Scripture: Ephesians 4:1-16
Today’s sermon is Part 7 in our current series on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. I want to make three points: Point Number One, What’s the “therefore” there for? Point Number Two, We all need healing. And Point Number Three, God wants our church to heal others.
But Point Number One… What’s the “therefore” there for?
Let’s start with verse 1: “Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.” Notice: the very first word of today’s scripture is “therefore.” Which means that something Paul has just finished saying, at the end of chapter 3, is connected to what he’s about to say. We can’t know what the connection is without looking back to chapter 3…
So let’s look at verses 20 and 21 of the previous chapter. Paul writes:
Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.
Pay attention to these words: Infinitely more than we might ask or think. To say the least, these famous words emphasize the awesome power of God available to us Christians, the awesome power that can work in us and through us. Paul says that this power is so far beyond the ordinary that we can’t even imagine it, much less even ask for it!
So… it is precisely this unimaginable power that Paul is thinking of when he uses that word “therefore.”
“Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord”… [dot, dot, dot]
When we think about it, Paul’s “therefore” might pose a problem in our minds…
So let me get this straight: God can “accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think”… except to prevent Paul from being arrested and put in prison in the first place?
God can “accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think”… except to rescue Paul from prison once he’s there.
God can “accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think”… except save Paul from suffering in prison and even being executed by Caesar, which Paul is well aware might happen.
Do you see the problem? How can Paul say—with a straight face, at the end of the previous chapter—that God can do “infinitely more” than we can ask or imagine when Paul himself is suffering in prison, having had his freedom taken away, no longer able to fulfill his mission to the Gentiles, facing execution?
Does chapter 3, verse 21, contradict chapter 4, verse 1?
Apparently Paul doesn’t think so.
To understand why, let’s look at one of Paul’s other letters that he wrote from prison… Paul’s letter to the Philippians. For context, Paul says that he’s chained between soldiers of Rome’s most elite fighting force, the Imperial Guard, soldiers who report to directly to Caesar himself. And then, let’s look at what Paul says in chapter 4 at the very end of his letter, which we may often consider the “boring” part, because he often sends greetings to specific people who we mostly don’t know.
But listen to what he says in verses 21 and 22:
Give my greetings to each of God’s holy people—all who belong to Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me send you their greetings. And all the rest of God’s people send you greetings, too, especially those in Caesar’s household.
Like I said… boring…
Or not! “Especially those in Caesar’s household.” Are you kidding? Do you get what that means? It means that at least some of God’s people in Rome who send their greetings to God’s people at the church in Philippi are members of Caesar’s household!
How did that happen?
Here’s a good guess: Paul, the greatest evangelist the world has ever known, preached the gospel to these soldiers who were chained to him 24/7. Some of these soldiers got converted. And they themselves in turn shared the gospel with members of Caesar’s household with whom they surely had close contact… and voila… associates of the most powerful ruler in the world were now talking about Jesus and sharing the gospel with people at the highest echelon of power in the world at that time!
That’s glorious!
Can you imagine if someone in “Caesar’s household” ended up sharing the gospel with Caesar himself? How did that conversation go? “Your Excellency,I know that you like to describe yourself with all-important, all-powerful titles like ‘Lord,’ ‘Savior,’ ‘the son of the gods.’ But you won’t believe this! I found out who really is Lord, and Savior, and the Son of God! His name is Jesus. Let you tell you about him…”
That conversation wouldn’t have gone well!
But still… Because of Paul’s imprisonment, the gospel is on the move… potentially reaching even Caesar himself.
And this is hardly the first time that Paul has been used by God in a jail cell! In the Book of Acts, remember he and Silas get arrested. Listen to Acts 16, beginning with verse 22:
A mob quickly formed against Paul and Silas, and the city officials ordered them stripped and beaten with wooden rods. They were severely beaten, and then they were thrown into prison. The jailer was ordered to make sure they didn’t escape. So the jailer put them into the inner dungeon and clamped their feet in the stocks. 1
I feel like, if this happened to me, I would be mired in self-pity. “Woe is me! Why am I being so badly mistreated. I don’t deserve this!” I’d be singing, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all… Gloom, despair, and agony on me.” If you’re under 50 years of age, that’s a Hee Haw reference. Sorry!
