CALLED TO BE A FAMILY

“Introduction”
Ephesians 4:1-3
Bob Bonner
March 25, 2007

Last Summer, in the midst of one of our Elder Board meetings God began a wonderful work that continues on to this day. As the result of a series of providential events, God caused us to recognize a very real need not only in all of the churches in our valley, but specifically a need He wants us to address here at Calvary Crossroads. In the end, we believe that God is pointing us in a direction that will prove to make us a healthier church family, and ultimately, to bring greater glory to God.

Working together, the elders have assembled an outline of points that we believe God wants us to consider together as a church. As best we can tell, it will probably take us ten messages to introduce these ideas. As elders we are not coming to this series with any preconceived plan to kick off some campaign or program of events. We don’t even have a team of leaders in place to make happen what we believe God is asking us to consider. Instead, we trust God to show each of us, meaning you and the Board, more of how He would have us apply these truths to our life together as a Church family.

I look at this series the same way I look at reading a new book on marriage with my wife. Becky and I have a great marriage, however, it is not a perfect marriage. Hence, Becky and I continually ask the Lord to show us how we can honor Him better by improving the way we live together as husband and wife. In order to better our marriage, we continue to read books on marriage. Our motivation in doing so is not so that we can beat up on one another by showing the other person how he is failing, but to help us learn how to love each other better.

Similarly, as Board, we love you and we are honored to serve you. This is not a series whose purpose is to pound on the “sheep.” We present this series of messages to challenge us to keep looking at how we can improve in how we glorify Christ through the way we relate to one another.

During this series, we are going to be using Ephesians 4 as the foundation of our expositional study of God’s word. From there, we will take a few rabbit trails to other parallel passages that will help us better understand how we can more specifically apply what Paul challenges us with in Ephesians 4. Upon completion of this brief series, we will return to finish our study of Genesis and then move on to the book of Philippians to look more in depth at what the Lord reveals to us about being His bride, the Church, amongst other things. 

I am truly excited about this study, and I hope that you come each week in anticipation of what God will reveal to you personally about this wonderful mystery that God calls His Church. It’s my sincere hope and expectation that together we can experience more of what God has planned for us as His bride, the Church, as each of us fulfills our part as a member of this body.

A couple of more introductory comments are in order before we get to our study. As a result of our Board discussions and a personal restudying of the Word of God over these past several months, God has made what I believe to be a significant change in my thinking about the purpose of the Church. In addition, because the Bible teaches us to honor one another, I particularly want to thank Joe Burgess for challenging my previously held ideas and thank the Lord for using Joe to help me better see God’s purpose of the Church. As we begin our study, I want to share with you what the adjustment in my thinking has been over these past several months.

In Joe’s message on March 11, he mentioned the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, which was compiled in the mid 1600's. In that, there was raised the question, “What is the chief and highest end of man?” The answer is, “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God and to fully enjoy Him forever.” 

Years ago, I was challenged by an evangelist who was attempting to motivate others to do more evangelism. In the course of his challenge, he asked this question: “If our chief purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, why does God leave us here on earth after we are saved? Why doesn’t He takes us immediately up to heaven where we can perfectly glorify Him without constantly being faced with temptation?” His point was, there has to be something here on earth that God wants us to do here as Christians, that we can’t do in heaven. Then, this evangelist went on to give his answer, which for years, I bought into, hook, line and sinker. He said that there is one single purpose for why God has left us here on earth by which we can bring glory to Him here and which can’t be done in heaven. In heaven there will be no souls to save. But here on earth, God wants to save souls. Therefore, the purpose of the church is ultimately evangelism.

Although there is much truth in what this evangelist taught, it is not the whole truth. I now see that there are at least two other specific callings we have as Christians left on this earth, by which we can uniquely glorify God here on earth. For example, recall what Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” In context to the rest of Jesus’ sermon, these “good works” specifically are in reference to an individual’s repentance from sin and walking in obedience to God, amidst a sin-filled, tempestuous world. To put it briefly, God is not just glorified by our evangelistic efforts, but He is as glorified by our personal good works, when sinners and believers alike repent and obey God amidst this fallen world. In heaven, we will definitely obey God and thus bring Him glory. But what makes this life on earth different from that obedience that brings God glory in heaven is, that in heaven there will be no temptation to sin. Whereas here on earth, we deal with temptation all day every day. Thus, in a unique way, glorifying God through obedience here on earth in the midst of temptation will bring Him greater glory here than our obedience will in heaven. 

