Ephesians 4:1–6 · WEB Classic
1 I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called, 2 with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, even as you also were called in one hope of your calling, 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in us all.
It is possible to agree enthusiastically that the church is one body and then discover that a particular member of it has parked in the place you prefer. The doctrine remains splendid. The person has suddenly become a problem. Most of us do not need an especially dramatic occasion to discover the distance between confessing our unity and enjoying its practical implications.
Paul, the prisoner in the Lord, urges believers to walk worthily of the calling with which they were called. Their conduct should fit the belonging God has given them. “Worthily” does not turn the calling into wages for sufficient moral improvement. It asks how people already welcomed through Christ should live with the other people he has welcomed.
The order matters. God has made them alive in Christ, reconciled them, welcomed them into his household, and given them his Spirit. Their obedience answers those gifts. A church can go wrong by treating conduct as the price of admission, but it can also go wrong by treating admission as the end of God’s concern with conduct. Paul connects the new life to a new walk.
The prison reference makes the appeal concrete. Paul’s faithfulness has not protected him from discomfort. He asks them to practice a worthy walk while demonstrating that Christ’s lordship remains meaningful under adverse circumstances. Their calling is larger than the arrangements that would make obedience convenient.
Humility that bears with people
The conduct begins with lowliness, humility, patience, and bearing with one another in love. These qualities concern relationships in which something actually irritates or inconveniences us. Patience has very little to do when everyone behaves exactly as we would prefer. Bearing with someone means love continues where immediate personal satisfaction does not.
Humility refuses to make our own importance the organizing principle of church life. We can hold a true conviction arrogantly, demand that everyone adopt our preferences, and then call the resulting conflict persecution. Paul does not ask us to surrender truth. He asks us to carry ourselves in a way consistent with people who have received grace.
Philippians 2:1–8 develops the same relationship between grace received and humility practiced. Paul appeals to encouragement in Christ, comfort from love, and fellowship in the Spirit. He then tells believers to reject selfish ambition and consider the interests of others. Their shared gifts become reasons to stop arranging every relationship around their own importance.
Christ supplies the pattern. He takes the form of a servant and humbles himself in obedience even to death. The people learning humility are following a Lord whose service was far more costly than allowing someone else a preference. It becomes difficult to explain why the one who belongs to the crucified Christ cannot possibly be expected to endure an inconvenient conversation.
Bearing with one another does not mean protecting abuse or pretending serious sin does not matter. Love tells the truth and seeks another person’s good. It also refuses to turn every awkward habit, minor offense, or difference in judgment into a moral emergency. Some Christians are prepared to die for the faith and equally prepared to split the church over the thermostat.
Believers are to be eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The Spirit has created the unity; the church must guard it. We are not manufacturing a new people by discovering enough things we like about one another. We already belong to one body through Christ.
Paul’s appeal to Philemon shows what happens when this belonging reaches an unequal relationship. Onesimus is to be received as a beloved brother, and Philemon is asked to receive him as he would receive Paul himself. Paul then addresses the possibility of a wrong or a debt and offers to have it charged to his own account (Philemon 16–19). He does not make brotherhood a pleasant word carefully insulated from the difficult parts of the situation.
That is a substantial request to make of a man with the social power to determine another person’s treatment. Christ’s claim upon Onesimus changes what Philemon must recognize in the man before him. Paul also makes his own willingness to bear a cost part of the appeal. Unity is being practiced through reception and responsibility, not merely endorsed as an attractive subject for a sermon.
Most of us will meet this obligation in less dramatic circumstances. The person testing our patience may talk too long, see a practical question differently, or need more help than we expected to give. Those things do not establish a right to contempt. We are learning to treat an existing bond as real when our immediate preferences make it inconvenient.
“Keep” assumes a gift already received and a responsibility that remains. We can neither create the body by agreeing to overlook Christ nor preserve its health while making every preference a condition of fellowship. Paul’s humility and patience concern how people inhabit an existing relationship. The unity becomes visible when believers treat their shared belonging as more substantial than the advantages they might gain by dividing.
Peace is also more demanding than an agreement to avoid uncomfortable subjects. If a church maintains quiet by concealing deception or refusing necessary correction, the quiet has been purchased at the expense of the truth on which its unity rests. The bond of peace is consistent with the Lord who reconciled the body. It calls us to pursue truthful relationships with the patience required to repair what sin has damaged.
One body and one Lord
Paul names one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all. The repeated “one” identifies the shared reality beneath the command. Christian unity has substance. It is grounded in the Father, Son, and Spirit and in the common confession and belonging of Christ’s people.
This is not an instruction to declare every religious claim equally true. The “one faith” has content, and the “one Lord” has an identity. Unity cannot be preserved by abandoning the truth that constitutes the church. At the same time, our shared allegiance forbids treating fellow Christians as disposable whenever they fail to mirror our personality.
The one baptism publicly marks belonging to the one Lord and his people. The point in this sentence is shared Christian identity rather than a full explanation of every question surrounding baptism. Paul gathers what believers have in common to show why their relationships should bear the marks of peace.
The Father is over all, through all, and in us all. Paul is describing the household whose shared faith, hope, and Lord he has just named. The brother we find difficult does not cease to belong to that Father when he becomes inconvenient to us. We can speak truthfully to him, correct him when necessary, and still make room for him at the table. His place was not ours to award in the first place.