We Weren’t Meant to Walk Alone | Ephesians 4:1–16

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South Good morning My name’s Jessica Rust. I’m one of the pastors here and before we get much farther, let’s pray Father God You have brought each of us here today with our own stories, our own questions Our own joys, our own sorrows. And we pray as we hear your word, you would speak to each of us now, that we would feel your presence, that we would know your love, and we would listen to your voice.

In your name we pray. Amen. Amen. As was mentioned, my name’s Jessica. I’m one of the pastors here, and for the last several weeks, we’ve been working our way through the Book of Ephesians. Paul spent a couple years with the community in Ephesus building up this church, pouring into these people, and now, as he sits in a prison cell in Rome, he writes to them, not because there’s an issue he feels like he needs to address, but because he so desperately wants them to understand the love and grace that they have received through Jesus Christ.

Ephesus is a wealthy city. It’s prosperous. It’s generally considered safe. It’s one of the ideal places to live in the Roman Empire. But the reality of daily life is one of striving and anxiety, where people rely on magic and money to try to keep hold of what they have and that they’re so afraid they’re going to lose.

And to this city, Paul speaks grace. To people who are hustling for what they have, he says peace. To people who are defined by anxiety and fear, he says unity. To a culture where divisions of class and ethnicity usually drive who has access to what, and he says belonging to people who feel like they’re on the outs.

And he says it’s all because of Jesus. And Alex- as Alex mentioned earlier, we’re in this shift in the Book of Ephesians with our passage today. Paul spent the first three chapters of Ephesians unpacking the gospel and the grace that the Ephesians have received. A- and now he’ll shift in chapter four and all the way through chapter six, the rest of the book, into unpacking what that grace actually means.

But here’s a, a risk I think we run when we divide up the Book of Ephesians. We sometimes get the idea that there’s the Jesus stuff, and then there’s the practical stuff, the real life stuff, and never the two shall meet. We have a hard time holding together the reality that everything Paul has already talked about in the first half isn’t separate from the day-to-day Rhythms of being in community and growing in our character and relationships that he’s going to talk about in the second half.

Actually, everything in chapter four to six needs to be remembered and read through this lens of what happens in one through three. How many of us have made or seen this science experiment before? This is called a density column. It’s an experiment to demonstrate how density works. So liquids with higher density go to the bottom, liquids with lower density go to the top, and they create these really nice defined layers.

And even though they’re all in the same container, they don’t really mix together. They stay separate. And I think this is how we sometimes view scripture. We have one layer of the theology and what we’re supposed to believe. We have one layer with all of the Bible stories. We have one layer with what we’re supposed to do and the commands and passages like Proverbs, and we don’t mix them together as we’re actually intended to.

But scripture’s not a density column. Scripture is actually more like water colored with food coloring, not separate at all, but now transformed. In Ephesians and throughout the whole Bible, what we’re commanded to do is never, ever separate from the love of God and what he has done for us.

Throughout four to six, Paul’s going to talk about practical things. He’s gonna talk about what it means to walk in the way of Jesus. But we have to remember the way is only possible because of the heart of Jesus. It’s only possible through the love of Jesus and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. But we also have to remember the heart of Jesus also always comes with an invitation to follow his way.

So what is the gospel that Paul’s preached in one through three? What do we need to keep in mind with us as we move into this next section of Ephesians? Over and over again, in chapters one through three, Paul has told the Ephesians, “You are seen by God. You are loved by God, and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you are redeemed.

You are able to be in relationship with this loving and gracious God once again.” And that is good news. That’s life-changing news. That’s eternity-changing news. But the implications of the gospel actually don’t stop there Because Paul also tells us from the very beginning of Ephesians that not only is our eternity secured, which again is good news, please don’t get me wrong, but we’re actually invited in to God’s family Chapter one, verse five, but we’ll read the whole passage for context.

“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he prede- predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves.”

You are loved by God, and you are actually loved so much That God’s not content with just punching a ticket for eternal security. He is inviting you in to participate with Him in all that He’s doing. He’s inviting you in to His family, to His people And through us, through grace-transformed people, he’s inviting us to show that grace to the world.

