1. What plea does the apostle make to those whom he addresses?
“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called.” Verse 1. Note 1.
2. With what spirit are they to walk?
“With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.” Verse 2. Note 2.
3. What are they to give diligence to keep?
“Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Verse 3. Note 3.
4. What great unity of God’s children ought to appeal to Christians?
“There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling.” Verse 4. Note 4.
5. How does he further express this unity?
“One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Verse 5. Note 5.
6. Who stands at the head of all this union?
“One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.” Verse 6. Note 6.
Notes
1. “I therefore.”—The apostle Paul has the right to plead. He is the apostle to the Gentiles, and he has sealed his apostleship with suffering for Christ, and for the sake of the souls for whom he labored. He therefore refers to himself again as “the prisoner in the Lord.” He would let them understand that even the sufferings that he is undergoing, he takes as blessings from God. Having been partaker in Christ’s sufferings for them, he can truly plead with them that they should honor Christ, and walk worthily of the calling wherewith they were called. And then think of that calling. The original name of the church, ekklesia, comes from the verb ekkaleo, meaning “to call out,” or “to summon forth,” and the church itself is an assembly of the citizens regularly summoned by the one who has authority to summon. So God’s people are called out of sin and darkness and woe and misery and death, called out from idolatry, called out from everything that is low and base and evil, called by the voice of God, the gospel of God, the Spirit of God, and called out always and forever to better things. We are “called to be saints” (Rom. 1:7); “called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:9); called “to peace” (1 Cor. 7:15) from the strife and unrest of sin. From the bondage of sin He has called us to liberty (Gal. 5:13); from the world’s uncleanness He has called us to holiness (1 Thess. 4:7); He has called us “out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9); we are called from the infamy of sin “unto His eternal glory” (1 Peter 5:10); we are called to His kingdom and glory (1 Thess. 2:12). And so we might multiply passages regarding the calling of the children of God. We are called sons and daughters, heirs of God, fellow citizens with the saints. Truly it may be said, in the language of the apostle, that He has called us with a holy calling. 2 Tim. 1:9. Surely there is force in the apostle’s exhortation to “walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called.”
2. “With all lowliness,”—humility. The whole tendency of the world is in the opposite direction. Men are proud and haughty and arrogant. The true child of God is meek. Jesus was meek. Moses was meek. This does not mean that he was soft and pliable, and yielding to everything that came before him. It does mean, however, that he was teachable under God. “The meek will He guide in judgment: and the meek will He teach His way.” Meekness is mildness and gentleness of temper, submissiveness not to evil, but to God, a disposition not easily provoked. The truly meek man is the truly strong man. Many times, he who seems to be strong, and blusters, and resents what are thought to be injuries, is, after all, the weak man. He has not conquered himself, he can not control himself. The meek man may be submissive under injuries, patient under trials, heedless of rebukes or abuse; still, where he believes anything to be right, he will stand like the everlasting rock. He is submitted to One who will enable him to stand; namely, God. So the man who walks in lowliness and meekness will be long-suffering and forbearing and patient toward others; and as God has done all this, not because of necessity, but because of His love for souls, so will the Christian. It will all be wrought in love. Let us learn that while we hate the sin, we must not hate the sinner.
3. “Giving diligence.”—The thought of the Christian life is not one of ease; it is one of activity. Diligence implies earnestness in application. It implies industry, steadfastness, watchfulness. The good things of God are certainly worth the keeping, and the keeping is certainly worth the effort. We are to give “diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit,”—that is, one Spirit, and the one Spirit binds together into one life all God’s children. But it is easy for the human, with his limited knowledge and powers, his inability to see the thoughts and motives of others, to allow to come in that which will break the unity and the harmony that ought to exist in the church of God. Let him give diligence to keep all the irritating things out of his intercourse with others. Let all his efforts be to bind together and strengthen the bond of peace which ought always to exist between the believer and his Lord, so that Christ Himself becomes the bond between the individuals; “for He is our Peace, who hath made both one.”
4. There is one body.—That one body is the church; the one Spirit is the life of the church; “for by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” Cherish the blessed thought that we are one body—the body of Christ; and cherish the thought that the life power in that body “shall give life also to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Rom. 8:11. And there is one hope to which we are called,—the hope which centers in our Lord Jesus Christ. We have learned the prayer in the beginning of these studies, “That ye may know what is the hope of His calling.” Eph. 1:18. That hope centers in our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming; for the same apostle tells us that “we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world; looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Titus 2:12, 13. That hope, he tells us in the first chapter and the second verse of Titus, includes the hope of eternal life. It includes becoming like our Lord Jesus Christ physically as well as spiritually. It includes the resurrection from the dead. It includes the eternal inheritance of all God’s children. That is the one hope to which we are called.
5. “One Lord.”—Not many lords. In the great heathen world there are gods many and lords many. They had no conception of one God who was infinite enough to encompass all things. They divided up all the beneficences and malignancies of nature into different gods, every one demanding different kinds of sacrifices, and some of them the most cruel, even of human sacrifices. But the Christian has one Lord—one Master; not an earthly one, but a heavenly one, who combines in Himself the human and the divine,—one Lord Jesus Christ. One faith.—That is, the faith of Jesus Christ, the faith by which He walked while here, the faith which centers in Him, the faith that lays hold on all the eternal springs of God’s word. One baptism.—This does not mean the baptism of the Spirit, for we are told of the Spirit before this, and that is the life of the Spirit that interfuses and unites all God’s children. This is that baptism which brings us into the fold of Christ, the baptism of which the apostle speaks in Rom. 6:3-6 and Col. 2:12, the baptism which shows forth in its very symbolism—immersion—faith in the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus our Lord. It is the outward marriage ceremony which unites the believer to Christ. Rom. 7:4; Gal. 3:27.
6. One God.—Over all this great unity of apparent diversity is one God and Father of all. God’s great universe is one. There are different suns and systems of suns and clusters of suns in the sidereal heavens, but they are all under the control of the one great Power. Sin has interfered with the unity of God’s plan in some measure, and God has suffered it. Therefore we see all creation groaning and travailing in pain together until now. It is manifest in burning sun, in dead wanderers in the heavens, in broken planets, in dead moons, and in a thousand different ways upon this sin-cursed earth. All this is the result of sin, which God has suffered, that the inhabitants of the universe may see the evil outworking of sin always. But it shall not always be. The longing of the universe will be met, and the creation that travails in pain itself also “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” It is of this and for this that God waits. He is over all now. He is working through all now. He is in all now, in the sense that He is controlling it to His own glory; and he who waits God’s time, will sometime see the fruition of all the operations of God during the waiting, travailing time. It is His plan, it is the original plan, that the whole universe shall be holy, that it shall move on in the everlasting cycles of life in glory. All who will take themselves out of this plan shall perish, but those who abide steadfast will be crowned with the glory of the triumph of the purpose of the ages.
