I. WALK WORTHY OF THE CALLING IN HUMILITY AND UNITY.

This brief section contains the practical theme, exhorting the readers to a walk worthy of their calling (Ephesians 4:1), naming three attendant virtues essential to this walk, defining further the mode of Christian forbearance (Ephesians 4:2), and giving, in the exhortation to the preservation of the unity of the Spirit, a motive for this forbearance, which suggests the theme of the next section. The virtues put in the foreground here, and giving character to the entire practical part, are distinctively Christian. The ethical tone is that of the Sermon on the Mount. There, however, the high ideal is presented to awaken a sense of need; here the practice of the same virtues is based upon the great truths of a completed gospel, offering not only motives and means, but Divine strength.

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Old Testament