Walking Worthy - Ephesians 4. 1-16. Sunday 8th May

Paul urges the Ephesians to "Walk worthy of the calling" to which they have been called.  How do you define Walking Worthy?  There are three things in this section that define walking worthy of what we are in Jesus...

Unity
There are two unities in this section:
1. Unity of the spirit in the bond (ligament: it's a body word!) of peace - maintain it!
a) If it is to be maintained, it is there already...  If I say to Sandra, or Val, or Len, "make sure you maintain your car properly, they would say "Don't be daft, I haven't got a car!"   We don't have to go looking for the unity of the Spirit. It is something that already exists.  Because we follow Jesus, because we have the Spirit of God living in us, we have the unity of the Spirit.
b) Unity in the body isn't a pragmatic thing, where we sort of ignore our differences to make something happen (a bit like the coalition government!) It is a theologically derived thing.  "One" seems to be God's favourite number.  There is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord Jesus, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father.  Consequently, you've got no choice in the matter. Will we be one with other Christians? Well, there is one body. Will we be one with the people sitting around us this morning? Well, there is one Body.
c) How do we maintain the unity of the Spirit? How do we keep it in good working order?  By walking the walk as we act and speak with humility, gentleness, patience, tolerance.
2. Unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.  Our unity isn't perfect.  We will sometimes struggle. There is a unity still, to be attained. It is something we grow into as our level of understanding develops, our character is shaped and our ministry develops, until we all attain to it, when we are all the same in the perfect Kingdom. Until then we are all growing towards that and we can help each other.

Ministry
1. Grace was given to each of us
a) It's grace, given through Christ.  Not just an undeserved favour (that's mercy) but God's Redemptive Activity Continually Expressed in our lives. Ministry like unity is first and foremost God at work; it isn't something we have to do but something that comes down.  The problem with earthly ministry is that it is so much hard work.
b) Grace is given to each of us.  You have a share in ministry... God's redemptive activity is at work in your life.

2. Like unity, ministry is rooted in theology. It isn't just something that we have to do (because the Church will go down the pan if we don't!)  Sharing ministry isn't something Pastors do because they are too idle to do it al themselves. It's rooted in the two big journeys Jesus made: he descended to earth and showed us what ministry is all about, serving other people, healing and teaching in the power of the Spirit, and he ascended to the highest place: and led a whole crowd of captives, giving gifts to men and women (?????p??).   Ministry is about Jesus.

3. It's shaped through the five-fold leadership of Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and teachers. Not the five-fold ministry; the ministry is for everyone.  Paul is talking about a five-fold leadership.
a) Apostles - those who maintain the sense of being sent out in the Church
b) Prophets  - those whose call is to hear from God and speak for him
c) Evangelists - those with a particular task of speaking the good news
d) Pastors - "Shepherds" who keep people safe and care for them
e) Teachers - who help people develop, understand and apply their faith.
Spiritual Leadership is about these things: mission, hearing God, good news, spiritual security and growth. Management, finance, etc., though important are not leadership!
4. Leadership equips the Saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. We sometimes think that is a list of things that leaders are to do: equipping the saints, the work of ministry, building up the body of Christ.  But it's not a list it's a chain reaction.  Leaders equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. It's what the saints do in the Church and the world.
5. Ministry - the ministry we all have -  builds up the body of Christ, so we can grow more like Jesus, and be making a difference in the world.

Maturity
What does Christian maturity consist of? What does it taste like and smell like and look like?
1. Christ-likeness.  The ultimate "Mature man" is Jesus himself. If we are mature, we are like Jesus.  People will see the character of Jesus in our character; people will see us responding as Jesus would respond. People will see the works of Jesus being done in our lives.
2. Conviction. Part of maturity is knowing what you believe and why you believe it.  But we are not to be blown around by every wind of doctrine.
a) It isn't mature just to accept "The official teaching" of the Church without thinking it through.
b) It isn't mature to think you have nothing more to learn.  We should always be ready to develop our understanding; we should always be humble enough to admit that the way we understand God's word is incomplete. (1 Corinthians 13. 12 says "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.")
c) But it isn't mature, either, to be ruled by what is trendy.  It's a characteristic of the world we live in, to reject the idea of absolute truth.  In the postmodern world, you can mix up your beliefs from different faiths; you can decide what God is like then reject anything in the Bible that doesn't fit; in the postmodern world , what matters is looking cool and feeling good.  We need to understand that world, and to begin where people are as we share the good news with them. But we need to know and as best we can understand what we believe.
3. Compassion.   Love. Conviction without compassion is not maturity it is bigotry.  "Speaking the truth in love" is one of the most abused verses in the whole Bible.  It is used to excuse all sorts of unkind and ill-thought-out outbursts.  You are only speaking the truth in love is you are speaking the truth (theological truth not just how you see things) and you are only speaking the truth in love if you have submitted what you saying and the way you say it, to the test of 1 Corinthians 13. 4-8. You're speaking the truth in love if you are not being arrogant, or boastful (maybe about you superior knowledge); if you are not insisting on your own way, not in the least irritable or resentful; not gloating over the other person' error, but still believing in them and prepared to stick with your relationship with them.
4. Community   v. 15-16.  "Speaking the truth we grow un into Christ.  from whom the whole body, joined (harmonized) and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working (energizing) properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love". We get closer to, deeper in love with and more like Jesus.  And we experience the reality of Jesus through the reality of his Body, the Church.  You can't claim to be a mature Christian if you are living outside of the Community of the Church. To be in Jesus is to be in the Church.   And in the Church - in the challenging and stretching experience of finding your place within the body, joined together, being a kneecap or a big toe that is working properly - we grow as individuals, we contribute to others' growth and to the growth of the Church - which is the Body of Christ in the world.
a) In a fragmented world, a united Church, a real community.
b) In a harsh and selfish world, a loving Compassionate Church;
c) In a confused and relativistic world, a Church with Conviction.
d) In a self-indulgent world, a church of growing, mature, unselfish people.

