Ephesians

Our Unity in the Spirit

Division among Christians brings shame and disrepute to the church, to Christ, and to His gospel. Christian unity brings glory to Jesus Christ and demonstrates the reality of God’s grace, love, and forgiveness. In other words, our oneness is our witness!

Paul shows us in Ephesians 4:3-6 that keeping the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace comes down to this one thing: oneness. Unity is oneness. Not sameness, but a special oneness centered on a few core essentials—one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God the Father. Some would seize on the word unity in verse 3 and say, “That’s the problem with the church today! It’s not unified! We need to gather all the churches and all the denominations into one big church. Then the church will have power, because there is power in numbers! Churches of the world, unite!”

From the world’s point of view, such feelings certainly make sense. Those sentiments lead to a move toward ecumenism, toward a single universal church, in the world today. But those who pursue a unification of all church bodies into a single, worldwide church body miss what the Bible teaches about the unity of the Spirit.

The Sources of Our Diversity

In Ephesians 4:3 Paul declares two great facts that we must clearly understand about church unity. First, he says we must allow for differences among Christians. We must make every diligent effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Clearly, there would be no need for this exhortation if differences did not exist.

The fact is, there is no group in the world so gloriously diverse and heterogeneous as the church. Its glory is that it is made up of different kinds of people. In the church of Jesus Christ, you find rich and poor, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, black, brown, and white, male and female, sitting side by side in one body, waiting upon one hope, worshiping one Lord, practicing one faith, sharing in one baptism, praying to one God and Father, unified by one Spirit.

But let’s be honest: We do not ignore these boundaries easily. Friction often arises from our differences. Those frictions exist today, and they existed in Paul’s time. In Philippians 4, Paul addresses two ladies in the Philippian church who cannot get along with each other. He says, in verse 2, “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.”

Are these women just a couple of troublemakers who bicker with each other because they have too much time on their hands? No, Paul makes it clear that these women are committed Christian workers who have labored hard for Jesus Christ. “I ask you, loyal yokefellow,” Paul continues in verse 3, “help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.”

Churches have been shattered by divisions over issues as small as the color of the carpet—and as large as the direction and philosophy of a church’s overall ministry. Frequently, spiritual gifts (see the following lesson) are a source of friction, because God distributes different gifts in every congregation, and our natural human tendency is to disparage the gifts of others while exalting our own.

So there are differences among Christians—differences of class, race, background, viewpoint, philosophy, attitude, personality, and spiritual gifts. Those differences offer fertile ground for friction.

The Source of Our Unity

The second fact Paul brings to our attention is crucial for us to understand if we are to transcend our differences and fulfill the command of Christ that we become one in Him: Beneath our differences, there is a basic unity that is given to the church by the Spirit. That unity exists right now, throughout the church, even between Christians who are at odds with each other. The fact that they don’t feel unified and act unified does not cancel out the fact that they already have the unity of the Spirit among them. They simply need to act worthy of a unity that already exists.

Notice the apostle does not say we are to produce unity; he says we are to keep a unity that has already been produced by the Holy Spirit. There is a unity that is already there by virtue of the very existence of the church, because the Holy Spirit is the bond which holds the church together. Here is the fundamental error of modern ecumenical movements. By and large, they strive to generate a man-made institutional unity, ignoring the spiritual unity that already exists in the Holy Spirit. The power of the church is not the power of numbers, but the power of one—one indwelling Spirit, who leads us in worshiping one Lord Jesus, in practicing one faith, in praying to one Father.

The church is not a conglomeration of individuals who happen to agree upon certain things. It is bound together as a spiritual organism in a bodily unity. It cannot therefore derive power from the sum of its numbers. It derives its power solely from the Spirit of God who binds these individuals into a unified, spiritual whole.

So we are forced to choose between two different kinds of unity. One is an external unity, a worldly unity, a unity of numbers that seeks to make its plans and enforce its will on society by the power of persuasion. The other is an internal unity, a spiritual unity, a unity of genuine oneness that is joined to God’s eternal plan and manifests the supernatural power of God.

We can violate that unity by our actions, we can grieve the Holy Spirit by our sinful behavior toward one another in the body of Christ, we can bring shame and dishonor to the gospel by sinning against our Spirit-given unity, but we cannot create or destroy what the Spirit Himself has produced. The church can be divided organizationally, but the body of Christ can never be disjointed.

