Summary of 4:1-6:9
With ch.4 we enter the second main section of Ephesians governed by the posture image of “Walk”. It is also the fourth “M” in the Missional Matrix we have been following through the letter. We have “sat” for three chapters reveling in the magnificent grace of God given to us in Jesus Christ. Now we finally get into action. The context is the community (the “you” of 4:1 is plural), the content is growing into the life of the community. In terms of our understanding the church as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement, this section is our “training manual”. These are the practices and processes by which we learn to subvert and counter the anti-life practices and processes set in place by sin, death, and the devil. Here are the maneuvers we need to negotiate the minefields of the enemy.
Paul begins with the community as we already noted (4:1-16). He then issues another reminder of where we have been and where by God’s grace we are now that take us back to our baptismal beginnings (4:17-24). Next Paul follows with a series of instructions on community busters and community builders (4:25-5:2). A set of three “Be’s” come next: Be Sure (5:3-14), Be Careful (5:15-20), and Be Subject (5:21-6:9). This completes Paul’s foundational teaching on growing into our service in God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary movement and sets the stage for Paul’s goal – our engaging the powers of darkness and evil to “stand firm” against them in Christ.
4:1-16
This first part of the “Walk” section breaks down into three sections:
4:1-6: Membership Manifesto
4:7-12: Spiritual Gifts
4:13-16: Maturity in the Community
The flow of thought is from unity (4:1-6) through diversity (4:7-12) to maturity (4:13-16). The unity is a given which must be maintained (v.3). The diversity of gifts are the donations of the ascended One (v.10). The goal of maturity results from maintaining our unity through the diversity of our gifts. This is how we are “joined and knitted together” into the one body of Christ. Let’s see how this works out in more detail
4:1-6
“Therefore,” Paul begins. One of his most important words. It draws the consequences or the point of what he has been discussing. A good paraphrase for it is “Duck!” Paul’s about to show us where the rubber hits the road! He’s about to show us how to “walk worthy of the calling to which you have been called”. This is, of course, all “in the Lord” because he is the center and goal of the “calling to which we have been called” (as we have seen in detail in chs.1-3).
The “therefore,” then pulls the “Sit” section right to our doorstep and Paul begins to translate all that into the training we need as God’s subversives. Calling himself “the prisoner in the Lord” reminds us of the subversive and counter-revolutionary nature of our calling. We ought not to expect to always fit in, feel good, or succeed as the world measures and values such things. But we also remember that “the Lord” has won the victory. He has the “skins on the wall” to assure us that he is control and our lives are in his hands and, to put it bluntly, we are on the winning side!
Literally Paul “begs” his churches to “walk worthy of the calling with which (they) have been called”. This “membership manifesto” or recruiting call is a call to voluntary commitment in response to God’s prior call to them. There is no compulsion, coercion, or constraint on someone to enlist in God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement. So Paul “begs” his churches to actively and faithfully practice their calling.
He begs them to “walk” (used also in 4:17; 5:2, 8, 15), to active, purposeful engagement with the world, “worthy” of their calling. The first mark of such active and purposeful engagement is the refusal to go it alone and find the community that can and will nurture and sustain your commitment.
Thus after Paul issues his call to community he begins to spell out the contours and texture of the kind of community that raises up subversive counter-revolutionaries. As we watch him unfold this vision of community, we will see at the same time the vision of the kind of world for which they will do battle.
As we pursue our calling to broadcast the multiplex wisdom of God to the powers (3:10), whose rebellious antics distort and disorder the conditions of human life, and share in the gathering of all things up in Christ (1:10), the worthiness of that work is measured by
-humility,
-gentleness,
-patience,
-bearing with one another in love, which
maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
It’s worth noting here that unity is reality, a gift of God to us, not something we have to create or bring into being. We have to maintain it, nurture it, sustain it, extend it, but we do not have to create it! We live in and work with a unity already vouchsafed to us in Christ.
The “unity virtues,” as Yoder Neufeld calls them[1], which Paul lays out turn out to be extraordinarily counter-cultural in Paul’s world. One of the worst things to call someone in that world was “humble”. No one of any stature or self-respect would stoop to such humiliating, demeaning, and servile behavior. For Paul, however, such Christ-emulating behavior (Phil.2:8) is constitutive of this divine subversive counter-revolutionary movement. And Christ’s own stance of humility was rooted in the piety of Judaism which understood God’s desire for those who know that
“Blessed are the ones who understand, we got nothing to bring but empty hands”.[2]
That’s why Jesus’ first Beatitude is “poverty of spirit” (Mt.5:3). Humility in this sense is the nonnegotiable starting point of life with God.
