Ephesians 4:1-6

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Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God. 2 Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love, 3 and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together. 4 You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. 5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.

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February 9, 2014!

pg. "1 of 6 "

Have ever been given a gift certicate, only to have the restaurant or store

shut down before you had a chance to use it? Or maybe you found a great coupon and you put away somewhere. And then forget it. I get my oil changed in Chattanooga and the rst time I went to this particular place they offered me a free carwash. They gave me a code for a basic wash, but that day there was a line, and I needed to come back up the mountain to work so I just put it in one of the cars pockets so I could use it later. Well that code has expired and the receipt is lost. Jodie and I hate washing the car, so I was excited about a free carwash, but I squandered it. We also have a tendency to leave our coupons at home when we go to the store. We will walk down and aisle and see vanilla wafers on sale, and Jodie will say oh we had a $1.00 off coupon at home. We also do this with some of the groceries we buy. I will see cantaloupes on sale and buy one, and I will think Oh, this is a healthy snack. No cookies for me, I will eat fruit, I am really turning the corner now. And then it gets put in the drawer way at the bottom. And two weeks later we nd a small shriveled mass. Its like a cantaloupe raisin. We squander those things, and it always bugs me. To have something so useful, so good and to let it go waste, it always bothers me. ! ! Paul must have have been bothered by the idea of squandering as well.

He begins this section of the letter telling the Ephesians not to squander the gift they have been given. In the rst 3 chapters of this letter, Paul reminded the Ephesians of what God had given them. God had brought them into Gods family. Paul talked to them about salvation, which is a gracious gift. It was a gift with a high price, it cost Jesus his life, but it also brought forth many gains. This gift not only saved each of us, it also tore down the barriers that were between us and God. It tore down the barriers between peoples, putting all of us on equal standing. This gracious gift was an invitation to come and join Gods family.!

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February 9, 2014!

pg. "2 of 6 "

And Paul urges them not to squander it. He says live a life worthy of your

calling. God has done all of this for you, so live as if it matters. Dont squander this gift of grace. Dont keep living according to your old ways, live according to Gods ways. Live a life worthy of your calling. Your calling is this gift of grace. Your calling is to accept what God has done. God saved you by grace through faith, not by your doing, but by Gods gift. God tore down the dividing walls. God gave you spiritual gifts. God chose to adopt you as Gods own child, a full member of Gods family. Live a life worthy of that. Now we cannot ever earn this gift. There is nothing you can do to even the score, but thats ok because God is not keeping score. Paul isnt saying you have to earn this gift, he is saying dont squander it. Dont hide it under a bushel, no! Dont put it down on the bottom drawer in your heart and forget about it for two weeks. Dont stuff it into a compartment somewhere and say I am glad I have this, someday I will actually do it. Live a life that is based on what God has done. Paul says live a life worthy of this calling. ! ! So what does a life worthy of this calling look like? Paul answers that as

we read on. In verses 4 through 6 he says You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all. One body, One spirit, called in one hope. Gods calling to adopt us into one family, or build us into one temple, mean that we have to live together as one. It is a call for unity. For oneness. We are to be one body with one spirit and one hope because there is one lord one faith one baptism and One God and Father of all. One. One. One. 7 times in 3 verses Paul appeals to oneness. That is why we must make every effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit. If we are divided against ourselves then we are not living a life worthy of our calling. Two weeks ago we talked about

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February 9, 2014!