Anyway, Paul and Silas are not singing “gloom, despair, and agony on me,” and “if it weren’t for bad luck they’d have no luck at all.” Because listen to the very next verse, verse 25: “Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening.”
Singing hymns… How often in life are you so happy that you feel like singing… that you break out in song? Not often. And especially not when you’ve been beaten and thrown in prison. But they’re doing it because, as strange as it seems, Paul and Silas are experiencing joy… they’re experiencing peace… a peace that surpasses all understanding. They’re experiencing the presence and power of Jesus Christ himself.
And if they have Christ, what else do they need? Freedom from prison? Nope. Freedom from pain? Nope. In fact, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12, when we are at our weakest, Christ is at his strongest in our lives. 2 So they’re experiencing Christ in a powerful way. And if prison and pain are what it takes for them to experience what they want more than anything else, it’s totally worth it to them.
Christ is enough for them. They don’t need anything else!
Paul and Silas are able to sing for joy because they can see by the eyes of faith that this jail does not really belong to the police, or to the city officials, or to the Romans… This jail, strange as it seems, exists under the authority and jurisdiction and control of Almighty God, who, as verse 6 of today’s scripture says, “is over all, in all, and living through all.”
The Bible says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” 3 The Bible says, “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” 4 The Bible says, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” 5 The Bible says, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…” 6 The Bible says that all things are working together for our good. 7 The Bible says that literally everything in the universe at this moment is being used by God for the ultimate benefit of God’s children. 8
You can hardly exaggerate how powerful God’s mighty hand is on the lives of those of us whose life is found in Jesus Christ!
So, yes, indeed, God is “able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” And that’s true, even when we’re prisoners for serving the Lord… or any other seemingly bleak or desperate or hopeless or difficult circumstance!
Just last week, in the Bible reading plan that I follow, I read the Book of Daniel, so this is fresh on my mind… But think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being thrown into the fiery furnace… That fiery furnace doesn’t belong to Nebuchadnezzar; that’s God’s fiery furnace. God is sovereign over those flames and God is right there with these three faithful people in the midst of those flames. Or think of Daniel being thrown into the lion’s den. That lion’s den doesn’t belong to King Darius… That’s God’s lion’s den.
And that’s Point Number One…
Point Number Two… All of us Christians still need healing…
Years ago, a man and his family left the church I was pastoring because of some friction with other church members. As often happens in every church, church members hurt one another. And so they all showed up at our house to break the news that they were leaving the church. And this man said that he just didn’t feel like this church was “family” to him… People in the church said hurtful things and mistreated him. And of course that never happens in families! But anyway…
then he said the following: “When I read about the church in Acts chapter 2, I guess I just want our church to be like that. I want to be part of a church that’s like the Acts chapter 2 church.” To refresh your memory, listen to some of what Luke writes about the church in Acts 2:
All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.
A deep sense of awe came over them all… all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They… shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together… met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity— all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. 9
Amen! I told this man, “I want to be part of a church like that, too!”
Only one problem: It wasn’t long before the church of Acts chapter 2 gave way to the church of Acts chapter 6. Same church… just a little while later. Listen to verse 1 of Acts 6: “But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. The Greek-speaking believers complained about the Hebrew-speaking believers, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.” The church, in other words, was fighting! It was splitting at the seams. It was contentious and divisive. And the problem had gotten so bad that the apostles had to appoint seven laypeople—the church’s first deacons—to help manage the situation.
Well, that happened in the very first church, the Jerusalem church… In spite of what also happened in Acts chapter 2. And do I need to remind you of all the things that were going wrong in a church in another part of the world, in the church at Corinth… You can read First and Second Corinthians to see about some of the problems there.
These are just a couple of examples. You’ve probably heard it said before that if you find a perfect church, don’t you dare join it. Why? Because if you join it, it will no longer be perfect!
Paul doesn’t list any specific problems happening in Ephesus in this letter. He’s speaking more generally. But listen to verses 2 and 3: “Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.”