Humility is love’s approach to God and each other.
“Gentleness,” a characteristic of Jesus according to Paul (2 Cor.10:1), is a “fruit of the Spirit (Gal.5:23). It means “handle with care”. We’ve been given each other as unimaginably good gifts. C.S. Lewis puts it memorably, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament
itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your
Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere
latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”[3] Gentleness, then, “to handle with care,” is the only reasonable and appropriate way to deal with brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.
Gentleness is love’s handling of one another.
“Patience” is another “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal.5:22). It’s the “stickiness” of our unity in Christ. We need each other in this subversive movement God’s called us to; and we’ve always got each other’s back. Whatever we must overcome to stay together, united in the partnership of faith’s struggle, we will overcome.[4] Patience is the dogged determination that this divine gift of stickiness will outlast the stinkiness we see forever to be inflicting on each other!
Patience is love’s sticking with one another.
Thus, humility, gentleness, and patience lead to “bearing with one another in love.” Snodgrass claims this translation archaic and too tame. It should be “putting up with one another in love”.[5] That sounds a bit more like the rough and tumble of everyday life to me! Life in community is a contact sport and there will be much to put up with, shrug off, and confront as we go. It’s seldom glamorous, occasionally glorious, and unimaginably important, given what we are called to do together. Perhaps that’s why Paul speaks so often (about 40 times) about the importance of “one anothering” – caring for, depending on, and benefitting from one another – in his letters.
And when we manage to practice such “one anothering” we also “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Again, “maintain the unity” may be a bit pale. The Greek literally says, “eagerly keeping the unity . . .” That better captures both the vigor of the effort and the vitality of the result Paul has in mind in this Membership Manifesto.
If vv.1-3 comprise the call to membership part of this manifesto, vv.4-6 are its charter. This charter has seven items prefaced with “one”. Biblically, the number seven stands for completeness. Paul indicates by this that this is a complete charter – a full set of shared convictions sufficient to both ground the unity and sustain the diversity of the church.
-“one body”: the church Paul places first. What else would you expect in this letter?
-“one Spirit”: the animating power of the church.
-“one hope”: Paul has expounded this over the first three chapters. To live by hope is to live towards this hope – all of us moving in this direction.
-“one Lord”: Jesus Christ, the risen and ascended One who rules over all creation and cosmos.
-“one faith”: the conviction that the God who has brought humanity back to himself and to each other in the cross of Jesus Christ will bring all things together under Christ as he has promised.
-“one baptism”: the public expression, “induction ceremony,” if you will, into God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement.
-“one God and Father of all”: the final item of the seven brings all the others together and in focus – God the Father.[6]
Paul has given this list his customary Trinitarian shape (“Spirit,” “Lord,” “God and Father”). The other six items on the list seem to prepare for and lead to the last: God the Father. This reflects what we noted earlier about the first section of Ephesians, the “Sit” section, that God the Father was its focus and the agent of the action. That makes it appropriate here to climax this charter of membership with this God, “the Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all”.
The great second century theologian Irenaeus of Lyon crafted a wonderful image to picture the work of the triune God. He envisioned God the Father as a head and body with the Son and the Spirit as his two hands. Thus the Father does his work through his hands, the Son and the Spirit. To graft Paul’s list on to Irenaeus’ image might look like this.
Father
Lord/Jesus Spiritfaith body baptism hope
This is a graphic way of portraying Paul’s conviction here that in the Father’s wisdom the Son works faith leading to baptism while the Spirit builds the body, the church, and leads it by hope into its future and destiny.
We Practice “Walking” as God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (7)
1.
How it might feel to “walk” as Paul “begs” us to do in Eph.4:1
G. R. R. Martin, in his fantasy novel Game of Thrones, has a scene where a father, Eddard Stark, is consoling and counseling his young daughter. Times are hard and growing more perilous as the long winter of doom approaches. His young daughter Arya is at odds with most everyone else around her – family and members of the court. Some of her gripes are more imagined than real, petty and spiteful. Other grievances are very real, profound and alienating. Eddard, her father, says,
“Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one other, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa . . . Sansa is your sister. You may be different as the sun and moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you . . . and I need both of you, gods help me . . .