In Ephesians 4:5-6, Paul describes the real unity of the body of Christ, which he breaks down into seven elements: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all. The unity of the body gathers around the three Persons of the Trinity—the Spirit, the Son, and the Father. It includes all the essentials of the Christian faith—the fellowship of the saints in one body, our hope of salvation, the doctrinal truths of our faith, and our baptism. Let’s examine each of these elements in turn:

1. One body

We are one body. The apostle does not say one organization or one institution; he uses a specific word-picture, describing the church as a body. While an organization is an assemblage of departments or units, a body is a living organism. A body consists of thousands of cells with one mutually shared life. That shared life and shared unity exists despite surface divisions and distinctions, even despite differences of culture and language.

I have had the privilege of traveling around the world, meeting with Christians in widespread places around the earth. I have discovered that it is easy to recognize this fundamental unity wherever I go. I may not understand the words of an African, Latin, European, or Asian brother in Christ, and he may not understand mine—but within moments of our first handshake, we both know that we jointly share one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God the Father. We know it, we feel it, we revel in the warmth of the Spirit, who joins our two spirits together in the bond of peace.

It is important to remember how a body comes about. A body begins with a single cell, which divides into two cells, then four cells, then eight, then sixteen, and on and on and on until it becomes a fully formed mature body—but every cell shares the life of the original cell. You and I are cells in a single body— “one body,” as Paul says—that extends geographically around the world and chronologically back to the very first followers of Christ.

2. One Spirit

This first exalted truth brings us to the next element: one Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the great, eternal, invisible Person who is the power behind the Christian church. The power of the church never comes from its numbers, but from the one Spirit who makes us one body.

The Spirit is the true power of the church, and there is only one Spirit. He is the same everywhere, no matter where the church exists, in every place and in every age. That is why the truth remains unchangeable—the passing of time does not change it. That is why the church is not dependent on many or few, or on the wisdom of its membership. It depends on one factor only: the one Spirit.

3. One hope

Paul links the first two elements, one body and one Spirit, with the one hope. These three elements link together because the Spirit forms and prepares the body for its ultimate goal, which is the one hope of the church. That hope is expressed succinctly in Paul’s statement, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Glory is the hope of the church. As the apostle John expresses it, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). That is our hope—a hope that one day we will no longer be frail, stumbling people as we are now, but we shall finally be like Christ.

Wherever I go, whomever I meet, I find this to be the one hope of Christians. No matter what their denominational or doctrinal stamp, all Christian believers hold a common hope. All Christians expect a transformation, in which we will eventually be like Christ. That is our one shared hope.

4. One Lord

The next three elements gather about the second Person of the Trinity, the Son—one Lord. I think it is significant that the apostle does not say “one Savior,” though it is true there is only one Savior. Everywhere in Scripture it is only when we acknowledge Jesus as Lord that He becomes our Savior. So the issue Paul centers on is that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Lord means “ultimate authority.” As Paul puts it in the letter to the Philippians, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11). He is the supreme Person of the universe. There is no other Lord; there will never be another Lord.

Peter puts it bluntly: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). That is why the early Christians could not say, “Caesar is Lord,” as the persecutors of the early church tried to get them to do. Torture and the threat of death could not wring those words from the lips of a Christian, because there is no other Lord. There is only one Lord, the man Christ Jesus, who lived and loved and died among us, who rose again and lives today, the Lord of the universe. That is why John says that anyone who denies this is not a Christian, he has the “spirit of the antichrist” (1 John 4:3). Paul says a man can only say, “Jesus is Lord,” by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3).

5. One faith

The next element is one faith. This does not refer to faith in general—the ability to believe. Everyone believes in something. Atheists believe in the proposition that there is no God, even while evidence continues to mount that our universe was carefully planned and delicately balanced. James 2:19 tells us, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder”—but that is certainly not the one faith Paul talks about here.

When Paul says “one faith,” he means that one body of truth that God has revealed in His Word. There is only one body of revealed truth, only one faith. This is what the New Testament refers to as “the salvation we share…the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3).

The one faith is linked to the one Lord, because our faith is centered in the revealed truth about Jesus Christ. There may be many questions on minor details of the life and message of Christ, but there is no disagreement as to the fundamental elements of our faith—that Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose again to save us from our sins. God has not given us different faiths for different cultures—one faith for the Jews, another for the Gentiles. No, there is one faith, one total panorama of truth that God has delivered to us through the prophets and apostles, forming a seamless, self-explanatory truth.

No one can truthfully say, as we sometimes hear, “Well, I have my truth and you have yours. I have my Christ and you have yours. I have my faith and you have yours.” There is only one truth, only one historic Jesus, and only one faith.