The very fact that he’s urging his church to be humble, to be gentle, to be patient, to “make allowance[s] for each other’s faults,” and to be united and at peace surely indicates how difficult these virtues are for a church to achieve and maintain.
Well, not merely difficult… Actually impossible… at least apart from God’s sanctifying grace!
But let’s notice one more thing here: Later in this passage Paul talks about some individual gifts that the Spirit gives—just a few of them; there are many, many more that he writes about in other letters. But here he highlights five: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. While every believer possesses at least one spiritual gift, these gifts may vary from believer to believer. The Spirit distributes them as he pleases. None of us will have all of them… not even close.
But notice that the gifts that Paul talks about in verses 2 and 3—gifts like humility, gentleness, patience, “making allowance for each other’s faults,” being united and at peace with one another, loving one another with Christlike love—these gifts are in a different category from the “spiritual gifts” he mentions here and elsewhere.
So unlike the gifts of prophecy, and teaching, and pastoring, Paul expects every believer to possess each one of these gifts mentioned in verses 2 and 3… to work to possess them more fully… to work to possess them perfectly! These are non-negotiable requirements of every believer!
So let’s not dare say, for instance, “The Spirit gave me the ‘gift’ of patience, but he didn’t give me the ‘gift’ of humility.”
Oh yes he did! Or at least he wants to give it to you… as you trust in him, as you submit to God’s Word, as you gather with brothers and sisters here at church! The Spirit wants to develop these gifts within each and every one of us until we possess them perfectly!
Don’t dare say, “Well, that can’t happen,” or “That won’t happen!” Don’t dare say, “This is just the way I am—by all means, I’m proud and domineering and inconsiderate and impatient and gossipy, but what do you expect me to do about it? I can never change! This is just who I am.” Are you kidding me? Our God “is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.”
In my quiet time last week, I read 2 Kings 5, which is the story of Naaman, the powerful Syrian general who’s contracted leprosy, and who goes to the prophet Elisha, in Israel, because he’s heard that Elisha has the power to heal people. So this powerful, highly decorated V.I.P. shows up at Elisha’s house. And Elisha doesn’t even bother to come out to greet him. Instead, Elisha sends his lowly servant to tell this man, “Go dip seven times in the Jordan River, and you’ll be healed of your leprosy.”
And Naaman gets angry. He won’t do it! This whole experience is beneath his dignity. That little “creek” called the Jordan River can’t even compare to the rivers he has back in Syria. He deserves better treatment than this! And even Naaman’s servants are like, “Master, if the prophet had asked you to do something really hard—instead of something that any child can do—you would gladly do it.” If Elisha had said, “Go on a quest to retrieve a rare flower on the highest peak of Mt. Hermon, the tallest mountain in Israel,” that would have stroked his ego, appealed to his pride: “Only a strong and fearless man like you can do this, Naaman!” And Naaman would have been A-okay with that.
See, here’s what was undoubtedly true of Naaman: As bad as his physical disease was, there was something that was even worse: his spiritual disease… including his deadly pride.
And unless or until we are made perfect by the Holy Spirit—which means we are suddenly able to do what Paul says to do in verses 2 and 3, to act with humility, gentleness, patience, to be able to “make allowance for each other’s faults,” to be united and at peace with one another, to love one another the way Christ loves us… until we can do all that… Our spiritual disease, brothers and sisters, will continue to be a far bigger problem than any physical disease… even though it will never show up in our weekly prayer concerns.
Do you believe it?
Tim Keller, in his masterpiece of a book on marriage, gives the following advice to couples. He says that each person in a marriage ought to treat his or her own sinful behavior and thoughts as the biggest problem in the marriage… because that’s the only thing over which they have control. As we know, we can’t control other people. So we treat our messiness as the biggest problem, not the other persons. This is, of course, completely consistent with Jesus’ words about removing the log from your own eye.
But listen: We should do that with our brothers and sisters in church, too. I need to pray for the grace to fix me first… before worrying too much about someone else’s sinfulness.
That’s Point Number Two… We all need spiritual healing.
Point Number Three… God wants our church to heal others.
