Christian Unity and the One Body, Spirit and Hope
Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called Ephesians 4:3,4 (NIV)
In 4:2-16 Paul will elaborate four truths about the kind of oneness God intends His new society to experience:
It depends on the godliness of our character and conduct (4:2)
It comes from the unity of our God (4:3-6)
It is enriched by the diversity of our gifts (4:7-12)
It demands the maturity of our growth (4:13-16)
We’ve looked at the godliness of our character and conduct as a factor in the oneness God wants for His people. We come now to:
(2) Christian unity depends on the unity of our God (4:3-6)
‘Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace’ (4:3). Paul sees this unity as God’s gift, made possible by the cross of Christ (2:14ff) and made effective through the Holy Spirit. We can’t create it. It is given to us, but our responsibility is to keep it, to guard it in the face of many attempts both from within and outside the church to take it away. Paul uses a word here translated ‘make every effort’ that means zealous effort and care (1 Thessalonians 2:17; 2 Timothy 2:15; 2 Peter 1:10,15). This unity can only be kept ‘through the bond of peace.’ Paul is encouraging the church to maintain the church’s unity visibly. We are to preserve in concrete relationships, ‘through the bond of peace,’ (the peace which binds us together), the unity God has created.
‘There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called’ (4:4). The ‘one body’ is the church, the body of Christ, comprising Jewish and Gentile believers, and its unity and cohesion is due to the one Holy Spirit who indwells and animates it (Romans 8:9).
All who have the Spirit have a common ‘hope.’ We may have come from a vast number of backgrounds but our goal is the same. The Spirit is the guarantee (1:14) and the down payment that in the end we will all stand together in God’s presence and be restored fully into His likeness and possess His inheritance.
Paul first describes the church’s unity as ‘the unity of the Spirit’ (meaning a unity which the Holy Spirit creates) and then argues that this unity is as indestructible as God Himself. Yet in the same context he also tells us that we have to maintain it. Why urge the maintenance of something indestructible, and urge us to maintain it, when it is a ‘unity of the Spirit’ which He created? The obvious answer is that to maintain the church’s unity must mean to maintain it visibly. Paul’s exhortation is for us to preserve in actual concrete relationships of love (in ‘the bond of peace’ – the peace which binds us together) that unity which God has created and which neither man nor demon can destroy. We are to demonstrate to the world that the unity we say exists indestructibly is a reality.
Be faithful to guard the sweet harmony of the Holy Spirit among you in the bonds of peace, so that you will be one body and one spirit, as you were all called into the same glorious hope of divine destiny Ephesians 4:3,4 (The Passion Translation)