6. One baptism

The next element: one baptism. Tragically, it is on the issue of baptism that many Christians divide. Some say, “Immersion is the only true mode of baptism.” Others reply, “Sprinkling is the only way!” Some believe in infant baptism, while others say baptism is only for adults. Some do not practice the symbol of water baptism at all, believing that baptism can only mean being spiritually immersed into the character and nature of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Despite all these arguments over the symbol for what Paul calls “one baptism,” we can agree that we are baptized into one body by one Spirit, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:13, and we are baptized into His death, as Romans 6:3 says.

7. One God and Father of all

The last of these seven unities is “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6). Here is the ultimate aim of all the other elements of our Christian unity. As Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba [Daddy], Father’” (Romans 8:15). He is approachable; He is caring; He is our loving Father.

But Paul wants us to understand that God is even more than this. God is over all, and through all, and in all. He is the end and the beginning. He is close and approachable, yet He is also vast and deep and beyond our comprehension. Once we gain an appreciation for God’s love and God’s infinite, awesome glory, we realize He can only be properly addressed, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9).

That is the nature of Christian unity—not a union to be created, but a unity that already exists, gathered around certain truths that every follower of Christ holds dear. As we bring new believers to Christ, the unity of the Spirit will be produced in them by the Spirit. We maintain that unity by practicing love, acceptance, and forgiveness toward others in the body of Christ.

There will be some who are weak in the faith, who may not have all their doctrinal T’s crossed and their theological I’s dotted. But Paul tells us in Romans 14:1 to receive the weaker brothers and sisters. Recognize a brother who manifests the experience of the unity of the Spirit, no matter what his label may be.

Occasionally, we will encounter some within a church or a Christian movement who claim to be Christians, but who deny one or more of the seven fundamental elements we have just examined. Understand, they are moving in a different direction. They do not share the one hope and one faith that is yours through the one Lord, Jesus Christ. We cannot join in evangelistic or ministry endeavors with those who deny this fundamental unity. Why not? Because our actions are determined by our beliefs. Paul makes this plain: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14).

This is not to say we are to shun non-Christians. Clearly, there are areas of cooperation that we can have with those who do not share the unity of the Spirit, and in the process, perhaps they might even be won to Christ. We can join with non-Christians in the workplace, in social programs, in medical programs, in government, in education, and many other enterprises in life. We can invite non-Christians to “seeker-friendly” Bible studies and church services, where they can be introduced to biblical truth and the joy of Christian fellowship in a relaxed, informal atmosphere.

The Bond of Peace

Once we truly understand where our Christian unity comes from—that it is given by the Holy Spirit, not created by ourselves—our behavior in the church will be transformed. We begin to realize that our job is not to create unity, but to live in a way that is worthy of the unity of the Spirit that is already ours. Instead of striving toward unity in our own strength, we will simply try to align our lives and our actions with the unity that already exists among us through the Holy Spirit.

This is what Paul means when he says, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). If we begin to think of our brothers and sisters in Christ as one with us through the Spirit, then our actions will be transformed. As prisoners of Christ, we will become more aware of the fact that our quarreling and struggling against one another is at odds with the fundamental reality that we are one with each other in the bond of peace. When we are tempted to feelings of resentment or to such actions as attacking one another or spreading rumors against one another, we should stop and ask God to bless the other person.

“That person is my brother or sister in Christ,” we should pray, “and we are one together in the Spirit. Lord, show me how I can reach out to my brother or sister in this time of irritation. Make me a blessing and not a hindrance in that person’s life. Show me practical ways I can work to maintain the unity between us that you have made possible through your Spirit. Replace my annoyance with understanding, my impatience with forbearance, my grudges with forgiveness, my bitterness with a sweet spirit, my resentment with love, my hardened heart with a tender heart. Lord, I am Your prisoner. I am ready to take orders from You.”

Study Questions

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Before you begin your study this week:

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  Pray and ask God to speak to you through His Holy Spirit.
  
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  Use only the Bible for your answers.
  
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  Write down your answers and the verses you used.
  
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  Answer the “Challenge” questions if you have the time and want to do them.
  
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  Share your answers to the “Personal” questions with the class only if you want to share them.
  

First Day: Read the commentary on Ephesians 4:1-6.

1. What meaningful or new thought did you find in the commentary on Ephesians 4:1-6 or from your teacher’s lecture? What personal application did you choose to apply to your life?

2. Look for a verse in the lesson to memorize this week. Write it down and post it in a prominent place. Make a real effort to learn the verse and its “address” (reference of where it is found in the Bible).

