November 21 2025

Friday November 21

We Are Called to Unity

Ephesians 4:1-3

1 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, 2 with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, 3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Today we're looking at Ephesians 4:1-3. The first 16 verses of this chapter is about the unity, the unity of the body of Christ, the church. Having unity in the church that shows forth to the world that we are one in Christ. We love one another. Jesus had told His disciples, "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples because of your love for one another" (John 13:35). To truly love one another means will manifest itself in unity. We set aside our differences, our preferences, and out of God's love and reservoir of His great endless love, we are now able to forgive one another, love one another, and have unity in the church.

In these first 16 verses, we see four very important things about this unity. In verses 1-3, we see the grace of this unity. Then we see in verses 4-6, the ground of unity. How that we are one in spirit, one in body, one in the Father, one in the Son, one in baptism. Then we'll see in verses 7-11, the gifts of unity. The gifts of the body of Christ that He has given us that enables us to serve one another and to work together. Then in verses 12-16, we see the growth of unity, as we grow into the fullness of Christ. Meaning we are Christlike in our attitude toward one another. We're Christlike in our attitude toward the lost world around us. Having the heart of Jesus that shows forth the maturity of the Christian believer.

As I was studying for this chat this morning, I couldn't help but think if I as a pastor again, I would not just recommend, I would require every new church member, indeed every church member, to read Ephesians 4 over and over again, almost memorize it, because it is so important that as believers, we work together in great unity. We work together for the Lord Jesus Christ. We do all these things because of His wonderful grace that He's given us through His cross, and His forgiveness of sins that we talked about in Ephesians 1-3. Which is the foundation that has been laid in the doctrine, the teaching, of what the Church, the body of Christ is all about in the Bible.

Now this unity is so important. What we must remember is, unity is not uniformity. Unity comes from within. It's a spiritual grace. While uniformity is the result of pressure from without. The real church is not everybody dressing alike, looking alike, sounding alike, talking alike. You see some churches like that. That's not the real church. The real church is diversity with unity. Unity with diversity. We have old people with gray hair, white hair, sitting there loving Jesus, loving the children, loving the young couples. We see the young couples and the children loving the old people. We see the people that like and prefer the Christian contemporary music loving the people that like the Beethoven type of Christian music. And vice versa. We are people that get along with each other despite our differences. This is “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” as we read in these first three verses. Remember in verse 1, Paul tells us to, "Walk worthy of the calling by which you were called." What were we called to?  We are called to unity. 

Then in verses 2-3, we see how that is possible. With all lowliness, gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Here we see seven different attributes or graces of this unity that we should be experiencing in our churches. The first one is “with all lowliness”. The other word for “lowliness” is humility. We humble ourselves. We prefer one another over the other, and over ourselves. It means we put Christ first in our lives. And because we put Him first in our lives, others around us are being loved, and ourselves are put last. Real JOY is Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last.

Oh, my friend, may God help us to pray that we have that unity in our churches today. The sad thing is that so many churches today have a reputation of a handful of people running and ruining the church. Always making problems that causes disunity that destroys the love of Christ in the body of Christ and destroys our witness and testimony to the world around us.

May God speak to our hearts today through these verses to help us all go back to our churches and endeavor to have this unity in the body of believers in our local church!

God bless!