But more importantly, as it concerns our topic for this series, God is glorified in a third manner. He is glorified when we, the Church, the followers of Jesus Christ love one another, amidst a fallen world. He is glorified when the local Church functions in the world in such a way, that those who don’t know Jesus marvel at how we love one another. Jesus said, in John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Keep in mind, the Church, or what the Bible calls the Bride of Christ, will enter into heaven, but it will not have to function as the Church under the same conditions as we do here in a fallen world. Hence, we, the local Church, will be bringing greater glory to God on earth than in heaven, because we will purposefully work against the grain of this fallen world, to serve God. 

Hence, since our chief purpose in being created by God is to give Him glory, I see our challenge here on earth to give Him glory focused in three areas of our lives. Think of it as a three legged stool, the seat of the stool being the purpose of glorifying God the way He has told us to glorify Him. The one leg of the stool that supports this seat is that we glorify God in our personal relationship with Him. Being saved and walking in obedience to Him. A second leg by which we glorify God is through our relationships with one another in the local Church. Through our working together, supporting each other, building up one another, loving one another, we glorify God to this world. The final leg to our glorifying God on earth is our commission by God to evangelize. 

Now here is where the big change has come in my thinking. Before, I believed that everything we did as believers was purposed to reach the lost. In other words, evangelize was the end-all of glorifying God. However, the Scripture doesn’t teach that. If we believe that, then we can get saved, never go to church, never have to learn how to be a Church family, live in isolation as Christians, bounce from church to church as independent agents, because we don’t think the church really matters. All that matters is that we know Christ and we lead others to Christ.

But God says that the world will see the truth about Christ through personal evangelism and through how Christians love one another in the Church. If you try to glorify God with only two of the legs, the stool falls over. Only when you glorify God in all three areas are you truly glorifying God. If you ignore God’s call to love one another in the Church, to be deeply involved in each other’s lives, you are not bringing glory to God, you are bringing Him shame. You are devaluing His bride, the Church by making your own independent agendas, tastes and purposes more important than His bride, and making sure that she is nourished, cherished. 

Having just recently realized the role of glorifying God by becoming the bride He has intended, I am now challenged to personally take more seriously my role as a believer in making sure that we become His healthy, functioning bride. To put it another way: taking seriously the concept that God has called you to be a part of a local Church and that you have a heavy responsibility and calling to make sure you and others are growing in the Lord is not an optional activity in your life. We are not allowed to live as isolationist Christians, free to do whatever we want with our days. Rather, God has ordered us to make it a priority in our lives to draw close together in support of one another, such that we bring glory to God. When we ignore this aspect of the call to glorify God, then we bring the opposite of glory to God. We bring shame to Christ when we operate as mere independent Christians with no responsibility for one another’s lives.

If you are serious in your worship of God, it is a requirement and your weekly schedule should reveal that it is, beyond just church attendance, that you be involved in each other’s lives. Hence, the purpose of our study in these next ten weeks will be simply to open the door to what it generally looks like, on a weekly basis, to fulfill your responsibility and calling to be a member of a Church. 

As I said in the beginning, we have not planned a program for how God would have us hold each other accountable to be faithful to this calling of functioning as His Church, but I trust that as each of us seek God, He will clearly and practically show us how we can better serve and love one another such that the world will know that we are Christ’s disciples.

As we consider what God has to teach us in Ephesians about loving one another in practical ways, I ask you to consider this question throughout this series: What evidence is there in my life, that I am deeply involved with any other person in this fellowship, whereby I am personally encouraging them, serving them, praying for them, challenging them, demonstrating to them and the world that I value my brother or sister in Christ?

Having said that, let’s turn to Ephesians 4, to examine God’s Word as to how we can better glorify God in this one area of relating to one another as a Church family. The previous three chapters of Ephesians spell out the theological doctrines of who we are in Christ. As it concerns the three ways in which we can glorify God, these first three chapters highlight how one glorifies God through his personal relationship with Jesus Christ. 

The last three chapters of Ephesians, focus more on how we can glorify God through the way we, a local Church, relate to one another as a family. Please note, that nowhere is there stressed in this book the importance of glorifying God through evangelism. It is taught elsewhere, but not here. Hence, by its absence, God is clearly pointing to the importance of glorifying Him by simply functioning as a healthy Church. In these chapters, Paul reveals what we can do to bring dishonor rather than glory to God as a group of Christians. In few words, we dishonor God as a Church by allowing conflict amongst us to go unchecked which leads to disunity, which in turn hamstrings any effectiveness that a local Church can have upon the world.

