of wrath, the power of Satan, the power which raised us up (dead in sins as we were) with Christ, and the efficacy of the cross, which had reconciled us to God, and abolished the distinction between Jew and Gentile in the assembly, to unite them in one body before God-the cross in which Christ drank the cup and bore the curse, so that wrath has passed away for the believer, and in which a God of love, a Saviour God, is fully manifested.
So the existence of the apostles dates here only from the gifts that followed the exaltation of Jesus. The twelve as sent out by Jesus on earth have no place in the instruction of this epistle, which treats of the body of Christ, of the unity and the members of this body; and the body could not exist before the Head existed and had taken His place as such. Thus also we have seen that, when the apostle speaks of the apostles and prophets, the latter are to him those exclusively of the New Testament, and those who have been made such by Christ after His ascension. It is the new heavenly man who, being the exalted Head in heaven, forms His body on the earth. He does it for heaven, putting the individuals who compose it spiritually and intelligently in connection with the Head by the power of the Holy Ghost acting in this body on the earth; the gifts, of which the apostle here speaks, being the channels by which His graces are communicated according to the bonds which the Holy Ghost forms with the Head.
The proper and immediate effect is the perfecting of individuals according to the grace that dwells in the Head. The shape which this divine action takes, further, is the work of the ministry, and the formation of the body of Christ, until all the members are grown up into the measure of the stature of Christ their Head. Christ has been revealed in all His fulness: it is according to this revelation that the members of the body are to be formed in the likeness of Christ, known as filling all things, and as the Head of His body, the revelation of the perfect love of God, of the excellency of man before Him according to His counsels, of man the vessel of all His grace, all His power, and all His gifts. Thus the assembly, and each one of the members of Christ, should be filled with the thoughts and the riches of a well-known Christ, instead of being tossed to and fro by all sort of doctrines brought forward by the enemy to deceive souls.
The Christian was to grow up according to all that was revealed in Christ, and to be ever increasing in likeness to his Head; using love and truth for his own soul-the two things of which Christ is the perfect expression. Truth displays the real relation of all things with each other in connection with the centre of all things, which is God revealed now in Christ. Love is that which God is in the midst of all this. Now Christ, as the light, put everything precisely in its place-man, Satan, sin, righteousness, holiness, all things, and that in every detail, and in connection with God. And Christ was love, the expression of the love of God in the midst of all this. And this is our pattern; and our pattern as having overcome, and, as having ascended into heaven, our Head, to which we are united as the members of His body.
There flows from this Head, by means of its members, the grace needed to accomplish the work of assimilation to Himself. His body, compacted together, increases by the working of His grace in each member, and edifies itself in love.[19] This is the position of the assembly according to God, until all the members of the body attain to the stature of Christ. The manifestation alas! of this unity is marred; but the grace, and the operation of the grace of its Head to nourish and cause its members to grow, is never impaired, any more than the love in the Lord’s heart from which this grace springs. We do not glorify Him, we have not the joy of being ministers of joy to each other as we might be; but the Head does not cease to work for the good of His body. The wolf indeed comes and scatters the sheep, but he cannot pluck them out of the Shepherd’s hands. His faithfulness is glorified in our unfaithfulness without excusing it.
With this precious object of the ministration of grace (namely, for the growth of each member individually unto the measure of the stature of the Head Himself), with the ministration of each member in its place to the edifying itself in love, ends this development of the counsels of God in the union of Christ and the assembly, in its double character of the body of Christ in heaven, and the habitation of the Holy Ghost on earth-truths which cannot be separated, but each of which has its distinctive importance, and which reconcile the certain immutable operations of grace in the Head with the failures of the assembly responsible on the earth.
Exhortations to a walk befitting such a position follow, in order that the glory of God in us and by us, and His grace towards us, may be identified in our full blessing. We will notice the great principles of these exhortations.
The first is the contrast [20] between the ignorance of a heart that is blind, and a stranger to the life of God, and consequently walking in the vanity of its own understanding, that is, according to the desires of a heart given up to the impulses of the flesh without God-the contrast, I say, between this state, and that of having learnt Christ, as the truth is in Jesus (which is the expression of the life of God in man, God Himself manifested in the flesh), the having put off this old man, which is corrupt itself according to its deceitful lusts, and put on this new man, Christ. It is not an amelioration of the old man; it is a putting it off, and a putting on of Christ.
Even here the apostle does not lose sight of the oneness of the body; we are to speak the truth, because we are members one of another. “Truth,” the expression of simplicity and integrity of heart, is in connection with “the truth as it is in Jesus,” whose life is transparent as the light, as falsehood is in connection with deceitful lusts.
Moreover, the old man is without God, alienated from the life of God. The new man is created, it is a new creation, and a creation [21] after the model of that which is the character of God righteousness and holiness of truth. The first Adam was not in that manner created after the image of God. By the fall the knowledge of good and evil entered into man. He can no longer be innocent. When innocent, he was ignorant of evil in itself. Now, fallen, he is a stranger to the life of God in his ignorance: but the knowledge of good and evil which he has acquired, the moral distinction between good and evil in itself, is a divine principle. “The man,” said God, “is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” But in order to possess this knowledge, and subsist in what is good before God, there must be divine energy, divine life.
Everything has its true nature, its true character, in the eyes of God. That is the truth. It is not that He is the truth. The truth is the right and perfect expression of that which a thing is (and, in an absolute way, of that which all things are), and of the relations in which it stands to other things, or in which all things stand towards each other. Thus God could not be the truth. He is not the expression of some other thing. Everything relates to Him. He is the centre of all true relationship, and of all moral obligation. Neither is God the measure of all things, for He is above all things; and nothing else can be so above them, or He would not be so.[22] It is God become man; it is Christ, who is the truth, and the measure of all things. But all things have their true character in the eyes of God: and He judges righteously of all, whether morally or in power. He acts according to that judgment. He is just. He also knows evil perfectly, being Himself goodness, that it may be perfectly an abomination to Him, that He may repel it by His own nature. He is holy. Now the new man, created after the divine nature, is so in righteousness and holiness of truth. What a privilege! What a blessing! It is, as another apostle has said, to be “partakers of the divine nature.” Adam had nothing of this.
Adam was perfect as an innocent man. The breath of life in his nostrils was breathed into him by God, and he was responsible for obedience to God in a thing wherein neither good nor evil was to be known, but simply a commandment. The trial was that of obedience only, not the knowledge of good or evil in itself. At present, in Christ, the portion of the believer is a participation in the divine nature itself, in a being who knows good and evil, and who vitally participates in the sovereign good, morally in the nature of God Himself, although always thereby dependent on Him. It is our evil nature which is not so, or at least which refuses to be dependent on Him.
Now there is a prince of this world, a stranger to God; and, besides participation in the divine nature, there is the Spirit Himself who has been given to us. These solemn truths enter also as principles into these exhortations. “Give no place to the devil,” on the one hand-give him no room to come in and act on the flesh; and, on the other hand, “grieve not the Holy Spirit” who dwells in you. The redemption of the creature has not yet taken place, but ye have been sealed unto that day: respect and cherish this mighty and holy guest who graciously dwells in you. Let all bitterness and malice therefore cease even in word, and let meekness and kindness reign in you according to the pattern you have in the ways of God in Christ towards you. Be imitators of God: beautiful and magnificent privilege! but which flows naturally from the truth that we are made partakers of His nature, and that His Spirit dwells in us.
These are the two great subjective principles of the Christian-the having put off the old man and put on the new, and the Holy Ghost’s dwelling in him. Nor can anything be more blessed than the pattern of life here given to the Christian, founded on our being a new creation. It is perfect subjectively and objectively. First, subjectively, the truth in Jesus is the having put off the old man and put on the new, which has God for its pattern. It is created after God in the perfection of His moral character. But this is not all. The Holy Spirit of God by which we are sealed to the day of redemption dwells in us: we are not to grieve Him. These are the two elements of our state, the new man created after God, and the presence of the Holy Spirit of God; and He is emphatically here called the Spirit of God, as in connection with God’s character.
And next objectively: created after God, and God dwelling in us, God is the pattern of our walk, and thus in respect of the two words which alone give God’s essence-love and light. We are to walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us a sacrifice to God. “For us” was divine love; “to God” is perfection of object and motive. Law takes up the love of self as the measure of love to others. Christ gives up self wholly and for us, but to God. Our worthlessness enhances the love but, on the other hand, an affection and a motive have their worth from the object (and with Christ that was God Himself), self wholly given up. For, so to speak, we may love up and love down. When we look upward in our affections, the nobler the object the nobler the affection; when it is downwards, the more unworthy the object, the more pure and absolute the love. Christ was perfect in both, and absolutely so. He gave Himself for us, and to God. Afterwards we are light in the Lord. We cannot say we are love, for love is sovereign goodness in God; we walk in it, like Christ. But we are light in the Lord. This is the second essential name of God and as partakers of the divine nature we are light in the Lord. Here again Christ is the pattern. “Christ shall give thee light.” We are called on, then, as His dear children to imitate God.
This life, in which we participate and of which we live as partakers of the divine nature, has been objectively presented to us in Christ in all its perfection and in all its fulness; in man, and in man now brought to perfection on high, according to the counsels of God respecting Him. It is Christ, this eternal life, who was with the Father and has been manifested unto us-He who, having then first descended, has ascended now into heaven to carry humanity thither, and display it in the glory-the glory of God-according to His eternal counsels. We have seen this life here in its earthly development: God manifest in flesh; man, perfectly heavenly, and obedient in all things to His Father, moved, in His conduct to others, by the motives that characterise God Himself in grace. Hereafter He will be manifested in judgment; and already, here below, He has gone through all the experiences of a man, understanding thus how grace adapts itself to our wants, and displaying it now, according to that knowledge, even as hereafter He will exercise judgment with a knowledge of man, not only divine, but which, having gone through this world in holiness, will leave the hearts of men without excuse and without escape.
But it is the image of God in Him, of which we are now speaking. It is in Him that the nature which we have to imitate is presented to us, and presented in man as it ought to be developed in us here below, in the circumstances through which we are passing. We see in Him the manifestation of God, and that in contrast with the old man. There we see “the truth as it is in Jesus,” save that in us it involves the putting off of the old man and putting on the new, answering to Christ’s death and resurrection (compare particularly as to His death, 1Pe 3:18; Act 4:1” 4:1). Thus, in order to attract and to lead on our hearts, to give us the model on which they are to be formed, the aim to which they should tend, God has given us an object in which He manifests Himself, and which is the object of all His own delight.
The reproduction of God in man is the object that God proposed to Himself in the new man; and that the new man proposes to himself, as he is himself the reproduction of the nature and the character of God. There are two principles for the Christian’s path, according to the light in which he views himself. Running his race as man towards the object of his heavenly calling, in which he follows after Christ ascended on high: he is running the heavenward race; the excellency of Christ to be won there, his motive-that is not the Ephesian aspect. In the Ephesians he is sitting in heavenly places in Christ, and he has to come out as from heaven, as Christ really did, and manifest God’s character upon earth, of which, as we have seen, Christ is the pattern. We are called, as in the position of dear children, to shew our Father’s ways.
We are not created anew according to that which the first Adam was, but according to that which God is: Christ is its manifestation. And He is the second Man, the last Adam.[23] In detail we shall find these characteristic features: truthfulness, the absence of all anger that has the nature of hatred (lying and hatred are the two characteristics of the enemy); practical righteousness connected with labour according to the will of God (man’s true position); and the absence of corruption. It is man under the rule of God since the fall, delivered from the effect of the deceitful lusts. But it is more than this. A divine principle brings in the desire of doing good to others, to their body and their soul. I need not say how truly we find here the picture of the life of Christ, as in the preceding remarks it was the putting off of the spirit of the enemy and of the old man. The spirit of peace and love (and that, in spite of evil in others and the wrongs they may do us) completes the picture, adding that which will be easily understood after what has been said, that, in “forgiving one another,” we are to be imitators of God, and to walk in love as Christ has loved us, and has given Himself for us. Beautiful picture, precious privilege! May God grant us so to look at Jesus as to have His image stamped upon us, and in some sort to walk like Him.
Footnotes for Ephesians Chapter 4
17: To recapitulate, there is, first, one body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling; second, one Lord, with whom are connected one faith and one baptism; third, one God and Father of all, who is above all things, everywhere, and in all Christians. Moreover, while insisting upon these three great relationships in which all Christians are placed, as being in their nature the foundations of unity, and the motives of its maintenance, these relationships extend successively in breadth. The direct relationship applies properly to the same persons; but the character of Him who is the basis of the relationship enlarges the idea connected with it. With regard to the Spirit, His presence unites the body-is the bond between all the members of the body: none but the members of the body-and they, as such-are seen here. The Lord has wider claims. In this relationship it is not the members of the body that are spoken of; there is one faith and one baptism, one profession in the world: there could not be two. But although the persons who are in this outward relationship may stand also in the other relationships and be members of the body, yet the relationship here is one of individual profession; it is not a thing which cannot exist at all except in reality (one is a member of Christ’s body, or one is not). God is the Father of these same members, as being His children, but He who maintains this relationship is necessarily and always above all things-personally above all things, but divinely everywhere.
18: The descent into the lower parts of the earth is viewed as from His place as man on earth; not His coming down from heaven to be a man. It is Christ who descended.
19: Eph 4:11 gives special and permanent gifts; Eph 4:16, what every joint supplies in its place. Both have their place in the forming and growth of the body.
20: I have already noticed, that contrast of the new state and the old characterises the Ephesians more than Colossians, where we find more development of life.
21: In Colossians we have “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created us.”
22: There is a sense in which God is, morally, the measure of other beings-a consideration that brings out the immense privilege of the child of God. It is the effect of grace, in that, being born of Him and partaking of His nature, the child of God is called to be the imitator of God, to be perfect as His Father is perfect. He who loves is born of God, and knows God, for God is love. He makes us partakers of His holiness, consequently we are called to be imitators of God, as His dear children. This shews the immense privileges of grace. It is the love of God in the midst of evil, and which, superior to all evil, walks in holiness, and rejoices also together, in a divine way, in the unity of the same joys and the same sentiments. Therefore Christ says (Joh 17:1-26), “as we are,” and “in us.”
23: It is useful to note here the difference of Rom 12:1-2, and this epistle. The Romans, we have seen, contemplates a living man on earth; hence he is to give his body up as a living sacrifice-alive in Christ, he is to yield his members up wholly to God. Here the saints are seen as sitting in heavenly places already, and they are to come out in testimony of God’s character before men, walking as Christ did in love, and light.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Eph_4:1 to Eph_6:20
III. PART SECOND
THE SPIRIT RULING IN THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Read full note →
Eph_4:1 to Eph_6:20
1. The Theme of the Whole Part:
Walk worthy of the calling love and unity
Eph_4:1-3
1I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you [I exhort you therefore, I the prisoner in the Lord,]1 that ye walk worthy of the vocation [calling] wherewith ye are [were] called, 2With all lowliness and meekness,2 with long-suffering, forbearing 3one another in love; Endeavoring [Earnestly striving] to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Eph_4:1 a. The connection. I exhort you therefore, I the prisoner in the Lord [ΙΙαρακαλῶ οὖν ὑμᾶς ἐγὼ ὁ δέσμιος ἐν κυρίῳ].—The verb παρακαλῶ, placed first for emphasis, marks what follows as the ethical part. Οὑ̄ν, “therefore,” joins this practical, hortatory portion of the letter with the previous theoretical part, and that too as a consequence, so that the one forms a foundation for the other; the context indicating the reference more closely.—Ὁ δέσμιος, “the prisoner,” resumes what was expressed in Eph_3:1 and continued further in Eph_4:13-14. As Paul in his bonds prays for the Church, so he exhorts it also. Although the paronomasia (παρακαλῶ—κλήσεως) recalls ἐκκλησια, yet the reference is not to ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ Eph_4:21, but to the whole of what precedes (τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ has occurred already in Eph_1:22), which is, however, summed up in the concluding doxology. Hence Meyer is incorrect in taking οὖν as an inference from Eph_3:21 merely.3 The exhortation of the Apostle gives special emphasis to ἐγώ, “I,” even though it stands after ὑμᾶς, “you,” in the Greek. The phrase, ὁ δέσμιος ἐν κυρίῳ4 “the prisoner in the Lord” (which can be taken together grammatically, and must be taken together in view of the reference to Eph_3:1), marks the importance of the exhortation of Paul, who as a “faithful member of Christ” bears chains in and for the cause of Christ. Calvin: Erant (vincula) enim veluti sigillum honorificæ illius legationis, quam obtinuerat. Theodoret: Τοῖς διὰ τὸν Χριστὸν δεσμοῖς ἐναβρύνεται μᾶλλον ἤ βασιλεὺς διαδήματι. He is a shining example, and elsewhere he refers to his own walk in agreement with his preaching (1Co_4:16; 1Co_11:1; Php_3:17); he speaks accordingly ad excitandum effectum, quo sit efficacior exhortatio (Estius), but not ut Paulum obsequio exhilararent (Bengel). He wishes to gain attention and efficacy for his παρακαλεῖν by appealing, not to his imprisonment, which in itself was incapable of strengthening his exhortation, but to his willing, joyful, worthy wearing of the bonds; thus at the same time also strongly urging self-denial. The verb itself means originally to call hither, to invite (Act_18:20); then to address either hortatively (Rom_12:1; 2Co_2:8) or consolingly (2Co_2:7; 2Co_1:6; 2Co_7:6-7). Ὑμᾶς, “you,” designates the Church in its individual members; he always conceives of the Church as a fellowship of particular persons.
The fundamental exhortation. Eph_4:1 b.
That ye walk worthy of the calling [ἆξιώς περιπατῆσαι τῆς κλήσεως—The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (see Eph_2:2), as in Act_27:33-34, sets forth the purport of the exhortation. The emphasis, of course, rests upon the closer qualification ἀξίως (“worthy”), which stands first; for the kind of walk is the important matter. The genitive (as in Php_1:27; Col_1:10; Rom_16:2; 1Th_2:12) τῆς κλήσεως denotes that call of God, to which the walk must correspond, in order to be worthy.
Wherewith ye were called, ἦς (instead of ᾑ̄ 1Co_7:20) ἔκλήθητε.5 This relative clause joined per attractionem (see on Eph_1:8) indicates that the call has already taken place and been accepted. He speaks of a walk corresponding to the call already received, not as though we should walk worthy, in order to be called, but, since we are called through the grace of God without our merit or worthiness, we should not be unworthy of such grace (Calvin). Comp. Eph_4:17-30; Eph_2:10; Tit_2:11 ff.; Rom_8:4 if.; Gal_5:19 ff.
Closer definition of the Christian walk; Eph_4:2-3.
Eph_4:2. With all lowliness and meekness [μετὰ πάσης ταπεινοφροσύνης καὶ πραύ̈τητος. See Textual Note2].—This clause defines more closely “walk worthy of the calling,” joining with it two attendants which belong to the Christian walk (Winer, p. 353).6 First stands “lowliness,” which has for its opposite “minding high things” (Rom_12:16), “thinking one’s self to be something” (Gal_6:3); it is πάσης ἀρετῆς ὑποθέσις (Chrysostom). Comp. Php_2:3; Col_2:18; Col_2:23; Col_3:12-13. It is belief in our poverty over against faith in Christ, so that we know we have nothing, know nothing, can do nothing, having only an empty hand, yet an open one, to receive what the Lord will give. Accordingly, as in Mat_5:3-5, to “the poor in spirit” and “they that mourn” (=οἱ ταπεινοφρονοῦντες) are joined “the meek,” so here “meekness,” πραύ̈της is added, that mildness which is gentle toward others, because it thinks: Have I been helped, then I do not know, who should not be helped! Comp. Gal_6:1; 2Co_10:1; 1Co_4:21; 2Ti_2:25. [See Trench, Syn. N. T. § 42, perhaps the most discriminating essay on these words which can be found.7—R.] The adjective πάσης, “all,” denotes all the various relations and situations of lowliness and meekness; the former must manifest itself in both intellectual and ethical spheres, before God and men, the latter toward friend and foe, under violations of our own rights and property as well as those of our neighbor.
With long-suffering, μετὰ μακροθυμίας, is co-ordinate in form with the other two, standing closely connected, yet taken up by itself. Long-suffering (Mat_18:26; Mat_18:29; 1Co_13:4; 2Co_6:6; Gal_5:22) is a manifestation of meekness; much depends upon it frequently in the life of a church. Hence it accords with the context to distinguish this by a second μετά and to conjoin it to the other terms. [The word means, not taking swift vengeance or inflicting speedy punishment, though it becomes more general in its sense=forbearance of every kind. The pointing of the E. V. is correct, making the phrase a separate clause. Besides the objection which Braune urges below against connecting it with what follows we may add, that thus the phrase would receive undue emphasis and the parallelism of the participial clauses be disturbed.—R.]
Forbearing one another in love [ἀνεχόμενοι ἀλλήλων ἐν ἀγάπῃ].—We would expect the accusative here instead of the nominative: παρακαλῶ ὑ μᾶς—περιπατῆσαι—ἀνεχομένους. It is not however the ὑμᾶς, “you,” which is to be more closely defined, but the “walking,” not the subject, who should walk, but the predicate, how the walk is to be conducted; the two participles (here and Eph_4:3) do not then present secondary and additional thoughts. The passage is continued as though, in accordance with the sense, περιπατήσατε were to be read. So Eph_1:18; Col_3:16; Col_2:2; Col_2:10. Winer, p. 532. Ἀνεχόμενοι are those who endure the injuries and sins of others; ἀνοχή is the action of μακροθυμία “long-suffering,” which as the disposition, virtue, is to be perceived in the former. Comp. Rom_2:4; 2Co_11:1; 2Th_1:4. Ἀνέχεσθαι is the active forbearance, ὑπομένειν the quiet endurance. Tittmann, Syn. I. p. 194. The genitive ἀλλήλων “one another,” refers to the fact, that each one, who has to endure from another, gives occasion also for endurance; “long-suffering” is well aware of this.
In love, ἐν ἀγάπῃ.—This shows at once that the forbearance should not be mere coldness, indifference, obtuseness. Love should be the element of the endurance (Eph_3:18). Aliorum infirmitates æquo animo ferimus, nec ob ea, quæ nobis in proximo displicent, ab ejus amicitia recedimus, sed personam constanter amamus, etsi vitia in odio habeamus (Calovius). Hence “in love” is not to be joined with what follows (Olshausen); nor are we besides this qualification of “forbearing,” to take “with long-suffering,” as still another such (Calvin, Rueckert, Harless, Stier and others): for the “forbearing” is the act of the “long-suffering,” and the latter is not therefore the attendant (μετά) of the former, but its ground, its cause; a forbearing without love is conceivable and actually occurs, but never without long-suffering and yet in love, since love, according to its very nature, “suffereth long” (μακροθυμεῖ, 1Co_13:4). Still less allowable is it to join the first μετά with ἀνεχόμενοι (Bengel). [Meyer properly urges against this view that it makes an abrupt, instead of an easy, transition from the general: “walk worthy,” to the special: “forbearing one another.”—R.]
Eph_4:3. Earnestly striving to keep [σπουδάζοντες τηρεῖν].—The participle is to be regarded grammatically like the preceding one. [“This clause is parallel to the preceding, and indicates not so much, as Meyer says, the inward feelings by which the ἀνέχεσθαι is to be characterized, as rather the motive to it, and the accompanying or simultaneous effort” (Eadie).—R.] It describes the zealous striving (Luther: be diligent), as Gal_2:10; 1Th_2:19. The present infinitive τηρεῖν denotes the continued maintenance which is necessary every day, since dangers constantly approach. The idea of the verb refers to retaining possession of property, which has not first to be gained. Etiam ubi nulla fissura est, monitis opus est (Bengel).
The unity of the Spirit, την ἑνότητα τοῦ πνευματου, not τοῦ νοός, is the unity which the Holy Spirit effects. So Chrysostom: τὸ πνεῦμα τους γένει και τροποις διαφόροις διεστηκότας ἑνοῖ and most. It is not the unity peculiar to the Spirit, which needs not to be preserved by us (Schenkel), but the unity and concord of the Church and its members, and indeed only that which the Holy Ghost works; that accomplished by the spirit of the age is not the object of zealous preservation (τηρεῖν), but only of purification. [The genitive is that of the originating cause (Eadie, Ellicott) rather than a possessive.—The reference to the human spirit is altogether inadmissible, yet is advocated by Anselm, Erasmus, Calvin, Estius, Rueckert, and others.—R.]
In the bond of peace, ἐν τῷ συνδέσμῳ τῆς εἰρήνης—This defines more closely the “keeping” which is the object of the “earnestly striving,” and in the same way (ἐν) as in Eph_4:2 (“forbearing”—“in love”), since something depends upon the motive and mode of preserving unity. The very “unity,” which is “of the Spirit,” required and wrought by the Spirit, can be fostered, furthered and preserved in a carnal manner, from political and egotistical grounds. Against this our phrase is directed. Ὁσύνδεσμος with the exception of Act_8:23, occurs only here and in the Epistle to the Colossians (Eph_2:19; Eph_3:14); to Eph_4:2-3, Col_3:13-14 are evident parallels. There “love” is “the bond of perfectness,” hence a bond well adapted to preserve the unity of the Spirit. “Peace” is indeed itself a condition corresponding alike with “unity” and “love;” it is in spiritual life, and for the Church, first peace with God, and then that peace of heart which is undisturbed by the assaults, temptations and ills of the world and the flesh, not even by the disquiet of the conscience; and further with respect to our neighbor, it is peace with him in love to him, out of love to the Lord of the Church, the Saviour, to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, and to His children through Him. Hence love is the bond which cherishes peace in the Church, and in such love should that unity be preserved, which God’s Spirit will work in the Church of Christ; “love edifieth” (1Co_8:1). Accordingly “the bond of peace” is love itself (so Bengel). The genitive is, therefore, not epexegetical (Bleek), nor the genitive of apposition (Meyer, Schenkel); else, as Rueckert aptly remarks, the foundation of the building would be sustained by a perishable roof, the unity of the Spirit be preserved in or through peace with our neighbor, while the Apostle says, that the unity of the Spirit should be preserved in the efficient strength of the power, which fosters this very peace; that is love, which has peace through faith in love, and brings, establishes and retains peace. Where it is wanting, there is carnal nature and discord (1Co_3:3). Accordingly the preposition “in” designates love as the element in which the unity of the Spirit is to be maintained; hence ἐν is not=διά (Bleek).
[Braune’s view takes the genitive as gen. objecti. It is adopted by Bengel, Rueckert, Harless, Stier, following Theophylact. But it is open to serious objection. It is far from probable that the Apostle would express the notion “in love” by such a periphrasis, especially as the parallel clauses are not parallel in the meaning of their several parts. Certainly the Ephesians would not have the Colossian Epistle at hand to suggest to them this sense, and it is not at all obvious without that suggestion. The assumption that ἐν was instrumental may have led to this view of the phrase (Meyer). On the other hand if the genitive be taken as one of apposition, defining the “bond” as “peace” (so Flatt, Olshausen, Meyer, Eadie, Hodge, Alford, Ellicott), we have an obvious and simple interpretation, suiting the sense of ἐν. Rueckert’s objection really applies only to the instrumental sense of the proposition. Alford: Peace binds together the Church as a condition and symbol of that inner unity which is only wrought by the indwelling Spirit of God—Far more than the union of Jew and Gentile is meant.—R.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Doctrine and Exhortation. “The distinction of doctrinal and hortatory parts must not assume the unapostolical character of that modern fiction, according to which exhortation is so severed from doctrinal discussion, as to contain no doctrine at all. As little as an apostolic Epistle is a mere doctrinal discussion, so little is an apostolic, or even a Christian, exhortation without doctrine. What the Apostle requires, are not requirements in addition to and outside of doctrine, but requirements of doctrine, if by doctrine we mean the knowledge of Christian saving truth. This is the very order, which distinguishes Christian ethics from all other.” The Apostle now shows his readers, “what the gospel requires,” after he has called to their memories what it has given them. It requires manifestations of life from those who had been quickened, not from the dead. It expects works of love and righteousness from those who believe and are justified, from him who has been new-created unto good works (comp. on Eph_2:10). It expects good fruit from a good tree. The opinion that men can gather grapes of thorns, see works of holiness without faith, and make man just before God without the Redeemer; the preaching of morality and the theory of good works without faith, all constitute a perversion of Christian intelligence and of the apostolic order into the futility and confusion of pseudo-Christianity (Harless). [The Apostle’s “therefore” rebukes both the dogmatism of dead orthodoxy, and the cry: give us something practical, none of your dry doctrine. At one time the application to the former was more necessary, but the tendency of the present day calls for special attention to the other phase of the matter. When professing Christians or churches tire of the facts respecting God’s love in Christ (the real Christian doctrine on which the Apostle’s “therefore” rests), they have already ceased to be in earnest about the worthy walk.—R.]
2. Paul’s right to exhort. The exhortation of the Apostle proceeds rather from the Christian worthiness of “the prisoner of the Lord,” than from the apostolic dignity of the ambassador of the Lord; the latter is more the merely outward, the former more the inward authority, both belonging together; the latter could not exist without the former and vice versa. The former would have neither courage nor right without the latter, but the latter would lack fervency, sincerity and emphasis without the former. The most winning exordium as well as the most powerful Amen, is still the Christianity of the servant of Christ. Vita clerici evangelium est populi. Non bene auditur, qui non bene diligitur (Gregory the Great). There should be no complaint, because at the present time so much is made to depend on the person, to this first of all men will look.
3. The calling. With the calling which God proffers to us, which we have experienced, the Christian life begins. At first we have only to hear (hören), then it comes about that we hearken (zuhören), and finally we adhere (zugehören). Many are the methods of the call: through God’s word sung or spoken in the sanctuary, in the pictures of sacred art, in holy action, in the statements of pious Christians, or in the Scriptures as we read in the closet, from the mouth of a mother or a child, from events in the life of others or ourselves, in the voice of conscience and the immediate suggestion of the Spirit, suddenly, or in the way of gradual consideration, of recollection of what was previously learned and perhaps long-forgotten—thus often is the call addressed to each: every one is more than once, yes many times called by God to Himself. To this the walk should correspond, to this it should give testimony.
4. The worthiness of the walk is determined first and chiefly by the relation of him who is called to the revelation of grace which introduces and regulates the spiritually received, personal fellowship of grace with God. Thus the foundation of the Christian life is laid. In the received benefits and possession lies the germ of all the blessings of eternity. The great matter is constancy, fidelity, personal fidelity to the inwardly efficient word of God, to the personal fellowship with God wrought by the Holy Ghost who calls us, not to a precept, a law, rule, maxim, not even to one’s own nature and soul; this comes in as a result of the first, which is the cause, the basis, the foundation work, followed by a superstructure of fidelity to the renewed soul.
