Humility and Unity

I invite you to turn with me to Ephesians and to chapter 4, and we’ll read from verse 1.

Ephesians 4:1:

“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. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.’ (In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

Well, we’ve picked up our studies again in Ephesians 4. I invite you to turn there, if you will. Let me read again the first three verses:

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.

Gracious God, with our Bibles open before us, we humbly pray that you will illumine the page to us and grant that as we understand, so that we might accept your Word, that we might receive it with meekness, that it might be planted in us. For the glory of your name we ask it. Amen.

Well, we’ve come, as we said last time, in what was essentially an introduction to an introduction, to the point at which Paul moves largely from the doctrinal section to the practical section. It’s always dangerous to state it in such categorical terms, because it doesn’t fit entirely. But nevertheless, broadly speaking, he does what he does in other of his epistles: lays down the doctrinal foundations, and having made them very clear, he then makes application of them as he brings the implications home to his readers.

Now, we said last time—and we won’t repeat ourselves apart from this—that the order of that is vitally important: that the doctrine gives the basis for the action, so that it is because all of these things are true of us in Christ that we now have to respond to these exhortations to live in the family of Christ and for Christ. And it is a reminder to us that while justification—the work of God’s grace for us—takes place outside of ourselves and is instantaneous and is complete, that the work of sanctification—being conformed to the image of Jesus—is not a feeling that we feel, but rather, it is an action to which we’re called. And it is on account of the impetus of divine grace that we are then able to respond to the call so that we might do as God’s Word tells us to do.

We said not only is the order important, but we also said that it is vitally important that we do not separate doctrine and practice. To become totally encapsulated in a concern about doctrine and to, as it were, pass by on the other side when we are confronted by need is to fall foul of the clear instruction of the Bible and to miss it entirely. And to immediately always be wanting to get on to activity and activity and activity that is not grounded in the verities of gospel truth, then, again, we will go just absolutely wrong.

The work of sanctification is not a feeling that we feel, but rather, it is an action to which we’re called.

And so, it is important that we have this clear in our mind, so that in going forward, because so much of it is hortatory—“Come on now, do this; stop doing that; you need to do that”—unless we constantly say to ourselves, “Now, wait a minute. It is doctrine and then it is practice. It is practice on the basis of what is true.” And that will save us.

And so, for example, in chapter 2, he has explained that the believers in Ephesus “have been saved.” Famous verses, Ephesians 2:8, 9, and 10. If you’ve memorized the Bible at all, you’ll know this. And he has pointed out that they were not saved by good works but, in verse 10, that they were saved “for good works.” They have not been put in a right relationship with God on account of their endeavors, but having, by God’s grace, on the strength of what Jesus has accomplished, been put in a right relationship with God, then the endeavors of the believers point to the reality of that relationship. And that relationship is a relationship which is not simply vertical—between an individual and God, who has redeemed—but it is also horizontal, bringing us into a relationship with one another.

And that, of course, has been the great pulsing, driving, central focus of Paul as he has driven home to these Ephesians, who’ve come—some of them from a gentile background, some of them from a Jewish background—to understand that where they were once alienated from God by their sin and they were hostile in their relationships with one another,[1] on the immensity of God’s amazing love towards them, all that has now been changed. And it has not been changed because the gentiles tried to be a little less anti-Semitic or that the Jews tried not to hold so firmly to some of the things that they had said, so that they sort of collapsed their convictions to make life better for one another. No. Both of them, understanding their background, coming to understand the wonder of who Jesus is and what he’s done, have been “born again to a living hope [by] the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”[2] and have now been put together as an entirely new family.

And it is to that family, the called of God—we’ve been called out; we’ve been called to; we’ve been called together—it is to that family that Paul now issues this call: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you…” This is not something casual to him. “I urge you to walk, or to conduct your life, in a manner that is worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” In other words, the doctrine that they have believed is now to be lived. Or, if you like, he’s saying to them, to us, “You are God’s children, so live in a manner that makes that obvious.”

Perhaps you will recall that your parents may have said something similar to you. You were going out into the community, or you were going to be involved in something at school, in a community context, and they had said to you, “Now, remember that your name is Alistair Begg—that you’re not out there simply on your own. You belong to John Begg and to Louise Begg, to Maureen Begg and to Kathleen Begg. And every breath you take and every move you make is directly related to the fact that you are in that family.”