The grace that we’ve received starts with us, but it was actually never intended to stop with us And Paul’s discourse on the gospel throughout the first three chapters of Ephesians culminates in this beautiful prayer that we talked about last week in Ephesians 3:16 and onward. “I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all of the fullness of God Paul’s prayer and longing for these people that he loves so deeply, and for each of us who follow after them, is that they would know, not just intellectually, the words of the gospel, that the gospel exists, not just that they’d be able to rattle it off if someone asked them what the gospel is, but that they would know deep in their hearts and their souls, in a relational, experiential way, how much God loves them and sees them and cares for them.

It’s not just life-changing news. It’s community-changing and world-changing news, and news that we get to participate in. And that’s where we shift from chapters three to chapter four. In chapter four, verse one, Paul says, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you’ve received.”

And I do love the NIV translation, but this is actually a moment where the translation falls short of what the original language communicates. The ESV gets a little bit closer. “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Walk in a manner worthy of this calling.

Live your way in a– Live your life in a way, day in and day out, in a way that reflects what you’ve been called to. And the phrase, “calling to which you’ve been called,” is a little bit redundant, but that’s actually done on purpose. Paul is trying to draw attention through repetition to just how significant this calling is.

This calling is a really big deal, he wants us to know. So what is this calling? In our culture, we tend to talk about calling more in terms of a vocation or a job or something you’re really excited about that hopefully you do get paid for. But that’s not what Paul’s talking about. He’s actually talking about everything he just stated in chapters one through three.

He’s talking about the gospel. He’s saying, “Live your life in a way, day in and day out, that reflects and honors the magnitude of the grace and love that you have received, that reflects the beauty of relationship you are invited into with the Lord of the universe.” Because if everything that Paul says is true in chapters one through three, if this grace is such a big deal, if it is life-changing, eternity-changing, world-changing, then that means something.

If what we’ve been given is so significant that means something, if it’s a grace that we’ve accepted, if we have chosen to follow Jesus, that means something for how it shapes the rest of our lives. It means something for how we live together in community. It means something for our character and our emotional life and our decisions.

It means something for our relationships, and it means something for our world

In our house, we watch a lot of Mary Poppins. And when Mary arrives at the Banks family home, she’s carrying a carpetbag. It’s small, ordinary, a little beat up, and we assume, and they assume, it’s probably carrying some clothes and personal items. And sure enough, when she gets up to her space, she pulls out some shoes, and then a plant, and then a mirror, and then a hat stand, and so on and so forth.

And this thing that seemed pretty ordinary and understood, and even understated, turns out to contain more than anyone could imagine. And as we understand the gospel, as we understand the relationship with Jesus that we are invited into, and as we understand how wide and deep the love of God is and what it means to walk in fullness of relationship with Him, it’s a lifelong journey of discovering that the gospel’s so much bigger, and means so much more, and shapes so much more than we initially thought possible

So with that in mind, let’s read Ephesians 4 again. As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you’ve received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

There’s one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who’s over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. That’s why it says, “When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.”

What does he ascended mean, except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and the teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ Then we’ll no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people and their deceitful scheming.

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work So Ephesians 4:1, walking in a way that reflects the calling we’ve been called to is a, a frame passage, not just for the rest of this passage that we’ll talk about today, but actually for all of chapters four through six and everything else that we’re going to hear in the rest of this series, everything else that comes in the Book of Ephesians.

All of it is framed by walking in a way that reflects the gospel that we’ve already heard. And the rest of what we’re gonna talk about today, two through 16, is a very community-oriented passage, and more specifically, it’s a church-oriented passage. We’re asking the question: What does it look like to walk in a way that reflects the grace we’ve re- received, that upholds this calling, the grace that we’ve already been given together?

So we’re gonna sum it up, and then we’re gonna unpack what we can with the time that we have Because of God’s glorious grace, we are called to live in a way that reflects the grace we’ve received. As followers of Jesus, the grace we’ve each received should shape how we offer grace to one another, and Christ has given each of us a part to play in His people.

This will look different for each of us, but together we work together to image Christ to each other and to the world, and in the process grow in the understanding and experience of the fullness of His love. That’s the really paraphrased version And as we get into talking about community, I wanna acknowledge in our American Christian culture, we are so used to talking about relationship with Jesus and faith mostly in individual context.