5. Lowliness is the first attendant (μετά) of the Christian walk, beginning after the call of God: He who hears the call, recognizes Jesus as the Christ, feeling. He has more and is more, His, heavenly and Divine fellowship is beyond all our experience, He knows and explains and presents the Father’s will in overpowering clearness, strength and beauty, and thus he who is called ever feels himself to be more insignificant, sinful and needy. In listening to and looking unto Jesus, lowliness springs up within him; he became a Christian not having this, he did not need to bring it to Christianity or as a price for it, but by becoming a Christian he becomes humble, and that too in the most profound earnestness and lively sorrow over his own sin and poverty and weakness. The more the Christian knows and feels himself to be exalted as a child of God, as a member of the body whose Head is Christ, so much the more does he feel himself to be exalted without any desert or worthiness, only through the fellowship of grace with his Creator, Redeemer and Comforter. He rejoices in his peculiar gifts, but only as given, not as profitable or abused. He well knows, that he is of worth before God, but also that what he is and has is little in comparison with what he should and might be and have, that he is an unprofitable servant and yet is a child of God, a joint heir with Christ.
6. Meekness is joined with lowliness. This is not a soft, yielding natural disposition, nor a prudent bridling of a passionate nature, but it is humility applied to the world, not taking offence at the offences of the world, even though misunderstood, mercilessly treated, oppressed and persecuted. This does not estrange her, for she knows herself. The knowledge and experience of corruption and of salvation through Christ in our own heart, produces either no permanent feeling, or else a common feeling, a fellow-feeling, which looks upon him who gives or prepares offence, as one who is suffering under sin, as unfortunate, rather than as evil-minded and rejoicing in sin; accordingly she remains without bitterness, because she has herself experienced the rich grace of God, and perseveres in patience, because she knows God’s patience. [It is also exercised toward God, in submission, which is the foundation of its manifestations toward men.—R.]
7. Long-suffering is added as an especial attendant of the Christian walk in social life. It is meekness towards the sins of others, whom we can punish, meekness, keeping its ground against a long series of these. She knows out of her own experience of the long-suffering of God, that sin is misery, out of which condemning and judging never helps us, but rather grace and mercy, if one will let himself be helped. Long-suffering refrains from punishment, that rejects, cuts off, expels from fellowship and friendship, having instead entreaty, exhortation, instruction, discipline in word and deed. She can lovingly hope, is lovingly spirited and brave. She bears with her neighbor, does not weakly yield, does not stand by coldly and stolidly, nor yet embittered and in carnal anger; she is not whimpering and feeble, but strong and heroic in her love, like a mother or a friend.
8. Unity should be the object of zealous striving, but only that unity which the Holy Ghost works. It is not first to be made, is not factitious, but unity, wrought from above, which we have only to preserve. Over against this, the Christian must keep at a distance from all party combinations, which in effect introduce discord and schism into church-life. But he must also avoid jumbling together the great variety and wealth of gifts and powers, and seeking to unite all under external form and letter. No carnal strife, but also no slothful peace, no patched-up, hypocritical or dead unity.
9. The impulse under which we must endeavor to keep this peace, is peaceable love, which can have foes, but is a foe to none, rejoicing in every gift and creature of God, embracing such and leading them into the life of the church, employing and enjoying them, as a nation in time of peace with its various classes, labors and powers, strives in every direction to perform its task, not from the motions of the flesh, but from the basis which God has given, out towards the appointed goal.
10. Paul conceives of the Church of Christ above all as a living company of Christian persons, not as an institution with all its regulations. But the sacredness does not rest upon the individuals, but inheres in the whole organism, which the Holy Ghost animates.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Suffer as a Christian, in order to be able to work in the service of the Master.—Show thyself in deed a servant of Christ, in order in such service to be able to direct aright in word, those who are directed to thee.—Loosen doctrine from the precept which it contains, but do not sever them from one another; distinguish, but do not divide them. There is no Christianity without Christ, and no religion without morality, but at the same time those ethics are of no value which have no doctrine behind them. True the conscience is the voice of God, but what were that, if it were without the Word of God?—He who walks unworthy of his vocation is doubly culpable, more than a heathen; do not despise the calling.—As a child of man, a son of earth, no one stands alone and solitary, but with others, as child of God also dost thou belong to a family; take heed thereto! Thou belongest not merely to the visible, but also to the invisible church.—The three chief virtues of a Christian: Lowliness, meekness, and long-suffering [Demuth, Sanftmuth, Langmuth].—Humility is the basis of all Christian virtue; without it all is wicked, however praiseworthy it may otherwise appear. It is nothing more than evangelical truth applied to all cases; a doctrine which does not make us humble is of no account.—Christian practice in walk and conversation is indispensable; it is more important to be skilful in this, than to have special insight respecting the theory.
Starke:—Christians have a great and important calling, to walk worthily according to the commands of their Saviour. O that we ever had this calling before our eyes in all our doings!—Where there is much cross, there much light is. Tribulation brings experience; he preaches best who preaches out of his experience.—What God gives and how He gives should satisfy us. Bread and honor are the twin-portions of our calling.—He lives in no shame, who has an unpleasant calling, for God has set him in it. Has God ordained, our pleasure’s gained!—Without lowliness, gentleness and patience the unity of the Spirit cannot be maintained. All discord, heresy and schism come from the vices which are opposed to these virtues.—A gentle spirit is the garden in which patience grows.—Unity of the Spirit, the highest ornament of Christians. How? should those live in discord, who are members of one body, of one Head, Jesus Christ? But that is the very sign of a corrupted Christianity, that there are so many sects, so much discord and strife among Christians.
Rieger:—Paul has just prayed so heartily, now he can exhort so profitably. Have you never found that after secret intercourse with God in prayer, your neighbor’s heart also inclines more to you, and is more willing to receive a word which is redolent of prayer?—The call entitles us indeed to the kingdom and glory of God, but it obligates us also to sanctification, and to adorn the doctrine of God and our Saviour.—Humility stands in the feeling of her own defects, and knows how slowly the growth of the inner man proceeds; hence in meekness she does not exact too much of others, and in long-suffering does not lose patience, when an enduring love is necessary in meeting others. Endurance is keenly felt, but love sweetens it, as we see in the case of our children, what we can endure in them, in order in love to help them out of their infirmities. Endeavor overcomes all difficulties: only ever revert to confidence in God.—Unity in the Spirit we dare not make, but only keep it.—To maintain peace is better than to maintain right.
Heubner:—The Christian should be and remain conscious of the fellowship to which he belongs: it is a calamity in the Christian church, that this consciousness has been so greatly extinguished. This consciousness should not be maintained proudly but humbly, because the higher the aim, the greater the required perfection, so much the more should each one be conscious of his distance from it and his weakness. The principle of the Christian communion is: to humble ourselves, to become the least, to serve; out of this grows meekness, which shows itself towards those who make the fulfilment of the duty difficult for us.—Endurance presupposes, that every one has something that is obnoxious to others. It is necessary, because we ourselves are troublesome to others, and because we are all members of one body, and because it is God who places others by our side.—The unity in the Spirit is something very different from corporate, external, conventional, superficial unity; it dwells deep within, in the entire will and disposition, it is holy, proceeding from the Spirit, not from mere prudence, concerning itself about essentials, not about non-essentials. From this we infer what real union is; the Spirit alone can create it, that made by man is as a rule of no value.—Spangenberg says: “I hold that no one is a child of God merely because he belongs to this or that religion [i.e., Christian confession]; to him who receives Jesus Christ, power will be given to become a son of God. In Christ Jesus nothing avails save faith, which works by love. He in whom I find this faith is my brother. Is he of another religion, that makes no difference, he is still my brother and nearer to me than my fellow-professors who have no faith. Indeed, because he is of another religion, in which the gospel does not shine so brightly, he is to me a miracle of grace.”—The Moravians have been very unjustly accused of narrow-heartedness.
Passavant:—The calling of men was from the beginning, to live innocently and holily, thankfully and obediently toward their God. The calling of the sinner is: to repent, to forsake the ways of sin, to seek pardon, grace and peace; to turn to the holy and living God, whom he has long forsaken. The calling of the Christian is this: internally and externally, with word and work, with his whole life, in all things, at all times in the church, before believers and unbelievers, to give glory to God the Father in Jesus Christ.—One may endure the faults of his neighbor from want of feeling, from mildness of temperament, from human good-nature, from earthly politeness, from temporal policy, from pharisaical hypocrisy; nothing is so common; but it is rarely done out of real Christian love.
Stier:—What is not rooted in humility does not deserve the name of a virtue.—Always and everywhere this alone is of avail, to cherish the unity of the Spirit; thus out of every desolation a new edifice is formed, without this the most beautiful structure becomes rotten and finally breaks.
Gerlach:—Patience manifests itself in the quiet endurance of injuries, long-suffering, more in the active maintenance of others in necessities, even when criminal.
Sermons on the Epistle for the 17th Sunday after Trinity (Eph_4:1-6). Westermeier: Unity in., the Spirit: 1. What is it? 2. By what means is it preserved? a) in general (Eph_4:1); b) in particular (Eph_4:2-3); 3. On what grounds should it be maintained (Eph_4:4-6).
Ziel:—Endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit! 1. On what this admonition is based (Eph_4:4-6). 2. How we obey it (Eph_4:1-3).
Ahlfeld:—Walk worthy of your Christian calling! 1) Your calling as children of God; 2) your calling as brethren to each other; 3) your calling, to derive the power for such a walk from the right sources.—Our joy in the congregation of the saints. 1) Who are these saints and how far does this fellowship extend? 2) What is the bond which encircles them? 3) What blessing and what joy do we derive from this fellowship of the saints?
Rautenberg:—The unity of the children of God. 1) How the Divine call requires it; 2) in what it consists; 3) from what it proceeds; 4) to what it obliges every one.
Kapff:—Endeavor to keep the unity in the Spirit! 1. Let go what disturbs unity. 2. Hold fast what confirms it.
Heubner:—The unity of the Christian Church. 1. Oneness of life: a) Worthy walk, b) brotherly love, c) peaceableness. 2. Oneness of faith: a) in one Holy Ghost, b) in one Saviour, c) in one God and Father.—The duties of Christian church-membership. 1. A walk which is worthy of the call into the church (Eph_4:1). 2. Specially fraternal walk in humility and love (Eph_4:2). 3. A concordant, harmonious walk, not mere external but internal unity (Eph_4:3), for the fellowship of the Church is not merely a body, but a Spirit (Eph_4:4); it is founded upon one faith in Christ and one confession (Eph_4:3) and is perfected in God the Father.—The communion of the saints. 1. A description: not of a place, nor of a form, but of love and of faith. 2. How is it established: not by force, by human power or act, but by the Spirit of God. 3. Its importance. The equality of our fellowship in Christianity. 1. Proof: we have one calling, one Saviour, one Father. 2. Application: Thanksgiving to God, caution against pride, consolation for the lowly and poor, awakening endeavors after this fellowship.
Pröhle:—Endeavor to keep the unity in the Spirit! 1. Only in sorrow can we receive this exhortation now-a-days. 2. May it knock loudly upon the conscience of every one. 3. And may it bind anew in firm union our hearts and hands.—Forbearing one another in love. 1. Meaning: a) We should follow after peace, as husbands, wives, kinsmen, masters, servants, b) This is possible through lowliness, meekness, long-suffering. 2. Motive: a) The duty of brotherly love, b) our own defects; to-day I must bear with you, to-morrow you must bear with me.
Footnotes:
[1]Eph_4:1.—Nearly all MSS. have: ἐν κυρίῳ;א.:ἐν κυρίῳ [The change of order is for the purpose of bringing out the emphatic force of παρακαλῶ (exhort rather than beseech); the second I being required in English. In is substituted for of as more correct, while calling is in itself a better word than vocation, serving here to preserve the correspondence between the substantive and verb (aorist: were called).—R.]
[2]Eph_4:2.—[The spelling πραΰτητος (א. B. C. 17) is considered by Tischendorf, Alford, Ellicott, as the best attested form in the dialect of the New Testament. Comp. Gal_5:23. Braune apparently prefers πραότητος (Rec., A. D. F. L., most cursives). His rendering of the three terms is very neat: mit aller Demuth und Sanftmuth, mit Langmuth.—R.]
[3][Eadie accepts a reference to the preceding paragraph; Alford to the all that precedes (so Hodge), but adds: “here perhaps also a resumption of τούτου χάριν Eph_3:1; Eph_3:14, and thus carried back to the contents of chaps. Eph_1:2.” Ellicott: “To those passages in the preceding chapter which relate to the spiritual privileges and calling of the Ephesians, e. g., Eph_4:6; Eph_4:12, but especially to Eph_4:14 ff., in which the tenor of the prayer incidentally discloses how high and how great that calling really was.” The objection to the more general reference in my mind is, that it assumes the Epistle to have been by the Apostle himself purposely divided into two parts, doctrinal and practical, like the divisions of a sermon. Paul’s method is rather that of concatenation.—R.]
[4][The choice of this phrase here, following Eph_3:1, where the genitive occurs, is overlooked in the E. V. Ἐν is not here=διά or σύν (it is doubtful if it ever is), but denotes the sphere or element of the captivity. As distinguished from Eph_3:1, this passage gives prominence to the fellowship with Christ and devotion to His cause, while the genitive marks Christ more definitely as the author or originator of the captivity. “In the Lord” seems to be at times, Ellicott remarks, little more than a qualitative definition, yet there is far more danger of abridging than extending its profound spiritual significance.—The phrase cannot be joined with the verb, as is done by Semler and Koppe.—R.]
[5][Meyer thinks the attraction is from the accusative ἥν, though admitting that a dative might be proper here. De Wette denies the propriety of the expression κλῆσιν καλεῖν (cognate accusative), though it is defended by Winer, p. 154, and occurs in Arrian, Epict.: καταισχύνειν τὴν κλῆσιν ἧν κέκληκεν. The dative gives the simpler grammatical form and through a slight violation of the law of attraction, is sustained by the analogy of 2Ti_1:9; 1 Cor. 5:20 is not decisive since ἐν with the dative precedes and the relative might be attracted into that case, though it probably is not.—R.]
[6][Σύν denotes coherence, often with the same idea of assistance; μετά refers to an accompaniment or attendant.—R.]
[7][Trench properly objects to Chrysostom’s proud humility, which shows itself in his definition of the first term: “making ourselves small when we are great,” defining it rather: “the esteming ourselves small, inasmuch as we are so: the thinking truly, lowlily of ourselves.”—The second term is more than gentleness, to which Braune and Hodge seem to limit it; it rests on the former as its foundation, accepting God’s dealings in humility, and manifesting itself toward men, because they are His instruments.—R.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On v2 lowliness--In classic Greek, the meaning is meanness of spirit:…
lowliness--In classic Greek, the meaning is meanness of spirit: the Gospel has elevated the word to express a Christian grace, namely, the esteeming of ourselves small, inasmuch as we are so; the thinking truly, and because truly, therefore lowlily, of ourselves [TRENCH].
meekness--that spirit in which we accept God's dealings with us without disputing and resisting; and also the accepting patiently of the injuries done us by men, out of the thought that they are permitted by God for the chastening and purifying of His people (Sa2 16:11; compare Gal 6:1; Ti2 2:25; Tit 3:2). It is only the lowly, humble heart that is also meek (Col 3:12). As "lowliness and meekness" answer to "forbearing one another in love" (compare "love," Eph 4:15-16), so "long-suffering" answers to (Eph 4:4) "endeavoring (Greek, 'earnestly' or 'zealously giving diligence') to keep (maintain) the unity of the Spirit (the unity between men of different tempers, which flows from the presence of the Spirit, who is Himself 'one,' Eph 4:4) in (united in) the bond of peace" (the "bond" by which "peace" is maintained, namely, "love," Col 3:14-15 [BENGEL]; or, "peace" itself is the "bond" meant, uniting the members of the Church [ALFORD]).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–3 I. IN CHURCHLY RELATIONS AND OBLIGATIONS, Eph_4:1 to Eph_5:21.
I. IN CHURCHLY RELATIONS AND OBLIGATIONS, Eph_4:1 to Eph_5:21.
1. To be a holy and efficient Church, 1-16.
Read full note →
a. In holy unity of spirit, Eph_4:1-6.
1. I—St. Paul’s powerful Ego again. Note Eph_3:1.
Therefore— In view of this sublime divine side of your redeemed churchdom.
Walk worthy… vocation… called—Had he been addressing sinners he would have exhorted them to enter by faith into the number of God’s elect, and by obedience to the divine call to be numbered among the called. But this they have done. They are elect and the called. He can, therefore, only exhort them to walk worthy of the vocation (and vocation signifies calling) wherewith they were called. They are called as once Gentiles into the spiritual Israel, and called as once sinners into the elect Church. Perseverance and not apostasy, perfectness and not defectiveness, is their now high and holy obligation. Walk here implies Christian activity; just as in Eph_2:2 it designates energetic, depraved activity. Dr. Clarke suggests a contrast between the apostles’ confinement to passive duty in prison and their freedom to walk in active Christian life. The antithesis is beautiful, but was imagined by the commentator, not by the apostle. Dr. Eadie’s calling the suggestion “a stroke of very miserable wit” is a “stroke” of very uncandid criticism. The simple-hearted and great-hearted Adam Clarke had not the slightest intention of “wit,” but of beautiful practical reflection.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Ch. Eph_4:1-16. Practical results: spiritual Unity in Diversity of…
Ch. Eph_4:1-16. Practical results: spiritual Unity in Diversity of Gifts
1. I therefore] Here begins what may be called the Second Part of the Epistle. Hitherto the Apostle has dealt with the eternal and spiritual aspects of Redemption. He now comes to their sequel and manifestation in conduct and life. Not that he leaves behind, for a moment, the eternal facts and spiritual principles. Scripture always brings the doctrinal into the practical, as reason and mainspring; and nowhere more than in this Epistle. But the main stress of thought is now on the effects rather than on the causes; it deals with the holy sequitur, the “therefore,” of the matter. Compare the Epistles to the Romans and Colossians for a similar arrangement; and, to some extent, the First to the Corinthians.
Read full note →
the prisoner of the Lord] Lit., the prisoner in the Lord. His bonds are due to his union with Christ. They are thus a strong Christian argument with his converts. See further on Eph_3:2, above.
beseech] Cp. Rom_12:1 for the same word in just the same connexion. The Gr. is a verb more elastic in reference than our “beseech,” often meaning “to exhort,” “to encourage,” and (without the thought of entreaty) “to request.” But the thought of entreaty is quite in place here.
walk] See on Eph_2:2; Eph_2:10, above. The distinctive notion of the word is that of the moral action and conduct of life.
worthy of the vocation] Better, worthily of the calling. For similar phrases, cp. Php_1:27, “walk worthily of the Gospel of Christ”; Col_1:10, “walk worthily of the Lord”; 1Th_2:12, “walk worthily of God.” Ideally, of course, no human walk is “worthy of” the Gospel, the Call, or the Divine Caller. But practically it can and should be so, in the sense of being governed at every step by the Divine motives, applied by grace, and so presenting a true correspondence to those motives.
“The vocation”:—see on Eph_1:18, “His calling.”
are called] Lit., and better, were called, when they heard and believed.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 (1) Worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.—This…
(1) Worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.—This “being worthy of the Christian calling” may obviously show itself in any of the graces of regenerate humanity, all being features of the image of Christ. Thus in 1Pe_1:15 it expresses itself in “holiness” (as in the frequent phrase “called to be saints”); in Php_1:27-30, in steadfastness of faith. But in this passage the especial point which has been dwelt upon in their calling is the fact that they were aliens, helpless and miserable, and that they are now united in one body with the ancient people of God. Hence, naturally, the graces declared to correspond with their calling, so viewed, are the graces of humility and gentleness, teaching them to sink all thought of self in “the unity of the Spirit.”
(1) Eph_4:1-6, although cast in a hortatory form contain the final summary of the great doctrine of the Epistle—the UNITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH—in words which have all the glowing freedom of spiritual enthusiasm, and all the clear-cut precision of a creed.
Read full note →
Thus (a) the ground of that unity is laid in that spiritual communion of each soul with the “one Spirit,” the “one Lord,” and the “one God and Father of all,” which underlies all outward ordinance, and which no power of man can either give or take away, (b) The means of entering that unity is the “one baptism,” ordained by Christ Himself, universal in the Christian world, capable of being ministered (though irregularly) by any Christian hand, (c) The graces, which in germ are conditions, and in full growth are effects, of such unity are the “one hope,” the “one faith,” the one “bond of peace” or charity. These last most of all depend on the “fellow-working” of man—primarily in the soul receiving them, and secondarily in all who can influence it for good and for evil.
We have here a perfect and exhaustive exposition of the unity of the Church, on which depend the other qualities of “Holiness,” “Catholicity,” and “Apostolicity” ascribed to it in the Creed. In other passages the essential life of the Church is attributed, now to the revelation of the Father (Mat_16:17-18), now to the indwelling presence of the Son (Mat_28:20), now to the gift of the Holy Ghost (Act_2:38-39). Here all are united in one comprehensive view. The order, however, is natural, not artificial. The exhortation to peace naturally leads to the conception of one Body, animated by the “one Spirit”; next, the remembrance of their calling leads to the “one Lord,” who called them to Him in one faith and by one baptism; and all ends in the contemplation of the “one God and Father,” who is not only above all and through all His creation, but specially in those who are adopted to a new sonship in Christ. (See Joh_14:22-23.) In its completeness and depth this passage stands alone. It is interesting to compare and contrast with it the equally celebrated passage occupying the corresponding place in the Colossian Epistle (Col_3:1-4), and to gather from this the mingled similarity and difference in the main idea of those two Epistles—the Ephesian Epistle dwelling especially on the unity and regeneration of the whole body, the Colossian Epistle on the sole Headship and Deity of Christ.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Vers. 1-16. CHURCH PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH AND PROGRESS; THE…
PRACTICAL PORTION OF THE EPISTLE.
Vers. 1-16. CHURCH PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH AND PROGRESS; THE CHURCH A BODY.
Read full note →
I therefore. Inference not only from last chapter, but the whole Epistle. Paul"s interest in the Ephesians led him to a double application of the great subject which he had expounded:
(1) to ask God on their behalf that he would bestow on them the full measure of the blessing to which of his grace they were entitled; (Eph_3:14-21) and
(2) to entreat them on God"s behalf to live in a way befitting their high calling. (Eph_4:6) To this second application he proceeds now. The prisoner in the Lord. Not merely "of the Lord," but ejn, Kuriw, the usual formula for vital communion with Christ, indicating that his captivity was the captivity of a part or member of the Lord. An exhortation from such a prisoner ought to fall with double weight. Beseech you to walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye were called. Their call was to be God"s people; (comp. Rom_9:25) this not a mere speculative distinction, but one that must have practical form and that must lead to suitable fruit. True grace in the heart must show itself by true goodness in the life. They were not to conceal their religion, not to be ashamed of it, but to avow it and glory in it, and their lives were not to be disgraced by unworthy conduct, but to be brightened and elevated by their relation to Christ.
Ver. 1.
The Christian walk.
worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called." We now come to the practical part of the Epistle, and the first exhortation is a striking one. Paul attached great importance to the element of walk or character. He skillfully puts two things in connection with each other vocation on the one hand, and walk on the other. The preceding chapters had shown the wonderful glory of the Christian vocation. The succeeding chapters are directed to secure a correspondingly elevated Christian walk. Two main topics present themselves.
1. Generally, the value of the Christian walk or character.
2. The kind of walk required of the vocation," etc.
I VALUE OF CHRISTIAN WALK OR CHARACTER. This may be shown in three aspects. As a plea for Christianity, or evidence of the reality of Christian faith; as a persuasive towards it, and as a pattern for imitation.
1. A plea. Skeptical tendencies of the present age; logic not sufficient to meet them. Strongest popular evidence of Christianity is its inherent truthfulness, its self-commending power. But next in power is the consistent lives of earnest Christians. Men and women consistently following Christ, breathing his spirit, and moving heavenwards, show that his religion is not a sham or a deception, but a great reality.
2. A persuasive. Such lives appeal to the heart as well as the head. They show religion to be, not only a reality, but a great obligation and a great blessing; appeal to the conscience and force it to say, "That is what we ought to be." Men feel they ought to live like such, and certainly they would fain die like them.
3. A pattern. Do we need it? Have we not other and more perfect patterns? Sermon on mount; life of Christ? Yes, but human nature desiderates something on its own level something visible and tangible, a stepping-stone between heaven and earth. Hence Paul gave thanks that the Thessalonians became followers of him and of the Lord, and he told the Philippians that he and others were given them "for an ensample." Every Christian congregation should have a number of model Christians fitted to be examples to the rest the elders and elderly people especially. Men may sneer at model Christians, but they do not sneer at model soldiers or model servants, and certainly every Christian worthy of the name should aim at being as near Christ as possible.
II THE KIND OF WALK. "Worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called." We have all an idea of consistency; inconsistency should be the object of our abhorrence. The world has a keen eye for inconsistencies of Christians, and exposes them mercilessly. It takes comfort from them to continue in sin. Sins detestable in the godly are thought nothing of in the worldly. If what David did in re Uriah had been done by Nebuchadnezzar, no one would have said anything. A consistent walk is, by God"s help, within the reach of all. It is an impressive sermon to the world, a continual sermon, an unanswerable sermon. Let all preach this sermon, though it be their only one. The "walk worthy" is a walk of holiness, humility, forbearance, forgiveness, patience, charity. It is also a walk of brightness and beneficence. It seeks to make the world brighter and better. Let us be urged to it by the sins of the world, by the miseries of the world, by the dangers of the world, as regards the soul. In order to promote it, let us be much with Christ, and as far as we can, with those who are like Christ. Let us study the biographies of Christ-like men and aim at conformity to their example. Let us often pray the prayer of the third chapter of this book, and other prayers of the like tenor. Let us use earnestly our means of grace, praying that each sabbath, each sermon, each sacrament, may serve to make us more worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.
HOMILIES BY T. CROSKERY.
Ver. 1.
Ethics after Theology.
The doctrinal part of the Epistle is now finished and the practical part begins. This is the true and natural order.
I IT IS IN THE SPHERE OF THE DOCTRINAL THAT WE FIND THE POWER THAT CARRIES US THROUGH ALL PRACTICAL DUTIES. In all the Epistles the duties enforced are grounded in the doctrines declared or explained. The doctrines are the reservoir which sends its stream of power down over the human life. The engineer scoops out a hollow space to be filled with water, constructs his machinery, and then lifts the sluice that sets all the machinery in motion. When the doctrines of grace have been fully expounded, the apostle lifts the sluice and lets on the stream that sends life spinning round and round in a course of holy activity. "I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice". (Rom_12:1)
II IT IS NECESSARY TO INCULCATE CHRISTIAN DUTIES EVEN IN THE CASE OF CHRISTIANS. If the apostles did it, we must do it. It is only Antinomianism resting on the doctrines of grace without watchfulness of the walk before God that contests this principle. An Antinomian Bible would have no place for duties. Christianity includes duties as well as doctrines. It does not merely hold out a refuge to the guilty, but takes all who accept Christ under its supreme and exclusive direction. It evangelizes human life by impregnating its minutest transactions with the spirit of the gospel. But we must be always careful, in preaching the necessity of good works and in enforcing Christian duties, to ground them, as the Scriptures ground them, in the doctrines of grace. T.C.
The obligations of the Christian calling.
"Walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye are called.
I THE NATURE OF THIS CALLING. It is the Christian vocation. We are called out of darkness into God"s marvelous light, (1Pe_2:9) into the grace of Christ, (Gal_1:6) into the fellowship of Christ; (1Co_1:9) unto holiness; (1Th_2:7) unto glory and virtue; (2Pe_1:3) unto peace, (1Co_7:15) not only with God, but with our consciences and with one another (Act_24:16; Eph_4:2) This calling is a high calling, a holy calling, a heavenly calling. We may well, therefore, walk worthy of it.
II THE WALK IN HARMONY WITH OUR CALLING. It is emphatically "to walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing"; (Col_1:10) "to walk worthy of God who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory"; (1Th_2:12) to have a conversation becoming the gospel of Christ. (Php_1:27) In human society, men are often kept from unworthy courses by a feeling of honor, as gentlemen; how much more ought Christians to cherish a sense of honor as disciples of the Savior and joint-heirs with him of the kingdom of heaven! The feeling of family honor is often a powerful guard against mean or ungenerous actions. It is a profound disgrace to find the descendant of an ancient and noble family forswear all its best traditions. As members of the household of God, as brethren of Jesus Christ himself, shall we disgrace this sublime relationship? We cannot afford to bring shame upon our profession, (Heb_6:6) to lose the comfort of our calling, (Psa_19:11) or to lose its end. (Heb_12:14) Let us not, therefore, affront our calling by inconsistencies, but walk in a way that will fully harmonize with its nature, glory, and end. It is all the more necessary to do so as the true walk of a saint tends so powerfully to promote the unity of the Church. T.C.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR Vers. 1-16.
The unity of the Church.
The doxology has just died away with its ascription of glory to God in the Church throughout all ages, and now the apostle turns from his intercession to admonish the Ephesian Christians about the necessity of cultivating lowliness of mind and mutual consideration, that in the Church there may be preserved "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." It is plain from the verses that follow that Paul"s conviction was that the Divine glory could only be manifested in a Church thoroughly united. To the all-important subject of the unity of the Church we are consequently led.
I CONSIDER THE UNIFYING FACTS, (Vers. 4-6.) Paul here lays before the Ephesians certain great facts which are meant to contribute to this unity of the Church. These facts we had better enumerate in barest outline.
1. There is one body. This refers to the solidarity of believers, who, so far from being independent units, are dependent parts of one great organism of which Christ is the Head. The unity of the Church is thus shown to be organic, and lying deep down in the nature of things.
2. There is one Spirit. For to the existence of a body there must be a spirit. The body, the Church, is pervaded by the Spirit, the Holy Ghost. It would be a corpse but for this indwelling.
1. There is one hope in all the called ones. The unity of hope is surely a remarkable fact. All the called ones have their faces set towards the future
2. as the golden age, when their ideals shall be realized. Christianity is the religion of hope, the one religion which denies that the former times were better than these, or that the golden age is behind us.
3. One Lord. Jesus reigns as the Church"s living Head. He as Mediator is the Source of all authority in the Church. His lordship or headship is a fact which calls for unity.
1. One faith. This asserts that the truth is one. Error is manifold, but the truth as it is in Jesus is one. It seems to our latitudinarian age almost heresy to affirm the unity of the Christian faith. But seeing that its substance consists in facts, it would be madness to relegate these to the region of uncertainty.
2. One baptism. This is baptism into the one Name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, (Mat_28:19) so that the Divine Name unifies the baptized believers. The doctrine of baptism" is reduced to a significant unity thereby.
