Walk Worthy, Walk Together

Intro: ME

Hey everyone, it’s great to be together online with all of y’all. I’m sad we can’t all be in the same place, but the body of Christ is still the body of Christ even when we’re not in the same building.

To start, I want to read Ephesians 4:1-6 for us. If you have your bible, or phone, or computer, go ahead and pull it up. I’m reading from the ESV, so it may be a little different than the version you’re using, which is fine.

Ephesians 4:1–6 ESV

1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

This is the word of the Lord.

Prayer

My junior and senior years of high school, I was part of the worship team for my youth group. I was young, I mean, I’m still young, but I was younger, had a lot of pride, and I thought I was the greatest electric guitarist in Wauchula, Florida. And my prideful, maybe even selfish thinking lead to a lot of problems in our little worship team. One time, we were practicing, and keyboard player and I got into a shouting match over whether we should play and Em chord or and Am chord. I was screaming, “It’s an Em!” and she was yelling back, “It’s and Am!” And this went on and on, and eventually the youth pastor came in, tried to lead us in compromising, we both refused to compromise, and so he jsut makes a decision. I think he jsut flipped a coin or something and was like “okay, y’all are playing Am.” And at this point, I’m fuming. So I stomp over to my side of the stage, the rest of the youth group starts to come in, and I make this decision in my mind: “I don’t care about how we sound together, I’m playing an Em.” And I kind of smirk to myself, because I was super spiteful, and was like, Just wait till we get to the bridge.” We get to the bridge, and she play Am and I play Em, and I mean I played that thing. I had the overdrive cranked up, I turned the volume up on my amp. And I’m like, I’m making a point tonight. and it disrupts the entire song and pretty much ruins worship that night. And the team just looks at me like “are you serious?” And I have this smirk on my face, like, “I showed them.” It was ugly y’all. But here’s what happened: I had to have things my way. I was humble or patient or gentle enough to see from another angle. I let my difference of opinion, or I let my difference of how I thought the song should sound, I let this prevent the team from coming together. And by us not being together, it negatively impacted worship. My inability to come together with the rest of the band hindered everyone from worshiping. I valued my opinion, I valued my preference, I valued my thinking over the people I was leading with.

We

But, we’ve all seen this. You’ve seen it in school. You’ve been a part of a team or a group that just can’t come together. You’ve done a group project and no one can agree on which direction to go, and everyone is holding on so tightly to their preferences and what they want or what they think, that it’s impossible to come together. You’ve seen it on a sports team or in orchestra if play an instrument, everyone’s really good at their position, but dynamically the team can’t come together. Or, you’ve served as part of a mission or outreach team, and everyone has a different way of doing things and seeing things, and the team never fully comes together and is ineffective in its outreach. And here’s why this happens: Often, individuals in a group value their differences more than their togetherness. When this happens, the group is ineffective in doing what it’s called to do. If an orchestra can’t come together, it can’t play the piece of music its set to perform. If a sports team can’t come together as one, it can’t win games.

But what about us as Jesus Followers? What about the visible body of Christ? Jesus did two huge things before he went to the cross. The first thing he did was he gathered his disciples together and he said to them “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” And I imagine the disciples role their eyes and are like, Jesus, bro, this isn’t new. You’ve said this, the law and the prophets say this, we know this.” And Jesus probably responds, I’m not finished. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: As I have loved you.” Oh, shoot, it is new. Jesus added something. As I have loved you. As he has loved us we are to love each other. Hmm, I can’t love how I want to love, I can’t love you based on how you treat me, I can’t love you only if I agree with you, I’m commanded to love the way that Jesus has loved me. Jesus followers are to love each other the way that Jesus has loved us. Interesting.

And then, shortly after this, Jesus prays, first for his disciples, and then for every person who will ever follow Jesus. And he says:

May they all be one, (May they remain together), as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me.

So Jesus has commanded his followers to love each other as he has loved us and he’s prayed that we’ll stay together. And there are a lot of reasons for this, but one huge one, is that Jesus knows. Jesus knows our hearts. Jesus knows our tendency to let our disagreements or our differences get in the way of our relationships with each other. He knows we’ll let these things keep us from staying together. So he commands us to love as he’s loved and he prays we’ll stay together. Because, when we value our differences over being together, we cripple the body of Christ, and Jesus is not glorified. When we as individuals in the body of Christ value our differences (or disagreements or our preferences) over being together, or over our relationships with each other, we cripple the body of Christ, and Jesus, our savior, is not glorified. We’re ineffective in our mission as Jesus followers. We’re ineffective in our churches, we’re ineffective in outreach, we’re ineffective in sharing the love and hope of Jesus with those around us. We’re ineffective in bringing glory to God - we fail in acknowledging his greatness. His greatness which overcomes all of our differences. We’re ineffective, but we’re also lonely. When we allow our differences to get in the way of our relationships, you know this, you’ve felt this, you’re left alone. Jesus doesn’t want this to happen, so at the end of his life, he commands us to love as he’s loved and he prays we’ll stay together.

