As we enter Chapter 4 of Ephesians, it gives us a beautiful example of how Paul admonishes a Christian to WALK.
(1) Unity (4:1-16).
(2) Purity (4:17-5:17).
(3) Harmony (5:18-6:9).
(4) Victory. (6-e t)
I wonder if we have under-emphasized the importance of the Christian walk. The first three chapters deal with Christian doctrines, the wealth in Jesus Christ etc. We find it easy to tell people of the wealth we have in Christ, but lost people generally are not receptive to the walk which we have in Christ. Many people want a simple, easy Christianity with no responsibility to live right. Many people think the grace we have is cheap grace. Grace stands for God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense and it’s not cheap but precious. It is free and the riches are available to everyone who walks the Christian walk. Many of us want all the wealth of the Lord’s blessing but we do not want the walk of the Lord’s burden. I know that what I am preaching is not popular gospel but this is what I have been commissioned to do. Genuine Christianity includes wealth and walk, doctrine and duty, riches and responsibility, salvation and service, conversion and a cross.
Any other type of Christianity is false and not genuine. That’s what Paul is calling the church into in chapter 4 to walk in Unity, Purity, Harmony, and Victory.
There are two important words to notice in the opening verses of this second section of Ephesians. They are (1) "therefore" and (2) "beseech.” I’ve always been told that when you see a" therefore" in the Bible, you need to understand what is the wherefore preceding it. He is basing the requirement for a Christian to Walk based on the Wealth Christ has promised to us. The theme for our conference is one aspect of that Walk. To walk in UNITY
Paul is saying in Chapters 1-3 that "God has blessed us with all spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. 1:3) And because of God’s great blessing we are to "Walk worthy of the vocation. Where with ye are called." (Eph. 4:1).
Here Paul is instructing the church how they are to act one to another. He’s leading them to unity. The Greek Prefix for the numbers from one to five is mono, di, tri, tetra, and penta. Mono or Uno is ONE. Paul says that you have been called for UNO vision in Uno body, Uno hope by the Uno Lord for Uno faith and Uno baptism. The Lord the father is Uno. He has given us the Uno vision. When the UNO-vision is gone the second numeral prefix takes its place. Uno is replaced by Di. When we add Di to vision, it becomes DIVISION. Di-vision with an e makes the vision to die. Seeing this, Paul is asking the church for Unity. And it’s unity for a purpose. Vs. 2 says "working together with one heart and purpose." The enemy knows that he cannot break the church from without so he infiltrates and starts from within. What if every member church of PYCD was able to stand together in UNO-ity in Dallas. What a mighty army it would have been. Seeing the church yielding to the ploys of the enemy, Paul says that’s it’s when we, the Church, are united, that we will accomplish our purpose. There are three purposes for the church.
1. To worship God,
2. To build up the saints, and
3. To spread the Good News.
In order to see what is necessary for us to achieve unity, we need to look at four things Paul admonished the church in Philippi to do. We can see that in Philippians 2: 2-11. Together with that, we see that he gives the example of how Jesus demonstrated for us each of the qualities Paul was now admonishing the people to exhibit. Paul is using this as a basis to teach them how they can live in unity. What are the four qualities and I will be done with what the Lord laid in my heart. I have to go from Ephesians 4: 2 and 3 to Philippians 2: 2 and 3 to explain that
1) don’t be selfish. (vs. 3) The society in which we live is a very self-oriented society. The big question we ask when we have a decision whether to do something or not is, "What’s in it for me?" or "How will I benefit from this?" However, the Church should not be selfish. For the Christian, the question should not be, "How can this benefit me?" but "How can this benefit the Kingdom of God?" One of the signature statements of the late President JFK is, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but you can do for your country." And if that’s true of something like an earthly political establishment, how much more true it should be of Christians and the Kingdom of God. We need to spend less time thinking of what God and what the Church can offer us, and spend more time asking God what we can do for him and his Church.
Self is all about the individual. But the Kingdom is about the body. As Ephesians 4:4says, "We are all one body." The Church isn’t made up of a lot of disconnected people. The Church is not you over there doing your thing and me over here doing my thing. Imagine if your hand suddenly decided that it didn’t want to work with your arm. Your arm and your foot just couldn’t get along. They both wanted to help you, but they had different ideas about how to do it. So, the hand decided one day that it would just do its own thing completely separate from your arm, so it separated itself. It would soon find that it was pretty useless without the arm. In fact, if you had 100 hands, but none of them were connected to arms, they wouldn’t be as good as one hand connected to an arm. For your body to work, it has to work together. And the Church is exactly the same. I’m sure that we all want to fulfill God’s purposes. But if allow ourselves to become selfish, then we end up all doing our own thing. It’s not that we don’t want to do God’s work, but we just don’t want to do it with Brother So-and-so or Sister So-and-so. Well, when we do that, we’re really not accomplishing anything for the Kingdom, because we’re separated from the body. We, the Church, must be a team, working together to accomplishing God’s purposes, because that’s the only way they can be accomplished.
Christianity is not about self, but about others. Christian is CHRIST and the last three letters are IAN, I AM NOTHING
Paul speaks of a concept in 2 Timothy 4:6, "As for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near." He’s referring to an Old Testament "drink-offering" here, which was an offering in which wine was poured out onto the ground as an offering to God. It’s interesting me that the Greek word for "poured out" used here is "spendo" which is the root of our English word "spent." It literally means to be poured out with no intention to be retrieved. The question is, is your life spent for yourself or for God and his purposes. Did you pour yourself into your ambitions, or did you use the things like your career and your success to pour yourself into God’s Kingdom?