3. "One God and lather of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all" (Revised Version). This is the seventh and last of the unifying facts. The fatherhood of God, all-embracing, all-pervading, speaks of family unity and rebukes all discord. In presence of such facts the wonder is that division could be entertained.
II CONSIDER THE UNIFYING GIFTS. (Vers. 7-12.) More has been done towards the unity of the Church than confront believers with unifying facts, even in their sevenfold perfection. The ascended Savior has bestowed unifying gifts upon his believing people. We need not tarry over the humiliation by which Christ secured them a humiliation down to the lower parts of the earth, and involving the tenanting of the tomb and the region of the dead. We hasten to the glorious gifts themselves, which come out of the hands of the ascended and glorified Christ. And here we have:
1. Apostles. We may well restrict the term to the selected witnesses of our Lord"s resurrection, the noble band who wrought most earnestly for the unity of the Church.
2. Prophets. The inspired ones, whose inspiration was always on the lines of Christian unity; for the will of God which they conveyed to men is that believers should be one.
3. Evangelists. Men like Timothy or Apollos, who go forth with the one message, thereby promoting unity in the Church of God. The gospel is not a manifold, as we have seen, but a unity, and he who proclaims it with simplicity and earnestness contributes thereby to the unity of the Church.
4. Pastors and teachers. These gifts are less special, and consequently more important. True pastors, true teachers for God, will aim at "the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ." The note of a Divine gift is the desire to promote the all-important unity. Is it not a glorious thought that orders of men have been established by Christ for this special purpose of promoting the unity of the Church?
III CONSIDER THE UNIFYING DEVELOPMENT. (Vers. 13-16.) The unifying process is to be educational and so progressive The unity will not spring full-grown and panoplied like Minerva from the head of Jove, but it will grow, as knowledge grows and kindly feeling, "from more to more." And in this patient development Jesus is to be our Ideal, and his fullness and perfection the goal for which we strive. Taking him as our Standard of excellence, we are to grow up into him in all things; and if we do, unity must result. And here we should observe:
1. Our development will carry us beyond childish vacillation. (Ver. 14.) For there is nothing so detrimental to unity as inability to make up our minds about the essential doctrines of the faith. If we are tossed about like vessels unmoored, if we are a prey to designing and cunning men, we cannot contribute anything to the unity of the Church.
2. Our development will enable us to be communicative and so far edifying. (Vers. 15, 16.) For as we grow in knowledge of Christ we learn to speak the truth in love. A speechless member of the community cannot contribute much to unity and edification. We are bound to be witnesses. And loving language about the Lord promotes the glorious unity. It grows as the organism grows in mutual adaptation, strength, and power. The Church, thus growing in the knowledge of the living Head and pervaded by the one Spirit of life and of love, advances towards the perfection which Christ has shown us. Hatless and Monod, in writing on these verses, refer to the indeterminate character of the passage as to the realization of the perfect state being in this world or beyond it. But the emphasis is laid by Paul upon the fact of development, and how each individual may contribute to the consummation in the unity of the Church. If each of us considers his duty in the matter of edifying that body of which, as a believer, he forms a part, the glorious development will make its steady progress towards the perfection to be realized at last. It is surely worth an effort to contribute something to such a purpose. R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON Vers. 1-16.
Exhortation.
I TRANSITION FROM THE DOCTRINAL TO THE PRACTICAL. "I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you." There is a similar transition at Rom_12:1, "I beseech you therefore." In both cases the therefore" is the link of connection between doctrine and duty. In both cases the apostle follows up his exposition of doctrine by an affectionate enforcement of duty. In the other case his affectionate tone is caught from a consideration of the mercies of God. In the present case it is caught from a consideration of his own sufferings. He has already prayed for them as the prisoner of Christ Jesus. Now, he beseeches them as the prisoner in the Lord. If in the former expression the idea is more that the imprisonment was "caused" by Christ, in the latter it is more that it came to him, not as a wrong-doer, but as moving in the Christian sphere. Either way, he refers it to Christ. He might have commanded them as their apostle, who had received the mystery relating to them by revelation, but he rather besought them as the Lord"s prisoner. It is well when the "official" can be lost sight in the personal." Paul thought that he might urge those from whom he had had an affectionate parting to the performance of duty by the consideration of his chains (in their relation to Christ).
II GENERAL EXHORTATION. "Walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called." They were called, according to the foregoing part of the Epistle, to be sons, or members of the Christian family. Another aspect of it was that they were called to be citizens, or members of the Christian commonwealth. They were thus called when they accepted of Christ. But whether they were called to be sons or citizens, it was a high" calling wherewith they were called. They had a great "Head" placed over them. It was in the working out of a great scheme that they were called.
And the apostle"s thought is that they were to bring their "walk" into some worthy correspondence with their "calling." "It is," said a Roman writer, "useful for cities that valiant men should (although it be false) believe themselves born of the gods, that their minds, thence bearing a confidence of their divine extraction, may more boldly undertake great enterprises, pursue them more earnestly, and hence accomplish them more happily, from the security the conceit produceth." It is by no conceit, but in sober truth, that as Christian believers we belong to a family, to a commonwealth of which God is the Head. And should not such a connection draw us away from what is mean and base, inspire us with noble thoughts, and incite us to noble actions?
III SPECIAL EXHORTATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY.
1. Disposition leading up to Christian unity. It is viewed as what should "attend" us in our Christian walk. That is to say, if we walk worthily of our calling, this is the disposition which we shall manifest "With all lowliness." This is of prime Importance with the apostle, for m the twelfth of the Romans, having set forth our duty toward God under the aspects of consecration to his service and separation from the world, he immediately says, "For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith." We have reason to be lowly before God. Even Christ, we know, cherished the spirit of lowliness, and commended it to us by his own example. He was lowly in respect of his creaturely nature. He was also content, as the Representative of mankind, to take whatever place the Father assigned him. He did not need to humble himself for sin, unless representatively (if it is proper to think of him as humbling himself for the sin with which he identified himself). We have reason to be lowly, because of having been personally involved in sin, and because of much remaining evil in our nature. And it is only in the way of faith, or in fellowship with Christ, that we have any Christian worth. And if we have thus reason to be lowly before God, shall we be arrogant toward others? Shall we not rather keep self in the background, in accordance with the precept, also in the twelfth of the Romans, "In honor preferring one another"? Let us, then, have all lowliness, such as becomes us as sinners before God, and such as becomes us in the various positions in life in which we are placed.
2. "And meekness." With lowliness the apostle couples meekness; and we need not wonder at his doing it when the Master had done it before, with this difference, that meekness came first to his thought of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart." Sleekness points to sufferings which have to be endured; we need not wonder, therefore, at it having a prominence in the Savior"s thought. There are sufferings sent upon us with which others have not had to do. We are to bear ourselves meekly under them before God. We are not to be as though we challenged God"s sovereignty, or wisdom, or goodness in sending them. And even when others have had to do with our sufferings, we can look past them to God, as David did when he said, "Let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him." "With long-suffering." This has reference to provocation received. There is provocation in the ordinary course of life. We suffer from the infirmities and faults of others. We may have to do, as Paul had, with "unreasonable and evil men." But we are to think specially here of there being provocation within the Church circle. There is provocation if we are ardent in a good cause and are associated with the apathetic, or if we see clearly the proper course to be pursued and are overborne by the ignorance of others, or if we are bearing our fair share of the common burdens while others are shirking them. There is provocation in a more positive form if we have to do with those who advance views or engage in movements which we must strongly condemn, or who are given to misrepresentation and abuse, or who in malice do not scruple to stir up strife. "Forbearing one another in love." The inward feeling with which we are to meet provocation is long-suffering; its outward manifestation is described as forbearing one another. The latter form of expression indicates that we have all our faults, and all need to be borne with. Forbearance is good for ourselves. "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." Forbearance is good for those who give provocation. It gives them time for reflection. It is also a likely means by which they may be won to reason. It is heaping coals of fire on their heads. It is overcoming evil with good. Forbearance is good for the ends of a Christian society, in preventing unnecessary division, in promoting unity.
3. The nature of Christian unity. "Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." In accordance with what has been said, this unity of the Spirit is, on the one side, a disinclination to obtrude self, and, on the other side, the power of bearing with others. In accordance with what is said of it here, as produced by the Spirit, this unity is the disposition to be guided by the Spirit, and to advance the end which the Spirit has in view in relation to the cause of Christ. This unity of the Spirit is to find expression in the bond of peace. The Roman Catholic Church claims to present this bond of peace in its entirety. For, first, it claims to be the unbroken organization of Christians all over the world, and shuts out from the Church of Christ all who do not enter its communion. We Protestants are not Christians; and therefore there is no break so far as we are concerned. And, secondly, it claims to have also the bond of peace, in freedom from internal division. We as Protestants refuse to acknowledge this claim. For, first, we differ from the Roman Catholic Church, in spite of its historic position, as to the essentials of salvation. And, secondly, its uniformity is not freely wrought of the Spirit, but results from unreasoning conformity to the law of the priest. It is suggested here that it may only be possible to attain to an imperfect realization of the bond of peace. We are to give diligence in this matter; but it does not entirely depend on ourselves. When we have done our best, the bond may be broken independently of us. Who are the breakers of the bond of peace?
(1) Those who are chargeable with defection. The bond of union in the Church is not what is supposed to be truth, but what can actually be made out to be truth from the Word of God. Those who are aside from this, whether they are in the majority or not, whether they conform to the language of the confession or not, are really the dividers. They necessitate those who have the leading of the Spirit giving their testimony "to the truth and, it may be, dissenting from their brethren.
(2) Those who manifest an unchristian spirit toward brethren who differ from them. It is right that we should try to convince those whom we believe to be in error. But there is a way in which we are to do it, if we have the interests of truth and of unity at heart. "In meekness correcting them that oppose themselves, if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth." If we exhibit a temper that is not consistent with the truth, that may be as dividing as holding an erroneous position.
(3) Those who unnecessarily separate from a Christian society. The mere fact of separation from a particular ecclesiastical organization is not decisive of the sin of schism. Nor is the fact of error in a society necessarily a warrant for separating from it. We should be content to remain in the same society with brethren, even though we differ from them in many points, if we think that the great interests of the kingdom are being properly advanced. By those who value the continuance of the bond of peace it must be acknowledged that separation is an extreme step; and is only to be justified, in the case of those who separate, where it can be made out that the interests of religion are better served by the existence of a separate society.
(4) Those who claim to be the Church of God to the exclusion of other Christian societies. If there are Christian bodies that are really doing the work of Christ, though they do not join with us, or work according to our methods, we are bound to regard them as belonging to the Church of Christ, and to live in brotherhood with them. And to be arrogant and uncharitable towards them is breaking the bond of peace as really as though we were separating on insufficient grounds.
4. Grounds of Christian unity.
(1) Unities to which we are to be properly related. It is manifest that the apostle has studied to put these in a striking and memorable form. There is a threefold division, and there are three unities in each of the divisions.
(a) The Church itself is constituted a unity. "There is one body." Believers are not detached units, but, whatever they are by human denomination, by Divine constitution they are made a unity. They are not two or more organizations, between which there might be rivalry; they are only one organization. And how fitting that there should be sympathy between the various members of the body that the eye should not say to the hand, "I have no need of thee," or, again, the head to the feet, "I have no need of you"? "And one Spirit." We are not merely constituted one body, but are animated by one Spirit. It is not as though we had a double or treble consciousness, hut being dwelt in by the one Spirit, we should be kept from divergence and led in the same direction. There is here ground, if we could get to it, for that unity described in Joh_17:20, "That they all may be one." "Even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling." The consummation is the same in essence to all. It is glory, or full and blessed fellowship with Christ. And how fitting that those who are to live with Christ throughout eternity should meantime as brethren dwell together in unity"!
(b) How this unity is brought out. "One Lord." "In whatsoever notion we take the word "Lord," either as a prince over subjects, or as a master over servants, or as an owner of goods, or as a preceptor and president over disciples, or as a leader and captain to followers, or as a person singularly eminent above inferiors, he is according to all such notions truly our Lord." A body implies a head, and as our dependence on Christ is that of responsibility, he is truly our Lord. As united to the same Head, it becomes us to be in good brotherhood. This is his law (common it is), "Hereby shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." "One faith." We have all the same uniting bond to Christ, the same subjective disposition toward him. We all rely upon the atoning merits of his sacrifice. We all confide in him for what is needed to complete our salvation. We can all use the same language of trust; we can sing the same hymns; we can offer the same prayers. Being thus alike in the essential element of character, it is fitting that we should exhibit catholicity, that we should be free from all sectarian feeling. "One baptism." It is this which symbolizes our union by faith to Christ. Our unity has received visible manifestation. We have all been baptized into Christ. It is fitting, then, that we should live in good fellowship one with another.
(c) How this unity is sustained. One God and Father of all." As the apostle has been speaking of Christians, we must not extend the range of this language beyond them. We can all say, "Our God," and "Our Father." "Who is over all." In his sovereignty he has an absolute right to dispose of all. This a father has to a limited extent over his children. "And through all." In his fatherly love he goes out to all, and pervades all with his gracious influences. So a father wishes to pervade his children with those sentiments of which he approves. "And in all." With the revelation of his fatherhood he blesses all. So a father would have his children to live in the sunshine of his love. In love of the brethren, then, we should be tenderly affectioned (or have natural affection) one to another. We must think of God as rejoicing in the peace of his Church, as a father rejoices to see good feeling maintained between those whom he has begotten.
(2) What diversity there is Christ has appointed. But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ." It is a motive for unity.
(a) That we have all grace for which to be thankful. No one has been overlooked in the distribution. The humblest Christian has his grace as well as the greatest apostle.
(b) That the diversities of grace have not been arbitrarily appointed. They have been measured out (to a nicety, it is suggested by the language) by the great Distributer.
(c) That all the diversities are necessary to the grand unity which Christ has in his mind. It was on his ascension that he became Donor, or Distributer to men. "Wherefore he saith, When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." The conception is that he ascended as a conqueror. Satan, sin, and. death were in his triumphant train. On his victory over these, he gave "gifts" to men. These were the spoils of the battle-field, as it were, which he distributed among his followers. We are to think of them, in their special association with the Ascension, as the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of a finished redemption, the gift of a completed Bible, the gift of the Christian style of character, and, as we shall see presently, the gift of the gospel ministry. It was because he descended that he could do so much when he ascended. "Now this, he ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might flit all things." His descending into the lower parts of the earth points emphatically to the reality of his death. His body was not merely on the earth, but was received within the earth. His soul was not merely a dweller in an earthly body, but was received into Hades. He thus had the extremes in his experience, and therefore can fill all things, from the lowest depth to the highest height. He can especially, out of his own experience, be with his people in the grave and in Hades, and. thence carry them with him to the heights.
(3) The various ministering orders were especially his gifts.
(a) What these were. "And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers." Apostles. These were the highest functionaries in the Church. Functions were combined in them which were separated in others. They also possessed extraordinary qualifications.
(a) They had extraordinary administrative power. They had the care of the Churches generally (or widely), and. were a gift to the early Church in being a supreme authority in all matters of administration. Many questions would come up at the first about the right working of the Church, and they were there on the spot as though Christ had been there to settle them decisively.
(b) They had extraordinary teaching power. There were developments of doctrine without which the Church could not be established, and for a time the Church had in the apostles the gift of infallible exposition. It was thus exceptionally helped through the most critical period. It was especially in connection with the founding of Churches that the apostolate was exercised. And in connection with this, ors its teaching side, the apostolate was separated into two offices.
(1) Prophets. These were inspired like the apostles, and seem to have come in after them, in the way especially of expounding apostolical teachings. While the apostles planted, the prophets watered. They would be useful to Churches, in the way of continuing the benefit when the apostles had to pass on to found others.
(2) Evangelists. These had the same itinerant character that the apostles and prophets had; but their distinctive feature was that they brought the gospel, especially as a message of pardon, to bear upon the ignorant, or careless, or inquiring. Philip did the work of an evangelist in directing the Ethiopian eunuch to Christ. They would be able to render valuable assistance to apostles in the founding of Churches. Christ still gives these to the Church, in the more or less distinctly recognized order of evangelists, i.e. men who have a special power in awakening the careless, as distinct from feeding believers with knowledge. He also gives them, in the order of missionaries, in so far as they have to do converting work.
There are added, in conjunction, pastors and teachers.
(1) These are in connection with Churches as settled, and as distinguished from the other orders are stationary.
(2) They are the ordinary office-bearers, after the extraordinary have ceased from the Church.
(3) They represent the two sides of the apostolate, without its infallibility and supremacy. The pastors represent the administrative side, the care which is to be exercised over members of a Church, similar to the care which the shepherd exercises over his flock. The teachers, again, represent the teaching side, the exposition which needs to be given of truth founded on the teachings of the Bible, and specially of Christ and his apostles. And, as it is not said as before, some, pastors, and some, teachers, but some, pastors and teachers, it is rightly held that there is contemplated a combination of the two functions in one order.
(b) For what end given. "For the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ.
(a) The ultimate end of the gifts is the perfecting of the saints. This is placed first, though we might have expected it last. For it is well to remember that all that is done in the Church or gifted for the Church is to be judged by this how far it serves the perfecting of the saints. There is a perfect form after which nature strives; so there is a perfect form to which the saints are designed to come, and it is most emphatically the province of the Church to help saints toward their perfection. What that perfection is we shall see more particularly in the following verses.
(b) The gifts specified agree in being connected with a work of ministering. The apostolate, we know, was not a sinecure; it meant work, and to Paul it meant hard work and suffering. What Christ still continues to the Church implies the work of ministering to the souls of others, a work than which none should be more arduous.
(c) The way in which the work of ministering is to reach the perfecting of the saints is by the building up of the body of Christ. To do the work of an evangelist is not enough. Men, after they have been converted, must be looked after. They must be brought into connection with the Church. And the Church must be thoroughly organized, must have all suitable institutions, must be strong and vigorous in its working, in order that the perfecting of the saints may go on. It follow
(1) as against the Plymouthists and others, that there is a special pastoral and teaching order in the Church; and
(2) there is this m the interests of unity, which is not broken by the diversity there is, seeing all are gifted to the Church by Christ.
(c) Goal up to which the gospel ministry has been given.
(a) Goal characterized as the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God. "Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God" There is a difficulty with which we are confronted here. It has already been said in this paragraph (ver. 4) that Christians have "one faith." We must have some "beginning" of faith in us, else we cannot be numbered among the "all" here. How, then, can it be said that we are to have "the unity of the faith" as our goal? It is not that we are to attain unto the same "degree" of faith. For in our ultimate state there will be differences in the degree of faith, which is only to say that there will be differences in character (no factor therein being more important than faith). But, at the same time, it is true that all will come to a full-orbed faith, that all will have clearly brought out the grand characteristics of faith which are only dimly seen now. Again, it is true that all Christians have, to begin with, "one knowledge," the one practical knowledge of the Son of God. In our ultimate state, too, we shall vary in our capacity of knowing the love of Christ and appreciating the bearings of his work. But there is a full, rounded, satisfying knowledge to which we shall all come. In our present advancement our faith is not sufficient to exclude unbelief. We can only say, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." But our ultimate will be the expulsion of all unbelief. Our knowledge, too, is not so much one as to exclude all differences of opinion. But the unity with which we shall end will be one in which we shall see eye to eye, from which all difference of opinion will be excluded.
(b) Goal characterized as the full-grown man. "Till we all attain ... unto a full-grown man." In apposition with the foregoing, it is said (changing from the abstract to the concrete), "till we all attain ... unto a full-grown man." We have just seen that there is a unity with which we begin and another unity with which we end. Here it is implied that there is a state of infancy with which we begin and a state of manhood with which we end. And the goal here, too, is purposely viewed as a unity; for it is not said, "full-grown men," but "a full-grown man." We must, however, in order to this unity being attained, become individually full-grown men. And that suggests how much there is before Christians rise from the babe state up to the state of manhood. What a disparity in bulk, stature, strength, and generally in development, between the babe and a man in his prime! We can mark the increase that takes place from year to year. And so there is a goal of spiritual manhood, far away from the point where a man first believes in Christ. There are possibilities of attainment before us which we are slow to realize. God shows us in the lily how rapidly we may grow, and in the cedars of Lebanon how deep-rooted we may grow; in the plane tree he shows us how widespreading we may become, and in the olive tree how productive; in the lily and olive, too, how beautiful we may become, and in the pine forests what a healthfulness and pleasantness there may be about us. Here he teaches us the lesson of growth from the human body. When we see how a child is growing up, let us think how there should be a parallel to that in our spiritual life.
(c) Goal set before us in Christ. "Till we all attain unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." If it was the abstract first, and then the concrete, it is now particularly the historical , it is a matter of infinite consequence that the goal for humanity has been reached by the representative Man. He has carried us, representatively, forward from our infantile state to our state of manhood. We can see before the throne, or on it, a representation of what by the inworking of Divine grace we are to become. Let us think of the character which he wrought out for us on earth, and as love is so much introduced by the apostle, let us think of that character as formed into its beauty under the formative principle of love. There is in Christ the representation of contemplative love. He contemplated whatever the Father showed him in nature, in human life, in the Holy Scriptures. In the stillness of his soul he communed with God through these, and these melted into him, they swallowed up his being. And as a consequence, what the world showed him was exposed to his mind, and could not pollute him. And if we are to attain to full stature in Christ, we must keep sabbath in our souls, we must keep out the distraction of the world, we must look upon and appreciate those glorious truths which, through the ages, God by his servants and his own Son has been setting before us. There is in Christ the representation of active love. He was more than the perfect man of the mystics; he presented also the side of activity. He felt that he had a blessing to impart to men; and all his energies must be strained that the blessing should not be withheld. "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work." And if we are to be of full stature in Christ, our inertness must be rebuked, our holy energies must be called forth. We must know what it is to "work," and, while working, let us take care that our works are wrought in God." There is in Christ the representation of suffering love. If Christ could be said to excel in one class of virtues more than in another, it was in the passive virtues. He suffered what was appointed him. He drank the cup which his heavenly Father put into his hand. He suffered sublimely for those whom he came to save. And if we are to attain unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, we must be ready to suffer, to bear the contradiction of sinners, to shed tears over sinners. For if there is anything which betokens the Christian style of character, it is sympathizing with men as lying under sin, so that we can suffer for them and from them, if so be that we may compass their good.
(d) Gospel ministry needed up to goat. The teaching here is that the gospel ministry is the means by which the final unity is to be brought about, by which spiritual manhood is to be reached. It is true of the teacher that he makes his work superfluous. The child grows up to be able to do without his help. And so with the "gift" of the teacher in the Church; his work is to make himself unnecessary. The time is coming when no man shall need to teach his brother, saying, "Know the Lord;" for all shall know him, from the least to the greatest. But, until the goal is reached, the gospel ministry will be needed. And nothing could set forth its position more strongly than that. It is not to be supposed that it does everything. It rather comes in as a supplement to what Christians can do by themselves. Even when the person sitting in the pew has a better understanding than the person occupying the pulpit, he may reap benefit, if only truth (however imperfectly) is presented to his mind. Let no one say that he has got beyond the help of the Christian ministry. If it is earnest, it may be expected to have Divine power with it. We know that Christ, who did not come to his manhood till the last (albeit that even while he was coming to manhood he left every other immeasurably behind), did not dispense with the teaching of the sanctuary. For he went, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the sabbath day. And shall we say of even the greatest literary man of the day who has a soul to care for, that he is better at home than sitting in church?
(e) Gospel ministry needed to deliver from the dangers incident to childhood. "That we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error." There are some who are necessarily in spiritual childhood from their recent spiritual birth. There are others upon whom it is a reflection that they are in their childhood, seeing that they might have got beyond it with the opportunities that they have had. It is the latter rather that are described here. They are at the mercy of false teachers, or the opinionative. They are like waves tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind. In their simplicity and inexperience they are made a handle of by those who are practiced in the wiles of error. A certain sleight of hand is practiced on them. The word "sleight" is literally" dice-playing." The dice-player can by trickery (loading the dice is part of the trickery) throw them so that the numbers turn up which suit his purpose. So there are religious tricksters who can turn texts of Scripture to suit their purpose. For instance, it is said by those who advocate the indiscriminate ministry of all that a stated ministry was only a temporary arrangement. And they get the simple those whom the apostle here calls children to believe that. This indiscriminate ministry is very much a playing upon men so that they are tossed to and fro and carried about, now believing this and now believing that, as the crafty influence them. A stated ministry is meant to deliver from the evils of such a condition, to carry the inexperienced past instability into a certain established state.
(f) Process of development toward the goal described.
(a) What we have to do in the determination of the development. "But speaking truth in love." It is not certain that "speaking truth" is the right translation. If it had been the intention of the apostle to convey this idea, we should have expected the same form of expression which is used in the twenty-fifth verse, where two words are used, and not the one word here, which primarily is truthing it. What is certain is that the apostle means to convey the idea that, instead of having to do with the wiles of error, we are to have to do with truth. We must be guided by truth if we would come to the goal set before us. We are to have to do with the truth in love. It is implied that there is an intimate connection between truth and love. If truth directs, love impels. Love is the highest law of being, and therefore we must have our being bathed in it if we would understand the truth of things, and speak and act the truth.
(b) Christ has a principal part in the development. "May grow up in all things into him which is the Head, even Christ." It is from the head that the regulation of the body, in all its movements, proceeds. So it is from Christ as the Head that the whole regulation of the Church proceeds. What we do is not to regulate ourselves, but rather to put ourselves into accord with Christ in his regulating of us. The head communicates with all the parts of the body; it can send commands to them. And thus it is in the Church. In all things we are commanded from Christ as from the brain or center of the whole system. And so we grow up into him in all things. The whole development takes a distinctively Christian form.
(c) Particularly, the development proceeds round Christ. "From whom all the body fitly framed and knit together." In the body round one center the different parts are harmoniously related to each other, and so related as mutually to support each other. So the idea is that in the Church Christ, as from the center, is putting each into his proper posit ion a position in which he will harmonize with other parts and add strength to them.
(d) The development proceeds by a supply from Christ according to the need of every part. "Through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several are, maketh the increase of the body." A tree grows by the vital juices which are supplied to every part. In a tree there is a connecting, as by joints, where the supplies pass off to the various points. The joints in the body are where the supplies of nourishment pass off to the various members. So the Church is so jointed that it can all be supplied from Christ. There is a due apportionment to every part. There is no part forgotten, so that there is nothing like atrophy. And no part is supplied contrary to its nature, so that there is no abnormal development, as though the hand were enlarged to the size of the foot, or the foot dwarfed to the size of the hand.
(e) The result which is being produced is described (the figure being dropped) as the building up of itself in love. "Unto the building up of itself in love." While the Church may be endlessly growing, it will come to a state of fixedness, of establishment. It will be built up like a strong compacted building which cannot be broken down. It is in love that this result is produced; and in love it will remain an eternal reality. This then, finally, is the way which the apostle takes to show the foundation that there has been laid for Christian unity. Thus at length has he supported his particular exhortation that we are to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. R.F.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Vers. 1-3.
Walking worthy of our vocation.
therefore, the prisoner of the Lord," etc. The verses, looked at homiletically, suggest the following truths:
I THAT MAN"S EXTERNAL CONDITION IN THIS WORLD IS NO TRUE TEST OF HIS REAL WORTH. A greater man than Paul, greater in true thought, lofty aims, disinterested sympathies, self-sacrificing love, Christ-like devotion, and philanthropy, never lived. He was great in himself, great in his spiritual influence, great in the estimation of all capable of appreciating worth. Yet he was a "prisoner" and doomed to martyrdom a condition the most ignominious and painful. This fact shows:
1. The corruption of human society. So blind in moral judgment and so perverse in heart has civil society been, almost from the beginning, that it has doomed its best men to degradation, suffering, and often martyrdom.
2. The high probability of a future retributive dispensation. The beheading of John the Baptist, the imprisonment of a Paul, the crucifying of the Christ, proclaim with a tongue of thunder a coming judgment, a day when "all ungodly men shall be convinced of all ungodly things which they have ungodly committed.
II THAT THE END OF ALL TRUE THEOLOGY IS THE IMPROVEMENT OF CHARACTER. The apostle, after laying down in the preceding chapters the grandest theological truths, begins in these verses an application of these truths to practical life. "I beseech you therefore." Therefore." Why? Because of the wonderful things I have stated. Theology, if it remains with us merely as a science, will do us no spiritual service. It may stimulate thought, widen the realm of intelligence, afford scope and incentive to our speculative faculties, and develop our powers of logic and controversy. But what boots all this? Devils in depravity and torture are theologians. It is only when theological truths pass from the intellect to the heart, and thence circulate as blood through every particle of our being in other words, when doctrines are translated into deeds that they really serve us. Theology is bread; but undigested bread does not impart health, but impairs it, does not invigorate the man, but enfeebles him. A great theologian is often a moral invalid.
III THAT THE PRIVILEGES OF A MORAL BEING ARE THE MEASURE OF HIS OBLIGATIONS. "Walk worthy of the vocation," etc. The Bible teaches us our duty, not so much by written precepts as by principles, either expressed or implied. Indeed, it seems to me no code of legislative propositions, though its volumes filled the world, could supply directions for the boundless activities of an undying soul. You cannot bring all the obligations of souls into any number of written sentences. Hence we have principles, and often one principle will meet all the possible activities of a soul, determine its duty in every separate act. The principle we have stated is an example. When a real Christian is told to "act worthy of his vocation," he is told everything touching all conceivable obligations. This point supplies us with two general remarks.
1. Christians are called into a Divine sonship, and their duty is to walk worthy of that. The call you have in the fifth verse of the first chapter. "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will." We are called to be the sons of God. What is our duty? To act worthy of our relationship, act as sons ought to act towards such a Father. Give him:
(1) The highest reverence. Our heavenly Father is not only greatest to us, but greatest to the universe. Therefore reverence him.
(2) The highest gratitude. We owe everything to him being and the highest blessings of being. Therefore to him our profoundest and incessant thanks are due.
(3) The highest esteem. He is the best of Beings, the Fountain of all virtues, the Standard of all character, the Totality of goodness. Therefore he should be loved with all our soul and strength.
(4) The highest confidence. Yield to him a cheerful trust, a boundless reliance. Trust in him forever.
(5) The highest attention. He should occupy more of our thoughts than any other being. You should study his character, trace his ways, anticipate his wishes, imbibe his Spirit, imitate his character, and thus become partakers of his nature. When Christians are told to walk worthy of their sonship, what more can he said? It means to live a pure, useful, elevated, morally royal life.