“I do not mean to frighten you, but neither will I lie to you. We have come to a dark and dangerous place, child. This is not Winterfell. We have enemies who mean us ill. We cannot fight a war among ourselves. This willfulness of yours, the running off, the angry words, the disobedience . . . at home, these were only the summer games of a child. Here and now, with winter soon upon us, that is a different matter. It’s time to begin growing up.
“I will,” Arya vowed. She had never loved him so much as she did in that instant.”[7]
This is a wonderful exemplification of both the vigor and vitality involved in “eagerly keeping” the peace granted us in Jesus Christ. Ponder this story in light of your experience in church and note any insights it might yield for how you might approach the “summer squabbles” we all have without them diminishing the unity required to face the struggle ahead.
2.
Possibilities for Unity
Given the massive and blasphemous disunity of the church, it is perhaps worth a look at what I have called Paul’s “Charter” of membership in Eph.4:4-6. Is it possible or at least thinkable that this charter might be a set of “essentials” that give us enough to stand together without pressing us into a stifling uniformity. A recent book bears the title What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?[8] Though Paul would probably not put it that way, his list here might be what he would put forward. Let’s play with it a little and see how it might work.
Paul begins with the “body,” the church. Well, we all believe in the church, the people of God. There is no particular form or polity specified (save the five gifts mentioned in the next section which except for “apostles” are relatively uncontroversial). The Spirit is a reality in every branch of the church, again without any further specification. The “hope” to which Paul points is the canonically authorized “mystery” he has unfolded in chs.1-3 which all Christians ought to be working for and towards.
The “Lord” Jesus as the fully divine/fully human Savior is implied by Paul’s calling him kurios (“Lord,” the Greek translation for the unpronounceable divine name YHWH in the Old Testament). That, but no theories about it, every church affirm, otherwise why bear the name “Christian” (“Christ ones”). Faith as a core of convictions that authorize and animate the “hope” we share is a bit more expansive but surely not so detailed that we would find ourselves dividing over its formulation. “Baptism,” though much debated, need not be divisive. It’s character as an “induction ceremony” into the service of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people seems to me to cut beneath and behind the debates about its mode and meaning that have divided us.
The sovereign God, full of wisdom and power, love and mercy, committed to bringing all things to their appointed end seems something we can agree to as well.
It does not seem insuperable to me that the church could stand together on this Pauline charter of membership while allowing sufficient latitude for the kinds of debates and discussions and even disagreements that comprise church history. It would require the “humility,” “gentleness,” and “patience” Paul enjoins on us in 4:1-3, but, isn’t that the point after all? Would not such an effort in such a way be a powerful testimony to the world, especially in light of our history of letting these things divide and diminish us. What do you think? Is this just a pipe dream? Can you imagine this?
3.
Steve Addison identifies “rapid mobilization” as his fourth characteristic of Movements that Change the World.
Paul does not address rapid mobilization as such in this section. However, movements like God’s counter-revolutionary movement need the capacity to recruit, train, and mobilize members into active service as rapidly as possible. A basic “charter” of membership like we just talked about would aid in this because we could train and equip recruits more quickly. I know this sounds counterintuitive because we have been socialized to believe that extensive training is required before people can be sent out in ministry.
Study of effective movements, however, proves otherwise. Our experience of God’s love and call to service is the fuel that drives the movement, not extensive training and quality control. Though there’s nothing inherently wrong with those things, they don’t serve the church as God’s movement particularly well. That’s something you might chew on as well here.
Do our systems of training, testing, and quality control serve or hinder our ministries? What’s your experience been? Can we trust God the Spirit to oversee the work others are called to do? That we are called to do? Have we over-professionalized and over-managed the work God has given us? Can we rapidly mobilize to respond to the Spirit’s leading? Worth thinking about I think.
[1] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 191.
[2] A lyric from Josh Wilson’s song “Fall Apart” (http://www.songlyrics.com/josh-wilson/fall-apart-lyrics/).
[3] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 9 at http://www.verber.com/mark/xian/weight-of-glory.pdf.
[4] There are some situations, of course, e.g. marital abuse and betrayal, where the road to healing can only be taken by separation. I have in mind here the more everyday kind of pettiness, pride, envy, and so on that everyone in the body has to deal with and which causes so much division for so little reason.
[5] Snodgrass, Ephesians, 196.
[6] We recall at this point that we call God “Father” because he has a “Son”. It is a relational description not an ascription of gender to our God. God is not male!
[7] George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Books, 1996), 222-23.
[8]Martin Thielen, What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian? (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).