Unity and Purity

Now, that is what Paul is saying here: “You are the children of God. Live like the children of God.” And in the course of developing this in chapter 4, he is highlighting two things. One is unity, to which we will come now, and the other is purity, to which we will come later.

I want just to say a word about this purity. If your Bible is open to chapter 4, notice what he says in verse 17: “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.” Now, remember, in 4:1 he said, “I’m urging you to walk in a manner that is worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called.” In other words, “You’ve got a whole different walk now that you have been made a member of Christ’s family. Christ is your Elder Brother. There are people all around you, and you are walking together.” In the ’60s, we used to sing, “And we will walk with one another, we will walk hand in hand, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”[3] Well, that’s what he’s saying here. He says, “You’re going to be walking in such a way that makes it clear to people that you’re different.”

So, for example, he goes on to say, a little further down, “You don’t want to be joining them in their greedy pursuit of immorality.” It’s a quite graphic picture: the idea of stuffing themselves, as it were, with “every kind of impurity.” You can see that in verse 19: “They”—that is, the company from which we have been redeemed—they’ve “become callous”; they’ve “given themselves up to sensuality”; they’re “greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” This is Ephesus, first-century Ephesus, and the Christians are living in that environment.

People say, “What an amazing thing it is in the twenty-first century!” There’s nothing new under the sun. Nobody has invented anything new at all. We can go back two thousand years and find the same corruption, the same expressions of man’s inhumanity to man, man’s defiance of God’s law, man’s desire to please himself and do whatever he wants to do. And Paul says, “Listen: you’re no longer in that group. Therefore, don’t let anybody think you are in that group. You’re not driving around,” he says… (They weren’t driving around; maybe on a donkey and a cart.) “But no, it’s not going to be enough for you to have your favorite verse on your bumper—that’s not going to carry any weight at all—or that you are opposed to abortion, or whatever it might be. Do whatever you want with those things, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that by your lip and by your life, it will be apparent that you no longer walk in the place you once walked. You no longer have your mind filled with the things that they were once filled with. You have been made radically different.” In other words, he says, “What I’m providing you with is learning for living. I want you,” he says, “to live in the light of what you have learned. And when you do, people will know.”

Oliver Twist was a poor soul, wasn’t he? He lived in the workhouse. He was a helpless character under the jurisdiction of Mr. Bumble, and then caught up with Fagin, and “You’ve got to pick a pocket or two.”[4] All of that. His life was marked by all of that. And then suddenly, somebody saw him in the streets of London, and he’s walking around. He had a very nice hat on and a velvet jacket, and his shoes were polished. And he wasn’t saying, “Hello, there. How are you doing?” He was saying, “Good morning. How nice to see you.” And people said, “What the world happened to Oliver Twist?” Well, what did happen to him? He didn’t clean up his act. He was adopted. Mr. Brownlow adopted him. And as a result, everything changed. He had new clothes. He had new conversation. He was new. And now his lifestyle bore testimony to the relationship into which he had been brought.

In a far more wonderful way, that is the story of the gospel. He reaches down into our lives, with our toes sticking, as it were, through the soles of our shoes, and adopts us into his family; clothes us with the righteousness of Christ; brings us into relationships with one another; changes where we walk, how we walk, and with whom we walk; and says to us, “You belong to me now. Now make it obvious to the world that you do belong to me, in purity and also in unity.”

Now, the unity part of it we’ve been singing about and we will spend the balance of our time on. Essential ingredients in the cause of unity are provided there in verse 2. It’s almost like a refresher course in our studies in the fruit of the Spirit earlier on in the year, or in the last year. These five characteristics are pointing us always and inevitably to Jesus. Because remember, we’re walking in a manner worthy of the calling to which we’ve been called. What is our call? Well, we’ve been called “to be conformed to the image of [Jesus].”[5] That’s Romans chapter 8. You can read it for yourself. Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians, says, “And here’s what’s happening to you: we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus.”[6]

Now, what will that then show up like in a community? Because remember, he’s writing here not in terms of individuals, but he is writing to them in plurality. Here is the family in Ephesus. Here are these church congregations gathered in different places. “Now,” he says, “I want you to make sure that you maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And if you’re going to do it, let me tell you five essential ingredients in order to bake this cake of unity.”

We’ve been called to be conformed to the image of Jesus.