2. Christians are called into a spiritual corporation, and their duty is to walk worthy of that. When on earth Christ founded a new society, its members consisted of those who practically accepted him as their great Teacher, Example, Savior, Lord. That society, few in numbers at first, has been increasing ever since. Millions have gone to heaven, and millions are still on this earth found in connection with all Churches, and not a few in connection with none. This society, though its members are divided by sentiment and ritual and distance, are nevertheless one one in spirit, purpose, life. They are but branches of one tree the Root of which is Christ, members of one body the Head of which is Christ. Now, every Christian is called into this grand corporation. And the apostle here states two things concerning our relation to it.
(1) The grand purpose we should aim at. "Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." "Unity of the Spirit" means the unity of which the Spirit is the Author. Unity, not merely doctrinal or ecclesiastical, for there may be doctrinal and ecclesiastical unity where there is spiritual separation. It is the unity of souls in Christ. Now, every one belonging to this corporation should diligently endeavor to maintain its unity. This unity is consonant with diversity; the waves are different, but the ocean is one; the branches are different, but the tree is one; the members are different, but the body is one; the stars are different, but the system is one. Men"s thoughts may be different, but men"s loves may be one, and loves are the bonds of souls.
(2) The method for promoting this purpose. Three things are indicated here.
(a) Humility. "With all lowliness and meekness." Pride, arrogance, and haughtiness in all its forms, have ever been amongst the most disturbing elements in Church life.
(b) Mutual forbearance. "Forbearing one another." The best members of this Church are imperfect in belief, sympathies, and conduct; hence mutual forbearance is necessary in order to maintain unity. He who feels disposed to quarrel with every fault of his associates may spend his time in doing nothing else.
(c) Brotherly love. "Forbearing one another in love." Love is the healer of discords. No hand but hers can retune the discordant harp of Church life. These lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, loving forbearance quiet, unpretending, unshowy virtues are amongst the best means for promoting true unity in the Church of God. Who is the most useful Christian? Not as a rule he who has the most transcendent genius, brilliant talents, and commanding eloquence, but he who has the most of this quiet, loving, forbearing spirit. The world may do without its Niagaras, whose thundering roar and majestic rush excite the highest amazement of mankind, but it cannot spare the thousand rivulets that glide unseen and unheard every moment through the earth, imparting life and verdure and beauty wherever they go. And so the Church may do without its men of splendid abilities, but it cannot do without its men of tender, loving, forbearing souls. D.T.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Vers. 1-3.
Walking worthily.
It is touching to see how the great apostle, who had a right to issue commands to the Churches in the name of Christ, prefers to beseech his readers with gentle entreaty as "the prisoner in the Lord." This method is as much a mark of his wisdom as of his humility and kindness of heart. For we are all more easily moved by persuasion and sympathy than by patronage and authority.
I CHRISTIANS ARE CALLED TO A HIGH VOCATION.
1. There is a Divine call. We are not left to drift through life aimlessly, nor are we permitted to carve out careers for ourselves. Divine purposes go before us, mapping out our course of future service; and Divine voices in the gospel and in our hearts bid us follow our vocation.
2. The call is lofty and worthy of all honor. Christians are not saved with a bare and beggarly deliverance, like shipwrecked mariners flung upon the beach, half drowned and bereft of everything. When we enter the Christian life we commence a course of high service, vast enterprise, and splendid aims.
3. The purpose of this vocation is to glorify God and bless the world by realizing the idea of the Christian Church. In the previous chapter St. Paul has been describing some of the great privileges of Christians, which consist chiefly in their being built into one great temple and growing together in union. The breaking down of national, ecclesiastical, intellectual, and moral barriers, and the building up of one great family, knit together by love and united through a common union with Christ, is St. Paul"s magnificent conception of the fruits that the gospel is to bear on earth.
II IT IS THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO WALK WORTHILY OF THEIR HIGH CALLING.
1. The responsibility of fulfilling our vocation rests upon us. We are called, not driven, and we can disobey the Divine voice. But though we are free from compulsion, we are not free from responsibility. For God has a right to call us whither he wilt, and Christ has laid us under peculiar obligations by his work and sacrifice for us.
2. This fulfillment of our vocation must be in our daily conduct. We are to "walk worthily." Belief and worship are not enough. The life and the whole work and daily occupation are to follow the Divine call.
3. Christian consistency is squaring our conduct with our calling. Many make much of mere self-consistency; but it is well often to be inconsistent with ourselves, or we can never progress, much less repent and amend. Nor is it enough to make our actions consistent with our opinions, unless both opinions and actions are consistent with truth, with God"s will, and with our vocation.
III WALKING WORTHILY OF THE CHRISTIAN CALLING CONSISTS CHIEFLY IN MAINTAINING AND INCREASING OUR MUTUAL BROTHERHOOD. Love is the queen of the New Testament graces. Selfishness, moroseness, lack of sympathy, and the like are sins against the peculiar genius of the gospel. To be zealous in defending the faith, to be pure as white marble in saintly separation from vice, to be strict in integrity, etc., will not be enough; for our calling is to a brotherhood, and our worthy walking must help this.
1. Negatively, we must have lowliness which declines to assert one"s self before one"s brethren, meekness which acts gently to them, and long-suffering which bears with any provocations they may give us.
2. Positively, we must extend Christian unity and the spirit of peace. The peaceful brotherly spirit must not only be passively harmless, it must be earnest, active, and diligent. W.F.A.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1–3 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you…
Eph_4:1
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.
Read full note →
Calling and conduct
I. The behaviour of Christians should correspond with their vocation.
1. From a sense of gratitude.
2. The Divine sentiment from which the vocation sprang should possess them.
II. Certain virtues specially become the Christian vocation.
1. Because of what they are in themselves.
2. Because of the great end they promote--the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. This reveals the real grandeur of these virtues. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
The obligations of the Christian calling
I. The nature of the obligations resting on Christians.
1. They spring from the circumstances of the Divine call.
(1) It exhibited unparalleled condescension and mercy on the part of God.
(2) It witnessed to a Divine unity in mankind. Christ was no apostle of Judaism; no national hero; but the Hope of Humanity.
2. They are determined by the fact of the Divine call Having been summoned by that call into a spiritual separation from the world, the followers of Jesus were at the same time constituted into a calling or profession by themselves.
(1) Its historic reputation had to be sustained.
(2) It was a holy and a heavenly calling (2Ti_1:9; Heb_3:1; Php_3:14).
(3) The spiritual unity it had called into existence should not be lost.
II. How these obligations of the Christian calling are to be satisfied.
1. By humility and gentleness.
2. The root and sustaining principle of these is love.
The lover of mankind will subordinate his own pleasure and advantage to the welfare of others. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
The nature and obligation of a Christians calling
I. The nature of a Christians calling.
1. It is a holy calling (2Ti_1:9).
2. It is an honourable calling (Php_3:14).
3. To serve an honourable Master (1Ti_1:17).
4. Hence it is a profitable calling (1Ti_4:8).
II. The obligation of the calling.
1. We must first study the principles of our calling (Eph_1:17).
2. We must be emulous to claim the privileges of the calling (Eph_3:16-19).
3. We must cultivate the spirit of the calling (Eph_4:2-3).
4. We must perform the duties of the calling (Joh_14:23).
(1) In civil life (Eph_4:25).
(2) In religious life (Eph_4:24).
(3) In domestic life (Eph_6:1-9).
III. The dignity of the calling (1Th_2:12).
IV. The object of the calling (1Pe_5:10). (T. B. Baker)
.
Walking worthy of our calling
How comes it to pass, that one half of this Epistle is made up of exhortation? Does not this force itself on ones conviction as its cause--that the saints of God need it? They want not only to be comforted, they want not only to be taught, but they want to be roused.
I. First as it regards their privilege. Beloved, it is one of the greatest that can be communicated to a fallen sinner. My dear hearers, in one sense, there is not a creature on earth, but what has a call of God to serve Him. There never could be a state in which there could be no law, because the very law of creation puts a man under obligation to serve God. But this is an especial calling; a call of a higher order, a covenant calling, an effectual calling: secured by the certainty of the Divine counsel, and never to be frustrated by man. We find in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, that it is a call to liberty; brethren, ye have been called unto liberty. Ah! man, with all his fond ideas of liberty, knows nothing of liberty, till he is under the teaching of God the Holy Ghost; for man, by nature, is a bond slave. Oh! the liberty of a free spirit; that can look death in the face, that can look quietly from the troubles of life to the God that ordained them, and find peace and rest in the midst of them! But observe, they are described as having been called into the holy fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ (1Co_1:9)--God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ. But they are also called to glory, to His kingdom.
II. Let us now, secondly, speak of the exhortation that stands based on this glorious privilege. I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles: I therefore beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. He does not beseech them to be worthy of that vocation. But he beseeches them to walk worthy of their vocation, their calling, because they have received such wondrous mercy. And if you ask me how they could do it?--in proportion as you walk in holy liberty, as you walk in the peace of the gospel, as you walk in the fellowship of Christ, as you walk in the path of holy walking. But I would remark, beloved, by way of concluding observation--see what place humility of soul occupies in this passage before us. Observe, Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness. He did place it first; and it is its right place; it is the great place, next to faith, hope, and love. The more a man knows of the crucified One, the lower he lies; the more he knows of the depth of Gods grace, the more he abases himself. Observe, too, what great stress is laid here upon what are the passive graces of the spirit. We ought to contend for activity; we live in days in which activity is required; not only activity of opposition, but activity of dispersion of Gods truth. But if you ask, What ought to be in the front?--it is the passive graces of the Holy Ghost. All lowliness, meekness, long suffering, forbearing one another in love, and endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. But observe that the basis of all is privilege. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)
On the Christians vocation
This exhortation takes in the whole circle of our duties. In effect, if we exhort a man of noble birth, or of distinguished rank in life, not to do anything unworthy of himself, disgraceful to his family, or unbecoming his high station, we say everything that can be said.
1. There is not any truth more evidently expressed, nor more frequently repeated, in the sacred Scriptures, than that the first object of our vocation to Christianity is to disengage us from the world, to break the chains which bind our affections to creatures. You are Christians: and therefore, when you appear among men, you are to make yourselves distinguished by charity, purity, and every virtue.
2. It is therefore a most destructive illusion to reason as Christians are sometimes heard to do: I am a man of the world; I must live as the world does; I must conform to its manners. I am a Christian; therefore I am not of this world; therefore I cannot live as the world does, cannot conform to its manners. Reason in this manner, and your determination will be conformable to the spirit and to the grace of your vocation. You must take notice that there are two kinds of separation from the world: the one corporal and exterior; the other, a separation in heart and in spirit. Withdraw yourselves from the world, before the world retires from you. You must quit the world by choice, and by an effort of virtue, or be torn from it at length by force and violence. Follow, therefore, now the sweet attractions of Divine grace. (J. Archer.)
The Christians calling
What is the kle?sis, vocation, or calling, of which the Scripture speaks so often? Take the following hints:
1. It is the calling of God (Rom_11:29; Php_3:14; comp. 2Th_1:11, 2Ti_1:9, Heb_3:1, 2Pe_1:10, Eph_1:18), because it is God Himself who calls us from darkness to light, and from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of His dear Son.
2. It is a high calling (Php_3:14), for the prize attached to it is eternal life.
3. It is a holy calling (2Ti_1:9), because the end and purpose of it (at least on earth) is holiness.
4. It is a heavenly calling (Heb_3:1), for it comes from and draws us to heaven.
5. The hope of our calling (Eph_4:4) is the hope which those called by God to serve Him may cherish. It belongs to the brethren alone, and proceeds entirely from God (1Co_1:26). This is what our fathers termed effectual calling, and it occupies a prominent place in all our systems of theology. The doctrine is based upon, or takes for granted the following principles--
(1) That the human race is fallen, and needs to be restored to God.
(2) That even this fallen and redeemed race cannot of itself return to God, but needs the assistance of a Divine call.
(3) That the election and the calling are co-extensive.
(4) That, therefore, the salvation of the Church is, in its origin, means, and end, to be ascribed to the pure and sovereign will of God. Our walk should be worthy of this vocation. There ought to be some relation between our conduct and our hopes, between our character and the promised reward. If His love has opened up to us glorious and immortal hopes, should not our service correspond to them? Worthy of His calling? It is a great, high, noble principle. It is a rule of life which lifts us from the dust, and gives us the position, hopes, and fears of immortal creatures. (W. Graham, D. D.)
Christian consistency
A writer on Christian consistency, says: History records that in the days of Tiberius it was thought a crime to carry a ring stamped with the image of Augustus into any mean or sordid place, where it might be polluted! How much may those who profess to be a holy people learn even from a heathen! (From The Epworth Bells.)
Apostolic exhortation
I. Consider, in the first place, that therefore of his and what it implies. For there are many reasons for not exhorting people to walk earnestly and carefully, and worthily of their high name and knowledge. It is much pleasanter to dwell exclusively upon the privileges and blessings of Christianity, and to leave its heavy responsibilities and penalties out of sight. But this therefore was something that moved the apostle, even from his prison, to fill half his Epistle with earnest, importunate, and pointed admonitions. A very potent therefore it must have been--but what was it? It does not appear to have been any one statement or fact in particular, but rather all that has gone before; as if, pausing at the end of the third chapter, he had been reading over what he had written, and had been so moved by it that he felt compelled, constrained, to break off into this exhortation. It is this strong feeling in his mind which finds expression in that word therefore. And what was it that he had been writing about? Why, it was the marvellous grace and loving kindness of God towards the Gentiles revealed to him, and preached by him; their fellowship in Christ, their union with the remnant of Israel and with one another in one divinely constituted body, their eternal predestination to this grace and adoption in Christ.
II. Consider, in the second place, the title which St. Paul here assumes in order to give force to his exhortation: I, the prisoner of (or rather in) the Lord. Himself a prisoner, enduring a painful captivity for the Masters sake, how properly might he exhort them in liberty to be true to their colours and to the standard of Christ. And this may lead us to reflect how universally true it is that Christianity needs example in order to be believed and obeyed. It is too weighty to be accepted on its own strength, too little favourable to the natural pride and indolence of men, too tremendous in its promises, revelations, claims, and assumptions. Men are beginning to perceive that the Christianity of Christ and His apostles was intended to be a life--a supernatural life, indeed, because the life of Christ Himself, and yet a life to be lived amongst men by ordinary people, and to be readily distinguished by certain palpable differences from the natural life of men.
III. Consider, in the third place, what it was of which they were to walk worthy. Their calling, or vocation--what was it? Not anything which we speak of now as a calling, such as we follow for gain, or honour, or convenience, or even for duty: this calling whereof the apostle speaks is of God. It is, in fact, His invitation, which He has addressed to each one of us as inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)
The prison house
I. Let us think first of the place and manner of St. Pauls imprisonment. The place was Rome, the capital of the world. A city full of glorious memories of the past, and famous in the present for art, and eloquence, and learning. Its soldiers could boast that they had conquered the world, and could point out the tombs of Pompey and of many another hero along the Appian Way. Its streets had been trodden by some of the greatest of poets, and its Senate-House had echoed with the burning words of the first orators of the world. Rome was full of contrasts, wealth and beggary, beauty and squalor, the palace of Caesar, and the haunt of vice and shame, were close together. The city was ruled over by a cruel tyrant, at once a hypocrite and a monster of iniquity. It was in such a place, so glorious and so shameful, that St. Paul was a prisoner. He was not, however, confined in a dungeon. By the favour of the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, whose duty it was to take charge of all prisoners awaiting trial before the Emperor, the apostle was allowed to live in a hired house of his own, to have free access to such friends as he had, and to preach the gospel freely to those who would hear him. But still St. Paul was a prisoner. After the Roman fashion, he was chained to a soldier, and at night probably two soldiers were linked to him. Yet, although an exile, a prisoner, waiting for a trial where he would have little chance of justice, knowing that the sword hung above his head ready to fall at any moment, St. Paul utters no complaint, no murmur of discontent. On the contrary, he bids his hearers rejoice in the Lord alway; he himself thanked God, and took courage; he tells his disciples that he has learnt in whatsoever state he is, to be content. He is poor, yet making many rich. The heathen tyrant can make him a prisoner, but his chains cannot keep him from the glorious freedom of the sons of God. And now what lesson can we learn from the prison house at Rome? We can learn this, that this world in which we live is in one sense a prison house to all.
1. It is a prison house of hard work. In our great cities the roar of traffic, the rattle of machinery, the shriek of the steam whistle, the eager crowds flocking to office and bank and exchange all mean one thing--work. Every mans talk is of business; he is in the prison house, and he is chained to his work.
2. Next, this world is a prison house of sorrow and trial. Everyone who has lived any time in the world can show you the marks of his chain. Everyone whom we meet is wearing a crown of thorns. It is hidden under the scanty white locks of the old, and the sunny tresses of youth. Specially is this world a prison house to those who strive to do their duty, and help their fellow men. For them in all ages there have been prison bars, and chains of persecution. If we would look on some of the greatest teachers, philosophers, and benefactors of mankind, we must look for them in a prison house. Socrates, when seventy-two years old, was a prisoner, and condemned to drink poison, because he taught higher lessons than the mob could understand. Bruno was burnt at Rome, because he exposed the false philosophy of the day. When Galileo, an old man of seventy, taught the truth about the earths motion, they cast him into the dungeons of the Inquisition, and after death the Pope refused a tomb for his body. And so for many others who dared to do their duty and to speak the truth. But the stonewalls could not confine the mind; the iron chain could not bind the truth. Some of the most glorious works in literature were composed in prison. The prison house at Rome has given us some of those Epistles of St. Paul which have gone far to convert the world; and the finest allegory in the English language was written in Bedford gaol. If we suffer for righteousness sake, happy are we. There are prisoners who are not the Lords. There are some fast bound in the misery and iron of bad habits, and habitual sin. These are lying in the condemned cell, bound hand and foot with the devils chain. And I tell you that you will often find this life a prison house, where you must give up your own will, deny yourselves, learn to endure hardness, and to bear the chain which suffering, or neglect, or ignorance put upon you. If you are indeed the prisoners of the Lord, the iron of your chain will make you brave to suffer and be strong. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)
Freedom in bonds
This prisoner has more freedom than any emperor ever had. External freedom, with internal bonds, is but an affectation, and a mockery of freedom. A man flattered and deceived by an ostentation of bodily freedom, while his spirit is held in the heavy chains of his own lusts and fears, is as melancholy a spectacle as any under the sun. The evil spirit laughs to see his slave enjoying the fond delirious conceit that he is a free man. The slavery is then perfect. Pauls prison lies open to all heaven. In spirit, he walks at large, in boundless light. The prisoner writing to those who are worthy to know the secret, says: I am surrounded by innumerable angels, I walk in paradise with the spirits of just men made perfect, I am entertained with unspeakable things. Chrysostom says: Were any to ask, whether he should place me on high with the angels, or with Paul in his bonds, I would choose the prison. According to his own showing, he was less in peril in prison, than in the third heavens. As a safeguard against his ecstasy, he must needs have some messenger of Satan, to buffet him. In prison he found no such temptation. His bonds were a precious means of grace to him. Finding an unspeakable peace in lowliness of mind, he commends the same to his brethren in Christ. (J. Pulsford.)
The privilege and duty of the Christian calling
I. The privilege declared. Their vocation, i.e., calling. Men have callings in the world--their business, profession, temporal office. The apostle speaks of the calling of God. There are different callings spoken of. There is--
1. An external calling--the invitation to gospel privileges.
2. An official calling--the appointment to administration in the Church.
3. An internal and effectual calling by the Spirit of God. This is
(1) an enlightening calling.
(2) A sanctifying calling.
(3) A uniting calling. It binds to
(a) Christ (1Co_1:9).
(b) The Church (Eph_4:4; Eph_1:18-22).
(4) A saving calling (1Th_2:12).
II. The duty urged. How can anyone walk worthy? It means suitably, in a manner somewhat becoming those who enjoy such privileges. As if the apostle would say: Have you--
1. A call to knowledge? Walk wisely.
2. A call to holiness? Walk unblameably.
3. A call to fellowship? Walk lovingly.
4. A call to glory? Walk happily.
Conclusion: These things--
1. Should put us on examination.
2. Should move us to diligence. (H. Parr.)
The life worthy of the calling
I do not think that St. Paul would consider, or have a right to consider, that his bondage was then his vocation; but an affliction, a sickness, an inability even to move, may be as much a vocation as anything that may happen in life. But he urges the Ephesians to use worthily--while they have it--their vocation to walk. To walk ought to be used as the emblem of a Christian life; and for this reason, because walking alone of all our actions places the whole man in motion, and that motion is a progressive one. It was a calling! Then there must be a caller. Who was the Caller? Was there not a Providence in the fact of your calling?
1. In the first place remember that call came from the Holy Trinity. The Father willed it, the Son mediated to obtain it, the Holy Ghost applied it. Is it then a fact that you have been thought worthy of the notice, the remembrance, the power, the love of each Person in that holy blessed Trinity? What a sacred, what a solemn thing that call must be!
2. Each Person in that mysterious Three is love, perfect love. That call then was the call of infinite, unspeakable love. Have you been walking worthy of the vocation of love? Could you say that your life is a life of love. Your walk, your walk! does it drop love at every step? Remember what you were when you had a call of love. You were unloving and unlovable.
3. But there is another particular characteristic of that love wherewith you were called. It was a call of forgiveness. The whole Trinity had combined to make that forgiveness. Now let me ask, Is there anyone at this moment in the whole world whom you have not forgiven? If so, then you are not walking worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called.
4. But there was another predominant characteristic in your call--it was a call to holiness. Be ye holy, for I am holy. Now are you walking every day a holy walk? Moreover, your call was a call to activity; also a call to a higher life. Are you walking worthy of it? (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Calling and walk
1. I feel sure that I shall carry along with me the experience of every child of God, when I say that his call, however it came to him, was very humbling. God has thousands of methods by which He draws souls to Himself, but in one respect, there is no difference between them all--He never calls a soul without humbling it. It is very likely that the instrument which effected your call was not one that the world would call great. It is very likely that the providences which attended it were very humbling providences. But however this may be--however it may be in respect of outward things, I am quite sure that as the grace of God began to take effect upon your heart, your soul passed into very low places, down into the very dust. You began to see yourself in a very different light from any in which you ever saw yourself before. And let me say, that I believe one of the chief reasons why many young Christians are happier than other Christians, is that in the first stages of grace, there is a more realizing, deep sense of nothingness, and sin.
2. But if it was an humbling call, I am sure it was a very kind one. Perhaps in the recollection of what took place then, now the thought is Through what exercises of mind you passed; but at the time itself, the chief feeling with you was--How very kind this is of God! what wonderful patience God has been exercising towards a poor, miserable sinner!
3. And let me further remind you, brethren, that your call was a very personal thing. It was characterized by individuality: each soul is singled out by itself by God. As respects walking, the apostle uses the figure for two reasons: one because it is distinctly a progressive motion, in all places progress; and secondly, it is the only movement which engages and puts in action the whole man. But as was the calling, so must be the walk,--humble, tender, earnest, holy, heavenly. Whatever progress you have made, still remember, that whatever cause there was for humility at the beginning, there is more cause now. For now, a wrong thought is worse than once a wrong action, because you are more responsible. Walk in the valley. That is an unworthy thought which ever lifts itself too high, either to God or man. And was God very kind, very patient, very long suffering, to bear with you, to choose you, to call you? Then be you just like that to every poor fellow sinner. And never forget what a real, personal, earnest matter between your soul and God, your call was. You have nothing to dread more than for religion to become a generality. As many as have felt Gods callings, know the exceeding weight and moment of every little thing. By little things you were made, by little things you were called. Therefore, again, if you would not frustrate the grace of God, you must be holy. He hath called you, not to uncleanness, but to holiness. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Walking worthy of ones vocation
I. The vocation wherewith a believer is called.
1. It is Gods speaking to the heart of a sinner in and by His word (2Co_4:6; Joh_5:25).
2. It is to the enjoyment of the greatest privileges (Isa_61:1; 2Co_3:17; Gal_5:1; Gal_5:13).
3. It is various, and yet the same, to all believers.
(1) Various--as to age, instruments, manner.
(2) Same--as to tendency.
4. It is of the sovereign goodwill of God (Rom_9:19-24).
5. God never repents and revokes this calling (Rom_11:29).
6. It is the duty and privilege of professors to make it sure to themselves.
II. What it is to walk worthy of this vocation. In general: When there is a suitableness in the walk to the nature of the calling. Particularly--
1. When it is such as has been exemplified in Christ and His Church.
2. When it tends to the edification of those about us--saints and sinners.
3. When such as God approves in His Word.
III. The manner in which the apostle enforces his exhortation. I, the prisoner, etc. (H. Foster, M. A.)
Mission of the saints
Each of Gods saints is sent into the world to prove some part of the Divine character. Perhaps I may be one of those who shall live in the valley of ease, having much rest, and hearing sweet birds of promise singing in my ears. The air is calm and balmy, the sheep are feeding round about me, and all is still and quiet. Well, then I shall prove the love of God in sweet communings. Or perhaps I may be Called to stand where the thunder clouds brew, where the lightnings play, and tempestuous winds are howling on the mountain tops. Well, then I am born to prove the power and majesty of our God: amid dangers He will inspire me with courage: amid toils He will make me strong. Perhaps it shall be mine to preserve an unblemished character, and so prove the power of sanctifying grace, in not being allowed to backslide from my professed dedication to God. I shall then be a proof of the omnipotent power of grace, which alone can save from the power, as well as from the guilt of sin. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Worthy walkin
g:--There is a seemliness appertaining to each calling. So here. We must walk nobly, as becometh the heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Luther counsels men to answer all temptations of Satan with this word, I am a Christian. They were wont to say of cowards in Rome, There is nothing Roman in them. Of many Christians we may say, There is nothing Christian in them. It is not amiss before we serve the world to put Alexanders questions to his followers, that would have persuaded him to run at the Olympic games. Do kings use to run at the Olympics? Every believer is higher than the kings of the earth. He must therefore carry himself accordingly. (J. Trapp.)
What are we called to
1. The knowledge of God (1Pe_4:9).
2. The faith of Christ (1Co_1:9; Gal_2:6).
3. Holiness of life (1Th_4:7; Rom_7:1).
4. Peace (1Co_7:15).
(1) With God (Rom_5:1).
(2) With our consciences (Act_24:16).
(3) With one another (Eph_4:2).
5. Eternal life (1Pe_3:9; 1Pe_5:10; 1Th_2:12). (Bishop Beveridge.)
What is it to walk worthy of our calling
1. Generally, to carry ourselves as becometh Christians (Php_1:27; Col_1:10; 1Th_2:12).
2. Particularly--
(1) To believe what Christ asserts (1Jn_5:10).
(2) To trust in what He promiseth (2Co_1:20).
(3) To perform what He commands (Joh_14:15). (Bishop Beveridge.)
Why walk worthy of our calling
1. Otherwise we sham our profession (Heb_6:5).
2. We lose the comfort of our calling (Psa_19:11).
3. We shall lose its end (Heb_12:14). (Bishop Beveridge.)
Our walk is watched
A gentleman in England said that he owed his conversion mainly to the marked consistency of a merchant who lived not far from him. His neighbour was a Christian, and professed to carry on his large business on strictly Christian principles. This surprised him; but not being sure of its reality, he determined to watch him for a year, and if at the end of that time he found that he was really what he professed to be, he would become a Christian also. All the year he watched without finding any flaw or inconsistency in his dealing. The result was a thorough conviction that the merchant was a true man, and that religion was a reality.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Chapter 16
Chapter 16
THE EXHORTATION ON CHURCH LIFE. CHAPTER 4:1-16
Read full note →
THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES
Eph_4:1-6
This Encyclical of St. Paul to the Churches of Asia is the most formal and deliberate of his writings since the great epistle to the Romans. In entering upon its hortatory and practical part we are reminded of the transition from doctrine to exhortation in that epistle. Here, as in Romans 11,12, the apostles theological teaching, brought with measured steps to its conclusion, has been followed by an act of worship expressing the profound and holy joy which fills his spirit as he views the purposes of God thus displayed in the gospel and the Church. In this exalted mood, as one sitting in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, St. Paul surveys the condition of his readers and addresses himself to their duties and necessities. His homily, like his argument, is inwoven with the golden thread of devotion; and the smooth flow of the epistle breaks ever and again into the music of thanksgiving.
The apostle resumes the words of self-description dropped in Eph_3:1. He appeals to his readers with pathetic dignity: "I the prisoner in the Lord"; and the expression gathers new solemnity from that which he has told us in the last chapter of the mystery and grandeur of his office. He is "the prisoner"-the one whose bonds were known through all the Churches and manifest even in the imperial palace. {Php_1:12-14} It was "in the Lord" that he wore this heavy chain, brought upon him in Christs service and borne joyfully for His peoples sake. He is now a martyr apostle. If his confinement detained him from his Gentile flock, at least it should add sacred force to the message he was able to convey. The tone of the apostles letters at this time shows that he was sensible of the increased consideration which the afflictions of the last few years had given to him in the eyes of the Church. He is thankful for this influence, and makes good use of it. His first and main appeal to the Asian brethren, as we should expect from the previous tenor of the letter, is an exhortation to unity. It is an obvious conclusion from the doctrine of the Church that he has taught them. The "oneness of the Spirit" which they must "earnestly endeavour to preserve," is the unity which their possession of the Holy Spirit of itself implies. "Having access in one Spirit to the Father," the antipathetic Jewish and Gentile factors of the Church are reconciled; "in the Spirit" they "are builded together for a habitation of God". {Eph_2:18-22} This unity when St. Paul wrote was an actual and visible fact, despite the violent efforts of the Judaisers to destroy it. The "right hands of fellowship" between himself and James, Peter, and John at the conference of Jerusalem were a witness thereto. {Gal_2:7-10} But it was a union that needed for its maintenance the efforts of right-thinking men and sons of peace everywhere. St. Paul bids all who read his letter help to keep Christs peace in the Churches.
The conditions for such pursuing and preserving of peace in the fold of Christ are briefly indicated in Eph_4:1-2. There must be-
(1) A due sense of the dignity of our Christian calling: "Walk worthily" he says, "of the calling wherewith you were called." This exhortation, of course, includes much besides in its scope; it is the preface to all the exhortations of the three following chapters, the basis, in fact, of every worthy appeal to Christian men; but it bears in the first instance, and pointedly, upon Church unity. Levity of temper, low and poor conceptions of religion militate against the catholic spirit; they create an atmosphere rife with causes of contention. "Whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal and walk as men?"
