Bound Together - One in Christ
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:1-6
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
If you were imprisoned for your faith, potentially facing capital punishment and you were given an opportunity to write a letter or several letters, who would you write him to? What would you say? This is what Paul is facing when he writes through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the letter to the church in Ephesus, writes the letter to the Philippians, writes the letter to to the Colossians, and the letter to Philemon.
He is in prison for preaching Christ and him crucified. Jewish authorities have brought charges against him and he had appealed to Caesar in hopes of witnessing before Caesar the lifesaving gospel of Jesus Christ. And so he is imprisoned here in our text, “I therefore a prisoner for the Lord,” (Ephesians 4:1) because he won't be quiet about Jesus.
And he spends the a lot of the beginning of Ephesians talking about grace. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9.
Now he turns and he is talking about what it means to be a Christian amongst each other because the church in Ephesus is divided. He wants them to walk worthily in the calling to which they were called.
It's a good thing he started talking about grace first because I don't know about you, but I don't like somebody to point out my incorrect behavior. That is now what he is doing. He is exhorting them to recognize the unity they have in Christ.
In Ephesus, there is, of course, a large gentile population, but there's also a large Jewish population. So, the church has a large population of both ethnically Jews and Gentiles, and they're not getting along. They're like oil and water. In a similar way, you have divisions in Corinth and Paul writes to them and says, "Hey, knock it off. Get along." This is Paul's letter to the Ephesians saying, "Hey, knock it off. Get along."
And he points to them, what is the basis of unity? And it's not them. Our unity here is not us. It's not that we're Americans. It's not that we're Oklahomans or that we live in Mustang, or Tuttle, or Yukon, or Blanchard, or Oklahoma City, or somewhere else.
The unity we have, the unity they have, the unity that God gives the church is in God.
It is in Christ Jesus. “One faith, one Lord, one baptism.'“ We are “one body in Christ.” And there is “one God and Father of all.” We are a family because God says we are a family. We are a body of Christ because God says we are a body of Christ. We have different functions as a body does. But the body needs all functions. It needs eyes and ears, tongue, feet, hands, kidneys, lungs, heart.
And so you could sum up this section of Ephesians, by sitting there saying it is really living out the Second Table of the Law, Commandments 4-10, the Third Function of those Commandments.
The First Function it is a curb. Do not do these things or do these things. This will lead to a good society. The Second Function (or Use) is a mirror. It shows me my sin, SOS- shows my sin. The law points out our blemishes.
But then for the Christian, there is this other function for those who are saved by grace through faith. For those who love Jesus, who love God, and you sit there and say, "Well, how can I love God?" Because I cannot take God on a date. I cannot take Him to, you know, Mahogany Steakhouse or Cattleman's, right? I cannot buy Him flowers. The flowers are already His! The steak is already His! I cannot give Him money to go get a pedicure. So, how do I show God that I love God? Oh, I do these things, I follow the Commandments to the best of my ability.
This is what Paul is telling the Ephesians. And he says it starts first with humility and gentleness. It starts with checking your ego at the door, with recognizing you are not the best and the greatest gift to mankind from God. That's Jesus. You ain't Jesus. And so to be humble and to be gentle, to recognize that you are a sinner saved by grace. You have been called into a community of sinners saved by grace.
This humbleness, this gentleness leads to patience. If I am a sinner and I make mistakes and I want grace and I want forgiveness, then my neighbor who is a sinner who is saved by grace, who wants grace and forgiveness, I can extend that to them and they can extend it to me. Love covers a multitude of sin (1 Peter 4:7-9).
We bear one another's burdens. And the love that Paul mentions here, bearing with one another in love is agape. The self-sacrificial love of putting somebody else's needs before your own because love is inherently selfless.
Our culture and the world wants to make “love” a definition that is selfish and it will try to twist it. But even the world has to admit and grant that selflessness has to be part of the definition. I cannot escape from that. You see this in media. Right now we are in the holiday movie season. Is is October there is the reruns of the Peanut’s Halloween special which is about what? About love and friendship right and that bleeds right over into Thanksgiving. We have all the the Hallmark Channel movies coming along. You got the fall ones right now. You're about to have the Thanksgiving ones and then pretty soon we will have the Christmas ones going on. And love will be shown to also be selfless, putting others in front of your own.
So we live with one another in the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. What is the bonds of peace? It is the forgiveness of sins. It is asking forgiveness and receiving forgiveness. It is living as Christ to one another. Some people will sit there and say, "Well, that sounds like a prison. Putting someone else's needs before my own, being bound to someone else."
Take the two greatest examples of living for another person. Take marriage and take child rearing, being a parent. What is the sign of a healthy marriage? Bearing with one another, not being overbearing. Remember 1 Corinthians 13, Love does not insist on its own way.
Is it hard to be in a marriage? Yeah. Is it hard to be a parent? Yeah, babies are great. And then they become toddlers and they start to develop personalities and they start to be like, "No, I like this and not that." And they start to move and they start to do their own things. All of a sudden you cannot control them anymore. They become functioning people. But what permeates both a good marriage and good child rearing, love. And it is actually very freeing. It is joyful to live with one another.
And the reason I picked out those two examples is because we are told that we are married to Christ. That we are his bride. He is our bridegroom and that we are children of God. That he has adopted us. He has placed his name upon us. Our adoption, our birth certificate into the body of Christ was baptism where he placed his name upon us. Does the Lord bear with us? Yes, he does. Do we vex our Lord greatly? Yes, we do. And yet, his grace comes out to us.
We were bought with his precious blood. We were made new. And so, Christ is bound to us and we are bound to Christ. Since Christ creates the unity, we are bound to one another. The bonds of peace.
This pericope also does not just stay with the Second Table of Law, Commandments 4-10, but also our understanding of the Third Article of the Creed.
We walk by grace. The grace that God has poured out on us. We walk by the grace that we show to one another. We are people from very different backgrounds. I know a lot of you have very polarizing opposite political opinions, but we are one body in Christ. Some of y'all I'm from the Republic of Texas (and I'm a born and raised Oklahoma and yesterday hurt my soul deeply), yet we are one body in Christ Jesus. I am middle-aged. I am too young to be old and too old to be young. Some of y'all are babies. We had a had a little infant in early service. Was giving a lot of "Amens!" the first half of that service. By the end of it, by the prayers, he had passed out. So if you need a baby to go to sleep, you know, just put my sermon on. We are separated by age. We are separated by background. We are separated by opinions. But we are one in Christ Jesus.
There is one faith. There is one Lord. There is one baptism. There is one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
And when we live this way, when we live in the way of love, when we live in the way of forgiveness, when we live in the way of walking together as the people of God, we fulfill what Christ claims of us. That the world will know us through our love for each other. That the world is full of division. The world is full of hate. But people will look at the church and they will see a people who get along even though they are polar opposites. They will see a body of people who forgive, who bear, and who lift up. May God grant it to be so in Christ's name. Amen.