With this in mind, the Apostle Paul, wastes no time in his opening remarks in Ephesians 4, to point out what is necessary to properly check conflict when it raises its ugly head between you and another Christian in the Church. He calls us to purposely do something that we normally don’t do. Paul writes, “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, [that’s another way for Paul to say, I’m exhorting you to glorify God as a local Church by doing the following] with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” 

I’m convinced, that as brilliant as the Apostle Paul was, he would have flunked my seventh grade English composition class. Those three verses are just one of many examples of Paul’s famous run-on sentences. His very long sentences make them very hard to dissect and understand what his main points are. Reading it just as it is written in most of our English translations, makes it almost impossible for one to understand easily Paul’s major point, for two reasons:  First, almost all of our modern English translations add punctuation to these verses that are not there in the original language.  For instance: there are no semi-colons in this verse, just a few comas, and a period at the end of verse three. When our English translations add punctuation or make two sentences out of one, so that it is easier for us to read, they also cause us to miss significant points Paul is making and they cause us to over-emphasize points that Paul never intended to emphasize.

A second reason that Paul’s run-on sentences are hard to understand is that they blur important Greek grammatical nuances that reveal what Paul is emphasizing as important points. Hence, I am giving you a structural approach to reading these verses that is intended to help you better understand what Paul is clearly emphasizing as important in these three verses.

Note in verse 1 Paul’s exhortation to walk worthy. This word "implore" or “entreat” is an intense emotional word. It means "to beg or plead." This intense word reveals Paul’s heart. He is burdened for the Church to be all that it can be to glorify God, that in turn the world would know we are Christ’s disciples.

Paul begins this very practical section of this letter challenging us to walk worthy of the calling of being His disciples. This word "worthy" has as its root meaning the idea of equalizing the scales, like those we see that symbolize the "scales of justice." On one side of the scale, Paul has in mind everything he just wrote about in chapters 1-3. Here, we have the fact that we were sinners headed to hell, but because of Christ’s merciful act to die in our place, we have been forgiven, and given the status of being called God’s children and saints, forever approved, forgiven and loved.  And now, in chapters 4-6, Paul calls us to demonstrate that we value our salvation and being given a new status as saints by the way we live our lives together as a Church. The whole emphasis in these three chapters of a worthy walk is focused on our relationships together as a Church family.

So what is it that God calls us to do that brings an equal weightiness to the glory of His saving each of us? How is it that God wants us to live so as to bring Him glory? Paul gets specific in verse 2.

According to the Greek grammar and structure of this verse, and not according to the word order in your English translation, as I have tried to demonstrate for you in the structural writing of the verse, Paul’s major point of this verse is that we show tolerance, or forbearance or suffer long or endure with one another in love.  This term “to show tolerance, or forbearance or long-suffering” literally comes from a root word that means to silence. The idea is to cover up, not so as to hide or pretend that something doesn’t exist, but rather not to unnecessarily bring it to light. It is synonymous with the expression of “love covers or overlooks a multitude of sins.” 

Hence, the idea behind this word is that while you live with other Christians, minister together, serve one another, who have different personalities, annoying habits, who were raised differently than you, and therefore may see things as offensive when you don’t, etc. rather than use those differences as something to challenge them with or fight over or condemn as wrong, rather than be harsh, hang in there with them. Allow them some wobble room. If indeed they are doing something that is wrong, don’t immediately or every time they do something wrong, pounce on them to correct them. Give them some time to grow, make mistakes and eventually get it right. When God grants you wisdom as to the right time to confront, then graciously encourage them and show them from the Word of God what God says is best.

This word “tolerance” was used to describe Jesus' life as He struggled with His disciples and the multitudes who had witnessed many of His miracles and heard much of His teachings. In Matthew 17:17, He said to them, "How much longer must I bear [long suffer, put up with, tolerate] with you?"

Do you see? Every time the disciples, the multitudes blew it, every time you blow it, God doesn’t come out of the sky and pounce on you. He puts up with your errors and foolishness for quite some time before He corrects you. Oftentimes, He allows us to learn the hard way through the school of hard knocks. At other times, when the time is right, He says something or brings someone alongside to explain things to you. But not every time. Wisdom knows when that time for confrontation is right. Sometimes, love calls us to suffer long. It is a part of growing and maturing. In the end, being longsuffering simply means: to put up with people out of love until God changes them. 

In addition, this expression, showing forbearance is a rather general term, and the Apostle Paul knows it, so he gets more specific as to what is necessary for one to practice longsuffering. He shows us in the first part of verse 2, three actions that together enable one to long suffer.