(2) Next to low-mindedness amongst the foes of unity comes ambition: "Walk with all lowliness of mind and meekness," he continues. Between the low-minded and the lowly-minded there is a total difference. The man of lowly mind habitually feels his dependence as a creature and his unworthiness as a sinner before God. This spirit nourishes in him a wholesome self-distrust, and watchfulness over his temper and motives.-The meek man thinks as little of his personal claims, as the humble man of his personal merits. He is willing to give place to others where higher interests will not suffer, content to take the lowest room and to be in mens eyes of no account. How many seeds of strife and roots of bitterness would be destroyed, if this mind were in us all. Self-importance, the love of office and power, and the craving for applause must be put away, if we are to recover and keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
(3) When St. Paul adds "with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love," he is opposing a cause of division quite different from the last, -to wit, impatience and resentfulness. A high Christian ideal and a strict self-judgment will render us more sensitive to wrong-doing in the world around us. Unless tempered with abundant charity, they may lead to harsh and one-sided censure. Gentle natures, reluctant to condemn, are sometimes slow and difficult in forgiveness. Humbleness and meekness are choice graces of the Spirit. But they are self-regarding virtues at the best, and may be found in a cold nature that has little of the patience which bears with mens infirmities, of the sympathetic insight that discovers the good often lying close to their faults. "Above all things"-above kindness, meekness, long-suffering, forgivingness-"put on love, which is the bond of perfectness". {Col_3:14} Love is the last word of St. Pauls definition of the Christian temper in Eph_4:2; it is the sum and essence of all that makes for Christian unity. In it lies a charm which can overcome both the lighter provocations and the grave offences of human intercourse, -offences that must needs rise in the purest society composed of infirm and sinful men. "Bind thyself to thy brother. Those who are bound together in love, bear all burdens lightly. Bind thyself to him, and him to thee. Both are in thy power; for whomsoever I will, I may easily make my friend" (Chrysostom).
Eph_4:1-3 exhibit the temper in which the unity of the Church is to be maintained. Eph_4:4-6 set forth the basis upon which it rests. This passage is a brief summary of Christian doctrine. It defines the "foundation of the apostles and prophets" asserted in Eph_2:20, -the groundwork of "every building" in Gods holy temple, the foundation upon which Pauls Gentile readers, along with the Jewish saints, were growing into one holy temple in the Lord. Seven elements of unity St. Paul enumerates: one body, Spirit, hope; one Lord, faith, and baptism; one God and Father of all. They form a chain stretching from the Church on earth to the throne and being of the universal Father in heaven.
Closely considered, we find that the seven unities resolve themselves into three, centring in the names of the Divine Trinity-the Spirit, the Lord, and the Father. The Spirit and the Lord are each accompanied by two kindred uniting elements; while the one God and Father, placed alone, in Himself forms a threefold bond to His creatures-by His sovereign power, pervasive action, and immanent presence: "Who is over all, and through all, and in all". {comp. Eph_1:23}
The rhythm of expression in these verses suggests that they belonged to some apostolic Christian song. Other passages in Pauls later epistles betray the same character; and we know from Eph_5:19 and Col_3:16 that the Pauline Church was already rich in psalmody. This epistle shows that St. Paul was touched with the poetic as well as the prophetical afflatus. He expected his people to sing; and we see no reason why he should not, like Luther and the Wesleys afterwards, have taught them to do so by giving voice to the joy of the new-found faith in "hymns and spiritual songs." These lines, we could fancy, belonged to some chant sung in the Christian assemblies; they form a brief metrical creed, the confession of the Church then and in all ages.
I. One body there is, and one Spirit.
The former was a patent fact. Believers in Jesus Christ formed a single body, the same in all essentials of religion, sharply distinguished from their Jewish and their Pagan neighbours. Although the distinctions now existing amongst Christians are vastly greater and more numerous, and the boundaries between the Church and the world at many points are much less visible, yet there is a true unity that binds together those "who profess and call themselves Christians" throughout the world. As against the multitudes of heathen and idolaters; as against Jewish and Mohammedan rejectors of our Christ; as against atheists and agnostics and all deniers of the Lord, we are "one body," and should feel and act as one.
In missionary fields, confronting the overwhelming forces and horrible evils of Paganism, the servants of Christ intensely realise their unity; they see how trifling in comparison are the things that separate the Churches, and how precious and deep are the things that Christians hold in common. It may need the pressure of some threatening outward force, the sense of a great peril hanging over Christendom to silence our contentions and compel the soldiers of Christ to fall into line and present to the enemy a united front. If the unity of believers in Christ-their oneness of worship and creed, of moral ideal and discipline-is hard to discern through the variety of human forms and systems and the confusion of tongues that prevails, yet the unity is there to be discerned; and it grows clearer to us as we look for it. It is visible in the universal acceptance of Scripture and the primitive creeds, in the large measure of correspondence between the different Church standards of the Protestant communions, in our common Christian literature, in the numerous alliances and combinations, local and general, that exist for philanthropic and missionary objects, in the increasing and auspicious comity of the Churches. The nearer we get to the essentials of truth and to the experience of living Christian men, the more we realise the existence of one body in the scattered limbs and innumerable sects of Christendom.
There is "one body and one Spirit"; one body because, and so far as, there is one Spirit. What is it constitutes the unity of our physical frame? Outward attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing. What I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is no part of me, any more than if it were in another planet. The clothes I wear take the bodys shape; they partake of its warmth and movement; they give its outward presentment. They are not of the body for all this. But the fingers that clasp, the lips that touch, the limbs that move and glow beneath the raiment, -these are the body itself; and everything belongs to it, however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable, nay, however diseased and burdensome, that is vitally connected with it. The life that thrills through nerve and artery, the spirit that animates with one will and being the whole framework and governs its ten thousand delicate springs and interlacing cords, -it is this that makes one body of an otherwise inert and decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit depart, it is a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of Christ, and its members in particular. Am I a living, integral part of the Church, quickened by its Spirit? or do I belong only to the raiment and the furniture that are about it? "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." He who has the Spirit of Christ, will find a place within His body. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is a communicative, sociable spirit. The child of God seeks out his brethren; like is drawn to like, bone to bone and sinew to its sinew in the building up of the risen body. By an instinct of its life, the new-born soul forms bonds of attachment for itself to the Christian souls nearest to it, to those amongst whom it is placed in Gods dispensation of grace. The ministry, the community through which it received spiritual life, and that travailed for its birth, claim it by a parental right that may not be disowned, nor at any time renounced without loss and peril.
Where the Spirit of Christ dwells as a vitalising, formative principle, it finds or makes for itself a body. Let no man say: I have the spirit of religion; I can dispense with forms. I need no fellowship with men; I prefer to walk with God.-God will not walk with men who do not care to walk with His people. He "loved the world"; and we must love it, or we displease Him. "This commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God love his brother also."
The oneness of communion amongst the people of Christ is governed by a unity of aim: "Even as also you were called in one hope of your calling." Our fellowship has an object to realise, our calling a prize to win. All Christian organisation is directed to a practical end. The old Pagan world fell to pieces because it was "without hope"; its golden age was in the past. No society can endure that lives upon its memories, or that contents itself with cherishing its privileges. Nothing holds men together like work and hope. This gives energy, purpose, progress to the fellowship of Christian believers. In this imperfect and unsatisfying world, with the majority of our race still in bondage to evil, it is idle for us to combine for any purpose that does not bear on human improvement and salvation. The Church of Christ is a society for the abolition of sin and death. That this will be accomplished, that Gods will shall be done on earth as in heaven, is the hope of our calling. To this hope we "were called" by the first summons of the gospel. "Repent," it cried, "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!"
For ourselves, in our personal quality, Christianity holds out a splendid crown of life. It promises our complete restoration to the image of God, the redemption of the body with the spirit from death, and our entrance upon an eternal fellowship with Christ in heaven. This hope, shared by us in common and affecting all the interests and relationships of daily life, is the ground of our communion. The Christian hope supplies to men, more truly and constantly than Nature in her most exalted forms,
"The anchor of their purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of their heart, and soul Of all their moral being."
Happy are the wife and husband, happy the master and servants, happy the circle of friends who live and work together as "joint-heirs of the grace of life." Well says Calvin here: "If this thought were fixed in our minds, this law laid upon us, that the sons of God may no more quarrel than the kingdom of heaven can be divided, how much more careful we should be in cultivating brotherly good-will! What a dread we should have of dissensions, if we considered, as we ought to do, that those who separate from their brethren, exile themselves from the kingdom of God."
But the hope of our calling is a hope for mankind, -nay, for the entire universe. We labour for the regeneration of humanity. "We look for a new heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness"; for the actual gathering into one in Christ of all things in all worlds, as they are already gathered in Gods eternal plan. Now if it were merely a personal salvation that we had to seek, Christian communion might appear to be an optional thing, and the Church no more than a society for mutual spiritual benefit. But seen in this larger light, Church membership is of the essence of our calling. As children of the household of faith, we are heirs to its duties with its possessions. We cannot escape the obligations of our spiritual any more than of our natural birth. One Spirit dwelling in each, one sublime ideal inspiring us and guiding all our efforts, how shall we not be one body in the fellowship of Christ? This hope of our calling it is our calling to breathe into the dead world. Its virtue alone can dispel the gloom and discord of the age. From the fountain of Gods love in Christ springing up in the heart of the Church, there shall pour forth "One common wave of thought and joy, Lifting mankind again!"
II. The first group of unities leads us to the second. If one Spirit dwells within us, it is one Lord who reigns over us. We have one hope to work for; it is because we have one faith to live by. A common fellowship implies a common creed.
Thus Christ Jesus the Lord takes His place fourth in this list of unities, between hope and faith, between the Spirit and the Father. He is the centre of centres, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the Christ in the midst of the ages. United with Christ, we are at unity with God and with our fellowmen. We find in Him the fulcrum of the forces that are raising the world, the corner-stone of the temple of humanity.
But let us mark that it is the one Lord in whom we find our unity. To think of Him as Saviour only is to treat Him as a means to an end. It is to make ourselves the centre, not Christ. This is the secret of much of the isolation and sectarianism of modern Churches. Individualism is the negation of Church life. Men value Christ for what they can get from Him for themselves. They do not follow Him and yield themselves up to Him, for the sake of what He is. "Come unto me, all ye that are burdened, and I will give you rest": they listen willingly so far. But when He goes on to say "Take my yoke upon you," their ears are deaf. There is a subtle self-seeking and selfpleasing even in the way of salvation.
From this springs the disloyalty, the want of affection for the Church, the indifference to all. Christian interests beyond the personal and local, which is worse than strife; for it is death to the body of Christ. The name of the "one Lord" silences party clamours and rebukes the voices that cry, "I am of Apollos, I of Cephas." It recalls loiterers and stragglers to the ranks. It bids each of us, in his own station of life and his own place in the Church, serve the common cause without sloth and without ambition.
Christs Lordship over us for life and death is signified by our baptism in His name. We have received, most of us in infancy through our parents reverent care, the token of allegiance to the Lord Christ. The baptismal water that He bade all nations receive from His apostles, has been sprinkled upon you. Shall this be in vain? Or do you now, by the faith of your heart in Christ Jesus the Lord, endorse the faith your parents and the Church exercised on your behalf? If so, your faith saves you. Your obedience is at once accepted by the Lord to whom it is tendered; and the sign of Gods redemption of the race which greeted you at your entrance into life, assumes for you all its significance and worth. It is the seal upon your brow, now stamped upon your heart, of your eternal covenant with Christ.
But it is the seal of a corporate life in Him. Christian baptism is no private transaction; it attests no mere secret vow passing between the soul and its Saviour. "For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit". {1Co_12:13} Our baptism is the sign of a common faith and hope, and binds us at once to Christ and to His Church.
One baptism there has been through all the ages since the ascending Lord said to His disciples: "Go, make disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." The ordinance has been administered in different ways and under varying regulations: but with few exceptions, it has been observed from the beginning by every Christian community in fulfilment of the word of Christ, and in acknowledgment of His dominion. Those who insist on the sole validity of this or that mode or channel of administration, recognise at least the intention of Churches baptising otherwise than themselves to honour the one Lord in thus confessing His name; and so far admit that there is in truth "one baptism." Wherever Christs sacraments are observed with a true faith, they serve as visible tokens of His rule.
In this rule lies the ultimate ground of union for men, and for all creatures. Our fellowship in the faith of Christ is deep as the nature of God; its blessedness rich as His love; its bonds strong and eternal as His power.
III. The last and greatest of the unities still remains. Add to our fellowship in the one Spirit and confession of the one Lord, our adoption by the one God and Father of all.
To the Gentile converts of the Asian cities this was a new and marvellous thought. "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians," they had been used to shout; or haply, "Great is Aphrodite of the Pergamenes," or "Bacchus of the Philadelphians." Great they knew was "Jupiter Best and Greatest" of conquering Rome; and great the numen of the Caesar, to which everywhere in this rich and servile province shrines were rising. Each city and tribe, each grove or fountain or sheltering hill had its local genius or daimon, requiring worship and sacrificial honours. Every office and occupation, every function in life-navigation, midwifery, even thieving-was under the patronage of its special deity. These petty godships by their numbers and rivalries distracted the pious heathen with continual fear lest one or other of them might not have received due observance.
With what a grand simplicity the Christian conception of "the one God and Father" rose above this vulgar pantheon, this swarm of motley deities-some gay and wanton, some dark and cruel, some of supposed beneficence, all infected with human passion and baseness-which filled the imagination of the Graeco-Asiatic pagans. What rest there was for the mind, what peace and freedom for the spirit in turning from such deities to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Here is no jealous Monarch regarding men as tribute-payers, and needing to be served by human hands. He is the Father of men. pitying us as His children and giving us all things richly to enjoy. Our God is no local divinity, to be honoured here but not there, tied to His temple and images and priestly mediators; but the "one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all." This was the very God whom the logic of Greek thought and the practical instincts of Roman law and empire blindly sought. Through ages He had revealed Himself to the people of Israel, who were now dispersed amongst the nations to bear His light. At last He declared His full name and purpose to the world in Jesus Christ. So the gods many and lords many have had their day. By His manifestation the idols are utterly abolished. The proclamation of one God and Father signifies the gathering of men into one family of God. The one religion supplies the basis for one life in all the world.
God is over all, gathering all worlds and beings under the shadow of His beneficent dominion. He is through all, and in all: an Omnipresence of love, righteousness, and wisdom, actuating the powers of nature and of grace, inhabiting the Church and the heart of men. You need not go far to seek Him; if you believe in Him, you are yourself His temple.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1–3. I, therefore. Practical duties are now urged which…
1–3. I, therefore. Practical duties are now urged which grow out of their glorious privileges in Christ. The prisoner of the Lord. See 3:1, and note. Compare Philemon 1:9. He was a prisoner because he was a servant of the Lord. Walk worthy of the calling. They had been called to a glorious calling, as he had shown in chapter 3. The Christian has been called to the highest calling with which man has ever been honored.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 Eph_4:1. Walk worthy of the vocation.—They had been called…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Eph_4:1. Walk worthy of the vocation.—They had been called to life in the Spirit, and they must also “walk in the Spirit.”
Read full note →
Eph_4:2. With all lowliness.—The Christian—“born from above”—is to exhibit a trait of character which the “high-born” Greek despised, and which Heine in modern times called “a hound’s virtue.” “The pride that apes humility” steals in under Chrysostom’s description of this “lowliness.” He says, “It is a making of ourselves small when we are great.” And meekness.—“A grace in advance of ‘lowliness,’ not as more precious than it, but as presupposing it, and as being unable to exist without it” (Trench). With long-suffering.—The exact opposite of our “short-tempered”—e.g. “Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened?” means “Has the Lord become irritable?” (Mic_2:7). The word suggests to men by nature irascible that “slowness to wrath” recommended by St. James. Forbearing one another in love.—The brother who is tempted to anger is not to look down from the height of a lofty pride on those who try his patience, but in compassionate love, remembering his own frailty, must “suffer long and be kind.”
Eph_4:3. Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.—It is no easy-going indifference that is inculcated; they will have to “exert themselves,” “give diligence” (R.V.), before that peace obtains which is the harmonious and frictionless working of each part of the machine.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Eph_4:1-3
The Dignity of the Christian Life—
I. Imposes the obligation to act in harmony with its lofty aims.—“Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Eph_4:1). There is the practical, stimulative influence of a high ideal. The Spirit within us has not only changed our nature and cleansed our spiritual vision, but He has lifted our horizon, formed within us distinct outlines of the Christian ideal after which we are to labour, and furnished us with the moral forces with which we are to attain the beauty and unity of a perfect spiritual character. We who are created in God’s image and restored in Christ and made partakers of the divine nature in Him, are bound by the conditions of our creation and redemption to endeavour to be like Him here that we may have the fruition of His glorious Godhead hereafter. The true Christian cannot stoop to any meanness either in thought or action. He is dignified without being proud.
II. Involves the practice of self-suppression.—
1. In a just estimate of ourselves. “With all lowliness and meekness.” In endeavouring to balance the value and use of our powers and faculties, and in measuring the degree and volume of our influence, we must observe humility—not a cringing, cowardly spirit which would deter us from the right for fear of doing wrong, but an elevated sense of right with courage to perform it, and with humility to acknowledge and confess when we are in the wrong. It does not mean the craven surrender of our honest convictions and carefully formed judgment. We may efface ourselves, but not the truth within us. An Italian bishop being asked the secret of his habitual humility and patience, replied, “It consists in nothing more than in making good use of my eyes. In whatever state I am, I first of all look up to heaven and remember that my principal business here is to get there. I then look down to earth and call to mind the space I shall shortly occupy in it. I then look abroad into the world and observe what multitudes there are who in all respects have more cause to be unhappy than myself, Thus I learn where true happiness is placed, where all our cares must end, and how very little reason I have to repine or complain.”
2. In a loving forbearance towards each other.—“With longsuffering, forbearing one another in love” (Eph_4:2). The meek man may be severe with himself, and his constant habit of self-suppression may render him somewhat impatient with the unreasonable outbreaks of temper in others. Meekness must be balanced and moderated with patience, and both virtues exercised in the all-pervading element of love. Love softens every harshness, tones down asperity, and welds together the Christian character in a firm but not too rigid a unity. “Bind thyself to thy brother,” said Chrysostom. “Those who are bound together in love bear all burdens lightly. Bind thyself to him and him to thee. Both are in thy power; for whomsoever I will, I may easily make my friend.”
III. Demands an earnest striving after a peaceful spiritual unity.—“Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph_4:3). Peace—“a silken cord binding into one the members of the Church; the encompassing element of the unity of the Spirit” (Beet). The apostle repeatedly and solemnly inculcates unity and peace on all the Churches, warns them against contentions and divisions, and kindles into righteous indignation against all those insidious and false teachers who, under the pretence of advocating a higher piety, really disturb and rend the Church of Christ. On what an enormous scale are preparations made for war! We should not be less diligent and elaborate in taking every precaution in promoting and maintaining peace.
Lessons.—
1. True humility is always dignified.
2. Personal happiness is not the highest aim of the Christian life.
3. The noblest virtues of the Christian character are not attained without earnest endeavour.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Eph_4:1-3. True Church Life.—
1. The word “walk” is of a very extensive signification. It includes all our inward and outward motions, all our thoughts, words, and actions. It takes in, not only everything we do, but everything we either speak or think.
2. We are called to walk, first, “with all lowliness,” to have the mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus; not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think; to be little, and poor, and mean, and vile in our own eyes; to know ourselves as also we are known by Him to whom all hearts are opened; to be deeply sensible of our own unworthiness. Who can be duly sensible how much remains in him of his natural enmity to God, or how far he is still alienated from God by the ignorance that is in him?
3. Yea, suppose God has now thoroughly cleansed our heart, and scattered the last remains of sin; yet how can we be sensible enough of our own helplessness, our utter inability to all good, unless we are every hour, yea, every moment, endued with power from on high?
4. When our inmost soul is thoroughly tinctured therewith, it remains that we “be clothed with humility.” The word used by St. Peter seems to imply that we be covered with it as with a surtout; that we be all humility, both within and without; tincturing all we think, speak, and do. Let all our actions spring from this fountain; let all our words breathe this spirit; that all men may know we have been with Jesus, and have learned of Him to be lowly in heart.
5. And being taught of Him who teacheth as never man taught, to be meek as well as lowly in heart. This implies not only a power over anger, but over all violent, turbulent passions. It implies the having all our passions in due proportion; none of them either too strong or too weak, but all duly balanced with each other, all subordinate to reason, and reason directed by the Spirit of God.
6. Walk with all “longsuffering.” This is nearly related to meekness, but implies something more. It carries on the victory already gained over all your turbulent passions, notwithstanding all the powers of darkness, all the assaults of evil men or evil spirits. It is patiently triumphant over all opposition, and unmoved though all the waves and storms thereof go over you.
7. The “forbearing one another in love” seems to mean, not only the not resenting anything, and the not avenging yourselves; not only the not injuring, hurting, or grieving each other, either by word or deed, but also the bearing one another’s burdens, yea, and lessening them by every means in our power. It implies the sympathising with them in their sorrows, afflictions, and infirmities; the bearing them up when, without our help, they would be liable to sink under their burdens.
8. Lastly, the true members of the Church of Christ “endeavour,” with all possible diligence, with all care and pains, with unwearied patience, to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” to preserve inviolate the same spirit of lowliness and meekness, of longsuffering, mutual forbearance, and love; and all these cemented and knit together by that sacred tie—the peace of God filling the heart. Thus only can we be and continue living members of that Church which is the body of Christ.
9. Does it not clearly appear from this whole account why, in the ancient creed commonly called the Apostles’, we term it the universal or catholic Church, “the holy catholic Church”? The Church is called holy, because it is holy, because every member thereof is holy, though in different degrees, as He that called them is holy. How clear this is! If the Church, as to the very essence of it, is a body of believers, no man that is not a Christian believer can be a member of it. If this whole body be animated by one Spirit, and endued with one faith, and one hope of their calling, then he who has not that Spirit and faith and hope is no member of this body. It follows, that not only no common swearer, no Sabbath-breaker, no drunkard, no whoremonger, no thief, no liar, none that lives in any outward sin, but none that is under the power of anger or pride, no lover of the world—in a word, none that is dead to God—can be a member of His Church.—Wesley.
Brotherly Love in Action.
I. Walk in lowliness.—Humble thoughts of ourselves, of our own knowledge, goodness, and importance are necessary to Christian peace and union. We shall not despise our brethren for their want of the internal gifts or external advantages we enjoy. We shall not lean to our own understanding; but, conscious of our liability to err, we shall be attentive to instruction and reproof, open to conviction, ready to retract our errors and confess our faults.
II. Walk in meekness—in a prudent restraint and government of the passions. We shall not be easily provoked, our resentments will not be sudden, without cause or without bounds. If a variance happens, we shall stand ready to be reconciled. We shall be cautious not to give, and slow to take offence. In matters of religion our zeal will be tempered with charity.
III. To our meekness we must add longsuffering and forbearance.—These terms express the patient and exalted exercise of meekness rather than virtues distinct from it. We are not only to be meek, but longsuffering in our meekness; not only to restrain anger under ordinary offences, but to suppress malice and forbear revenge under the most provoking injuries.
IV. We must endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.—Not unity of opinion—this is not possible, nor reasonable to be expected, in the present state of mankind; but unity of spirit, of heart and affection, disposing us to preserve the bond of peace and maintain all the duties of Christian fellowship, whatever differences of sentiment take place. To the same purpose are the apostle’s exhortations to all the Churches, and especially to those in which diversity of opinion concerning ceremonial usages threatened their external peace.—Lathrop.
Eph_4:3. Peace the Bond of Unity.
I. There is a union of the visible Church and the members thereof among themselves, and this is twofold: the one necessary to the being of a Church and being of a Church member, so that a Church cannot be a Church nor a man a member without it, the tie of which is God’s covenant with the visible Church, and the Church’s laying hold of it; the other necessary to the well-being of the Church, which is entertained by unity in judgment, in heart and affection, by concurrences in purposes and actings.
II. Neither fair pretences for peace and union in the Church, not seconded but contradicted by practice, nor yet careless endeavours easily broken by difficulties, will God accept as the duty required for preserving or restoring unity.—There is no less called for than the utmost of our serious endeavours for that end, so that we not only eschew what may give cause of rending, but also be not easily provoked when it is given by others, and when a rent is made spare no pains for having it removed, and weary not under small appearances of success.
III. Whatever differences may fall out among the members of the Church they are not to break the bond of peaceable walking one with another by factious sidings, but ought to study unanimous and joint practice in those things wherein there is agreement; and where this peaceable deportment is, it tends to preserve what remains of spiritual unity and to regain what is already lost.—Fergusson.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 The Unity of the Spirit.
Eph 4:3
The Unity of the Spirit.
Read full note →
I. What is to be kept: "the unity of the Spirit." That unity may be regarded as twofold. It may be viewed in two lights: as outwardly manifested and as inwardly wrought. In either view it is the unity of the Spirit.
II. This unity is to be kept. (1) There must be an endeavour to keep it. (2) There is a bond provided for keeping it: it is the bond of peace; it is the peace of reconciliation to God.
R. S. Candlish, Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 70.
Eph 4:3
The Basis of Communion.
I. It seems to me that there are two streams of influence which are pressing some, and those by no means the feeblest and least thoughtful, of our ministers, towards the conclusion that the Church of the future will take comparatively slight heed of doctrinal agreements and differences, and will base its fellowship on vital sympathy in the work of teaching, helping, and saving society. First, there is the weariness of the narrow doctrinal basis which has been accepted as orthodox, which has made exclusion rather than inclusion the watchword of the kingdom of heaven. There is the certainty that many others within the Church who are distinguished by no loftiness of spiritual nature, but who are proud of their soundness in the faith, would be found practically, if they were examined, to be in much confusion as to the true nature and bearings of even such truths as the Incarnation and the Atonement; while outside the orthodox pale there are equally a large number who seem to be laden with all the fruits of the Spirit, to live in love, and to spend themselves in ministry to mankind. This is one stream of influence, and it is pressing men strongly in this direction, to this issue: a communion independent of doctrine and based purely on fellowship of spirit, sympathetic views of Christian activities, Christian endeavour and aspiration, Christian methods, aims, and ends.
II. There is another stream of influence tending towards the same result. There are those who are not impatient of the doctrinal barriers which are raised between those who, it is affirmed, ought to be in communion, but who are in doubt of the doctrines themselves. They hold reverently, tenaciously, to the spiritual element in Christianity. The Cross represents to them the highest and most sacred power which can be brought to bear on the development and elevation of mankind, but they have no hold on the realities outside the sphere of the human which revelation makes known to us. They see the historic basis of the Church, as they think, vanishing; they find no longer credible the facts and judgments on which for eighteen centuries Christendom has nourished its life. They dread lest those whose faith in the great Christian verities is shaken or shattered should drift away into blank atheism and sensualism, and they would gladly create for them a haven of Christian fellowship in a non-sectarian, undoctrinal, and free-thinking Church.
III. Sound doctrine is in the long run as needful to healthy, vigorous, productive Christian life as bone is to flesh in the order of the human frame; but I do not hesitate to say that I see considerable force in what is urged by this latter party, and I entertain not a shadow of doubt that in this direction—the larger and more loving recognition of the unity which may underlie wide doctrinal divergences—lies the next great expansion of the visible kingdom of heaven.
J. B. Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 401.
I. The more the heavenly and spiritual union of all Christians in one body is out of sight and above understanding, the more necessary it is that we should be continually put in mind of it. Having once learned it, we should never allow ourselves to forget it, else we shall be often doing many things, in carelessness or in ignorance, most contrary to this Divine unity. Therefore the Apostle lays such stress on the word "endeavouring "in our text: "Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," that is, making a serious object of it, looking to Church union and communion distinctly as one great purpose of our lives. Do Christians in general, do we ourselves, attend as we ought to this precept of the Holy Ghost? The bond of peace we understand and perceive the benefits of, but the unity of the Spirit is a matter of faith, not of sight; we either never think of it at all, or dismiss it at once out of our minds, saying it is above us, and all we can do is to live quietly among our neighbours of all sorts.
II. What can private Christians do towards so great an object as this of keeping the Church at unity in itself? In answer to this, I would remind you of those many Scriptures in which the Church of Christ is represented as a holy building or temple, whereof the materials are not earthly stones, but the sanctified and regenerated souls and bodies of Christians, living stones, as St. Peter entitled us all, forming one spiritual household. The layman or the child has so far the same duty as the Apostle, that is, to maintain his post in the building, and not to loosen it, as the withdrawing of any stone must do. We may never see what the early Christians saw on earth, the Church universal of one accord, of one mind, but we may hope to see in heaven that of which even the first and best Church was but a faint shadow and emblem: the unity of the Spirit kept perfectly in the bond of everlasting peace.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. i, p. 206.
Life and Peace.
I. "The Spirit bloweth where it listeth.’’ The influences which we recognise as coming to us from above, and which mould our individual being, are often presented to us partially in fitful succession, and their first effect seems rather to disturb us than to control. And yet it is out of such struggling and discordant elements that the growth towards the ideal life is to be won. For in all human life and movement that is not merely a sinking downwards there is something which without irreverence may be called a breathing of the Spirit. And the Spirit must be there, striving with human infirmity, before the first upward step can be taken. It is not from the complacent, satisfied, unaspiring temper that the unity of the Spirit is to be wrought. There may be unity in such a life, but it is not the unity of the Spirit; there may be a sort of peace, but it is the peace of apathy. That is not the peace which reflects the image of the early Christian ideal.
II. But when we look back on the struggle after it is over, and the peace is won, we may see the evidence of the working of something higher still, and a unifying, harmonising power that was less apparent to us at the time; and we cannot claim that power to have been our own. "When I said, My foot hath slipped, Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up." This is a strength which knows its dependence upon a higher strength, and which rejoices in the belief that it may be privileged to strengthen others with the might wherewith it has itself been strengthened from above.
III. For the Divinity that shapes our ends is no blind destiny descending on us from without and compelling us we know not whither, nor yet can we admit that character is fate in the sense that weakness predetermines men to ruin. There is a Spirit witnessing to our spirit that we are the children of God.
IV. And in this belief and consciousness the life is at last girded with the bond of peace. Life without peace is weakness and chaos; peace without life is nothingness. It is when the two are united, when self-control is not mere self-repression, but the enlightened guidance of an ardent will, that the individual has realised for himself, and will assist his brethren in realising individually, the ideal which the Apostle sets collectively before the early Church: the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
L. Campbell, Some Aspects of the Christian Ideal, p. 123.
References: Eph 4:3.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi., No. 607; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i., p. 56; A. Mackennal, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 328; J. Baldwin Brown, Ibid., vol. xiii., p. 9; F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii., p. 155; J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons, p. 383. Eph 4:3-6.—Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. ix., p. 186; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 205; vol. iv., p. 31.
