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As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have 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. (Ephesians 4:1-3)

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Pastor Michael mentioned Ephesians 4-5 yesterday in his devotion on private and corporate faith, and so let\u2019s go there.\xa0

These first few verses from the fourth chapter of Ephesians followed my wife and I around over the first few years we knew each other.\xa0 They were the theme verses of the international church conference we met at, we heard a surprising number of sermons on these verses during that time, and so these verses became our wedding text too.\xa0 Whether in our personal lives, our relational lives, or in our church lives\u2014these verses have much to say to how we live in all of life!\xa0

There is a strange paradox that arises in the heart of verse three where Paul urges us to \u201ckeep the unity of the Spirit.\u201d\xa0 It\u2019s a paradox, because as Paul will go on to say, \u201cthere is\u2026 one Spirit.\u201d \xa0This singular Holy Spirit is already united in and with Himself as are the people of God in whose lives the Spirit is active\u2014so this unity Paul urges us toward is already there.\xa0 What\u2019s to keep?\xa0 Yet, on the other end of the paradox we discover that the people who claim that one-and-the-same Spirit of Christ to be active in their lives and churches are often divided, living in dis-unity.\xa0

Unity with the whole church of Christ is a gift we have nothing to do but receive from the Spirit as He joins us to the One True God, and yet this unity with the whole church of Christ is also a goal we must strive to keep in all our Christian lives and living.\xa0

Paul wrote this challenging line from prison.\xa0 A place of being set apart, divided from the rest of the church.\xa0 But it is from this place that Paul makes his plea, urging us all to live worthily of the calling we have received.\xa0 In these times of being scattered as a church family, we can perhaps catch the urgency in Paul\u2019s plea.

Far from striving to heights of success, which often includes puffing up our own pride and resume through competing and outshining others, the calling we have received includes a call to walk the humble, gentle, patient, loving path of Christ.\xa0 This slow, lowly, and unspectacular path of Jesus is the means of living out our other calling to keep what we already have and remain what we already are: united to Christ and one another through the Spirit by the will of the Father.

To again echo Pastor Michael, this Christian calling is not to walk a solo journey.\xa0 The calling is to walk together in unity with the rest of our brothers and sisters in Christ who make up God\u2019s family.\xa0

We\u2019ve been adopted into this family by the grace of God, the work of Christ, and the power of the Spirit.\xa0

But as with any family: it takes some humility, love, and patience to remain united as a family.\xa0 We don\u2019t always get along so well.\xa0 We annoy each other, disagree with one another, hurt each other, and take from one another.\xa0

Those collected wounds and annoyances can drive wedges that eventually blow families apart in divorce and estrangement. \xa0But, they are also opportunities for the Spirit to quietly work a unifying redemption through us instead.\xa0

This is the work we are called and urged to join. \xa0We are continually called to reconcile with one another, confess to one another, and forgive one another.\xa0 This is the slow, humble, loving work of keeping the unity of the Spirit-joined family in bonds of peace.\xa0 It\u2019s not easy, but we do not do it alone.\xa0 Unity is not just a goal, it is also one of the Spirit\u2019s surprising gifts.\xa0

May we seek and find just such a reconciled unity as we gather around the family dinner table, the Lord\u2019s Table, this Sunday.

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