pg. "3 of 6 "

the dividing walls, which Jesus tore down. When we mend those wall, we fail to live up to calling.! ! Paul is saying the most basic thing we should share as Christians is a

sense of unity. Every other Christian on earth, that has ever lived, was saved by grace through faith. They did not earn it, you did not earn it. We were all given a gift, an invitation into Gods family. But too often we look at Catholics with suspicion, at Pentecostals with condescension, and the Presbyterians up yonder with jealousy, and we fail to live as brothers and sisters. We struggle to live it out between denominations and sometimes we even struggle to live it out in this church. There are people in our church, and I would say every church, who hold grudges against each other. Somewhere down the line something happened, maybe you were wronged, maybe its someone who has different beliefs or priorities. We all encounter people who rub us the wrong way. We all know that some people are easy to be friends with and other people are difcult, for a myriad of reasons. But Paul says that in Christ, according to our one calling from the one Lord, sealed in the one Spirit at our one baptism into the one faith, we must become one body. Make every effort to preserve the unity.! ! But that is hard, its hard to be unied with people when there really are

differences amongst us. Thats why Paul told them how to do it. Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love. ! ! The only way for a group of people to live in unity is to conduct themselves

with humility. If everyone is thinking their ideas are the best, their needs are the most important, and their way is the only way there will be no unity. The only person who can make a claim for authority is the one Lord, and that aint me or you. So we must take up an attitude of humility. We must accept that we might be

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February 9, 2014!

pg. "4 of 6 "

wrong about things. Someone elses ideas and ways could be better. We should defer to each other, lookout for each other.! ! That leads us to gentleness, which is an outpouring of humbleness. When

we disagree with each other we must be gentle with each other. You are gentle with something that is precious, something you dont wish to be hurt, something you want protected. Even the people you dont like, even the people that are a bit off, even the people with whom we disagree, were given the same gift of grace. And if Jesus valued them enough to lay down his life for them, then perhaps we should value them the same way. ! ! And nally perhaps the most important part is patience. For us to bear with

each other we must be patient. My wife can tell you how important patience is in a relationship. If she were not patient with me, I would have run her off several times. And she might even admit that I have had to be patient with her. We have come to realize that we cant just change the other person. Guilt, force, manipulation, passive aggressiveness all destroy the relationship. We cant force our way on to each other, but we also cant just go our separate ways, that leaves us with just waiting it out. Sometimes I get stubborn and Jodie has to let me spin my wheels, discover on my own that I am wrong, and then come back to her side with my tail between my legs. And actually there have been times where patience has helped her see that I was actually right. That is what it mean to be bound together. That is what unity takes, that is how separate people become one body in the Spirit.! ! To sum all of this up Paul tells them simply, Accept one another in love.

Love as shown in God through Christ, is what holds us together. Paul wrote to Corinthians that even if he could speak like angel but didnt have love it he just a clanging symbol. If our church had 400 members but we couldnt love each other and live as one in unity then we are nothing more than mob. Love is the dening
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characteristic of the church the body of Christ, because it was the dening characteristic of Christ. Jesus told his followers Love one another, this is how people will know you are my followers, if you love each other.1 Not by your
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theology or your politics or the size of your houses or the slogans on your t-shirts. But if you will love each other. ! ! God is inviting us us into his family, into one big family, and we shouldnt

squander that invitation. But if we want to live into that calling, if we want to live a life that is worthy of this calling. Then we must love each other and live in unity. That means we have to be humble and gentle with non-christians. We have to be patient with other christians from other denominations and see them as our partners and siblings. But most importantly we have to accept each other in love. Here, this group. We have to love each other, not through a program, not through your pastor. Because if we cant live together within the connes of this one little church, than what chance do we have of inviting others to join us. What chance do we have to be unied to the rest of the universal Church. In truth, we dont have a chance. We cant do what it takes to make this happen. We cant force ourselves to live in unity. We cant make ourselves into a family. Because God has already done it. God has adopted us, God has broken down the dividing walls, Gods love, its height and width and depth and length can do more than what we could ask or imagine. God has already opened the door, and made a way for this to happen, all we have to do is accept the invitation. When God called us he made it possible for the Spirit to lead us to this unity so that we could live together as one, all we have to do is live according to that call. I pray that we can do that, because if we do, then a whole new world is opened to us, and it is the world we made to live in. Thanks be to God, Amen.!

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John 13:34-35 February 9, 2014! pg. "6 of 6 "

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