Eph 4:4
I. Consider the unity or oneness of the Church as set forth by the unity or oneness of the body. "The body is one," says the Apostle. Notwithstanding the several limbs of which it is composed, one life animates the whole. The parts mutually subserve one another. They instinctively feel that they belong to one another; that they owe to one another mutual help and support. And so, too, the Church is one—one mystical body, as we call it—having one Author, which is God, and one Head, which is Christ, and one informing Spirit, which is the Holy Ghost; having one country toward which all its members are travelling, which is heaven, one code of instructions to guide them thither, which is the word of God, one and the same band of enemies seeking to bar their passage, which are the world, the flesh, and the devil; having the same effectual assistances in the shape of sacraments and other means of grace to enable them to overcome these enemies, and of God’s good favour to attain the land of their rest.
II. But, secondly, as in the human body there is unity, so there is also variety, diversity, multiplicity, or whatever else we may please to call it. The Church is most truly a body in this sense also: that its different members have different functions to perform, all these being assigned to them by God; and then, and then only, it makes equable and harmonious growth.
III. Consider the lessons which we may derive from these truths. (1) We are members of a body. Let us never forget this. It is only too easy to do so. Do not let us yield to the temptation which would lead us to separate ourselves, if not wholly, yet in part, from the body of Christ, and to set up a selfish independent life of our own. (2) If we are thus members one of another, many are the debts which as such we owe the one to the other. We owe each other truth, love, honour. Let us ask of God a tenderer, livelier, more earnest sense of the sorrows, needs, perplexities, distresses, fears, trials, of our brethren.
R. C. Trench, Westminster and Other Sermons, p. 152.
References: Eph 4:4.—J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 380; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 211.
Eph 4:4-6
Church Unity.
In these words, which unite the passionate enthusiasm of thanksgiving with the clear-cut precision of a creed, St. Paul draws out to us explicitly that which is the great subject of the whole Ephesian Epistle: the existence and the nature of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. The whole area of humanity, and therefore the whole area of the salvation of Christ, is seen by him as a whole. Over the whole battlefield of the world he watches the sweep of the tides of the spiritual battle. The unity of all men in Christ with God and with each other is the magnificent truth which fills his whole mind and heart, and breaks forth ever and anon in bursts of praise; and the text draws out at last, as it were in a triumphant creed, the great lines of the pervading subject.
I. The picture before St. Paul’s eyes was the picture of the Catholic Church of Christ. And that picture differs very much from the appearance which it presents to our eyes now. Far less was it then in extent, numbering its thousands instead of its millions, only spread over the civilisation that fringed the basin of the Mediterranean, instead of pervading the length and breadth of the world. Far less pervading was it in its power. It had not yet penetrated into the very nature of humanity; it had not yet moulded the language, the thought, the imagination, and the life of all the leading nations of mankind. But yet, if it was far less grand in its outline, how much more perfect was it in its unity.
II. St. Paul places the source and living power of our unity not in anything that belongs to us, but in the eternal unity of God. There is one Spirit, the Holy Ghost Himself, making His temple in the hearts of Christians. They who partake of His life are one body still. The bonds which bind all Christian hearts with gold chains about the feet of God have passed upward from the earth. They cannot be trampled and broken under the heel of man; they cannot be severed. Whatever else we have done, the source of our unity we can no more close up than we can stop the outburst of some mighty river when it comes rushing down from its ice cave in the everlasting hills.
III. In all unity between rational beings there must be action on both sides, and God brings in the law in His dealing with us. All His blessings are freely given by His grace; but only by the consent of the human will can they penetrate the soul. Faith, hope, love, that triad of Christian graces—these are the conditions which make us one body indeed. What is the duty which this passage forces upon Christians? (1) Realise what you have. Feel, and act as if you felt, the large amount of unity which exists among Christians still. Let us act with, let us think with, let us pray with, all who bear the name of Christ. (2) Strive for what as yet you have not. There is an incalculable waste of spiritual power, not only by division, but by friction and antagonism. There is a bewilderment of truth when it is proclaimed, however loudly, by discordant voices. If only Christendom were united, it would hardly need a generation to convert the world; if only England were united, our isle might be "an isle of saints," a kingdom of God.
Bishop Barry, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 679.
I. Ver. 4: The Apostle uses a favourite image here. The Church is represented by the individual man, and the unity of the Church is represented as like the unity of a man. There is an outward oneness of character and walk, as there is an outward oneness in the corporeal structure of a man; and there is an inward oneness, as of the soul in man.
II. The one individual man, having a body and a soul, but still one, is one also as having and owning one Head. Made one body and one spirit, through the one hopeful calling common to all, we are further one as recognising one Lord. And there is but one method of union with Him and with one another in Him: faith, one faith; and one seal of that oneness of faith: one baptism.
III. Thus called, in one hopeful calling, to be one body animated by one Spirit, thus united to one and the same Lord by one and the same faith, confirmed by the seal of one and the same baptism, they who constitute the one Church come to stand in one and the same relation to the Supreme, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.
R. S. Candlish, Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 70.
Reference: Eph 4:4-6.—Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 428.
Eph 4:5
I. How is the lordship of Jesus constituted? Not by the suffrages of men, but by the will of God. It consists in the exaltation, the reward of servantship, and is constituted by God directly and acquiesced in, and acknowledged, and accepted with gladness by the Church.
II. What does this lordship comprise? It is a sign of His pre-eminence. He rises far above all principalities, and powers, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named in this world and in that which is to come. In and over the Church, He, and He only, has the right to reign; and it is a high offence against Christ for any to set up thrones to men within the Church or to assume lordship over God’s heritage.
III. See how this is essential to the Church. Of the Church’s household Christ is Master. As a school of faith and holiness Christ is Teacher. Of the Church as a host Christ is Captain. Of the Church as bride Christ is Husband and Lord. Honour the Son, and you are in that very act honouring the Father also. Confess that Jesus is Lord. Every tongue that confesseth that Jesus is Lord does so to the glory of God the Father.
IV. Consider the Church in manifestation—that is to say, the Christian community upon the earth. Jesus Christ is Lord, Head, Ruler, Lawgiver, of the whole Christian assembly and of all the assemblies in detail—Jesus Christ, and He alone. As Lord He gives teachers; as chief Captain He employs officers and orderlies in the war. But He has carefully directed that they should remember that they are servants and not assume lordship over the heritage of God.
V. Note the uses of this doctrine. (1) The doctrine of the lordship of Jesus Christ stirs gratitude; (2) it requires obedience; (3) it promotes equity and fair play among Christians; (4) it binds together Christians in unity.
D. Fraser, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 145.
Reference: Eph 4:5.—C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons chiefly Practical, pp. 435, 450.
Eph 4:5-6
I. The Apostle speaks first of one Lord. Those words would have at once recalled to a Jew the sentence which had been repeated to him since he could speak: "The Lord thy God is one Lord." And surely much of the emphasis of this Divine sentence lay in the word "thy." Multitudes of things surround thee and crave thy worship; there is One near thee, ruling thee, caring for thee, jealous of thee, who claims thy heart for Himself: He is the Lord.
II. "One faith." The Jew had been taught to put his whole trust in the Lord God of Israel. Faith or trust was the principle of his being; losing that, he lost everything. The different objects of sense were appealing to him every moment. He could care for them or dread them, but he could not trust them. He must have one faith, or they become his masters; he must have one faith, or there was nothing to bind him to his brother-Israelites; he must have one faith, or his manliness forsook him.
III. "One baptism." The baptism of John had been a witness that the one God of their fathers was calling them to turn round to Him from all the visible objects and the secret lusts to which they had yielded; that He was pardoning away their sins and confirming His covenant with them.
IV. "One God and Father of all." One Lord the law and the prophets had spoken of. But this name of Father, who had uttered that? It came forth when Jesus went up into the mount to proclaim the fulfilment, not the destruction, of that which had been said in the old time. Then did the belief of "one God and Father of all" begin to break through the Jewish exclusiveness, to prove that the Jewish election had this for its final result. One God and Father of all, because one Man who can say, "I came from the Father, and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father."
F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi., p. 111.
References: Eph 4:7.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 98. Eph 4:7-12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii., No. 982.
Eph 4:7-16
The Church Edified and Edifying Itself.
I. There are various outward appliances all meant for the edifying of the body of Christ. These may be regarded as comprehending generally all the spiritual instrumentalities and gifts brought to bear upon the Church and its members from without and from above. For the Apostle is not here laying down the platform of Church government, or determining formally and authoritatively what offices had been or were to be owned and sanctioned in the Church. He is not thinking of that, but of something else. He merely names the ministries then in exercise. He names them simply to bring out their variety of function in connection with their unity of aim. They are all of them, as then subsisting, among the gifts which when He ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, Christ received from the Father, that He might give them unto men. They are widely different from one another in respect of their inherent nature and their official use; but all their differences tend to one result: the drawing of the whole together, the edifying of the body of Christ.
II. In this process of edification the body of Christ is not passive. It has inward vitality, internal vital impulses and movements. And these also are various, yet tend in one direction and to one issue: the edifying of the body of Christ. Oneness and faith and knowledge as regards the Son of God is the great terminus ad quem, the meeting point for all the members of the body. There is ripeness or maturity of manhood among Christians in proportion as there is oneness of faith and knowledge about the Son of God. To that we are all to come at last; to that we are all coming now. But our coming implies the fulfilling of two conditions. (1) There must be an end of all childishness or infantile imbecility; (2) there must be wrought in us an active energetic principle, bent on doing the true thing and doing it lovingly.
R. S. Candlish, Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 94.
References: Eph 4:8.—Archbishop Benson, Sundays in Wellington College, p. 243; S. A. Tipple, Sunday Mornings at Norwood, p. 5; J. Kennedy, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 9.
Eph 4:8, Eph 4:11
A Glorious Ascension.
To ascend on high must have meant for Christ a large increase of His quickening influence, more power to act beneficially on human minds and hearts, to purify and energise, to inspire and elevate, as hitherto He had not been able. That was His supreme ambition, the height for which He sighed; and was it not even thus that He went up gloriously at last from the cross and the grave, mounting from thence to be a greater saving and subliming force than He had ever been before, to beget repentance and remission of sins beyond what He had ever done?
I. He led captivity captive; in plain language, He captured the prisoners, making happy captives of those who were the victims of a miserable captivity, emancipating them from the bondage in which they were held by bringing them into subjection to something better and worthier. They were captured by the vision of a spiritual redemption—a spiritual redemption, not for Jews only, but for peoples of all nations, for men everywhere. In leaving them alone to mourn and wonder, Christ drew forth from them the ripe fruit of what they had blindly and little by little imbibed from Him. Then at length He rescued them from prison to be the bondsmen of a grander Lord; then at length He raised their ideal.
II. "He gave gifts unto men." The men who had been redeemed from their former sensuous dreams to discern and follow the glory of the spiritual began to blossom all over, became thereby more Divinely endowed. Christ enriched them with a heritage of gifts simply by detaching them from the meaner object on which their eyes were fixed and binding them fast to a higher ideal. Gifts that are not ours do often lie hid and slumbering in us, waiting only for the application of the needed stimulus—healing or cleansing—to display themselves; and blessed is he who with some disturbing, quickening touch helps to elicit them.
III. Christ left behind Him men qualified and ready to labour in different capacities. Here was the issue and fruit of Him, a number of living souls, whom He had been slowly training, on whom at last He had succeeded in impressing Himself, a number of living souls, at last in fellowship with His mind, understanding and sympathising with His aims, touched by His Spirit. Let us not doubt that that is always the Divinest work: to get at a man and be the means of ministering in some way to his healthier growth or finer inspiration, of helping him in some way to juster thought or loftier feeling.
S. A. Tipple, Sunday Mornings at Upper Norwood, p. 1.
Eph 4:8-16
The Origin of the Christian Clergy.
No doubt from the first the Christian society which we now call a Church existed in Christ’s faithful followers, even from the beginning, and wheresoever, in any time or country, two or three were gathered together by the communion of love or faith, they also would be a Christian Church, and even for years after our Lord’s departure such a society existed without the separate order of clergy.
I. Yet there was a sense in which the Christian ministry was the gift of our Divine Master. Not in His earthly life, not as a part of the original manifestation of Christianity, but as a result of the complex influences which were showered down to the earth after its Founder had left, as part of the vast machinery of Christian civilisation, created by the Spirit of Christ for filling up the void of His absence, came the various gifts of Christianity, and among these was the great vocation, the sacred profession, of the Christian ministry. And various grades of the Christian clergy had sprung up in Christian society in the same way, by the same Divine cause, the same natural necessity as the various grades of government and law and science—a necessity only more urgent and more universal, and therefore more Divine, so far as the religious wants of mankind were of a more general, a more simple, and therefore a more Divine kind than their social and intellectual wants.
II. The two great functions of the Christian ministry are those of pastor and teacher. The object of their existence was, as the Apostle told them, that they might take their part in the complex but glorious work in which all Christians were called to share: the edifying or building up of the whole body of Christ. The Church, as thus put before them, was not to be an unreasoning infant, or a stunted dwarf, or an old crone, tossed to and fro with every blast, but it was to be a solid, well-built, manly, full-grown man. It was not to be a dead, dry system, but a well-compacted living organisation, in which every part should be knit together, every muscle should move in accordance with its natural bent, where there should be the active hand, and the feeling heart, and the ready foot, and the resolute backbone.
A. P. Stanley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 17.
References: Eph 4:9.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 365; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 4th series, p. 221.
Eph 4:9-10
Consider:—
I. The ascension of Christ in the light of its previous and preparatory history. That the Son of man ascended from the deepest depth of human history and experience, from the lower parts of the earth, up above all heavens, presupposes His descent. In His descent He became the hidden presence and controlling power of the world’s history until the old world passed away in His death and the new world rose in His resurrection.
II. The Ascension in the light of its declared purpose: "That He might fill all things." (1) When we see the only-begotten Son, clothed in a body like our own, exalted above all the heavens, in that sight we have before us the all-glorious and controlling centre of all the spheres, the key which interprets the testimony of prophecy, the gathered firstfruits of a new and redeemed world. The Gospel contains a gospel for nature as well as for man, the prediction of the day when the strife of elements shall cease, and when the powers of darkness shall be swallowed up of light. (2) By Christ’s ascension our nature is endowed with an exalted fulness and clothed with a glory becoming the Son of God. "A parcel of clay," to use the words of Archbishop Leighton, "is made so bright and set so high as to outshine all the flaming spirits of eternity and the stars of the morning." And with such a miracle of grace who can regret his connection with a sinful history which conditions so great a salvation?
W. Pulsford, Trinity Church Sermons, p. 271.
Reference: Eph 4:9, Eph 4:10.—C. Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons, p. 388.
Eph 4:10
Christ Filling all Things.
I. Let us understand, first, how Christ fills all things, not with His body, for, as it has been well said, "Christ’s body may be anywhere at any time; but Christ’s Spirit is everywhere at all times." Of that body of Christ, of spiritual body at all, still more of spiritual body glorified, we know, and we can know, nothing; but as far as our faculties can reach, body must occupy definite space. How then does Christ fill all things? (1) By His influence. We know that even here a person may occupy a much larger sphere than he actually fills with his presence, and the range in which a man may thus go on filling circle after circle is almost without limit. Carry on that idea of the power of extending influence infinitely, and you will arrive at some conception of the way in which Christ can fill all things. (2) By His sovereignty and care. The Queen fills her realms, and we are always conscious of the power of our Queen. How much more does the royal, superintending power and love of Christ fill the universe? There is nothing so small that it is below it, and there is nothing so great that it is above it, nothing independent of it, nothing despised by it. (3) Higher still than this all-diffusive power of Christ’s majesty, there is that actual living Spirit that we call the Holy Ghost. By the presence of the Holy Ghost Christ is present everywhere, and not only present, but He is the very life of all that lives; He is the soul of every being in creation. "He fills all things."
II. Why does Christ fill all things? And what is the design of this grand arrangement in God’s great empire? (1) It is that all honours should be to Jesus Christ in every degree; (2) that no man upon this earth should ever find any real satisfaction out of Christ; (3) that there may be always in Christ a fulness suited to every man’s want.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 174.
References: Eph 4:10.—Homilist, 3rd scries, vol. i., p. 272; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 305. Eph 4:11.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xii., p. 215; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 204; Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 32. Eph 4:11, Eph 4:12.—S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 35; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 224.
Eph 4:11-13
The Christian Ministry.
I. The Christian ministry is simply this: a teaching, a helping, of men’s personal feeling and life. The man who seeks to change his ministry from a teaching and helping into a priesthood, an official prerogative, whether as a sacrificer or an absolver, is false to the fundamental idea of Christianity and its ministry. Every necessity of sacrifice is provided in the one sacrifice of Christ, "offered once for all"; every necessity of revelation is provided in the inspired and authoritative Scriptures. All that is now necessary is that men should be taught about Jesus Christ and induced to accept Him as their Redeemer from sin. And this is the sole function of the Christian ministry; we simply preach Christ crucified.
II. Another great idea is unity in diversity, the harmony of diversified functions in the ministry of the Church. Elsewhere St. Paul insists upon the harmony of diversified gifts in the same function. All Apostles, all evangelists, all pastors, all teachers, are not alike. They are as diversified as the members of the body, and with relentless and resistless logic the Apostle presses his argument: the well-being of the body demands diversity in its members, diversity in its gifts. Thus God’s truth, like the phenomena of nature, is seen in many lights and on many sides. The great fundamental facts are unchangeable, but a thousand minds and hearts tell us their impressions of them; the very varieties of apprehension confirm them. It is a magnificent harmony of truth in which a thousand impressions and voices blend. Instead of being dissatisfied, let us rejoice in the diversified gifts and ministry of the Church.
H. Allon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxi., p. 177.
References: Eph 4:11-13.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 292; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vi., p. 216. Eph 4:11-16.—W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 316.
Eph 4:12
I. The work of the ministry is a work for all believers, and a work for none but believers. The command to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature is a command given to all the disciples of Jesus Christ, and the exhortation to teach and admonish one another is intended for all Christian people everywhere. If a Church choose, with a view to order and edification, to select one of its brethren to be its president and, in some especial manner, its pastor and its teacher, that does not by any means debar other brethren from engaging, and engaging largely, in this work of the ministry.
II. Our life as Christian workers is a life of work. There has been such a development of Christian agency and work, and of the various operations of a moral and religious sort in which Christian ministers are expected to take part, and almost must take part; and a pastor, if faithful and up to his work, must be full of work. It is a life of work, "the work of the ministry."
III. "The work of the ministry." That is to say, it is a work of service. We are servants in a twofold sense. We are the servants of Christ, and we are the servants of Christ’s people. The former position, of course, is readily recognised; but let us not be so proud and so wilful as to refuse to recognise the latter. The Church does not exist for the ministry, but the ministry for the Church. The work of the ministry is suggestive of much toil and of much patient waiting. It is also a work of very solemn and awful responsibility. There is no other work which is weighted with such responsibility. But while we are deeply and solemnly impressed with the responsibility, do not let us be dismayed or run away from the work, but rather let us ask God to give us more diligence and faithfulness and courage, that, like Paul, we may be able to witness that we are free from the blood of all men. It is very pleasing to see the results of this spiritual labour and to see those to whom the word has been preached living, by God’s grace, in the enjoyment of the light and peace of the truth of the Gospel. Disappointments there are, certainly, and bitter and terrible they are. There is, nevertheless, not a work in all this world which can compare with this in the greatness and permanence and glory of the reward.
H. Stowell Brown, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 761.
References: Eph 4:12.—H. S. Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 266; Fraser, Ibid., vol. xxviii., p. 25. Eph 4:13.—G. Butler, Sermons in Cheltenham College, p. 243; A. Stanton, Church of England Pulpit, vol. v., p. 65; C. Short, Ibid., vol. xi., p. 305; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 308; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. v., p. 289.
Eph 4:14
Modern Thought: its Influence on Character.
The words "modern thought" are used by not a few in our day as a badge of reproach. For the emancipated children of the Reformation to disparage thought simply for its modernness is, indeed, passing strange. Unless our thinking be modern, we have no thinking at all. All the thinking that has ever been done in the world has been "modern" in its day. Let us clear our minds of any timid prejudice against thought as modern, and, in the name of Him who has given us mental powers and has placed us in the present age, let us all try to be modern thinkers, pondering all that can affect our life and duty with reverent boldness, as did those spiritual ancestors whom we most admire. On the other hand, let us beware of idolising what is modern. Many who have scarcely begun to think, and certainly have never thought, seriously, broadly, or profoundly, pick up the phrases of the hour, and talk about being "abreast of the age," as if newness were a test of truth rather than a call for investigation.
I. There is an intellectual stream of tremendous force connected with the physical researches of this century by which character is affected in many powerful, but in some respects subtle, ways. Modern science has helped theology by giving us new measures of time and new standards of greatness and wisdom. The enthralling interest and beauty of various modern sciences and the fascinating effect of dazzling theories based upon so many sure and certain discoveries of fact tend to absorb attention and to exclude things spiritual from many studious minds.
II. Another way in which modern scientific thought influences character lies in its tendency to regard all our thoughts and activities as the necessary results of our physical antecedents and environment. Be not driven about by every wind of hasty teaching offered in its name. There is no knowledge so sure and clear as self-consciousness. Be true, then, to the voice of conscience within. Cultivate the powers of moral judgment, that your senses may, by reason of use, be keener to discern good and evil.
T. V. Tymms, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 401.
Reference: Eph 4:14.—T. Hooke, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 173; H. W. Beecher, Sermons, vol. ii., pp. 327, 343. Eph 4:14, Eph 4:15.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. i., p. 449.
Eph 4:15
The real test of all religion is, and must be, its power to raise and to regenerate the life of man. There are three chief needs which the life of man must fill up. He has in him the lower nature of the flesh, with its appetites and its passions, by which he is fast bound in the chains of this material world; and that flesh must be subdued to the spirit, to the indestructible will, to that superior power of reason, to that clear voice of conscience, to that glowing spirit of love, by which alone he is able to rise above the material world. He is, again, on the one side, bound up in this life, on which are written at every turn the characters of transitoriness and of death; and yet he is so to move in this life as to satisfy his inner consciousness of immortality, his capacity and longing for a higher life. He has also the reality of his sin in its loathsomeness. The test of the truth of religion must be its power to aid men in filling up their great needs.
I. The first part of this great principle is simply the speaking truth, or rather the being true in action, in word, and in thought. This, again, has more than one form. It bids us to seek for truth; it bids us to speak truth in ourselves. In the first lies all the power of progress, and on the second is laid the basis of human society. What is it to seek truth? Truth is the law established in many forms by God Himself. The Gospel has all the characteristics of truth.
II. To speak truth is only one small part of this great principle. The principle is to be true, to be that which we claim to be. In this alone is there safety against falsehood. St. Paul finds in love that spirit which gives new life to truth, and in which, as in a Diviner region, the truth moves free from all those taints which would sully its brightness. We must be true in love, and so grow up into the Head, because we are members one of another.
III. We see how this love strengthens and intensifies the spirit of truth. There is, doubtless, a delight in truth. From him who feels a positive glow of love, especially for those who love and trust him, the very thought of falsehood is far away. To be true is to fill the place which is set us in this world, to rise above all secondary motives to that which is the highest guide of man.
Bishop Barry, Penny Pulpit, New Scries, No. 276.
Christian Growth.
The doctrine of our text is that true spiritual growth is to be sought in sincere, truthful dealing in our Christian relation to Christ and to them that are His, our fellow-labourers in Christ. Manifestly one might here divide the subject into two heads: truthfulness towards Christ and truthfulness towards them that are His. Into the first of the two points I shall not enter.
Paul looks at truthful dealing with the brethren as the form in which a sincere heart towards our common Head must mainly manifest itself.
I. First, then, the text assumes that if we are Christians our daily conversation will be mainly with our fellow-Christians. If our relations with our fellow-Christians were only occasional and accidental, it would be vain to think that our truthful discharge of those relations could ensure growth in the whole spiritual life; but the true Christian cannot be merely in occasional and accidental contact with those who are radically united to him in Christ.
II. Secondly, the blessed fruits of the fellowship into which we enter inwardly and spiritually in our union with Christ, and visibly and outwardly in our public profession of faith as members of the Christian Church, can only be manifested by truthfulness and loyalty.
III. Where there is this honesty of purpose towards the brethren, we shall be sure to find candour, simplicity, and plain truthfulness in every act of life.
IV. If our actions were always pure in the sight of God and man, if our Christian life were perfect, if we were not still under the power of sin, so often intent on selfish ends, it would be easy for us to be candid and sincere to one another. The test of Christian truthfulness is to be found in its power to assert itself as the rule of our life in spite of the sins that disturb even Christian fellowship.
V. Truthful dealing is possible only if, as the Apostle says, it is truth speaking "in love."
W. Robertson Smith, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 20.
References: Eph 4:15.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 60; Homilist, vol. i., p. 137; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 7th series, p. 97; J. W. Lance, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 360; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 409; Ibid., vol. xxx., p. 298; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 294; F. W. Robertson, The Human Race, p. 94; S. Martin, Sermons, p. 211. Eph 4:16.—Archbishop Benson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxiv., p. 1. Eph 4:17.—F. W. Macdonald, Ibid., vol. xxx., p. 156.
Eph 4:17-18
The Life of God.
I. Let us see what St. Paul means when he talks about the Gentiles in his day. For that also has to do with us. I said that every man, Christian or heathen, has the same duty, and is bound to do the same right; every man, Christian or heathen, if he sins, breaks his duty in the same way, and does the same wrong. There is but one righteousness: the life of God; there is but one sin, and that is being alienated from the life of God. The one disease to which every man is liable is that we are every one of us worse than we ought to be, worse than we know how to be, and, strangest of all, worse than we wish and like to be. Just as far as we are like the heathen of old, we shall be worse than we know how to be. For we are all ready enough to turn heathens again at any moment, my friends; and the best Christian in this church knows best that what I say is true: that he is beset by the very same temptations which ruined the old heathens, and that if he gave way to them a moment they would ruin him likewise. For what does St. Paul say was the matter with the old heathens?
II. "Their understanding was darkened." But what part of it? What was it that they had got dark about and could not understand? For in some matters they were as clever as we and cleverer. What part of their understanding was it which was darkened? St. Paul tells us in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. It was their hearts—their reason, as we should say. It was about God and the life of God that they were dark. They had not been always dark about God, but they were darkened; they grew more and more dark about Him generation after generation; they gave themselves up more and more to their corrupt and fallen nature, and so the children grew worse than their fathers, and their children, again, worse than them, till they had lost all notion of what God was like.
III. The heathens of old might have known that, if they had chosen to open their eyes and see. But they would not see. They were dark, cruel, and unloving, and therefore they fancied that God was dark, cruel, and unloving also. They did not love love, and therefore they did not love God, for God is love. And therefore they did not love loving; they did not enjoy loving; and so they lost the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of love. And therefore they did not love each other, but lived in hatred, and suspicion, and selfishness, and darkness. They were but heathen. But if even they ought to have known that God was love, how much more we! For we know of a deed of God’s love, such as those poor heathen never dreamed of. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son to die for it. Then God showed what our eternal life is: to know Him who is love and Jesus Christ, whom He sent to show forth His love; then God showed that it is the duty of, and in the power of, every man to live the life of God, the life of love.
C. Kingsley, Sermons for the Times, p. 198.
Eph 4:17-19
The Walk of the Gentiles.
I. As to the nature of this walk, one leading feature or characteristic of it is vanity of mind. The life of men walking in the vanity of their minds is either all but wholly aimless, or else its aims are mean and frivolous, or at the best disappointing, tantalising, and unsatisfying. The character of vanity is stamped on all its pursuits and pleasures, on its worship, such as it is, and on all its works and ways.
II. Now the cause of this dismal and disastrous state of things is indicated in ver. 19. On the one hand, men are darkened in respect of their understanding; they are spiritually blind: on the other hand, they are alienated from the life of God. By the life of God we are to understand the life which consists in glorifying and enjoying God; the life for which man was made; life in God, with God, to God; God’s own life in the soul of man; life of which He is the source, the centre, and the end. Thus the root of the disease is double. It is in the mind and in the heart. The mind is wilfully ignorant; the heart is wilfully hardened. Therefore there is neither light in the mind, nor love in the heart, and therefore there is vain walking.
III. The natural result or issue in the case of other Gentiles or worldly men is explained in ver. 19. A terrible course of possible declension is pointed out. There are several stages in it. First, there is your walking like others in the vanity of your minds; secondly, there is your being darkened in your understandings; thirdly, there is your alienation from the life of God; and fourthly, there is a giving of yourselves over to a life of mere and thorough self-seeking and self-indulgence, in some form or other. Surely, then, the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles.
R. S. Candlish, Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 107.
The Immorality of the Heathen.
There is a startling contrast between the earlier and the later chapters of this Epistle. In the earlier chapters Paul describes the Christians at Ephesus as saints, as the faithful in Christ Jesus, etc.; and now to the persons whom he has described by these sacred titles, and to whom he has spoken of these Divine mysteries, he gives a succession of precepts relating to the most elementary moral duties. He thinks it necessary to warn them against the basest and the coarsest vices: against lying and thieving; against foul speech; against drunkenness; against gross sensual sins.
I. The access of the Divine life does not at once and in a moment change the man’s moral temper and habits. Moral distinctions which were faint will not at once become vivid; moral distinctions which were not recognised at all will not at once become apparent. The Christians at Ephesus had been breathing from their childhood the foul atmosphere of a most corrupt form of heathenism; they were breathing it still. In the community which surrounded them the grossest vices were unrebuked by public sentiment. Christian righteousness is achieved slowly. A Divine life is given to us, but the life has to grow. There will, however, be real ethical progress wherever there is genuine loyalty to Christ.
II. The description of the heathen both here and in the Epistle to the Romans is to be taken as representing their general condition. Speaking broadly and generally, heathen men had lost the knowledge of God, and had lost the knowledge of the steadfast and eternal laws of righteousness, and this is what Paul means when he says that they were walking in the vanity of their minds. We are environed by an invisible, Divine, and eternal world. When once that world has been revealed to us, our whole conception of human duty and human destiny is changed; we discover that it is only the larger world that has been revealed to us by Christ which is real and enduring; we see that the true life of man is the eternal and Divine life by which he is related to what is eternal and Divine, that the true honour, the true wealth, the true wisdom, the true happiness, of man are found in that eternal and Divine kingdom.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 294.
References: Eph 4:17-20.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 380. Eph 4:18.—Homilist, vol. i., p. 313; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 20; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. i., p. 218.
Eph 4:19
Spiritual Insensibility.