Number one: humility. Humility. Now, that was not viewed as a virtue in first-century Ephesus. It’s important that we understand that. So people would not say, “Oh, now that’s a nice thing to be.” No. The average person in first-century Ephesus would have said, “What is that about? Humility? Lowliness? That’s ridiculous!”

How do you think it’s viewed in twenty-first-century America? How many of you… This is rhetorical; it doesn’t matter. A number of you will have read The Road to Character by David Brooks. If you picked this book up and just began to read it, you would definitely want to have it. You would buy it. You just would want it, because the beginning is fantastic. Yeah, I’ll give you a little bit of the beginning. Yeah, I will.

He talks about the fact that he’s driving home in his car, and he hears a broadcast on the radio called Command Performance, and the episode that he heard was broadcast the day after V–J Day on August 15, 1945. I can’t read this for you. We don’t have time. But he makes the point that as he listened to the program, driving, it struck him how low-key everything was. Bing Crosby opened by saying, “What can you say at a time like this? You can’t throw your skimmer in the air. That’s for run-of-the-mill holidays. I guess all anybody can do is thank God it’s over.”

He then says that the tone of the program was marked by a sort of gravity and by a sense of awe. It “wasn’t just a matter of mood or style,” he said, because

the people on [the] broadcast had been part of one of the most historic victories ever known. But they didn’t go around telling themselves how great they were. They didn’t print up bumper stickers commemorating their own awesomeness. Their first instinct was to remind themselves that they were [the beneficiaries of God’s goodness]. … They intuitively resisted the natural human tendency toward excessive self-love.

Then he says,

I arrived home before the program was over and listened to [the] radio show in my driveway for a time. Then I went inside and turned on a football game. A quarterback threw a short pass to a wide receiver, who was tackled almost immediately for a two-yard gain. The defensive player did what all professional athletes do these days in moments of personal accomplishment. He did a self-puffing victory dance, as the camera lingered.

Here we go: “It occurred to me that I had just watched more self-celebration after a two-yard gain than I had heard after the United States won World War II.” He says, “[Are we really living in a generation where people think] that every thought, feeling, and achievement should be immediately shared with the world at large[?]”[7]

It really does—my friends, it really does have something to say about an increasing preoccupation that I detect; I don’t share. I don’t say it to my credit, but I’m not interested in it—with the constant referencing of social media to see how many people like me, how many people listen to me, how many people have been responding to my amazing insights into whatever it was and seeing again the wonders and glories of these remarkable children and grandchildren which the whole world is waiting to see. There’s a balance, isn’t there, between genuine affection and appreciation and a kind of gushing self-orientation that is, frankly, nauseating?

The Christian church is supposed to look different in the matter of humility. Paul did it. Remember, he writes to the Corinthians, his second letter; he says, “Listen: we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”[8] “What, after all, is Paul? What, after all, is Apollos? What, after all, is Cephas?” he writes. “Only servants through whom you came to believe. One plants. Another waters. Only God makes things grow.”[9] In other words, gifts are gifts. No matter how influential you or I may apparently be, no matter how appreciated we may be, or whatever else it is, when we put our heads on the pillow at night, we know that what Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 4 is the right question: “Who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If [you then] received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”[10] I mean, spiritual pride has got to be the ugliest of all pride. If God gives spiritual gifts that enables somebody to do something, that extends his kingdom, sets forward his purposes, woe betide that individual if he forgets that it’s a gift.

“I urge you to walk worthy of the calling to which you have been called, in all humility.” Oh, don’t you wish it had said “in some humility” or “in a little humility”? No. The comprehensive nature of the challenge is such that we know that only the enabling grace of God will temper our self-assertiveness and our natural tendency. Only his grace. But it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. That’s why you go to the seat that is the low seat. You don’t get put there; you go there. That is why we do what we do: because we are called to do. It’s not a feeling. It’s an action. It’s a divinely enabled action, but an action nevertheless. Some of us are running out of time for this as we get older. May God help us. Humility.

Pride, you see, lurks behind all discord. Pride lurks behind all discord. I guarantee you, if it’s in a sports team, if it’s in an office, if it’s a music group: pride. Sue and I watched, the other night, the Brian Wilson kind of bio piece—Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. And, you know, the undercurrents that were there in that—anything that was pulling them apart could ultimately be traced to pride: “I’m not getting my name where I need it. I’m not getting the solo when I want it. I’m not getting the prominence that I deserve,” you know. “It’s all about you, Brian. And you think you’re the great one, and we’re just along for the ride,” and so on. Pride. It’s pride. They should have been humble enough to recognize that in many ways, they were along for the ride. Because the guy was uniquely gifted.