The first action that is necessary for true tolerance to exist, is humility. The literal meaning of this word is "to think of yourself as unimportant." Or, as Romans 12:3 says that you are not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think! In other words, you have value and worth to God, because He saved you; but keep in mind, the world did stop its rotation the day you were born, nor the day you were born again!   

The world, your family, the way others in the Church may want to do something doesn’t revolve around us or our agenda and plans. In the end, all of creation exists to bring glory to God, not to us. When we fully understand that, we live in humility. When we lose sight of who God is and that He is in charge, we become prideful.  As it concerns the Church, God stands against the proud who demand their own way, regardless of what it may do to others around them. God stands against those who lose sight of their calling and of who called them. When we get disappointed or uncomfortable with one another, and the honeymoon is over, we typically become unforgiving, with a critical spirit, non-serving, non-encouraging ...in short, unloving and prideful! We no longer show tolerance to others. When people get this way in churches, instead of practicing longsuffering, they become a group of individualists who are harder to lead than herding a bunch of cats!

The next action that Paul points to that demonstrates longsuffering at work is gentleness. Gentleness and humility are closely linked together. You cannot have one without the other. The term, "gentleness" or as some translations have it, "meekness,” was used of powerful and wild animals that had been broken and tamed, like lions and horses. When broken, such an animal still has his strength, power and spirit, but now it is simply under control. Gentleness, then is power, but power under control.  Our power, position and abilities are controlled by God. Gentleness suggests one who not only rules over one's physical strength, but also over one's emotions.    

Contrary to what some people believe, gentleness is not timidity or a deficiency in courage or spirit or weakness or cowardice.  The opposite of gentleness is being self-assertive, rude, demanding one’s own rights and ways of doing things, harsh, vengeful, and having a spirit of retaliation.

This word for gentleness is usually seen in relationship between two people that are having a conflict. One party thinks he has been taken advantage of, and in response, he can be rough or gentle in his correction of the other party. If he is gentle in his correction, then, when he finishes in his dealing with a person, usually there is little desire to dispute or fight against the one who confronts him. One who is humble, who truly knows who He is in Christ, doesn't feel the need to prove himself to anyone, to run over someone or to make a name for himself. Therefore, he does not put you down in correcting you, he is gentle. Proverbs 16:32 describes a gentle person without using the word. The wise man writes, "He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city."

The third specific action that reveals one is practicing longsuffering is patience. This term most predominantly concerns our ability to deal with difficult people.  It refers to a person being patient when he has the power or the right to avenge himself, but he chooses not to, out of love. Rather, out of understanding certain circumstances, this person chooses to cover a multitude of sins with love. He allows the other to grow at God’s pace. He doesn’t demand his rights to get even.

Notice the natural progression of these three attitudes, and how one builds on top of the other. First, you have humility. The more humble you are leads to you becoming more gentle and in turn more patient. In other words, longsuffering is the product based upon humility which produces gentleness which in turn, brings about more patience.

Therefore, the key to walking worthy of our calling, by showing longsuffering begins with us walking in humility. Amongst many things, humility requires that I have a clear understanding of my own weaknesses; then and only then can I begin to understand others’ weaknesses, and respond to them in gentleness and wait patiently for God to finish His work in their lives.

Hence, the real question we should be asking ourselves, if we are serious about walking worthy of our calling is, “How can I develop more personal humility?” I would recommend you do three things: First, ask God to create in you a humble spirit. Humanly, we can’t make ourselves humble. We can have all of the desire in the world to become more humble rather than arrogant, but becoming truly humble requires a supernatural work of God. If you are serious about becoming more humble, I promise you, God will bring about situations in your life to teach you humility. 

Second, study what the Bible has to say about humility and pride. Get a Bible concordance and look up all the references to humility and pride. God will use that study to begin a work in your heart that will produce humility.

Third, I highly recommend you read C. J. Mahaney’s book, Humility, True Greatness, published by Multnomah Publishers.

I challenge you to think seriously about this subject of showing longsuffering towards others with whom you fellowship in this church, as well as with your own family members. In particular, I challenge you to ask God to create a more humble spirit within you. This is not some flippant or nice idea to consider when you have time. If it were, God, through the Apostle Paul’s words, would not have begun with such a highly emotional plea for you to do so.

Last March, I seriously asked God to develop a more humble spirit in me, that I might love others more truly in Christ. As a result, this has been one of the most difficult and painful years I have experienced in a long time. But through it all, He has been hammering away at my prideful ways that I never knew existed, and He is creating within my heart, His humility. He is far from being finished with this project. But the good news is that He is enabling me to walk more worthy of the calling with which I have been called.

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