It’s me and Jesus, right? How am I doing with God? What am I working on? What am I growing in? What am I studying? And to bring it into a community passage takes a little bit of a shift for us. But actually, when we think about the calling we’ve received, if part of that calling is to be invited into God’s people, invited into His family, that actually means we don’t live out that calling alone.

It means we’re meant to live it out with other people. Walking with Jesus Does have an individual aspect. An individual relationship with God is a very core part of our faith. But it wasn’t just meant to be a solo hike that we occasionally invite people into if we choose to. We are meant to walk and live out our calling with others

To Cherish the Warren in her book, What Grows in Weary Lands, talks about the church this way. As disciples of Jesus, we must not live as if we’re autonomous individuals with infinite options. We must allow others to lay claims on us, to limit us even. To go deep with God always involves going deep with others, being rooted in a place, a community, a tradition, a church Because if we’re a people transformed by grace, then grace means something for how we will walk together at Cell Fellowship Church

In Ephesians 4:2, Paul instructs the Ephesian church and us to be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. So can what Paul says here apply to people who are totally outside of the church, not following Jesus at all? Yes, absolutely. We should respond to everyone with humility and gentleness and patience and love.

Can it apply to people in the broader church, in other organizations, people at Mission Hills and Beth- or Calvary Bethany and Wellspring? Yes, absolutely. But for the purpose of today, we’re going to bring it right here and talk about what does this mean? What does Ephesians 4 mean for us as South Fellowship Church?

When Paul originally wrote Ephesians, the Ephesians didn’t take their Bibles and go off in their own corners and read the passage and then come back and discuss it at some point. They were actually sitting together hearing this letter read aloud, and Paul’s encouragement and expectation wasn’t that they go off and leave with some high ideal of, “Man, I should really h- try hard to be patient.

Unity is a good thing.” His intention was for them to turn around and live this way together with the people who were sitting there with them hearing what he had to say, practicing grace together So what does it look like to live out humility and gentleness and patience and forbearance and love together?

Gentleness might be better translated as interacting with self-control, not letting your emotions or frustrations override how you interact with someone. Patience better translation, p- translated as being slow to anger with another person. Bearing with one another sounds really nice and beautiful.

It means putting up with one another. And just to be clear, because verses like this are often misused in really unhealthy ways, this does not mean if someone is abusing you, you need to just take it ’cause the Bible says it. It’s talking about in a church community, there are going to be people who you would not choose to interact with otherwise, but you’re here together because of your shared faith in Jesus, and they might really drive you up a wall.

And they might really do some things that bother you. And they are a beloved child of God, and probably your brother or sister in Christ, and you are to offer them the same grace and love that you have received So at South

That means we get to apply this. That means the spirituality, this sense of humility and patience and long-suffering and forbearance is how we should interact with one another. And you might be here today, and you don’t consider South your community. You’re just visiting. Maybe you’re checking it out. I’m super glad you’re here.

And if you’re following Jesus, I hope that you find a community where you are able to enter in this way, and that this is what you receive from your brothers and sisters in Christ. Walking… n.T. Wright sums it up really this way: “Generous grace was how you began. Generous grace in your common life is how you are to continue.”

The grace that we’ve received is supposed to shape how we walk together in our calling. Walking according to our calling together means also upholding walking- maintaining among ourselves the unity we have in Christ. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There’s one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who’s over all and through all and in all.

And Paul repeats the word one over and over to highlight

This is what unites us. Jesus, the gospel, is what holds us together. Not try to find a bunch of things that maybe you have in common and figure out how you can be unified. Just as we’re not pulling on a calling that we haven’t already s- received, we already have this calling. He’s saying, “You are already unified because of the faith that you have, the God that we worship.

We have something bigger than each of us that holds us together as a community.” This is actually in the north lobby why we have the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed on our wall. And if you didn’t know that they were there, go check them out after the service. They are right over there. But it’s to always remind us, as South Fellowship Church, that this is what we hold central.

Jesus is who we hold central. What He has done is what we hold central. And that means in areas of disagreement or frustration or disappointment, that we respond first out of the unity that comes through Jesus Christ. Not responding to one another first and foremost out of our disappointment and disagreement, but responding first with Christ in mind In verse seven, it says, “To but each of one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.

