Sermon Tone Analysis

(The Message)

1 In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do.

While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel.

I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands.

I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere.

2 And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love,

3 alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.

4 You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly.

5 You have one Master, one faith, one baptism,

6 one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all.

Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.

7 But that doesn’t mean you should all look and speak and act the same.

Out of the generosity of Christ, each of us is given his own gift.

8 The text for this is, He climbed the high mountain, He captured the enemy and seized the booty, He handed it all out in gifts to the people.

9 Is it not true that the One who climbed up also climbed down, down to the valley of earth?

10 And the One who climbed down is the One who climbed back up, up to highest heaven.

He handed out gifts above and below, filled heaven with his gifts,

11 filled earth with his gifts.

He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher

12 to train Christ’s followers in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church,

13 until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.

14 No prolonged infancies among us, please.

We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors.

15 God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything.

We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do.

16 He keeps us in step with each other.

His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.

17 And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd.

Building the Church’s Unity

The opening sentence of chapter 4, where Paul says, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received,” marks the turning point in the book of Ephesians.

The message moves from theology to practicality.

This is typical of Paul’s writing.

You can observe the same change in

and .

This shift can be expressed in many ways: from doctrine to duty; from creed to conduct; from the Christian’s wealth to his walk; from exposition to exhortation; from the indicative to the imperative; from high society to a high life.

Because of the amazing theological realities of chapters 1 through 3, Paul urges the Ephesians (and us) “to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”

The Greek word translated “worthy” is axios, which has the root idea of weight.

This is the word from which we derive our English word axiom, which means, “to be of equal weight.”

In an equation the axiom indicates doing something to each side of the equation so it remains true.

Paul is saying we should try to live lives equal to the great blessings described in chapters 1 through 3. We are to be like the man who said, “Christ has done so much for me, the rest of my life is a P.S. to his great work!”

How are we to walk worthy?

That should be our natural response.

And the remainder of the book answers this.

But the immediate charge in chapter 4 contains two ways of doing this: first by walking in unity (vv.

1–16), and then by walking in purity (v.

17ff.).

We will now take up the theme of unity, which we will explore in two studies (vv.

1–6 and vv.

7–16).

The present meditation divides under three headings: 1) The Character Which Brings Christian Unity (v. 2), 2) The Divine Origin of Christian Unity (vv.

4–6), and 3) The Charge to Build Christian Unity (v.

3).

This subject has a special poignancy today in a world which has so failed in its attempts at unity and is so alienated.

I was in my teens during the fifties when ecumenism was the big thing with the mainline denominations.

But it all came to naught because it was based on an “eviscerated, spineless” theology instead of a “vertebrate system of Christian belief.”

Today the World Council of Churches is little more than a “mouse that roared.”

I was in my twenties in the sixties, and I remember visiting Haight Ashbury in San Francisco and being handed flowers and underground newspapers proclaiming a new day of peace.

The bright colors were colors of optimism, the communes wishful microcosms of the new order.

But today all that is left are some middle-aged anachronisms — cultural dinosaurs.

We live in a cold, fragmented world.

Recently a UPI story told of a wheelchair-bound man who was ticketed for setting fire to his armchair.

“I set the chair on fire because I’m here by myself,” said John J. Davies, fifty-eight.

“I was afraid, but I didn’t care.

I wanted to get attention.…

I set the fire so someone would get me out of here.”

Arson investigators said Davies was ticketed for misdemeanor arson to discourage him from doing it again.

“Maybe he’ll realize it’s something serious,” Fire Captain Joseph Napravnik said.

Actually John Davies already thought it was serious.

Alienation and neglect are like death.

I recently spoke to a young man who is so starved for attention that he has his hair cut once a week just to be touched by another human hand in a nonthreatening manner.

Life for so many in this world is like an elevator ride — everyone facing forward, no eye contact, no conversation or interaction — and then everyone rushes off to their faceless endeavors.

The world is looking for a new humanity, a third race, which is not only walking in unity, but has open, inviting arms and hearts.

THE CHARACTER WHICH BRINGS CHRISTIAN UNITY (v. 2)

The unity which Paul urges upon us begins with character: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (v.

2).

The people who bring unity are first of all “humble and gentle.”

Humility was despised in the ancient Greco-Roman world as a slave-like quality.

What was admired was the mega-souled or “great-souled” man who was complete and self-sufficient.

Ernest Hemingway, as he portrayed himself in his prime, would be a good example — brimming with male elan, in control, self-assured, needing nothing.

The proud white hunter in The Snows of Kilimanjaro to whom his adventurer mistress said, “You’re the most complete man I’ve ever known” — that is the man the Greeks would have applauded.

But here Paul extols humility and couples it with the tandem characteristic of “gentle[ness]” (or meekness, as it is more often translated).

This meekness/gentleness is not weakness.

It is rather strength under control.

There is nothing spineless or timid about it.

Jesus described himself with both words, saying, “I am gentle [meek] and humble in heart” ().

We see his steel-like meekness in two ways.

First, in respect to himself — his power not to practice retaliation, his ability to forgive.

And second, in his fierce defense of others or of the truth.

I like John Wycliffe’s translation—mild.

Pride and self-promoting arrogance sow disunity, but a humble, gentle man or woman is like a caressing breeze.

Charles Simeon, the great preacher of Kings’ College and Holy Trinity Cambridge, was like this.

Hugh Evan Hopkins, his biographer, tells us:

When in 1808 Simeon’s health broke down and he had to spend some eight months recuperating on the Isle of Wight, it fell to Thomason to step into the gap and preach as many as five times on a Sunday in Trinity Church and Stapleford.

He surprised himself and everyone else by developing a preaching ability almost equal to his vicar’s at which Simeon, totally free from any suggestions of professional jealousy, greatly rejoiced.

He quoted the Scripture, “He must increase; but I must decrease,” and told a friend, “Now I see why I have been laid aside.

I bless God for it.”

Those who walk in unity are not only humble and gentle but, as the second couplet says, “patient, bearing with one another in love” (v.

2).

J. Dwight Pentecost tells of a church split that was so serious each side filed a lawsuit to dispossess the others from the church, completely disregarding the Biblical injunction not to go to court against fellow believers.

The civil courts threw it out, but eventually it came to a church court, where it belonged.

The higher judiciary of the church made its decision and awarded the church property to one of the two factions.

The losers withdrew and formed another church in the area.

In the course of the proceedings the church courts found that the conflict had begun at a church dinner when an elder received a smaller slice of ham than a child seated next to him.

The root of the impasse was an absence of patience and forbearing love — not to mention humility and gentleness!