I. There is a certain pitch of wickedness at which moral insensibility comes on; and when that comes on, the case becomes almost hopeless. There is little prospect of repentance or reformation then. No matter how bad any poor sinner has been, there is still some hope so long as you can get him to feel. It is one of the last and worst symptoms of the soul’s condition when feeling is gone. That is arrived at by most men only after a long continuance in iniquity; and that is an indication which gives sad ground for fearing that the Holy Ghost, without whom we can never feel anything as we ought, has ceased to strive with that hardened soul, has left that obdurate heart alone. We all run a great risk of becoming so familiar with spiritual truths that we shall understand them and believe them without feeling them, without really feeling what their meaning is, and without that degree of emotion being excited by them that ought to be excited. And if it be true that even the converted man, in whom what we may call the organs of spiritual perception have been quickened from their native paralysis, and the capacity of spiritual emotion in some good measure developed, by the working of Divine grace, has to wonder and lament that he believes so much, but feels it so little, we need hardly be surprised to find that in the case of most unconverted men living in a Christian country, and probably frequenting a Christian church, there is a perfect numbness of soul; as regards spiritual things they are, in the full sense of the words, "past feeling."
II. While we never forget that in the case of even a true Christian it is a sad thing when as years go his religion appears to be always growing more a thing of the head and less a thing of the heart, and while we are well assured that no one will lament that more than the true Christian himself, let us remember that such a train of thought must not be pushed too far. It would be very wrong if the aged believer were to fancy that because his religious feelings are growing less keen, less easily excited than in former years, he must, therefore, conclude that he is backsliding from his God and leaving his first love. He is causing for himself needless sorrow when he so acts and thinks. It is just that he has grown older, and so less capable of all emotion; but his choice of Christ may be just as firm and his religious convictions as deep as ever.
III. It is only to such as have really some good ground for hoping that they have believed in Christ that all this should be any ground of comfort. But if a man be not a believer, and if when he listens to the declaration of the doctrines of the Cross he understands them, but does not feel them; if he knows thoroughly well that whosoever does not betake himself to the great atonement of Christ must perish eternally, and if he knows too that he himself has never gone to Christ and never prepared to die; and if, with all this, he does not care—ah, then there is a sad and a fearful explanation of how he comes to be so. Let it be your earnest prayer and endeavour at once to go to Him who came to seek and save the lost, lest the Holy Spirit, without whom you can do nothing, may be finally grieved away.
A. K. H. Boyd, The Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson, p. 106.
References: Eph 4:19.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 305; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 166. Eph 4:20.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 164.
Eph 4:20-21
I. We have here distinctly affirmed that the living voice of Christ Himself is our teacher. "Ye have heard Him" says Paul. Remember that the New Testament everywhere represents Christ as still working and teaching in the world; remember that He Himself promised the prolongation of His great work of declaring the Father beyond the limits of His earthly life, and that no more in proverbs, but plainly; remember that He has pledged Himself to send the teaching Spirit of truth, in whose coming Christ Himself comes, and all whose illuminations and communications are showing and imparting to us the things of Christ. Every living soul may have, and every Christian soul does have, direct access for himself to the living Lord, the eternal Word.
II. Those who are in Christ receive continuous instruction from Him: "and have been taught by Him." These words seem to imply the conditions of the gradual process of Christ’s schooling. His teaching is not one act, but a long, loving; patient discipline. The first feeble motion of faith enrols us as disciples, and then there follows through all the years the "teaching to observe all things whatsoever He has commanded."
III. This gradualness and slowness of instruction is brought out still more distinctly if we look at the third idea which is contained in these words: as to the substance of the instruction. The theme of the teaching is the Teacher: "Ye have not so learned Christ." Then our lesson is not thoughts about the Lord, but the living Lord Himself, not the doctrine of Christianity only, but Christ, the theme as well as the Teacher.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, 2nd series, p. 61.
I. Let us glance at the truth in Jesus. (1) The life of Jesus opposed and contradicted that which was false and wrong, and in this respect the truth was in Jesus. (2) Jesus embodied the truth of truth’s symbols. (3) Jesus spake truth, that which, on account of its importance to man, is the truth. His truth is eternal, universal, new.
II. Let us show what cannot be learned by those who have only heard and been taught by Christ. (1) Nothing childish can be learned of Christ. (2) A shifting and accommodating creed is not learned of Christ. (3) Pious frauds are not learned of Christ. (4) A literal and carnal interpretation of Christ’s laws is not learned of Christ. (5) Truth framed according to system is not learned of Christ. (6) Nothing contrary to the Godlike can be learned of Christ.
S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Sermons, 3rd series, p. 81.
References: Eph 4:20, Eph 4:21.—D. Rhys Jenkins, The Eternal Life, p. 365; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 14th series, p. 61.
Eph 4:20-21
I. When the phrase, "the truth as it is in Jesus," is used, it is probably almost always intended to imply, if nothing more, at least this: the great doctrine of human sin and of the redemption of mankind by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we should separate these two things which God has graciously joined together and take by itself that truth which the Old Testament contains, viz., the truth that man has fallen under the wrath of God, we should have a truth, but a truth emphatically as it is not in Jesus Christ; we should have the truth as it appears in its coldness and blackness and wretchedness, apart from that which has lightened it up and made it tolerable, even the smiles of Him who was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
II. It would be giving a somewhat different view of the matter, though it would after all be substantially the same, if we were to say that the truth as it is in Jesus ought to be taken as our expression of that belief concerning the Lord Jesus Christ which is contained in the Apostles’ Creed. To this general view of the truth as it is in Jesus many persons would be disposed to make several additions. They would be disposed to include within the limits of this truth, not only the knowledge of what God has done for us, but the knowledge of what we must, on our part, do in order to apprehend Christ and make our calling and election sure. Right views of faith and the saving, justifying power of faith would enter largely into this conception of the truth as it is in Jesus, or of what may be called Gospel truth. The manner in which we are to avail ourselves of the love of God is of course infinitely important; yet, after all, it is nothing as compared with the love itself. Christ is the foundation; Christ is the Truth; and the manner in which we build upon the foundation is, in the very nature of things, second to the fact of our having a foundation whereon to build.
Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, 5th series, p. 290.
The Christian Method of Moral Regeneration.
I. A complete moral revolution is not accomplished either by one supreme effort of our will, or by any momentary shock of Divine power. It must be carried through in detail by a long, laborious, and sometimes painful process of self-discipline. The process lasts as long as life lasts. For with the changing years there are changing forms of moral evil which have to be resisted and put away from us. The earlier triumphs make the later triumphs easier, but do not release us from the hard necessities of battle. (1) Self-examination is necessary. Our moral habits must be compared, one by one, with the commandments of Christ, and their conformity to the genius and spirit of Christian ethics must be patiently and honestly tested. (2) There must be self-discipline as well as self-examination. We must put away our old self. The whole structure of our former moral character and habits must be demolished, and the ruins cleared away, that the building may be recommenced from its very foundation.
II. The truth which the Apostle assumes had been taught to the Ephesian Christians required them to be renewed in the spirit of their mind. The "spirit," which is that element of our life which comes to us direct from God, and by which we are akin to God, restores to the mind its soundness and health, the clearness of its vision, and its practical force and authority. In this high region of our nature Paul finds the springs of moral regeneration. It is by the discovery of the invisible kingdom of God that we learn the laws by which we are to be governed in the external and accidental relations of this transitory world. Regeneration must be followed by renewal. The Divine life given in the new birth must be fed from its eternal springs, or the stream will soon run shallow, will cease to flow, will at last disappear altogether. We must be renewed in the spirit of our mind.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 308.
References: Eph 4:20-24— Homilist, 1st series, vol. v., p. 326; 3rd series, vol. v., p. 241; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 331.
Eph 4:22
I. Note the very significant, though brief, outline sketch of the facts of universal sinful human nature which the Apostle gives here. (1) The first of the characteristics of the sinful self is that every Christian life, whatsoever the superficial differences in it, is really a life shaped according to, and under the influence of, passionate desires. The desires are meant to be impelling powers. It is absurdity and the destruction of true manhood to make them, as we so often do, directing powers, and to put the reins into their hand. They are the wind, not the helm; the steam, not the driver. (2) The words of the text not only represent the various passionate desires as being the real guides of the "old man," but they give this other characteristic: that these desires are in their very nature the instrument of deceit and lies. The way never to get what you need and desire is always to do what you like, because (a) the object only satisfies for a time; (b) the desire grows, and the object of it does not. Whoever takes it for his law to do as he likes will not for long like what he does. (3) These deceiving desires corrupt. In whatever direction we move, the rate of progress tends to accelerate itself.
II. Note how we have here the hopeless command to put off the old man. That command "put off" is the plain dictate of conscience and of common sense, but it seems as hopeless as it is imperative. But what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son, did: He condemned sin in the flesh. So we come to—
III. The possibility of fulfilling the command. The context tells us how this is possible. The law, the pattern, and the power for complete victory over the old sinful self are to be found "as the truth is in Jesus." Union with Christ gives us a real possession of a new principle of life, derived from Him and like His own. We shall die with Him to sin when, resting by faith on Him who has died for sin, we are made conformable to His death, that we may walk in newness of life.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, 3rd series, p. 105.
References: Eph 4:22-24.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 207. Eph 4:22-30.—H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 1st series, p. 351. Eph 4:25.—Homilist, vol. vii., p. 104.
Eph 4:24
I. The great purpose of the Gospel is our moral renewal: "the new man," created in righteousness and holiness. Notice (1) the profound sense of human sinfulness which underlies the text. (2) The Apostle specifies as the elements or characteristics of this new nature righteousness and holiness.
II. A second principle contained in these words is that this moral renewal is a creation in the image of God.
III. This new creation has to be put on and appropriated by us. That process of assumption has two parts. We are clothed upon with Christ in a double way, or rather in a double sense: we are found in Him, not having our own righteousness, but invested with His for our pardon and acceptance; we are clothed with His righteousness for our purifying and sanctifying. There is the assumption of Christ’s righteousness which makes a man a Christian and has for its condition simple faith; there is the assumption of His righteousness, sanctifying and transforming us, which follows in a Christian course as its indispensable accompaniment and characteristic, and that is realised by daily and continuous effort.
IV. Finally, the text contains the principle that the means of appropriating this new nature is contact with the truth. (1) Let us learn how impossible are righteousness and holiness, morality and religion, in men unless they flow from this source; (2) let us learn the incompleteness and monstrosity of a professed belief in the truth which does not produce this righteousness and holiness.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, 3rd series, p. 119.
Eph 4:24
I. "The inward man is renewed day by day." This renewing is to be sought after and to be cherished. A Christian is not to wait for its coming; he is to secure its advent.
II. Further, these changes are to be made manifest. When a Christian is renewed within, the renewing is to appear. It is not to be kept secret, but is to be shown, just as the newness of life in the vegetable kingdom is shown in the buds, and in the expanding leaves, and in the formative blossoms.
III. The new man consists, not of words merely, or of one class of actions, but of the entire human development. The characteristic of the new man is godliness, and its distinctive features are righteousness and true holiness.
S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Sermons, 2nd series, p. 93.
References: Eph 4:24.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 159; J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons, p. 398. Eph 4:25.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 115; W. Braden, Ibid., vol. vii., p. 225; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College, p. 158.
Eph 4:26
Anger, Noble and Ignoble.
In this injunction, delivered by St. Paul to a body of Christians, the privilege and duty of anger, as well as the danger attending its display, are fully recognised. They might be angry; they must be angry. Circumstances would continually arise to call out this emotion. They were not to crush it, only to watch it, lest it changed from a feeling worthy of God into one worthy only of the devil.
I. What then is the emotion which is here by implication commended? Anger is not the same as temper, or irritability, or ill-humour, or hatred; anger is displeasure strongly excited: that is its definition. An enthusiasm of love for righteousness includes an enthusiasm of hatred for evil; and this last emotion is called in one word "anger."
II. To be capable of anger is a strength, and not a weakness. Think of St. John, the very Apostle of charity, but also the son of thunder, who lay upon his Master’s breast, and who in his last hour bade his children love one another as the completest gospel he would leave to them—think of him and the fire of indignation that burned in him at the thought of wrong. He could denounce not the less, but the more, because he loved much. Only he who loves much knows what it is to feel that anger which is ennobling and Godlike.
III. "Be ye angry, and sin not." The warning follows the injunction to remind us how easily the holy feeling may merge in the unholy. Self is always ready to creep in and usurp the place of the holier object. Let anger do its work, and then dismiss it; let it fire you to protest, to denounce, to witness against evil. Put the fire that is kindled in you to its one righteous use, but do not make a plaything of it, or it may consume you. Aim to rise into that higher region where God is and where self is annulled; aim to be so filled with the Spirit of God that obedience is freedom, and not slavery. And this you will attain by the study of the character and the words of Christ, for they are spirit, and they are life.
A. Ainger, Sermons in the Temple Church, p. 166.
References: Eph 4:26.—W. Braden, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 388; Bishop Stubbs, Ibid., vol. xxiv., p. 209; R. W. Dale, Ibid., vol. xxxv., p. 81; J. J. S. Perowne, Sermons, p. 1; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 11. Eph 4:26, Eph 4:27.—A. Blomfield, Sermons in Town and Country, p. 147.
Eph 4:27
"Who is the most diligent bishop in all England?" asks old Hugh Latimer in one of his quaint sermons. "I will tell you: it is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all others; he is never out of his diocese; he is ever applying to his business; his office is to murder religion, to set up idolatry."
I. We may be sure of this: that the devil never means good, but always evil. Sometimes he approaches Christian people in the garb of an angel of light, and deceives them by vain words. The more we yield to him, the further he will press his authority, and the more complete will be his dominion over us. It is much easier to keep him out than to get him out when once he has gained possession. A reason why we should be of good courage and resolute in resisting the assaults of the devil is that no one is obliged to yield to him.
II. Note some of the ways in which people do give place to the devil. (1) The soul that is not filled with good thoughts and desires is left empty for the enemy to enter. (2) Another way in which people put themselves in the power of the great adversary is by yielding to spiritual indolence. Industry and watchfulness distinguish all real Christians. As soon as they become indolent, they cease to be on their guard against the enemy of souls. (3) Another favourable opportunity which Christians too often give to Satan to do them serious mischief is the absorbing attention which they pay to their worldly business. If their business only proves safe and profitable, they care very little about how far it extends itself. There is danger in this all-engrossing attention to worldly pursuits. Many Christians have found, to their sorrow, that it is one of the fatal ways of giving place to the devil.
J. N. Norton, Every Sunday, p. 343.
Reference: Eph 4:27-29.—G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College, p. 275.
Eph 4:28
St. Paul’s Exaltation of Labour.
I. When we look on one side of St. Paul’s character, it is so full of spiritual fervour and rapture, there is such aspiration in it, such ardent pursuit of large ends, he is so wrapped in his great mission to convert the world to the revelation of Jesus Christ, that, arguing from what we know of men, we should be inclined to expect that his high spiritual mission would have drawn his mind away from the humbler duties of man and from thinking much of ordinary life; we should know that he must recognise such duties, but we should not expect him to dwell upon them, to have them much on his mind, and to be always recurring to them. But it is remarkable that with St. Paul this is the case. He often recurs to the plain and quiet work of humble life. It has no low place in the scale in his estimate, as if it were necessary to be done, but did not rank as religious work. No; he regards it as spiritual work and elevating work.
II. The eye which St. Paul has to the goodness of humble labour is only a sample of a general predilection in him which extends to other qualities. He chooses the sober and plain class of duties as his test. A man doing well duties not of a showy sort, for which he gets no particular credit—this is his rule of fitness for a conspicuous post and a post of authority. Men form their religious standards by two tests: one the law of conscience and obedience to God; the other what is striking to man. Of these two St. Paul’s test is very easily seen to be the former. Throughout his Epistles he recurs constantly to it. "Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? or Who shall descend into the deep? for the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thine heart."
J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 222.
References: Eph 4:28.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 393; F. Williams, Ibid., vol. iii., p. 314.
Eph 4:29
I. One special talent by which we may glorify God and our Saviour and edify one another is the gift of speech. The tongue is called in Scripture more than once man’s glory. As the first duty of the heart is to God, so is the service of the tongue due to Him. Prayer and praise are the first duties of the tongue, its highest and holiest uses. How it is used it is awful to think: how much more in profaning God’s holy name than in praising it, how much more in cursing and swearing than in blessing Him. To talk about religion may be easy to an irreligious person, but never at all to say an unholy thing, nor to speak in an irreligious tone, argues a holy and a truly religious mind.
II. This leads us to that second use of the tongue, which regards our communication with each other. God forbids all bad use of the tongue before He enforces its true use. He says, "I say unto you"—as if to call our special attention to it—"Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment, for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." Can it be that Christians, talking as they do, ever think of that sentence, those who would fain persuade themselves that they speak without thinking and swear without meaning anything? Surely the tongue, which is the means by which we hold intercourse with each other, should be a means by which we edify one another.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. vii., p. 184.
References: Eph 4:29.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 355; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 31; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 259.
Eph 4:30
The Sealing of the Soul.
The presence of the Holy Ghost in the soul is many things. It is the life of the soul; it is the teaching of the soul; it is the comforting of the soul; it is the consecration of the soul; it is the purification of the soul; or rather all these things have in Him their central point. But it is one thing more: it is the sealing of the soul.
I. You have some valuable property, it may be gold or jewels, and you are going abroad for a season. Anxious for your precious things, you gather them carefully up, and you put on them your seal, your name to the seal. The seal marks them yours while you are away, and secures them from being lost or stolen. So long as they are under the seal, they cannot be removed or hurt; and you look to find them in this sure keeping when you come back. You are Christ’s precious jewels. Your great Proprietor, who has spent so much on you, is gone away for a time; He has gone to a far country: but He is to return, and when He returns His longing desire is to find you unharmed and beautiful, and still His own. Therefore He has put His seal upon you. It is a fast seal, and a royal one; His own name and His own likeness are on it. No thief, no injury, no loss, no accident, can come near to touch you.
II. The day of redemption is plainly the day of the resurrection, that day of Christ’s appearing, when the whole work of your redemption will be complete. The sealing is not for this life only, neither is it only for the soul. It is for the body; it is for the grave. But it goes on even to the resurrection, to the day of redemption. The dust of the saints is sealed; it is quite safe, loved and cared for: and the grave’s casket will be opened when He comes, and you will find the gem bright and untouched. Do not grieve the Spirit of God by doubting it.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 151.
I. In Divine, as in natural, truth, it remains with the soul to accept or to reject the truth proposed to it by God; to embrace it purely or to corrupt it; to deny its existence or its own power to discern it; to abandon contemptuously all search for truth, resolving all into one maze of doubt. But it can do so only on the same principles whereby men may deny the certainty of all natural knowledge, abdicating the implanted powers of the soul and denying the light, natural or supernatural, infused by God within them, and their own consciousness. These are awful words: "Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." All, then, on God’s part, has been complete. We received the Holy Spirit as a living seal upon our living souls; to mark and to guard us, as His purchased possession and peculiar treasure; to impress, one may boldly say, His image, His likeness, His features, upon our souls.
II. But meanwhile He has left it in our power to accept or reject Himself, our only and infinite good. He appeals to us with Divine tenderness that we do it not. I fear that one of the things which will most amaze us, when we open our eyes upon eternity, will be the multitude of our own rudenesses to Divine grace, that is, to God the Holy Ghost, whose motions grace is. Grace came to us so tenderly: it never did violence to us, or it did such gentle violence; it ever came to us in a way adapted to win our individual being. Ardent natures the Spirit sets on fire for good; before active natures He sets activity in His service; easiness of disposition He hallows by the glow of His love; the cold iron of severity He tempers by His fire into the bending steel of strong devoted purpose. Let not, then, His seal upon you mark you as a deserter. "Thy Teacher is within thee"; pray to Him, listen to Him, with a hushed heart, and He in His own time will teach thee.
E. B. Pusey, University Sermons, p. 338.
Consider one or two of the consequences of a grieved Spirit.
I. Whenever you grieve the Spirit, you cause sorrow—it is God’s own word—to Him to whom you are bound by every generous feeling to give only happiness. Few persons are sufficiently aware of the debt which they owe to the Spirit. Think you it is no sacrifice for a Being of perfect holiness and immaculate purity to come and dwell in such an abode as a sinner’s heart, amidst the scenes of daily life, there, in the closest of all possible contact, to bear with all He hears and sees and feels, there to be constantly planting seeds which we root up, shedding light which we darken, drawing bands which we break, whispering voices which we drown? Surely, therefore, it should be the first spring of our hearts—a sufficient motive to a holy life, even if there were no other—to give, not grief, but joy, to Him who, with such pains and at such cost, invites our love and claims our gratitude.
II. Every time we grieve the Spirit we weaken the seals of our own security. As soon as a man has peace, the Holy Spirit gives him, in the strength of that peace, holiness. The peace is the consequence of the pardon, and the holiness is the consequence of the peace, and both are seals, the peace seals the pardon and the sanctification seals the peace. Break any one of these seals, and your safety is in the same proportion diminished, and every grieving of the Spirit is a defacing of an impression and a loosening of one of the seals.
III. There are four deep, downward steps in the path to death. To grieve the Spirit is the first; to resist the Spirit is the second; to quench the Spirit is the third; to blaspheme the Spirit is the fourth. No one of these is ever reached but by going through that which is previous to it; but he who grieves the Spirit by a thought or an omission may soon resist the Spirit by some more overt act of direct opposition, and he who thus resists the Spirit wilfully may soon wish to put the Spirit out altogether from his heart. Let the consummation of the tremendous series teach the true character of the first imagination which lies upon its slope, and give emphasis to the solemn word, "Grieve not the holy Spirit of God."
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 45.
References: Eph 4:30.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 278; vol. xiii., No. 738; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 326; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, p. 220; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 1874, p. 17; E. Cooper, Practical Sermons, vol. ii., p. 239; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iii., p. 276; E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 40; S. Slater, Ibid., vol. v., p. 100; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. vii., p. 355; G. John, Ibid., vol. xii., p. 74; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 234; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 193. Eph 4:31.—Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, 1st series, p. 289.
Eph 4:31-32
Love the Foe and Conqueror of Selfishness.
Christianity denies the assumption, and challenges it all along the line, that pursuit of the higher life need be, in any sense or degree, necessarily selfish. It may be selfish, but it is just as possible that it is wholly otherwise. And more, in all its most energetic and effectual types it is sure to be unselfish, for selfishness is never, as a practical fact, able to kindle into life the more fervent and daring forms of self-assertion. The selfish man seeks his own good, after all, but very sluggishly; it is the unselfish Apostle who pursues it with the zeal of a martyr and the passion of a saint.
I. What exactly does it mean to say that one’s own good is selfishly sought? It is selfishly sought only when it is desired for the sake of the gratification it brings, for the sake of the honour and pleasure and gain it may reflect upon its possessor, that is, when it is not sought for its own sake, but only for the sake of what it brings after it. No man has ever produced the highest artistic work for the sake of the pleasure it brought him; such an aim inevitably drains the life-blood out of his heart, and in business and in all employments the same impulse tells. That is the best workman in all employs who works for the sake of the work. Wherever throughout a country the artistic motive in work languishes, there the productions deteriorate and the trade must fail. That is the verdict of a world-wide experience, and Christianity seizes on it in its primary truth.
II. Nor is it only the joy of the artist that is the seed of vigorous action; there is another motive, even more powerful, more universal, and more fruitful: the motive of love. A man will do far more for the love of others than he will ever do for himself; he will display a finer vigour, a nobler patience, a steadier courage, a fuller energy, on behalf of mother, and home, and wife, and children, by the side of which the efforts he will make on behalf of his own interests will look but poor and thin. Unselfishness is the only salt that preserves our soundness; unselfishness is the only fire that purifies, and refines, and betters, and makes perfect. We shall be enabled to do so much only if we love. We live by loving, and the more we love the more we live; and therefore, when life feels dull and the spirits are low, turn and love God, love your neighbour, and you will be healed of your wound.
H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 193.
References: Eph 4:31, Eph 4:32.—R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons, p. 285; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 181. Eph 4:32.—Spurgeon Sermons, vol. xi., No. 614; vol. xxiv., No. 1448; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 59; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 344; J. Edmunds, Sermons in a Village Church, 2nd series, p. 321.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Section 4. (Eph 4:1-16.)
Section 4. (Eph 4:1-16.)
Practical results as to the Church.
Read full note →
We come now, according to the order of that which we find all through Scripture, to the practical results of all this. Truths such as we have been considering must surely be of the most practical character. All doctrine, in fact, is. The precept resulting must be, of necessity, lower than the doctrine itself. The cause is more than the effect and in this case cannot even be measured fully by the effect.
1. We have, first of all here, the unities which the apostle would have us mark. There are seven unities, the number which, as we well know, speaks of a perfection, which is peculiarly that of God. He reminds us, first of all, that as to himself, it is the prisoner in the Lord who is speaking. Well may he who has shown us the power of the truth upon himself in the very place which it has given him amongst men, exhort us to "walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called." The "calling" includes all the blessing that we have been looking at. It is this which God’s voice is drawing us on with, a Voice which has power in it also to accomplish its will; but what then is the suited answer to it on our part? "All lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love." The necessary effect of having to do with God is that it puts us into that low place before Him, the place of one with whom, therefore, the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity is able to dwell. To be with God, we must be in the sense of what God is, before Him in the consciousness of creature nothingness, yet not discouraged or distressed by that, but, on the contrary, realizing only the more the sweetness of the wonderful condescension of God toward us. We are in a world of suffering, where sin has caused suffering, and where even in one another the sin still remaining makes us suffer also; suffering from one another thus calling forth in us, as God would have it, only the more fully those Christian graces which find but opportunity for full display where there is such demand upon them. The lowliness which is the primal thought here, becomes in us meekness, and then, with reference to others, longsuffering and the bearing with one another, not as simply accepting, as it were, what we cannot escape from, but "in love." We have to "use diligence," therefore, to "keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace." We have not to form this unity, as is clear. The Spirit dwelling in us all has formed it, but we have to keep it "in the bond of peace." Nor is it the unity of the body of which he is speaking. That is not ours even to keep, but the Spirit is that which animates the body and makes it work together for common blessing. Thus it is not a unity in form merely, as the unity of the body might be. It is the unity characterized by what the Spirit Himself is, and to keep it may involve also sometimes what might seem to be in contrast, rather, with the unity of the body. The members of the body cannot in that character be cut off from Christ, but yet looking at things as they are here, the figure for us may be rather that of the human body such as we know it in the place of sin and death, and where one member may have, even, to be cut off for the good of the whole. The unity of the Spirit is a holy unity. Separation from evil is an essential characteristic of it, and here it may carry us beyond what the mere thought of one body would seem to necessitate. The unity of the Spirit is living unity, and we need to use diligence to keep it. How many things there are in fact that are contrary to it in a world like this!
The specification of these unities follows. "One body and one Spirit" are linked together with the "one hope of our calling" in which we have been called. Here we have, as has been often said, the innermost of three circles that we find here. The "one body and one Spirit" give us, one may say, the deepest character of unity, to which the "hope of our calling" of necessity contributes. The energy which carries us forward is the energy which works for edification and blessing now. We have then the circle of profession, not meaning by that at all to imply mere profession, while yet it leaves room for it. Here we have "one Lord," Christ in the authority which belongs to Him; "one faith," that is to say, one creed, the common range of truth which belongs to us all; "one baptism," which is not, as we see at once, the baptism of the Spirit, for that would link with the first circle rather than with the second one. Moreover, baptism spoken of in this way, simply by itself, always seems to mean what we ordinarily call that: the baptism of the Spirit has to be expressed by this addition. The language here is used, in fact, analogically, the baptism of water being analogous with that which is a deeper thing; but in the apostle’s words here it is simply the baptism of water, which connects, as we have seen, throughout with the kingdom, and therefore with the Lord. It is that in which the Lord is owned. It is that which brings into the sphere of discipleship and thus is linked with the "one, faith," which is the disciples, creed. All is perfectly fitted together, therefore, here.
We have finally one unity which is wider, "one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all and in us all." If we take what we have been learning of late, we might say that this "one God and Father" introduces us into a circle which includes the angels themselves also, and so we have the "over all" and "through all," and then in distinction, if this indeed be the reading (which is somewhat in question) "in us all;" it may be however, "in all." Here we have the wide extent of creation plainly before us. He is God of all this. He is the Father of all His creatures, and though sin has indeed come in and marred, for the time, the blessedness of it, yet grace, as we know, has come in too, and more than given us back all the reality of what we have here. Evil, therefore, is not thought of in this connection. It is the glorious presence of One whom everything serves, who pervades everything, whom, therefore, we can find everywhere, if this be the truth of the third clause. Here again, then, we find the blessed triune God: Father, Son and Spirit, all in connection with us, and ourselves in distinct blessing in relation to each Person.
2. Here, then, are the relationships, but we have now to see Christ Himself working for the maintenance and manifestation of what belongs to these relationships. There is grace given to every one of us, "according to the measure of the gift of Christ;" that is, all is in His hand as Lord of all, to measure out to every one what is appointed to him, what gives him his special place. The apostle refers us back to the sixty-eighth psalm, to show us Christ ascended on high, having "led captivity captive," that is, having led captive all the power of Satan, "captivity" put for the one who produces it. It is not enough for Him to deliver His redeemed, however. He must enrich them also. If He has ascended up on high, it is to give gifts to men; but the apostle reminds us here that the One who ascended is seen by this to be One who has descended. We could not rightly speak of ascension with regard to Him, if He had not done so. He was at the highest point of all. If He is now gone up, it is because, in grace, He left the place which was truly His. He has descended, in fact, into the lower parts of the earth. But here then, is a wonderful cause of blessing for us. The very One who descended is the One who has now gone up. Thus He fills all things. There is not a place between the depth of the cross and the height of the glory which He has not occupied. There is not a place in which we can be in which we cannot find Him for us; and, with the perfect knowledge which he has of all, the perfect knowledge, therefore, of our necessities, He has given gifts. He means to have us up with Himself where He is, and He knows how low He has to reach down after us. It is in this way, then, that He has given "some apostles, and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers."
Apostles and prophets come first, as we have already seen, and lay the foundation. Evangelists go out to bring in others and thus enlarge the building. Pastors and teachers care for that which is within, "for the perfecting of the saints." It is evident that not every gift is named here. It may be that every gift which He gives could scarcely be named; but that we have the special classes after this manner: evangelists, those preceding the pastors and teachers, as their work necessitates; while apostles and. prophets stand, in some sense, apart from one another, in a way that is easily recognized; apostles representing more the authority of God, while the prophets speak of communications from Him. The pastors and teachers again are more closely united than any of the rest, a connection which is very obvious, for the pastor has to do with what in Corinthians is called "the word of wisdom," as the teacher has to do with the "word of knowledge." Yet these things tend to unite together; for the "word of wisdom" is but the power to apply to existing things the "word of knowledge," and love which has the Lord’s people at heart will tend always to develop the "word of knowledge" in this way. It is evident that the pastor has more the people before him, while the teacher occupies himself more with the truth; but the end is still, and in all these cases, "the perfecting of the saints." That is the first thing, and it is strongly individual. It is not yet said "for the edifying of the body of Christ," although we come to that directly, but the "perfecting of the saints," -the individuals come first. God would not have us lose the individual in the general mass. He would not have us think of the body, as it were, apart from the members. Thus the individual saint is the first thing that is contemplated here. But then, let us notice, this "perfecting of the saints" is "to the work of the ministry." We are not to look at these things as if they were simply put side by side with one another, as if the "perfecting of the saints" was the same thing as "the work of the ministry." That is not the idea. The "perfecting of the saints," if the saints are members of the body of Christ, would be clearly to put every member in his place, and that place must be a place of ministry, for that is the function of each member of the body clearly. We have it directly after, here; but the very thought of a member of the body gives us a relationship of responsibility to the body at large, a relationship which each member has, in a, way, peculiar to himself From the very fact of what divine grace has fitted him for, he has a duty with regard to the whole to minister in that way to the whole. Thus the saints are not perfected, except as the result is the work of the ministry on their part, and this is parallel to the edifying of the body of Christ. That is what it involves. The body of Christ is built up by the action of these members, which, while they retain their individuality, (or there would be no peculiar ministry of any, as is clear, and no part edifying the whole), yet work for the common blessing. The whole is built up by that, as he says directly "which every part supplies."