And then, 20-25 years go by, and the Apostle Paul jumps onto the scene. And Paul hated Christians. He did everything he could to have them killed, thrown in jail, persecuted. You name it. He did everything he could to get rid of Jesus followers. Until, he’s walking down the road, and he has this wild conversion experience where Jesus literally speaks to him from heaven and asks him why he’s persecuting him. And Paul gets wrecked, and he becomes a Jesus follower. And so, Paul travels around the Mediterranean sea planting churches, preaching in synagogues, saying Jesus has come, he’s the messiah, and he’s done something incredible, and as he’s preaching one afternoon, the people riot, they pick him up and throw him out, and then 8 or 9 people sneak out at night and say we want to hear more about this, so he takes these people both Jewish and gentile, and then he’d start a church. And then he would get on a ship that none of us would even dream of getting on, and he’d sail across the mediterranean see, and he does this over and over and over, and he begins to write these letters so that he can coach or train the people in the churches he’s started. And he takes what Jesus said: Love as I have Loved and remain together, and instead of just saying this, he makes it specific and teaches what it looks like to love and how we can make sure we stay together.

And in this letter to the churches in Ephesus, Paul is writing to Christians who are Jewish and Gentile. Christians who come from completely different background and cultures. Christians who have a ton of differences. And so, Paul writes in Ephesians 4:1 “ I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, He’s being very clear here. He’s in prison for the Lord. He doesn’t say this so that the churches he’s writing to will feel sorry for him, he says this to emphasize the urgency, the importance, the wight, of what he’s teaching. I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk (or urge you to live, urge you to act, urge you to conduct yourselves) in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. The first three chapters of this letter, Paul has been just spitting doctrine and theology and outlining what our calling is, what our inheritance is, what belongs to us who follow Jesus. And I can’t go through everything right now, but I just want to highlight a few things that Paul talks about in reference to our calling:

In 1:4 he says we’ve been chosen. You and me as Followers of Jesus have been chosen. Chosen or called to be holy and blameless in love before him.

We’ve been adopted as daughters and sons.

We’ve been called to salvation. To redemption through his blood. You’ve been bought, your sins have been paid for by the blood of Jesus.

we’ve been called to forgiveness. Your sins have been forgiven.

In Jesus we have an inheritance. There’s a future hope that we have.

This is all in chapter 1. So I encourage you to read that on your own when you have a chance. But he keeps going, and so just a few more things in relation to our calling:

In 2:5, We’ve been made alive. We were dead in our sins and our trespasses. In other words we were a mess. In need of gospel transformation. And Jesus came and saved us.

In 2:13, we who were far away, we who were without any hope, were brought near by the blood of Christ. And through the blood of Christ, God has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility. God has destroyed the barriers that we have that come between us as Jesus followers. So that, he might create one new humanity. So that our hostility, our disagreements, our separation would be put to death. would be ended. And in him, all of us are being put together as a dwelling place, as place where the Spirit of God lives.

And so, Paul is saying, in light of all of this that is true of you, walk worthy of the calling to which you have been called. That word worthy, means balance. And it means that our calling, all of these things I jsut outlined that are true of Jesus Followers, our calling should be in balance with our conduct. Our calling (what Jesus has done for us) should influence how we live. Our calling should drive us towards staying together.

And great. So this is what we’re supposed to do. Walk worthy of our calling with this focus on staying together. But how, Paul? How can we remain together? How can we maintain this togetherness.

Here’s how:

Paul writes: with all humility. Now, we all say or think we know what humility is, but remember, these are all things that are in relation to other people, so humility in relationship to other people is really simple. Humility is seeing myself for as I really am in relation to other people and to God. Humility is viewing myself accurately, it’s viewing yourself accurately as you are in relationship to other people and to God. And viewing myself accurately in relation to other people is that I am nothing more than citizen of humanity just like all of you. We’re all born in this world without any control of who we’re born to or what we’re born into, and most of us have no control over that or over when we die. But there is an equality among human beings, you’re not inferior or superior to anyones else, there this equality among us in that the thing that makes you special and the thing that makes me special is that we are loved by God the father. Humility allows me to approach you as a peer no matter who you are or what you do or how young you are, or what you have or don’t have. Humility allows us to approach one another as equals. There is a sense that it doesn’t matter what I’ve accomplished or haven’t accomplished but that we are peers, we’re all together in this world and we live under the canopy of God’s love.

