There is one body

Ephesians 4:1-6 (TNIV) -

1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.3 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;5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism;

6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

My thoughts -

Paul gave a bit of a "pep talk" to the Ephesian church in chapter 3, encouraging them to, rather than be discouraged by his suffering for the church and for Christ, be strengthened by it. Now it seems he is urging them to live how he would if he were able.

You will, in reading Paul, see that he mentions frequently that we are essentially free to live as we please. Someone who spent the bulk of his adult life in prison probably has some very strong ideas of what "freedom" is. But, if we have freedom in Christ to live as we please then we have strength in Christ to live according to God's will. That seems like a contradiction, doesn't it? There are many seeming contradictions in the Christian life and I think a big part of solving this conundrum is to think and live more experientially than rationally. Love is never very rational, anyway. Life in Christ is more to be experienced than understood, no matter how much I wish to know and understand.

So here is Paul, in prison, telling the Ephesian church how they (and us, by extension) ought to, in their (our) freedom, live together. And what does Paul say?

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

So we're to be humble and gentle? That's not to hard, is it? What, what does he mean by "completely", here? Does that mean there are no exceptions? No exclusions, no exchanges, returns, or refunds?

And we are to be patient? How patient? Does this fall under the purview of "completely" from the previous statement? Haven't you heard a pastor or someone once say to never pray for patience? There's no easy way to acquire patience. It takes a lot of work. And the work is unpleasant, at that.

And what exactly does "every effort" mean on the whole keeping the unity and peace thing? Is that like the token effort that we put in to be able to say that we tried or does that literally mean "every" effort, like to try everything possible?

It seems like a stupid, cheesy cliché to say this but we are all in this together. There is one God and one body and we're the body. Life isn't easy and if we are really living for Christ it's even harder. We can't just "go with the flow", follow all of the inclinations of this world and our own sinful natures and just see where we end up. Living for Christ is intentional. Seeking after and doing God's will is intentional. I'd like to believe that we're given a very simple list of instructions we are to follow in this life and all of the tools to do it and it's just that easy but God doesn't work that way. Me wanting God to doesn't change that. The answers are never easy and only end up leading to more questions.

But we're asking the questions together. And we're living the answers together. And if we want an easy list of instructions then maybe we should start with "love God and love people" and see where that leads us. But then we have to ask what love is and which people and then the questions just snowball from there.

Honestly seeking after God is no easy thing. Honestly living as a Christian is no easy thing. You might think in a culture where Christianity is accepted and even normative that would be different but I think it makes it even harder. There's a blurred line, at least in the Bible belt, between "godly" and "worldly". There aren't a lot of clear distinctions and it's easy to live according to the worldly and not even notice. Most of us do that. I hate to admit it but I do as well. It's unavoidable.

Life is hard. Following Christ is hard. If we aren't living with each other in the way Paul describes here; if we aren't humble (remember, it isn't about us, it's about Jesus)and gentle; if we aren't patient, loving, and peaceful; if we aren't united as one body in Christ then this life is even harder.