This is the work which is needed to be done in the meantime, "until," as he says, "we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Thus he has carried us back to that thought of the "one new man" which he has given us before this -Christ and His body together. It is manifest that the body needs indeed, how much! to grow up, if it is to grow to the "measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." That "fulness of Christ" is here the Church itself, of course; for that, we have learned, is the "fulness of Him that filleth all in all," but it is the Church as a body fitted to the Head and therefore having arrived at its completion. Till then, the gifts are necessary here, and till then the "perfecting of the saints" must go on. And notice, the "unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God," these two consist almost of the same thing. We are built up from the Head and by that which is imparted to us by the Head. We are built up by that which we find in Christ. The Head develops the body, however little that may be in accordance with the figure, but Christians grow up in Christ, that is clear; and we see of how much importance the faith is of which he speaks. What knowledge of the Son of God could we have apart from the faith? The truth which God has communicated to us lies at the very foundation of everything, therefore, for our souls; only it must be truth that the Spirit of God ministers to us, and which, therefore, we learn not in the mere common way in which we may learn any other knowledge, but as subject to and taught of Him.
The effect will be that we shall be no longer babes; we shall not be "tossed and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive." Plenty of all that there is, and will be, and God would use it to exercise His people in the truth, that they may learn the value of that which they have, not that they may be carried away from it; and yet how apt apparently are we to be carried away! How we need to be warned with regard to this! How many systems of deception are there in the world, compared with that one truth which certainly must be somewhere, and which is the only thing that can be truth, for there is but one truth. If the babes are characterized by such instability, alas, how many remain babes, one would think, almost to the last! How common a thing it is to see those whom we thought well grounded in truth which they have enjoyed, delighted in, and yet who are carried off by the very first blast of error! How solemn a reminder it is of the need that we have to make progress in the truth that we have, if we are to hold it fast! We may learn it as a creed without ever having learned it really. We may rejoice in it in many respects and yet, for all that, without getting it so for our souls that it becomes a vital necessity for us. To lose it, is as it were to lose life itself; nay, it is to lose what is dearer than life; it is, at least in that measure, to lose Christ Himself. On the contrary, he says here "holding the truth in love," we are to "grow up to Him in all things who is the Head." How much, as already said, how much advance, then, have we all to make, how much have we to learn, how eager ought we to be over our lesson-book, how the gaps that are in God’s word now for us ought to fill up! If all of it be just what God would have us acquainted with, if He has not given us too much, if the whole of it is necessary to form in us fully and properly the mind of Christ, what shall we do if we neglect the continually seeking to lay hold more of that which is indeed infinite in its character, but which God would have us in some sense embrace as a whole? If we are to be developed as a whole, developed harmoniously, we must go on to this. It is from Christ, then, that the whole body is to be built up, -every part helping in this, every part ministering to every other part, (how we suffer, therefore, from the dislocation of saints from one another which we find today) and each part needing to be developed according to its measure also. How much we need then to care for one another and to think of one another, even to think rightly concerning ourselves! If the whole body is to be built up, we need all, clearly, to work for this, and in the measure of every part the body builds itself up. Let us notice that. Gifts of every kind have their place, but then there are no giftless parts. The body as a whole builds itself up. The gifts exclude no action of any part of the body, but, on the contrary, are meant to induce the fullest activity on the part of every member. All that we have, we have to serve with; all that we have is responsibility as well as privilege. And let us notice that this building up can only be in love. That is the spirit of it all. That is the only possible spirit which will beget true ministry, and love always will. How is it possible, if we love others, to see them in the need in which they are and not seek to minister to that need? And how little shall we allow any thought of our insufficiency to prevent us realizing the sufficiency of Him who is fitting us all together to accomplish in us the true character of one who ministers, which is only His character who is the Minister to us all! How can we be in any right fellowship with Him without being ministers after the pattern of His gracious ministry?
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v1 Eph 4:1; Rev 3:4
EPHESIANS
THE CALLING AND THE KINGDOM
Read full note →
Eph 4:1; Rev 3:4
The estimate formed of a centurion by the elders of the Jews was, ‘He is worthy for whom Thou shouldst do this’ and in contrast therewith the estimate formed by himself was, ‘I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof.’ From these two statements we deduce the thought that merit has no place in the Christian’s salvation, but all is to be traced to undeserved, gracious love. But that principle, true and all-important as it is, like every other great truth, may be exaggerated, and may be so isolated as to become untrue and a source of much evil. And so I desire to turn to the other side of the shield, and to emphasise the place that worthiness has in the Christian life, and its personal results both here and hereafter. To say that character has nothing to do with blessedness is untrue, both to conscience and to the Christian revelation; and however we trace all things to grace, we must also remember that we get what we have fitted ourselves for.
Now, my two texts bring out two aspects which have to be taken in conjunction. The one of them speaks about the present life, and lays it as an imperative obligation on all Christian people to be worthy of their Christianity, and the other carries us into the future and shows us that there it is they who are ‘worthy’ who attain to the Kingdom. So I think I shall best bring out what I desire to emphasise if I just take these two points-the Christian calling and the life that is worthy of it, and the Christian heaven and the life that is worthy of it.
I. The Christian calling and the life that is worthy of it.
‘I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.’ Now, that thought recurs in other places in the Apostle’s writings, somewhat modified in expression. For instance, in one passage he speaks of ‘walking worthily of the God who has called us to His kingdom and glory,’ and in another of the Christian man’s duty to ‘walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing.’ There is a certain vocation to which a Christian man is bound to make his life correspond, and his conduct should be in some measure worthy of the ideal that is set before it. Now, we shall best understand what is involved in such worthiness if we make clear to ourselves what the Apostle means by this ‘calling’ to which he appeals as containing in itself a standard to which our lives are to be conformed.
Suppose we try to put away the technical word ‘calling’ and instead of ‘calling’ say ‘summons,’ which is nearer the idea, because it conveys the notions more fully of the urgency of the voice, and of the authority of the voice, which speaks to us. And what is that summons? How do we hear it? One of the other Apostles speaks of God as calling us ‘by His own glory and virtue,’ that is to say, wherever God reveals Himself in any fashion, and by any medium, to a man, the man fails to understand the deepest meaning of the revelation unless his purged ear hears in it the great voice saying, ‘Come up hither.’ For all God’s self-manifestation, in the creatures around us, in the deep voice of our own souls, in the mysteries of our own personal lives, and in the slow evolution of His purpose through the history of the world, all these revelations of God bear in them the summons to us that hear and see them to draw near to Him, and to mould ourselves into His likeness. And thus, just as the sun by the effluence of its beams gathers all the ministering planets, as it were, round its feet, and draws them to itself, so God, raying Himself out into the waste, fills the waste with magnetic influences which are meant to draw men to nobleness, goodness, God-pleasingness, and God-likeness.
But in another place in this Apostle’s writings we read of ‘the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’ Yes, there, as focussed into one strong voice, all the summonses are concentrated and gathered. For in Jesus Christ we see the possibilities of humanity realised, and we have the pattern of what we ought to be, and are called thereby to be. And in Christ we get the great motives which make this summons, as it comes mended from His lips, no longer the mere harsh voice of an authoritative legislator, but the gentle invitation, ‘Come unto Me, ... and ye shall find rest unto your souls.’ The summons is honeyed, sweetened, and made infinitely mightier when we hear it from His gracious lips. It is the blessed peculiarity of the Christian ideal, that the manifestation of the ideal carries with it the power to realise it. And just as the increasing strength of the spring sunshine summons the buds from out of their folds, and the snowdrops hear the call and force themselves through the frozen soil, so when Christ summons He inclines the ears that hear, and enables the men that own them to obey the summons, and to be what they are commanded. And thus we have ‘the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’
Now, if that is the call, if the life of Christ is that to which we are summoned, and the death of Christ is that by which we are inclined to obey the summons, and the Spirit of Christ is that by which we are enabled to do so, what sort of a life will be worthy of these? Well, the context supplies part of the answer. ‘I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation ... with all meekness and lowliness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.’ That is one side of the vocation, and the life that is worthy of it will be a life emancipated from the meanness of selfishness, and delivered from the tumidities of pride and arrogance, and changed into the sweetness of gentleness and the royalties of love.
And then, on the other side, in one of the other texts where the same general set of ideas is involved, we get a yet more wondrous exhibition of the life which the Apostle considered to be worthy. I simply signalise its points of detail without venturing to dwell upon them. ‘Unto all pleasing’; the first characteristic of life that is ‘worthy of our calling’ and to which, therefore, every one of us Christian people is imperatively bound, is that it shall, in all its parts, please God, and that is a large demand. Then follow details: ‘Fruitful in every good work’-a many-sided fruitfulness, an encyclopaediacal beneficent activity, covering all the ground of possible excellence; and that is not all; ‘increasing in the knowledge of God,’-a life of progressive acquaintance with Him; and that is not all:-’strengthened with all might unto all patience and long-suffering’; nor is that all, for the crown of the whole is ‘giving thanks unto the Father.’ So, then, ‘ye see your calling, brethren.’ A life that is ‘worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called’ is a life that conforms to the divine will, that is ‘fruitful in all good,’ that is progressive in its acquaintance with God, that is strengthened for all patience and long-suffering, and that in everything is thankful to Him. That is what we are summoned to be, and unless we are in some measure obeying the summons, and bringing out such a life in our conduct, then, notwithstanding all that we have to say about unmerited mercy, and free grace, and undeserved love, and salvation being not by works but by faith, we have no right to claim the mercy to which we say we trust.
Now, this necessity of a worthy life is perfectly harmonious with the great truth that, after all, every man owes all to the undeserved mercy of God. The more nearly we come to realise the purpose of our calling, the more ‘worthy’ of it we are, the deeper will be our consciousness of our unworthiness. The more we approximate to the ideal, and come closer up to it, and so see its features the better, the more we shall feel how unlike we are to it. The law for Christian progress is that the sense of unworthiness increases in the precise degree in which the worthiness increases. The same man that said, ‘Of whom {sinners} I am chief,’ said to the same reader, ‘I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.’ And so the two things are not contradictory but complementary. On the one side ‘worthy’ has nothing to do with the outflow of Christ’s love to us; on the other side we are to ‘walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.’
II. And now, let us turn to the other thought, the Christian heaven and the life that is worthy of it.
Some of you, I have no doubt, would think that that was a tremendous heresy if there were not Scriptural words to buttress it. Let us see what it means. My text out of the Revelation says, ‘They shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.’ And the same voice that spake these, to some of us, astounding, words, said, when He was here on earth, ‘They which shall be counted worthy to attain to the life of the resurrection from the dead,’ etc. The text brings out very clearly the continuity and congruity between the life on earth and the life in heaven. Who is it of whom it is said that ‘they are worthy’ to ‘walk in white’? It is the ‘few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments.’ You see the connection; clean robes here and shining robes hereafter; the two go together, and you cannot separate them. And no belief that salvation, in its incipient germ here, and salvation in its fulness hereafter, are the results ‘not of works of righteousness which we have done, but of His mercy,’ is to be allowed to interfere with that other truth that they who are worthy attain to the Kingdom.
I must not be diverted from my main purpose, tempting as the theme would be, to say more than just a sentence about what is included in that great promise, ‘They shall walk with Me in white’ And if I do touch upon it at all, it is only in order to bring out more clearly that the very nature of the heavenly reward demands this worthiness which the text lays down as the condition of possessing it. ‘They shall walk’-activity on an external world. That opens a great door, but perhaps we had better be contented just with looking in. ‘They shall walk’-progress; ‘with me’-union with Jesus Christ; ‘in white’-resplendent purity of character. Now take these four things-activity on an outward universe, progress, union with Christ, resplendent purity of character, and you have almost all that we know of the future; the rest is partly doubtful and is mostly symbolical or negative, and in any case subordinate. Never mind about ‘physical theories of another life’; never mind about all the questions-to some of us how torturing they sometimes are!-concerning that future life. The more we keep ourselves within the broad limits of these promises that are intertwined and folded up together in that one saying, ‘They shall walk with Me in white,’ the better, I think, for the sanity and the spirituality of our conception of a future life.
That being understood, the next thing clearly follows, that only those who in the sense of the word as it is used here, are ‘worthy,’ can enter upon the possession of such a heaven. From the nature of the gift it is clear that there must be a moral and religious congruity between the gift and the recipient, or, to put it into plainer words, you cannot get heaven unless your nature is capable of receiving these great gifts which constitute heaven. People talk about the future state as being ‘a state of retribution.’ Well! that is not altogether a satisfactory form of expression, for retribution may convey the idea, such as is presented in earthly rewards and punishments, of there being no natural correspondence between the crime and its punishment, or the virtue and its reward. A bit of bronze shaped into the form of a cross may be the retribution ‘For Valour,’ and a prison cell may be the retribution by legal appointment for a certain crime. But that is not the way that God deals out rewards and punishments in the life which is to come. It is not a case of retribution, meaning thereby the arbitrary bestowment of a certain fixed gift in response to certain virtues, but it is a case of outcome, and the old metaphor of sowing and reaping is the true one. We sow here and we reap yonder. We pass into that future, ‘bringing our sheaves with us,’ and we have to grind the corn and make bread of it, and we have to eat the work of our own hands. They drink as they have brewed. ‘Their works do follow them,’ or they go before them and ‘receive them into everlasting habitations.’ Outcome, the necessary result, and not a mere arbitrary retribution, is the relation which heaven bears to earth.
That is plain, too, from our own nature. We carry ourselves with us wherever we go. The persistence of character, the continuity of personal being, the continuity of memory, the unobliterable-if I may coin a word-results upon ourselves of our actions, all these things make it certain that what looks to us a cleft, deep and broad, between the present life and the next, is to those that have passed it, and see it from the other side, but a little crack in the soil scarcely observable, and that we carry on into another world the selves that we have made here. Whatever death does-and it does a great deal that we do not know of-it does not alter, it only brings out, and, as I suppose, intensifies, the main drift and set of a character. And so they who ‘have not defiled their garments shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.’
Ah, brethren! how solemn that makes life; the fleeting moment carries Eternity in its bosom. It passes, and the works pass, but nothing human ever dies, and we bear with us the net results of all the yesterdays into that eternal to-day. You write upon a thin film of paper and there is a black leaf below it. Yes, and below the black leaf there is another sheet, and all that you write on the top one goes through the dark interposed page, and is recorded on the third, and one day that will be taken out of the book, and you will have to read it and say, ‘What I have written I have written.’
So, dear friends, whilst we begin with that unmerited love, and that same unmerited love is the sole ground on which the gates of the kingdom of heaven are by the Death and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ opened to believers, their place there depends not only on faith but on the work which is the fruit of faith. There is such a thing as being ‘saved yet so as by fire,’ and there is such a thing as ‘having an entrance ministered abundantly unto us’; we have to make the choice. There is such a thing as the sore punishment of which they are thought worthy who have rejected the Son of God, and counted the blood of the Covenant an unholy thing; and there is such a thing as a man saying, ‘I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come unto me,’ and Christ answering, ‘He shall walk with Me in white, for he is worthy’ and we have to make that choice also.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Unity of the New Life. Rules for the New…
Unity of the New Life. Rules for the New Life
The Apostle passes, as usual, from doctrinal statements to practical exhortations; but doctrine is here and there introduced to support exhortation.
Read full note →
1-6. 'Live in humility, in loving forbearance, and in unity, for we have one Body, one Head, and one Heavenly Father.'
1. Prisoner] This looks back to Eph_3:1. 'He can no longer superintend them: they must walk alone. He lost his liberty in their service: they will do what he asks.'
2. To a Greek, meekness was a second-rate virtue, and lowliness no virtue at all. The gospel gives both qualities their true position. The nearer man comes to God, the more he feels his own worthlessness, and the member of a vast Church knows his own insignificance.
4. 'One Body, animated by one Spirit, and cheered by one Hope.'
5. 'One Head, to which each member is united by one Faith and one Baptism.'
6. 'One God, the supreme Source and Sustainer.' In you all] RV 'in all.' Throughout the v. the 'all' is vague and may be neuter: we must leave it vague. Note the Trinitarian background: Spirit, Lord, Father.
7-16. 'But the various members have various gifts and functions.'
8. He saith] There is no pronoun in the Greek, and the nominative may be 'it,' 'the Scripture,' viz. Psa_68:18. The important parts of the quotation are 'He ascended' and 'gave gifts.' Led captivity captive] i.e. led many captives in His train. These He used as ministers.
9, 10. The meaning of this obscure passage seems to be this. 'Christ ascended, not to leave His Church an orphan (Joh_14:18), but in order to return to it with the rich gifts of His spiritual presence. The ascent without this subsequent descent would be incomprehensible.' The descent is placed after the ascent, and can hardly refer to either the burial or the descent into Hades. RV omits first.
11. He gave] 'He' is emphatic; 'He it is who gave.' Some, apostles] RV 'some to be apostles';'some as Apostles.' 'Some' is accusative, not dative. St. Paul is speaking of the Church as a whole, and does not mention bishops, presbyters, or deacons, which were local ministers: cp. 1Co_12:28; Rom_12:6-8.
12. For.. for.. for] There is a change of preposition, which should be marked in English—for.. unto.. unto and there should be no comma after 'saints.' The saints are perfected with a view to their ministering, to their building up of the Church.
13. Come in the unity] RV 'attain unto the unity.' A more mature and perfect unity than the Church had at first (Eph_2:15), an ideal to work for, resulting in a mature and perfect humanity, endowed with the fulness which Christ, in union with the Church (Eph_1:23), has.
14. 'In order to reach this united manhood, we must cease to be a number of unstable children, at the mercy of every scheming teacher.'
15. Speaking the truth in love] upholding truth without bitterness.
16. Language cannot express the full truth. Christ is the Head. He is also the whole organism. He is also the source of its unity, growth, and energy. Consistency of thought and language is lost in this divine physiology.
17-24. 'How different are the believing Gentiles from the unbelieving! Believers must beware of retaining anything of the vanity, ignorance, or impurity of the old heathen life.'
17. Walk] He returns from the lofty panegyric of Christian unity to the lower but necessary topic of the Christian 'walk.' He began with 'do' (Eph_4:1); here it is nearly all 'do not.'
18. Pagans, 'being darkened in their understanding,' must be alienated from Him in whom is no darkness (1Jn_1:5). RV substitutes 'hardening' for blindness; perhaps wrongly.
19. Being past feeling] they ceased to notice the pricks of conscience, and became reckless. In Rom_1:21-24; We have the same sequence: vanity, darkness, uncleanness.
21. Heard him] He is not thinking of the possibility that some of them had heard Christ teach: they 'heard Him' in listening to the gospel; heard what He taught on earth.
In Jesus] St. Paul rarely uses this name by itself; when he does, he is thinking of the earthly life, death, and rising again. To him Christ is the glorified Christ, 'Jesus Christ,' 'Christ Jesus,' 'the Lord Jesus,' or' the Lord Jesus Christ.'
22. Put off] Like filthy, worn-out clothes, the old self had to be put away. Conversation has the old meaning of 'manner of life' (Shakespeare,' 2 Hen. IV,' Eph_4:5): cp. 1Pe_3:2; 2Pe_2:7.
24. The new man which after God hath been created is that fresh form of humanity, after the first divine pattern, which redemption has produced. In righteousness and true holiness] RV 'in righteousness and holiness of truth.' 'Of truth' belongs to both substantives.
25-32. Illustrations of the old man: falsehood, vindictiveness, theft, bad language, bad temper; and, by contrast, of the new.
25. From Zec_8:16. 'How monstrous that members of the same body should deceive one another 1 and members of Christ!'
26. Prom Psa_4:4. 'Anger may be righteous, but beware of nursing it.'
27. Give place to means' give him an opening.'
28. 'Instead of robbing others, earn something to share with others.'
29. Corrupt communication] bad language of any kind. To the use of edifying] RV 'for edifying as the need may be,' i.e. for building up the social fabric as occasion may require, that it may benefit them that hear.
30. 'The Spirit, who sealed us as His own, is pained when our tongues rebel.'
32. 'The mercifulness of God forbids our being unmerciful to our brethren: become kind.'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 1. Walking worthy of the Calling
II. THE PRACTICAL MANIFESTATION IN THE LIFE OF THE BELIEVER (4-6)
1. Walking worthy of the Calling
Read full note →
CHAPTER 4:1-6
1. The walk in lowliness and meekness (Eph 4:1-2)
2. Keeping the unity of the Spirit (Eph 4:3-6)
“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye are called.” This marks the beginning of the second part of the epistle. it is obvious then, to walk worthy as a Christian, one has to know the calling wherewith God has called us. This calling, as we have seen, is revealed in the first three chapters. The first exhortation is to walk “with all lowliness and meekness.” He does not speak of doing some great work, or to seek special gifts and special power. Lowliness and meekness are to be manifested by the members of the body of Christ. These two words remind us of the Lord Jesus and the words which came from His blessed lips. “Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Mat 11:29). He who had laid His glory by, thus emptying Himself, lived down here in lowliness and meekness. And we are called to walk even as He walked (1Jn 2:6). “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Php 2:5). The Holy Spirit tells us then that the first thing in the walk of the believer is to manifest the lowliness and meekness of the Lord Jesus. Walking in meekness produces gentleness towards the brethren, the fellow-saints. And as we walk “with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love” we manifest practically that we are members of the one body. Love is to be the governing principle towards all the saints of God.
In the second place we are to give “diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” We are not told to produce the unity of the Spirit, but to keep it. What is this unity of the Spirit? It is the unity which God in His infinite grace has made Himself. All believers are members of the body of Christ, the Church. The Holy Spirit dwells in each and He has put us into that body as members; the one body, and believers members of that body, constitutes the unity of the Spirit. We are to own it by keeping it in the bond of peace. This unity can never be destroyed for it is the work of God. But it may be denied and the expression of it completely lost. Alas! this is the common thing about us. Sectarianism is a denial of this unity of the Spirit. We keep the unity of the Spirit when we recognize in every true believer a member of Christ and of His body. What will enable us to keep this unity and this walk worthy of our calling? We must constantly feed on the glorious realities of our redemption in Christ. What God has wrought for us and for all His saints, the fact that all are indwelt by the same Spirit, and that all have the same glorious destiny, must never be lost sight of.
The unity of the Spirit is revealed in Eph 4:4-6. Again, the three persons of the Godhead are seen only in reverse order, the Holy Spirit first, the Son of God the second, and the God and Father third.
The Holy Spirit
1. One Body
2. One Spirit
3. One Hope
The Son of God, the Lord
4. One Lord
5. One Faith
6. One Baptism
The God and Father
7. One God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all
The one body, which stands first, is the Church, the body of Christ. The fullness of Him that filleth all in all. The one Spirit is the Holy Spirit. He came on the day of Pentecost and the Baptism of the Spirit then took place, by which the body of Christ is formed. “For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body” (1Co 12:13). The one hope is the hope of the Church, to be with the Lord in glory, to be like Him and share His glory. The next three linked with the Lord and are likewise connected with the Church. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, presents the aspect of public profession. The one Lord, is Christ; all Christians own Him professedly as Lord. The “one faith” is the faith in the Lord and the “one baptism” is water-baptism, which is both, the initiatory rite of Christian profession and an expression of that faith in the one Lord. And God is the “one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all.” Of course this applies only to believers.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Apostolic Admonitions to Unity, to Perfection in Knowledge, to…
Apostolic Admonitions to Unity, to Perfection in Knowledge, to Holiness, and to Peace. Eph 4:1-32
Paul exhorts to unity:
Read full note →
v. 1. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,
v. 2. with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, for bearing one another in love;
v. 3. endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
v. 4. There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;
v. 5. one Lord, one faith, one Baptism,
v. 6. one God and father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all.
Having brought the doctrinal section of his letter to a close, the apostle bases his admonitions to holiness of life upon the foundation of Christian knowledge thus laid. He opens the second part of his letter just as he did Rom 12:1: I beseech you, therefore, I, the prisoner in the Lord, to live your life worthy of the calling wherewith you were called. As the apostle of the Gentiles he was very much concerned about his charges’ remaining in faith and leading a holy life. Emphatically he speaks of himself as the prisoner in the Lord, thus reminding them of the reason for his present state. He was a prisoner because of his connection with Christ, the Lord, in behalf of the Gentiles. As such he exhorts or entreats his readers to conduct themselves at all times so, to lead their entire life in such a manner, as to be worthy of their calling as Christians, to prove themselves true members of the Christian congregation. It was God that had called them to the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ; as children of God they could not afford to bring disgrace upon the name of their heavenly Father.
They should walk and conduct themselves, therefore: With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, bearing one another in love. These Christian virtues, according to God’s will, are to attend the Christians, to be their constant companions and associates. All possible lowliness they should use in their fellowship toward one another, as fellow-members of the same body of the Church. That very disposition of mind which was despised by the heathen as unworthy of a man, the deep sense of one’s own smallness in insignificance, the Christians are to cultivate. And this is to be accompanied by gentleness, loving submissiveness, patient yielding to others even under provocation, willingness to serve and share rather than to demand. The apostle, moreover, expects from the Christians long-suffering, in this connection not so much the endurance of tribulations from without as patience under provocations on the part of friends and brethren, as Paul himself adds, in explanation, that we should forbear one another in love, that we should endure even the unpleasant peculiarities of our Christian brethren without a hint of impatience. The apostle here paints an ideal of the relation that should obtain among the members of the Christian Church, which may well provoke all Christians to eager emulation.
With these virtues as a basis, the next admonition expands the idea of the relation among Christians: Giving diligence to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. While the believers strive after the virtues indicated above, they should incidentally make use of all energy, work with all zeal, to hold fast with watchful care the glorious possession of the oneness of the Spirit, the unity in feeling, interest, and purpose which accompanies the unity in doctrine. It is the unity of the Spirit, wrought by the Spirit of God, the unity in the truth. This splendid gift and possession is to be kept in the bond of peace, this being the tie that binds the hearts together. By striving after the virtues named by the apostle: love, peace, meekness, humility, long-suffering, patience, the Christians maintain the unity of the Spirit given to them in the Word. As soon as these virtues are disregarded, the result is dissension and disagreement, division and sectarianism.
That the apostle, however, by no means advocates or sanctions the modern perversion of his words which the spirit of unionism, now rampant, shows, he indicates in the next words: One body and one Spirit, just as you also are called in one hope of your calling. This is not an admonition referring to the future, but one which calls upon the Christians to hold fast that which they have. They are one body, as closely connected and joined together as the members of one body. They are united and kept in the union of Christ’s body by the one Spirit who lives in them, the Holy Ghost being, as it were, the soul of this body, of the Christian Church, who directs and governs the entire body. They are all looking forward to the same goal, for they are all called in or with the one hope of their calling. When the call of the Lord was realized in them, the hope of eternal salvation was held before them all, and this hope holds them together, emphasizes their unity.
The Christians, moreover, have in common: One Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all. The Lord of the Christians to whom they belong, who has redeemed them with His holy, precious blood, is Christ. In Him they believe, Him they recognize and acknowledge as their Lord; for Him they have put on in Baptism. So they all have the same faith, which united them with their one Lord by means of the same Sacrament. But the climax is reached in the words: One God and Father of us all. Through Christ’s vicarious work God is our Father, the Father of all Christians without exception. He is over them all, He rules over them, He exercises His gracious parental authority over them as His dear children, He is their Guardian and Guide. He is through them all, through them, as through the instruments of His mercy, He carries out many of His intentions; all the good works which the Christians perform, especially such as serve the Church, they do by the power of God which works in them. He is in them all, He has deigned to dwell in them; they are His temple, His constant abode. Thus the Christians, in and through the Triune God, in whom they live, and move, and have their being, are most intimately connected with one another; they are bound together by the strongest ties that can be conceived of.
Note: This passage describes, in a wonderfully clear and brief way, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints. "Here St. Paul says and teaches what the true Christian Church is and by what signs one can recognize it, namely, that there is no more than one single Church or people of God on earth, that has one faith, Baptism, one confession of God the Father and of Christ, etc. , and therein holds and remains together in complete harmony. In this Church every one that wants to be saved and come to God, must be found and be embodied, and outside of her no one is saved. Therefore this unity of the Church does not consist in various forms of outside government, law, and precept, nor in having and observing church customs,... but is found where this harmony of the one faith, Baptism, etc. , is. Therefore it is called one holy Catholic or Christian Church."
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v1 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Because of what Paul has been writing to the Ephesians, he tells them how they should live their lives as believers and again emphasizes that believers are to agree with each other.
Read full note →
as the prisoner for the Lord
"as someone who is in prison because of his choice to serve the Lord"
walk worthily of the calling
Walking is a common way to express the idea of living one's life. (See: Metaphor)
to live with great humility and gentleness and patience
"to learn to be humble, gentle, and patient"
to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace
Here Paul speaks of "peace" as if it were a bond that ties people together. This is a metaphor for being united with other people by living peacefully with them. AT: "to live peacefully with one another and remain united as the Spirit made possible"
translationWords
prison
lord
call
humble
Holy Spirit
peace
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1–3 4:1–6:20 Therefore: Ephesians divides into two sections, the first…
4:1–6:20 Therefore: Ephesians divides into two sections, the first devoted to explaining the Good News, the second to drawing out the implications for Christian living. This arrangement reflects Paul’s belief that believers’ lives should be a response of gratitude for God’s grace.
4:1-6 God’s saving grace for both Jews and Gentiles should be reflected in how the two groups relate to each other in the church: They are to accept each other warmly, just as God has accepted them.
Read full note →
4:1 I, a prisoner for serving the Lord: See study note on 3:1. • Though salvation can never be earned, believers are to live in a manner worthy of their calling to salvation (see Phil 1:27; Col 1:10; 1 Thes 2:12). • called by God: See Eph 1:4-5, 11.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.