Ephesians 4:4-6

THE APPEAL FOR UNITY

‘There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in all.’

Ephesians 4:4 (R. V.)

The great dangers we are in by reason of the existence of separated Christian bodies lay beyond the horizon of the Apostles. But the seeds of these ‘unhappy divisions’ were already in the soil, though centuries had to elapse before they bore their bitter fruit. The Apostles were familiar, sadly familiar, with cabals, estrangements, divisions, the spirit of wilfulness and of partisanship, the spirit which postpones the desire for the advantage and progress of the whole society to the desire for the mastery and the pre-eminence of some section of the community. It is against this spirit in its manifold forms that St. Paul in this Epistle makes his solemn protest, over against which he sets his magnificent conception of Christian unity as a supreme law of the Christian Church and a guiding principle of the Christian life. Let us try to follow out his inspired thought.

I. One Spirit.—This unity is the unity of the Spirit; that is, it is the unity which the Spirit inspires and confirms. There is one Spirit. ‘We have been all made to drink,’ as St. Paul says elsewhere, drawing his metaphor from the story of Israel in the wilderness, ‘of one Spirit.’ ‘One body and one Spirit.’ The whole figure is taken from human personality. The interpretation is at once clear. Each Christian man and woman is a member in the one body of Christ. None may go his own ways or seek his own ends. None is independent of his fellow Christians. But all (in the ideal) work together and live one life, each taking that particular part in the one life which God assigns to him. Here, in this later Epistle, St. Paul carries forward and explains his earlier parable. What is the reason of the unity of the human body? Why do the limbs co-operate? Because in every man the members are all ruled by one will. The one spirit of the man controls the many members. Not otherwise is it with the Body of Christ. The one Holy Spirit has been given to all. The one Spirit inspires all, governs all, controls all, energises all. We are all one man, one personality, in Christ Jesus.

II. One Lord.—And if there is but one Spirit, so also there is but one Lord, one supreme Master of the lives of all Christian men. St. Paul’s mind, doubtless, is reverting to what we learn from a a series of passages in his writings to have been the earliest confession of Christian faith, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ ‘Jesus Christ is Lord.’ We are His by right of purchase. ‘Ye are not your own; ye were bought with a price.’ There is one Lord—one supreme Master. That is the one faith which all Christian men confess. That is the one baptism by which all Christian men are brought into a vital relation to Him. The inference is clear and immediate. Servants who are loyal to the one Lord and Master are bound together by their one allegiance. The household is one: to divide the household is treason against the one Master.

III. One Father.—There remains one plea even higher than the constraining power of the one allegiance to the Lord Christ. ‘One God and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in all.’ He Who is the primal source of all, Who transcends all, and through the Word transfuses and permeates all, has revealed Himself through Christ as the Father of all for whom Christ died. His fatherly love is the final cause of redemption. He is the Father of all, specially of them that believe. All Christians are His sons. Again the inference is clear and immediate. Sons who love the one Father, and whom the one Father loves with so great a love that for their sakes He spared not the Eternal Son of His love, are bound together by their one sonship. The family is one. To divide the family is treason against the one Father.

One Spirit, one Master, one Father. By these great fundamental verities of the Christian faith—not cold abstract truths, but each instinct with the love of atonement—St. Paul conjures us to labour for peace, for love, for unity.

—Bishop Chase.