Second Day: Read Ephesians 4:7-16, concentrating on verses 7-10.

1. The apostle Paul continues speaking to Christians. Who has been given a gift? What is the gift? Who determined the gift? (Ephesians 4:7)

2. Paul reminds us of what Jesus Christ has done. What does Ephesians 4:8 say about Jesus Christ? (Note: the term “men” in this verse refers to human beings, whether male or female).

3. How does Paul explain what “he ascended” implies? (Ephesians 4:9)

4. What do you learn about this from the following verses?

John 16:28

1 John 4:14

5. a. Where is the Lord Jesus now? (Ephesians 4:10)

b. Paul sometimes repeats himself, re-emphasizing important truths. How does Ephesians 1:20-23 reaffirm the truth expressed in Ephesians 4:10?

6. Personal: Have you submitted yourself to the Lordship of Jesus Christ? Take a moment and search your heart. Is there someone or something you put before Him in your life? Won’t you pray now and ask His forgiveness and make Him Lord of all areas of your life?

Third Day: Review Ephesians 4:7-16, concentrating on verses 7-12.

1. a. As we read in Ephesians 4:7, grace has been given to each of us. In this passage “grace” refers to spiritual gifts that have been given to us. How does Romans 12:6a confirm this?

b. All Christians have a spiritual gift. From Ephesians 4:11, name some of the spiritual gifts God has given to the body of Christ.

2. From Ephesians 4:12, what is the purpose of these spiritual gifts?

3. Read 1 Peter 4:10-11. What do you learn about how we should use our spiritual gifts, and about the ultimate goal of these gifts?

4. What do you learn about our Christian service from the following verses?

Galatians 5:13

Ephesians 6:7

5. Personal: What is your attitude toward your brothers and sisters in Christ? Do you eagerly serve them? Name some ways you can help the body of Christ. What is your attitude toward those who endeavor to help you grow in the Lord? Will you take time this week to express your gratitude to them and to the Lord for giving them to you?

Fourth Day: Review Ephesians 4:7-16, concentrating on verses 11-14.

1. a. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are to build up the body of Christ. From Ephesians 4:13, describe the desired result of their exercise.

b. Read Colossians 1:28-29. How is this same result accomplished and by whose power?

c. Challenge: Reread Ephesians 4:11-13. How does this compare to Colossians 1:28-29?

2. From Ephesians 4:14, what does Paul call the spiritually immature, and what does he say happens to them?

3. Read 1 Corinthians 3:1-3. What characterizes the spiritually immature?

4. Read Hebrews 5:12-14. Christian maturity does not depend on your physical age or on how long you’ve been a Christian. Contrast the spiritually immature person with the spiritually mature.

5. Personal: We all like to think of ourselves as spiritually mature, but take a long look at your life, including your attitude and actions. How does it compare to the above Scriptures? Do you train yourself to distinguish good from evil? Are you worldly? Jealous? Quarrelsome?

Fifth Day: Read Ephesians 4:7-16, concentrating on verse 14.

1. From Ephesians 4:14, describe the teaching of some people that you may encounter.

2. What do you learn from the following passages regarding those who don’t teach the truth or who twist the truth and lead people astray?

1 Timothy 4:1-2

Acts 20:29-31a

Romans 16:17-18

Galatians 1:6-9

Colossians 2:4-8

2 Timothy 4:2-4

2 Corinthians 11:4,13-15

1 John 4:5-6

3. Titus 2:11-15 sums up what should be the core of all Christian teaching. What are the key points in this passage?

4. What critical lesson can we learn from the Bereans in Acts 17:11?

5. Personal. There are many false doctrines parading themselves as Christianity. When someone teaches you something, do you search God’s Word to see if it is true and lines up with the entire Bible, or do you accept the few Scriptures verses that are given you without checking the context? You are responsible for what you accept as truth. What will your attitude be from now on?

Sixth Day: Review Ephesians 4:7-16, concentrating on verses 15-16.

1. a. From Ephesians 4:15, what type of speech characterizes those who are becoming spiritually mature?

b. Challenge: Can a person speak the truth but not speak in love? Are you guilty of this?

2. As we have seen over and over, God desires that we, as individuals and as the body of Christ, grow to become like Christ. From Ephesians 4:16, describe how the body of Christ is to grow.

3. a. Read Romans 12:4-10. From verses 4-8, describe some of the ways the body of Christ builds itself up.

b. From Romans 12:9-10, what actions and attitudes should characterize all believers?

4. Personal: In what areas have you been convicted or encouraged by today’s lesson?
Ephesians Lesson 13

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