I think I’ve told you before about my encounter in the candy store in Glasgow when I was a small boy. And it’s riveted in my mind, along with a little ditty that was added at Sunday school, where I had gone into this store, and I was being cared for by the lady behind the counter. There were adults in the store. And eventually, there was no one in this shop except myself and the lady. The people who had left must have remarked on the fact that I looked clean and tidy or something. They must have said nice things to me or about me. And the lady, when she poured the sweets into the paper bag and twisted the bag and handed it to me, said to me, “Sonny, flattery is like perfume. Sniff it. Don’t swallow it.”

Now, I must have been nine years old. Now I’m sixty-five years old. (Sixty-four years old. Coming fast!) But I’m thankful for that lady. I don’t know who she was. But I say it to myself all the time. And then at Sunday school we had to sing,

Rid them out, get them gone,
All the little rabbits in the fields of corn.
Envy, jealousy, malice, and pride,
They must never in my heart abide.

We had to wag our heads like that. I don’t know why you had to do that, but we did. But, okay, here we are, you know, sixty years on. You’re driving in your car, you’re looking in your rearview mirror, and you’re singing to yourself, “Rid them out, get them gone.” Humility.

You say, “Well, it’s going to be a long talk. ’Cause there’s five of these, and that’s only point one.” Don’t worry about it.

Gentleness. Gentleness. Once again, gentleness was not a virtue in first-century Ephesus. It was a self-assertive culture. The secular Greek for this word was used to describe, for example, a domesticated animal֫—an animal that was biddable, was completely disciplined and under control. That would have been a gentle one. And so he says, “You know, you may have lived your life previously as a kind of pit bull, but now you ought to live your life much more like a very biddable golden retriever.” Incidentally, I think golden retrievers do have a problem with pride. They’re very gentle, but I think they know they are. If you ever see a golden retriever, it just looks like, “Hey, look at me! I’m a golden retriever.” I can’t say that for sure, but nevertheless… So in other words, you could be doing well in gentleness and doing poor on humility. That’s the point.

When Paul urges Titus to tell his people in Crete how to live, part of his instruction to them is this: “Listen, when you go out there into the community”—Titus 3:2—“speak evil of no one, avoid quarreling, be gentle, and show perfect courtesy.”[11] Be, be, be, be, be, be. How? By the enabling grace of God.

Next, patience. Patience. The word here for “patience” means to be long-souled, s-o-u-l-e-d. In other words, the ability to take the long view of things—the ability to recognize that, you know, aggravating people need to be responded to in the way in which God has responded to us, because we ourselves are aggravating people; that Jesus’ toleration of his disciples when they were argumentative, when they were stuck on themselves, when they wanted to sit on the big chairs was his patient response, in the awareness of the fact that they were all under construction.

Surely it reveals how tough the Christian journey is when I find that I’m very, very willing to extend this kind of long-souled view to my own inadequacies and imperfections, but I’m entirely unprepared to extend it to yours. In other words, I am unduly patient with myself and horribly impatient about you. That’s why Paul is writing this way.

Forbearance fits with it, doesn’t it? In the same way, “forbearing one another in love.”[12] If you look up forbearance in the Oxford English Dictionary, it reads, in terms of definition, “Abstinence from enforcing what is due.” “From enforcing what is due.” In other words, “This is what this person deserves.” “No, but don’t do that. Bear with one another in love.”

You see, without that kind of mutual tolerance, no group of human beings will be able to live together in peace. And so love. Love actually is the one ingredient that binds all the rest together. You’ll see that as you study Colossians 3 this evening. In other words, it’s the one garment that we must never be without. It’s kind of like the all-purpose garment. “I want you to walk in a manner that’s worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called, with all humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love.”

Love is the one garment that we must never be without.

And—and this is the second point, that we’ll just begin and then stop—but, and then, “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” In other words, where you have a church family that is enthusiastic about unity, you will find them committed to these five ingredients. If you have a church family that likes always just to have big arguments about minutiae of doctrine—you know, if you move amongst them, you quickly find out that they’ve always got some predilection, some negative whatever it might be, and you realize, “We’re not getting a feel of unity here.” And we’re not talking here about the central verities of Christian doctrine and so on, but just people who like to be argumentative and a jolly nuisance.