And what the Apostle Paul wants us to understand is that when people interact with us, he wants us to come across as people who understand that we’re special not because of what were capable of, and we’re special regardless of what we’ve accomplished or have not accomplished, because God who has invited all of us to call him heavenly father, loves you unconditionally. This is what makes us special, this is who we are, and knowing who we are in relation to God and to others is true humility. And true humility gives us the ability to see the perspective of someone we disagree with.

So, walk with all humility, and then he writes gentleness: You know what gentleness is? Gentleness is the decision we make to respond to someone in light of their strengths and weaknesses instead of responding to them out of our strength. Gentleness is making the decision to accommodate to the level of strength or weakness of a brother or sister as we interact with them instead of coming to them out of our strength. It’s the difference between picking up a contact on the tip of my finger and a 10 pound dumb-bell with my hand. I’m capable of both, but I’m going to adjust my approach and my strength according to the object of my strength. What this means is that gentle people don’t come into a conversation and maintain the relationship from a position of who they are and what they’ve done and how much they know the bible or how much they’ve accomplished, or their background, they gear down to the level of the person. They aren’t condescending. It has everyting to do with communicating that my relationship with you is more important than you being impressed by me. My relationship wiht you is more important than you knowing my full capacity and my full strength. And I’m goign to adjust for your benefit.

And then he writes with patience, Patience is basically deciding to go the speed of another person. It’s gearing down and determining to move at someone else’s speed instead of mine. It’s not pushy. It chooses to move at the other person’s pace. It doesn’t push other’s to match your pace. It does what God, our heavenly father, has done for us. God has accommodated to our capacity. Patience accommodates to other’s capacity. To be patient, we need to slow down or in some cases speed up. We need to move and lean into the direction of others. God moved at our pace and we’re to do the same for others. And so, we need to exercise our patience muscle, patience is a muscle, and this is so frustrating, especially for me as an impatient person. And I can guarantee that all of us will have a chance to exercise that muscle sometime before the day is over. And when we’re patient with each other, it gives us clout with the other person. And it allows us to speak to them and oven time it allows us to speak into their situation or circumstances.

And then Paul writes: bearing with one another in love. This bearing word, I found kind of funny, but it means basically tolerating. Putting up with each other. Sometimes, we just have to put up with each other. We’re gonna disagree, we’re gonna have differences, arguments, but we need to do everything in our power to put up with each other and stay together.

And the focus on “one other” is huge. Paul uses this word 40 times throughout his letters to churches. And this tells us that Christians, Jesus followers, we’re a part of one another. And we’re called to think about one other, serve one another, love one another, build up, strengthen, encourage one another, take on the burdens and hardships and difficulties of one another, and with that, be willing to let others take on your burdens, submit to one another. Because Christianity, following Jesus, is others-oriented. One pastor writes “Christianity is a God-directed, Christ-defined, other-oriented religion. The focus isn’t on us so much as it is on one another. And what Jesus has done for us and in us allows us to focus away from ourselves and onto each other.

And Paul closes this off with “in love.” It’s love that pulls all of these things Paul mentions together. And so often, we think of love as this feeling. And that’s part of it for sure. But more than that, it’s a decision. It’s an action. It can only exist in relation to others, and it’s always costly. To love others the way Jesus loved us is costly. It cost Jesus his life. And the love that Jesus showed us must be shown to others. And this love is a response to the love Jesus showed us. To love is a choice we make because of Jesus’ love. To really follow jesus and to maintain togetherness is going to cost us somethings. And that’s okay. Because what we gain in unity is worth the costs we have to pay.

Paul continues be eager, or make every effort, or value, or invest your energy, time, resources, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

This is important. Maintain the unity of the Spirit. We’re not creating unity. We’re not creating togetherness. This has already been given to us. We’re to maintain it. To keep it up. To make sure it’s not threatened by anything. To make sure our differences don’t come between us. Togetherness is ours. And this is one of those weird things that Paul writes. It’s ours, it needs to be maintained, but if you read down to 4:13, it’s also something we work towards. And I think this really emphasizes the importance of it. It should always be in our minds and it should always come out in our actions.

Maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Paul’s referencing back to chapter 2:14-18 where he talks about Christ making peace between all people and creating one new humanity that’s together. Our staying together is based in the peacemaking of Jesus. is based in the destruction of the walls of hostility. Is based in the tearing down of the differences that we let divide us.

And so, by walking humbly, by walking gently, by walking in patience, by putting up with each other, we work to maintain or to keep the unity of the Spirit. We maintain togetherness, which is our in Christ. But why? Why is this so important. Why does any of this matter? John, there are just people in my church that I don’t like and I don’t get a long with, they annoy me, and there are too many differences. We have too many differences, and humility, patience, gentleness, these are great, they might even give me the ability to work through differences, but this is just too hard. And Paul knows this. Remember, he’s writing to Christians in churches who have member from all different backgrounds. Paul was aware of the differences the churches and the people in the churches in Ephesus had.

So he writes, and he emphasizes what they have in common. He emphasizes the realities of what is theirs in Christ and what should bring them together and transcend their differences. He shows, again, that they have togetherness and their actions must reflect it. Regardless of their differences. And this next section was likely a creed, or a statement of what Jesus followers believed, and early Christians would say this as a part of their worship service. And it serves as a powerful reminder of what we have in common.

He writes: There is one body. There’s one body of Christ. All of us that follow Jesus are a part of this body. We come from different churches, different denominations, different background and cultures, but we’re all a part of the body of Christ. Regardless of the differences we have in how we worship, regardless of some of the subtle theological differences we have, regardless of our backgrounds, regardless of our cultures, through Jesus we’ve been made into one body. One new humanity. And this doesn’t mean that differences aren’t important. They are. This doesnt meant that God doesnt value our cultures, backgrounds, etc. We won’t really get into this tonight, but the rest of this chapter addresses the diversity in the body and how that’s a good thing. And I think when we work together with our differences, when we seek to see things from each other’s point of view, we’re able to come together and create something better than we could on our own. Because we all have different perspectives that are unique to us, and all of our perspective are valuable. But we have blind spots. And so to see that, we have to maintain togetherness, we have walk in humility, gentleness, patience, etc. So this isn’t saying ignore those things and settle for something less. It’s saying don’t let those things come between you. Work together, as the body, with your differences, work together through the Holy Spirit, and you’ll create something better than you could if you split and did things your way.

And along with this, he writes, and one Spirit. All of us that follow Jesus have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. This empowers us to stay together. This empowers us to see each other’s differences and work together, recognize each other and where we’re coming from, and it enables us to maintain togetherness. It can’t be done if we’re not walking in the Spirit.

—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— We all have a common hope. Our future with our savior in heaven. So if we don’t remain together here, just know, we’ll see each other in the future.

5 one Lord. We follow one Lord. We all follow the same Jesus. The same Jesus who commanded us to love as he loved. The same Jesus that prayed we would stay together. He is who we follow. He is who we confess with our lips is Lord. He is who we should be cnfessing with our actions is Lord. And because there is one Lord, this should bind us, tie us together more than anything. It’s the confession and belief and Following Jesus as Lord that enabled jews and gentiles to worship in the same space even with all of their differences. It’s this same Lord, who we confess and who we follows that allows us to worship together across all generational, cultural, denominational lines. Confessing Jesus as Lord allows us value togetherness more than differences.

We have in common one faith. All Jesus followers throughout the world have in common one faith. Theres one Jesus who we confess as Lord. He is the object of our faith. All of us have in common faith in Jesus, one gospel, faith in the one who has freed us from sin, freed us from bondage, freed us from the hostilities we have. There’s one faith that unites all of us.

One baptism, and this one gets tricky. Some of us were baptized as infants, and later went through confirmation, I was baptized by being dunked in a bathtub in front of my whole church. I’ve seen people baptized in water troughs. Something that people from Wauchula like to do is get baptized in the Peace river. It’s this like nasty muddy river, and they’ll become a Jesus follower and they’ll get a pastor to go down to the river and dunk them in it. Kinda gross, but that’s cool. And we could argue back and forth for years on what the right way to baptize is. But I think what Paul is saying here is that the baptism that truly matters is baptism into Christ.

And finally: 6 one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. You have a heavenly father who loves you, who cherishes you, who values you, who gave his son for you. You’ve been made in his image, and you have value and worth. And through Jesus, you have been restored into his family. Your Christian sister or brother who you have differences with, is also made in the image of God and is loved by the same heavenly father that loves you. And when we let our differences come between our togetherness, we’re saying that God loves you, and that’s great, but I don’t have to. We’re communicating that the love God has for us is great, but it’s not enough to motivate me towards loving you. And I don’t know, but that’s just weird. We’re loved, deeply loved, buy the creator of the heavens and the earth, but we can’t love each other and maintain togetherness?

