Ephesians 4:4-6, One hope of your calling: The quality of the elect.

Sunday, January 3, 2021

Eph 4:1-6

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love, 3 being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

Paul is a prisoner of the Lord. Is it because he is imprisoned at the time? Are not all of us in the body of Christ the Lord’s prisoners? How long it takes us to understand the implications of that truth and how deeply enslaved to Christ we are. Keep learning, keep seeking, knocking, and asking.

I’m struck by the manner worthy not being described, at least in this passage, by strength and honor and wisdom. The words are much more passive and peaceful: humility, gentleness (meekness), patience, forbearance, and love. Paul is focusing on unity more so than individual power. The one body, one Spirit, one hope of calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one Father we all share and each possess fully.

Our study on the hope of our calling led us this time not to focus as much on the calling, which subject we studied in detail not long ago, but on the hope. That hope led us to fix our eyes on our destiny, our true home where our resurrected Lord has gone before us to build, where He sits at the right hand of God interceding for us, representing us, waiting for us. Our calling is not in this world but in heaven, which the Bible indicates for us many times. The blessings of our calling have come from heaven, which blessings we use in time upon the earth in the darkness of the cosmos system of the world.

“Happy they to whom the darkness of this world reveals the boundless distances of the starry heaven, and who find that the blows which have shattered their earthly happiness have merely broken the shell which confined their true life and have given them entrance into a world infinite and eternal.” [Dods, First Corinthians p. 79]

We are warned that we must possess the true knowledge of Christ as having light in a dark world, since, as we are also warned, there is much falsehood about Christ and Christianity and God in the dark world.

This led us to study our most recent paragraph in scripture.

2Pe 1:1-3

Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours [likely referring to Jews and Gentiles], by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: 2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge [epignosis = true or full knowledge] of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3 seeing that [hos – in the same manner; a dilation of the thought] His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.