Well, when you move amongst that community, you will realize that they are not “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” They are not enthusiastic about it. They’re not saying to themselves, “What should I do in this situation, or what should I not do in this situation, in order to establish the fact that we as a church family are actually enthusiastic about having a unity that is something different from some kind of structural, created, external unity?” Because think about it: in my lifetime, there have been all sorts of plans for church unity—the dismantling of one denomination, the folding in of another, and so on. And where are they? Mostly, they’ve just crumbled to nothing. Why? Because they’re not grounded in the very basis of unity that God provides.

Now, you’ll notice the verb is crucial: “eager to maintain the unity.” This is not a call to create unity; it is to maintain unity. We are called to live as one because we are one. The church of Jesus Christ is united. Despite all of the various bits and places and various notions, when you get to the very core of things, you can travel anywhere in the world, engage with people that speak any language in the world, and find yourself sitting next to a brother or a sister in Jesus. You don’t create that. You discover it. You enjoy it. You marvel at it: “You were brought up in Taiwan? You were raised in the Ukraine? You come from Indonesia? You were raised in liberal France? And here we are, and we are rejoicing together in the wonder of who Jesus is and what he’s done.” That is a unity which God creates. And it is that unity which is then to be maintained.

You see, these people understood it, because they had been opposed to one another. The Jew and the gentile absolutely couldn’t stand each other. But they had been made new. And it was on the basis of this doctrine, again, that their unity was established.

We need to stop. But let me finish in this way: the unity that is to be maintained is not a unity on the basis of the lowest common denominator—that is, you know, “Well, certain people don’t like the idea of…” This is how it happened in liberalism in the early part of the twentieth century in Britain: “Certain people don’t like the idea of a literal resurrection. Therefore, we don’t have to hold on to a literal resurrection. We can let that go.” Somebody else has got a problem with something else: “Well, we can drop that as well. Because really, the whole issue is unity.” And the mantra went like this: “Doctrine divides and love unites.” That’s what the people would say: “Doctrine divides and love unites.” It’s a false antithesis. The expression of God’s love for us is a doctrinal love. That’s why Paul begins as he begins. “Here,” he says, “is the basis of your unity: He has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. He’s adopted us as sons. It is in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. He has made known to us the mystery of his will. And indeed, it is the very fact of Christ himself that is the basis of our peace.”[13]

Humility—and we’ll come back to this—humility and unity are vital in a church family that longs to see unbelieving people become the committed followers of Jesus. Before Christ went to the cross, he prays in his High Priestly Prayer, in John 17, for his followers as follows: “[I pray, Father,] that they [all may] be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”[14] You see the doctrine? The unity that exists within the Godhead would be the foundation of the unity that exists in Christ.

He’s going to go on and say, “There is only one God and one Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, one Spirit, one body, one faith, one baptism.”[15] It’s all doctrinal.

To this we will return.

A brief prayer:

Father, thank you that your Word is there for us to search and to consider and to study. We bow down before it. We bow down before you. We want that these things would become increasingly true of us, Lord. We realize the gap that exists between all that we are and all that we are becoming, but we thank you for every encouragement. And we thank you for those who tolerate us, for the forbearance that keeps us together and has kept us together as a church family. Lord, help us more and more to this end, we pray, so that your grace and your peace may be our portion. For we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

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[1] See Colossians 1:21.

[2] 1 Peter 1:3 (ESV).

[3] Peter Scholtes, “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” Lyrics lightly altered.

[4] Lionel Bart, “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two” (1960).

[5] Romans 8:29 (ESV).

[6] 2 Corinthians 3:18 (paraphrased).

[7] David Brooks, The Road to Character (New York: Random House, 2015), 4–5.

[8] 2 Corinthians 4:5 (paraphrased).

[9] 1 Corinthians 3:5–7 (paraphrased).

[10] 1 Corinthians 4:7 (ESV).

[11] Titus 3:2 (paraphrased).

[12] Ephesians 4:2 (KJV).

[13] Ephesians 1:4–9; 2:14 (paraphrased).

[14] John 17:20–21 (ESV).

[15] Ephesians 4:4–6 (paraphrased).