2) Don’t live to make a good impression on others. (vs. 3)
In such a success-oriented society, it seems that everyone wants to impress others with their accomplishments. I’ve discovered that no matter how much money people make in America, it’s not enough, because they spend it all trying to live up to their status. We all want to keep up with the Jones’s. Me included, moving to Dallas from NY, I am amazed at the size of the homes that we live in. We want people to be impressed with our accomplishments and with our sacrifices as well. We want people to be impressed with everything we do. It’s a basic part of the sinful human nature--we call it pride. We’re so concerned about what others think of us. And guess what, pride tries to creep into the church too. People often want others to know of their accomplishments for God’s Kingdom. They want others to know what they’ve given, what they’ve sacrificed. They want others to look at them and see a holy person. Not that it’s wrong for others to see a holy person, unless it’s not real holiness, but only a show.
Jesus certainly didn’t live to impress others. vs. 7, says "He made himself nothing." The King James Version translates this, "But made himself of no reputation." As the Creator of the world, Jesus was deserving of much glory. In fact, John 1 speaks of Jesus being God, and that means that he had the full glory of God. Jesus dealt with spiritual pride a lot--especially with the Pharisees. In Matthew 6:1-4, Jesus says, "Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, because then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. When you give a gift to someone in need, don’t shout about it as the hypocrites do--blowing trumpets in the synagogues and the streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I assure you, they have received all the reward they will ever get. But when you give to someone, don’t tell your left hand what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in secret, and your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you." And Jesus isn’t just talking about giving money here, because the next thing he does is condemn the Pharisees for the same spiritual pride in their prayer. This is the first danger with being worried about making a good impression on others. You may do a good thing, but in reality it becomes worthless, because it was done with the wrong attitude. We’re so influenced by a results oriented society that sometimes we forget that God isn’t as interested in our results as he is in our hearts. This sort of arrogant pride also breaks up the unity in the body that we have already discovered is so vital to the Church fulfilling its purposes.
There are functions within the body of Christ that must be done, but they are things that nobody sees. They are positions that don’t impress anybody. So, if everybody is so busy doing the things that will impress people, that don’t leave anybody to do those things that are truly important. And the body cannot be maintained unless all of its functions are carried out. Surely it may give the appearance of life for a while, but it is not truly healthy.
3) Be humble--think of others as better than yourself (vs. 3)
This point goes hand-in-hand with the last point. It once again brings up the subject of spiritual pride. This time it is a little different. The previous statement spoke of being proud of your deeds. This speaks of being proud of yourself, having a superiority complex. Jesus dealt with this a lot too, with the Pharisees.
Luke 18:9-14, "9Then Jesus told this story to some who had great self-confidence and scorned everyone else: 10"Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a dishonest tax collector. 11 The proud Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ’I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially like that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don’t sin, I don’t commit adultery, 12I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’ 13 "But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ’O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ 14 I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored.""
God isn’t interested in people who think they’re great. In fact 1 Peter 5:5 says, "God sets himself against the proud, but he shows favor to the humble."
And this is talking about relationships again. Not only is God against the proud, but we see here that Peter is also specifically addressing pride within the church. When we think that we are better than others, we destroy the unity of the church, and remember how important that unity is to our fulfilling the purposes of the Church. I want to refer to the way elections are being held these days in churches. One of my good friends, Saju John Mathew in a powerful message said that, we are taking the church back to the Egyptian exile by the way we do elections these days. One candidate is saying that he is better than the other which is diametrically opposite to God’s commandment
But Jesus taught us the power of humility. Humility is a powerful tool that helps to keep the unity of the Church.
4) Be interested in others. (vs. 4).
Here we move back to the concept of selflessness and teamwork. The Church really is not a one-man show. The Kingdom of God isn’t about what you are doing, or about what I am doing. It is about what we are doing together. We may all have some part that is our own. We each have our own role and function in the body, but we cannot just do our job and forget about everyone else. It’s not that we just do our thing and if someone else does something that has nothing to with us. Instead Paul urges us to take an interest, and a genuine interest in other people. This not only creates effective results, but helps to promote unity in the Church. When the wall was built in Jerusalem, Nehemiah 4:6, the word says, WE rebuilt the wall.
Jesus considered others. He took an interest in others. vs. 8 "And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross." He didn’t die on the cross for himself. He did it for others. He never had a perspective where he only looked at what he was doing, but he saw everything in light of God’s greater plan. Further, he took a genuine interest in his disciples. After his resurrection, he took special interest in restoring Peter. (John 21) For him, every person was valuable. He took a genuine interest in people.
And we must mirror this concern for people. It’s great if we’re accomplishing things for God, however, we have to make sure that we’re not so focused on what we’re doing that we pay no attention to anyone else. Remember the Kingdom of God is about people. We can’t get so caught up in systems and programs that we forget about people. There are lots of things we can accomplish, but if we forget the people, we’ve accomplished them in vain. In order to preserve the unity of the church, we must take a genuine interest in other people.
The Christian walk involves
1) A Calling (to be a Christian)
2) An Attitude (of lowliness, long-suffering, and love) and
3) An Effort (working at maintaining unity).
Have we been walking the walk or simply talking the talk?