That’s why it says: ‘When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.’ What does he ascended mean except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we’ll no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Part of being invited into God’s family, into His people, means that each person in our community has something to contribute. And just to be clear, this is not a, “And that means you need to sign up for all of the things,” plug.

It’s an acknowledgement that God created you. He gave you certain gifts, certain wiring, certain personality that are different from what He gave me, from what He gave Ken, from what He gave Andrea, from what He gave David, and He has a part for you to play. He wants you to participate in Him and come to know the fullness of His love more and more as you also get to be fully yourself using the gifts that you have been given.

Paul talks about it with the metaphor of the body, all the ligaments straining in the same direction. You can also think of this as An orchestra works together to play one particular piece of music as it was meant to be. And you can have a conductor with no instruments and no musicians, and the conductor’s gonna know exactly where they’re supposed to go, but they’re not gonna be able to do anything about it Oh, my sweater got over the microphone.

You can have an orchestra with cymbals and a cello and a clarinet, and they’ll be able to do something. They’ll make some sound. Some of it might sound like music- … but it’s not going to be what it was intended to be with only the three instruments. You can have a full orchestra with everyone present except for one violinist, and they’ll sound really good.

They’ll get pretty close to what the piece was intended to sound like. But without that one violinist, they will still not be able to play and experience, and the audience listening to them will not be able to experience the fullness of what was intended by the composer. And you know who else is missing out?

The violinist who’s not there. On their own, apart from the orchestra, the violinist can still play music, and it will still maybe sound like beautiful music But apart from the orchestra, their experience is not going to be fully what it was intended for them to be either So what does this mean for how we live together as the body of South Fellowship Church?

Some of us aren’t even sure that South is our community. Some of us are just trying to keep our heads above water. Some of us are grieving. Some of us are dealing with an illness that shapes how much we are or aren’t able to participate right now in this season of life. Most of us are very busy, and some of us might not love being told what to do when it comes to church.

So how do we live this out? And you know what? I actually don’t know what it specifically looks like for you. Because to each of us, God has given different gifts and a different measure of ability in different seasons of life. Maybe for you, just showing up on Sunday is all you can do, or more than you can do.

And that might be what God is inviting you to just keep doing right now, and adding something else isn’t necessarily part of what you should be doing. Maybe, though, it means striking up a conversation with someone you haven’t met yet today. Maybe it means stri- striking up a conversation with someone who you need to practice a little bit of forbearance with, and you’ve been avoiding because they drive you up a wall.

And your calling today, walking out your calling today, means greeting them with love and grace and patience. Maybe it does look like joining a group or using what you’ve been given to step in and serve or joining our giving community. I don’t know. If you want to talk about what that could look like, I would love to have that conversation with you ’cause I have a lot more suggestions.

And any member of our staff would love to talk about what that would look like for you or what it could look like for you. But whatever it is, it probably starts with an honest conversation with Jesus and how He’s inviting you to participate in this church community, if it is your church community. And it will probably involve extending the grace you’ve been given to someone else around you but self as a community living in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.

Let us walk together in a manner that reflects the grace and love that we have been given, and the glorious, gracious God that we have come to know. Let us be a community defined by grace We’re gonna close with communion today. You might know it as Mass or the Eucharist. In communion, we reflect and recognize what Jesus has done for each of us through his death and resurrection to reconcile us to Christ.

We thank him, we confess our need for him But communion is not just an individual practice. It’s also a community practice, a practice that usually we do next week on the first Sunday, so you did not get your Sundays mixed up. But we’re doing it today because this practice so beautifully encapsulates everything that Paul talked about in Ephesians 4:1-16.

Together, as the body of Christ at South Fellowship, in our different stories, different stages of life, different needs, different hopes, different gifts, we come together to declare and proclaim the faith that unites us To, to celebrate and commune with the one who unites us, Jesus. So as you come to the table, there’s three tables in the front, three in the back.

Take the bread, take the juice, and maybe make eye contact and smile at someone. It might feel a little awkward. You will survive that. Do it anyway. And as you sit and reflect on the love that you have been shown, and thank God for what He has done for you, also thank God for what He has done for everyone here So when you’re ready come up and take the elements you’re welcome to take the bread whenever you’re ready, and we’ll take the cup together.