In verses 4 through 6, the word “one” shows up seven times: For instance, there is one Spirit, not many spirits. There is one Lord, not many lords. There is one faith, not many faiths. There is one God and Father—not merely of some, but of all, Paul says.
There is, in other words, only one way into a saving relationship with God, and that way is Christ. He said so himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” 10 Or as Peter said, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” 11
These words are deeply countercultural… as we all know.
And if that’s true, then all these “ones” imply mission. Our mission is cut out for us! We have to make our mission—the Great Commission, in other words—our church’s highest and most urgent priority. God wants us and empowers us to heal the world.
So how do we do it? How do we convince friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, and classmates that they need the eternal spiritual healing available through Christ?
Last weekend, I saw some young people doing it in a profound way, and I want to share my experience with you.
Last weekend, as many of you know, my middle child Townshend got married. I have an amazing new daughter-in-law, Lydia. And I even had the privilege of officiating the wedding.
And weddings can be a tricky business for us Christians in today’s world. What I mean is, romantic love can easily become an idol, a false god, for many people today.
Our culture tells us, after all, that nothing is better than romantic love. Nothing fulfills us, satisfies us, makes us happier—nothing brings us joy—like finding “the one”—that one special person, our soulmate. And if only we can find “the one,” then we’ll live happily ever after.
This is the theme of so many Hallmark Christmas movies, the theme of Rom-Coms, the theme of pop-song lyrics.
“I would do anything for love,” Meat Loaf sang. “I would die for you,” Prince sang. “I would climb any mountain, sail across the stormy sea/ If that’s what it takes me, baby, to show how much you mean to me,” Lou Gramm of Foreigner sang.
Or how about Bryan Adams, from possibly the best-selling hit single of all time:
“Search your heart, search your soul
And when you find me there, you’ll search no more
Don’t tell me it’s not worth tryin’ for
You can’t tell me it’s not worth dyin’ for
You know it’s true Everything I do, I do it for you, for you.”
(Remember: Bryan Adams isn’t singing these words to Jesus. He’s talking about a woman! This is idolatry!)
My point is, our culture tells us that romantic love is worth everything.
Meanwhile, Townshend and Lydia, in their wedding, communicated something radically different…
For instance… After Lydia’s father gave her away, Lydia and Townshend, the bridesmaids and groomsmen, and myself, the pastor, took seats in the congregation. And then some very talented musicians and gospel singers led the congregation in singing praise and worship songs for about 15 minutes or so.
And get this: after Townshend and Lydia exchanged vows and wedding rings, Townshend and I stepped back… and Lydia herself—a gifted singer who performed musical theater and sang in college choirs—Lydia sang a song that included these words:
In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This Cornerstone, this solid Ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My Comforter, my All in All,
Here in the love of Christ I stand.
And then… After I presented the couple—you know, “Now I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Townshend White”—and after I had Townshend kiss his bride, and after all the cheering from the congregation, the couple had me make the following announcement: “Townshend and Lydia want me to tell you that their first act as husband and wife will be to worship God. So join us now in worship.” And we sang some more.
Christ was at the center of that wedding… Christ was at the center of the lives of these dear young people!
Townshend and Lydia bore witness to the truth that there’s something better than what our culture routinely tells us is the best thing of all… Even better than this love that brings man and woman together for the rest of their life is this love that brings men and women, and boys and girls, together with Christ for eternity!
Fast forward to the next evening… There’s a special Ethiopian wedding reception. You may recall that Lydia is a child of Ethiopian immigrants. And at our table sat a young woman who’s a girlfriend of one of Townshend’s groomsmen. She was not yet a believer in Christ. And she told us how deeply touched she was by the wedding service. She said, “I never had this kind of emotional connection to Christ that I’ve seen in each of you this weekend.” That’s what she called it—an “emotional connection.” “How do you get that? How did that happen for you?”
Brothers and sisters, we have the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ living within us. And by the power of the Spirit, we are “growing in every way more and more like Christ.” The Christ that people see and experience in us will be beautiful and attractive and magnetic and compelling to so many people who are ready to answer his call and receive him.
Can we pray that people can see and experience Christ through us?