When this is how the body of Christ behaves, when we value our differences over being together, when we refuse to humble ourselves, and gently and patiently see each other’s perspective, we’re crippling the body of Christ. As I said earlier, we’re ineffective. We’re just meeting together out of habit or tradition, and that’s not the purpose of the church. When we let our differences come between us and keep us from being together, our witness to the world around us is ruined.

Here’s why this is all so important. Here’s why we must walk worthy of our calling focusing on staying together, focusing on keeping the unity. here’s why we must walk in humility - seeing ourselves as we truly are, and why we must walk in gentleness - why we respond according to others strengths or weakness, why we walk patiently - accommodating to other’s capacity, here’s why we put up with each other even when we can’t agree. Here’s why we do everything in our power to stay together:

New England, the place you’re saturated in, is in desperate need of the body of Christ to be together. Our nation, and our world, is in desperate need of the body of Christ to be together. When the church doesn’t function as one, doesn’t function practically together, we can’t love as Jesus loved. We can’t share the message of the gospel with our friends or our families. We can’t fight against injustices in our society. And the world needs the church in this fight. People are dying because of injustices in our country. We’ve seen the news this week. We’ve all seen the Murder of George Floyd, Ahmad Arbery, Brionna Taylor. We’ve seen the brokenness and evil of our society over and over and over the past five months. And we can’t maintain unity? People are dying, if not physically, then spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and they’re one hope, our societies one hope, Jesus, they want nothing to do with because they see how Christians act towards one another. Jesus prayed, May they stay one, so that the world may know. They see how the visible body of Christ, limps along ineffectively. Focused on ourselves. Focused on our differences and disagreements. The world sees how we respond to each other. The world sees how we can’t come together.

It should’t be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s walk worthy of our calling. Let’s work to keep the unity. Let’s be saved, be redeemed, be made new, let’s have this wonderful hope and inheritance in Christ, and let’s live like it. Let’s live with the confidence that the Spirit of God resides in us, empowering us to walk together. Empowering us to walk in humility, gentleness, patience, empowering us to put up with each other. And I get it. This is hard. Paul uses the term walking, and walking seems easy, but if you haven’t walked in a long time. It’s not. A few weeks ago, this is kinda embarassing, but I started exercising a little bit. And I walked, not ran, not jogged, not power walked, I just walked about a mile, and the next day I couldn’t move. Legit, Like my knees were locked up, my feet hurt, just getting out of bed was painful. Because, I hadn’t been walking. I had build up muscles that were there, but that hadn’t been used so they were dormant. And this is true of humility, gentleness, patience, tolerance, they need to be exercised. We need to intentionally, daily, live our lives with these things in focus.

One more thing, and I’ll close:

Last September, Dr. Eric Mason spoke at Gordon-Conwell and he used this illustration of unity that I think is so powerful. So I’ll end with this:

In the 80’s there was this cartoon called Vultron. And I watched a clip of it this afternoon, interesting show. But basically, there are the lions that would go out and fight evil.

They were all different colors, you had the red lion the black lion the yellow lion

they’d go out and they’d fight against evil, and they individually would start getting their buts whooped, the black one would say, alright, it’s tim for us to come together. They’d shoot up in the sky, music starts playing, they’d start joining together. And when they all connect together, the head starts to show up. The head doesn’t show up in their situation until the link up together with all of their different colors and differences. Our calling together is: the only way the head is going to functionally show up redemptively in our context is if we functionally see ourselves as brothers and sisters in Christ and we get rid of our differences and we begin to connect and be committed and connected to the reality of our ability to not fight alone but fight together, and it has to start in our churches. It has to start with you and with me. We’ve got to work with everything we have towards togetherness.

the bible says we have to by the name of jesus attain to the unity of the faith.

We’re already unified now we have to walk practically in our unity. We have to see our gospel commonality, the things we have in common, as a central commonality. but in seeing this commonality, one thing we must do is enter one another’s experience so that your issues becomes my issues and my issues become your issues, and other communities issues become our issues. And we begin to work together, against the powers and systems of racism and injustice and the evils of this world. Against the schemes of Satan. Therefore being a witness to a lost and dying and sin sick world around us. Because, If we aren’t together, we’re not effective. But when we walk together, The head of Jesus shows up, and we’re empowered as the body of Christ to enact change in our context.