© Gilmour Lilly May 2011

Paul's ministry: People, Perspective, Power Eph 3.

New people
 I have learned to ask, "What's the story" when I am teaching the Bible. And there is a "big story", the God-story... of a cosmic plan to bring these two groups, Jews and gentiles, together in a new humanity, a new community, united like one body with Jesus as its head....  This big story, this "God story" is the background to what Paul writes in this chapter...  He says "for this reason" - looking back to the previous chapter all about the Church being the new humanity in Christ.

So Paul goes on to talk a wee bit about his own ministry... For the first time, in this chapter, Paul hints at the fact that he is in fact a prisoner, "For the Gentiles."    Paul really believed in preaching the Good News of Jesus; and in particular, he believed in preaching that Good news to all people, not just his fellow-Jews.  Maybe, it's just possible, that if he had contented himself with preaching only to Jews, he could have remained a free man.  Going to the Gentiles meant going out into strange territory; and it meant upsetting the traditional Jews who thought he was a threat to the purity of their faith.... It was often the Jews, not the gentiles, who caused trouble for Paul... so he was in prison for the sake of "you gentiles."


Paul knows his ministry is a huge privilege; he has special insight and a clear job to do; he is willing to pay the price of doing that job.  That's how he sees and understands his ministry...  God is at work, revealing things that have been kept hidden for years and years. And he has been doing that through apostles and prophets.  Paul's work is all about building up this new humanity church he was speaking of in Chapter 2.  And - here's the mind-blowing bit - the "New Humanity Church" exists to make known to the principalities and powers the multi-coloured wisdom of God.  We often think of the Church existing to make the Gospel known to our neighbours.  It's vital that we do spread the Good News of our faith. But the real purpose of the Church is to make God's wisdom known to the principalities and powers.  That's what Paul has been given an amazing share in.  God calls every one of us to be involved in this cosmic plan and in this glorious community called the Church!

New perspective 
And all of that, he is putting in brackets, as he jumps back in verse 14 to repeat "For this reason"...   Isn't that amazing?  We need to learn, as Paul did, to put ourselves, our ministry, our interests, our comfort, our reputation, our struggles, in brackets; to get a Jesus-centred perspective on all of our lives...  God can do it without us.  We suffer, along with the rest of the human race, from an inflated sense of our own importance.  Our Heavenly father loves us so much. He gives us the dignity of being part of this new humanity; he pours out love into our lives. None of us are rubbish; none of us are losers, however weak we are, and whatever mistakes we make.  God welcomes us with big, wide, open arms; but he invites us to a place of repentance; to a place where we say "Jesus, be the centre".

Because God has made a new rainbow humanity, built together as a place for God to live, in order to show his multi-coloured wisdom to the principalities and powers, Verses:14-19.

Paul's prayer is worshipful - or his worship is prayerful.  It was much more normal for a Jew - or an early Christian - to pray standing up; kneeling was homage; it was worship as is appropriate for the God who is over and above very human tribe and every rank of angels... it's the cosmic God of the cosmic new humanity in the cosmic Church that Paul is praying to.  Maybe worship like that - getting a grasp on the splendour of the King - will help us pray.

New power! 
And what is Paul praying for?  He is praying - again, see Eph 1. 17-21 - that his friends would be strengthened with power through the Spirit in their inner being.  Paul wants the Spirit - who raised Jesus from the dead, who is at work in Paul, to be at work in the Ephesian Christians.  An encounter with the Holy Spirit is not just for leaders or particularly spiritual people.  Paul prays the same work of the Spirit that is seen in his life, into the lives of the Ephesians...

What does it mean to ask the Spirit to touch us? What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit?   The language Paul uses here tells us...

1. It's about strength and power in our inner being. (v 16)

2. It's about fellowship.  ("Rooted and grounded in love" v 17; "with all the saints" v 18)  The work of the Spirit is personal within each of us, but is never given just for us as individuals, but so we can play our part in the "Body".

3. It's about understanding the full immensity (length, breadth, height, depth v 18)) of God's love.

4. It's about experience Christ's love ("knowing" v 19)  We all need to know we are special; part of that is about believing what god says in his word: it's "cognitive". You can help yourself by believing the truth.  The truth will set you free.  But part of it also is about feeling the love of God; it's "affective". God heals the broken hearted.

5. And lastly, you can't separate the Spirit from the Trinity
o It's about Jesus.  Paul prays for the Spirit to come so that "Christ may set up home in your hearts (the seat of personality) through faith."  The Holy Spirit comes to show us Jesus, to help us grasp truth about Jesus, to form in us the character of Jesus and enable us to continue the ministry of Jesus.  There is no difference between the work of Jesus and the work of the Spirit.  We don't experience Jesus except as the Spirit, and we don't experience the Spirit except as Jesus.
o It's about God the Father. "That you may be filled towards all the fulness of God". IF in the New Testament we experience Jesus by the Spirit, in the Old Testament we experience the Father by the Spirit.  And in Paul's teaching the Spirit is the Spirit of sonship.  To pray for the Spirit to come is to pray that God himself will come: the God of the Big bang, the God who spoke worlds into existence, the God of the Red Sea, the God who raised Jesus from the dead.  There's always more, of God, to be poured out into our lives.

Maybe that's why Paul finishes with that wonderful Blessing: "Now to him who is able to do more than you can imagine, to him be glory in the Church..."  If every believer were filled toward the fullness of God, there would be glory in the Church!

© Gilmour Lilly May 2011