Ephesians 4:1

While he was there with them he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the Father's promise... "For John baptized with water but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days." So when they had come together they asked him, "Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?" And he said to them, "It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set in his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:4–8)

How do citizens of heaven live on earth? Paul's answer is a worthy walk marked by humility, unity, and the standard of Christ Himself.

The Ascension and the Mission

I grew up in a creed-reciting church, so this summer as we've gone through the Nicene Creed it's been interesting—the first time hearing everybody recite it brought back some good old days and bad old days from when I was a kid. Today I have the privilege of teaching on the portion where we talk about Jesus being ascended into heaven, and to start, we go to the book of Acts, because that's where it actually happens.

The disciples have a fixation on what's happening politically right around them. "Lord, are we finally going to get rid of the Romans? Are we going to be done with this scourge?" When Jesus says, "You will receive power," they're probably thinking, "Yes! This is what we've been looking for." But then He follows it with, "And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Jesus's mission was not the Romans. He tells them this is the Father's business. Your power is to be a witness—power, yes, but not for the reason you think.

Then in verse 9 He was taken up, and a cloud took Him out of sight. As they were gazing into heaven, two men in white clothes stood by them and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? The same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come in the same way you have seen him go." They're telling the disciples: why are you fixating on watching Him go? He's coming back, and you have a responsibility to the mission. Jesus's physical body leaving the earth is like the starting gun for the church, which is the body of Christ here on earth.

Bridging Two Worlds

So why do we have such a hard time doing what Jesus has called us to do? This brings us to the first point: our calling bridges two worlds—divine perfection with Jesus in heaven, and the opposite on earth. Colossians 3:2 calls us to set our minds on things above and not on things of earth, but our bodies are still here. How do we operate in this tension between these two extremes?

I was noodling on this while shaving one morning, water running, thinking deep thoughts about how we're called to have our minds with Christ yet still operate on earth. Suddenly something sounded different—I looked down and the overflow on my sink wasn't working, the water rising above the basin. I thought, "That's a great illustration, thanks, Jesus." Then this morning I woke up, prayed for about 19 seconds, jumped on my phone, and had an email from the water department: "You may have a leak." Ever since I became a homeowner, water is the thing I fear most—we've had three slab leaks. It turned out an irrigation timer had malfunctioned and run all night. Fourteen hundred and thirty gallons later, this "bridging two worlds" thing was smacking me right in the mouth—but I was still left with the same question: how do I operate between these two extremes?

Walk Worthy: Heavenly Character in Earthly Circumstances

The answer I found was in Ephesians 4. Paul says, "Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."

Your calling bridges two worlds. We live here, but we're called to have our hearts and minds on Jesus. This creates tension. We live in a place that ranges from indifferent to outright hostile to the things we hold dear, and even in the midst of this Jesus is calling others and us closer to Him. We're called into a weird dance where we have to live like God's will is being done in a world where it mostly isn't. Paul is clear: we're called to practice heavenly character in all our earthly circumstances.

Humility, Gentleness, and Patience

For a biblical definition of humility, what I came up with is this: we need to know who we are. We're not God, we're not good, and it's not about us. Our thoughts, plans, and desires are not the standard. We're created by God to do what He has for us. We're also not good—we are marked, influenced, and susceptible to sin, so we cannot even accurately know what is definitively right in most circumstances. We need an unflawed standard.

I sometimes wake up and forget I wear glasses. I do pretty well through the shower, but the moment I try to do anything requiring precision—shaving, reading—it becomes clear I need a way to view the world that doesn't rely on my own vision. Our need for God and His word is similar. We can bumble along from a generous outside perspective, but once we try to do what God has called us to do, it becomes very clear we need help, and we find it in the Word of God. And it's not about us—we're set out by Jesus to make Him known and to build up the body of Christ. We're called to make disciples, not palaces.

Gentleness: people are fragile—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We design our lives to protect ourselves physically, and we should do the same for emotional and spiritual health. The problem is we sometimes strike out in a spiritual fervor, wielding the Word of God like a sword instead of a scalpel. Instead of lancing boils we're lopping off arms, and feeling justified because it's the truth. We're called to speak the truth in love. Gentleness is even what we should show ourselves. I've met people unbelievably unkind to themselves, saying things no one else would ever say to them, justifying it because "I'm just talking to myself." You are talking to a child of God who was worthy of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. If that's you, be gentle to yourself—hear Jesus saying, "Be nice to my kid."

Patience is almost a dirty word in church—we're warned not to pray for it because God will give us opportunities to practice it. The truth is we'll have those opportunities regardless. When Peter asked Jesus if he had to forgive his brother seven times—surely an adequate number—Jesus said, "No, seventy times seven." I did the math: that's 490. I can't keep track that high. The point is we're called to be patient, and part of patience is forgiving.

Bearing With One Another and the Bond of Peace

"Bearing with one another in love" is not "putting up with that moron." That's not the spirit of what Paul is writing. Bearing with someone is the previous three characteristics lived out all at once—being humble, gentle, and patient. It's carrying burdens, lifting each other up, maintaining unity.

Then Paul says, "making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit." Every effort—all the efforts. This is not our unity, not one we choose like a political, ethnic, or sports-team unity. Even if they're Raiders fans, it's different. We're called to a unity of the Holy Spirit that supersedes any other reason we have to be unified. As a family that homeschooled, I'm called to unity with people who send their kids to public school, with brothers and sisters who baptize infants or start their service by reciting a creed. This is exactly what it means to live as citizens of heaven while residing on earth. The world wants to divide us by zip codes, tax brackets, and voting records, but heaven unites us by the blood of Christ.

This brings up the next point: when earthly categories matter more than our unity with other believers, we let the world squeeze heaven out of our hearts.

The "bond of peace" makes me think of spray adhesive. You spray two surfaces separately; each gets sticky, then almost dry, but when you press them together they're bonded—for better or worse, sickness and health—and they will not come apart easily. That's like this bond. The Holy Spirit works in my life, the Holy Spirit works in yours, and God brings us together in the church and—bang—we are bonded whether we like it or not. The problem is we're terrible surfaces to bond. We fracture and fall apart, so we have to work hard at not pulling against the bond and tearing it. We also need to help others maintain their bonds—be careful not to encourage believers to pull away from those they're bonded to through gossip or "just cut them off." We need to be very careful about that.

One Body, Many Gifts

In case we missed it, Paul drives it home with repetition: "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope... one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all." We are called to be one because we are part of one body.

Because Jesus ascended into heaven, He is qualified to give gifts and assign roles. We can get twitchy about that, but God assigns roles. "He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, to build up the body of Christ." These roles have a single function—to equip the saints. It's a sequential thought in the Greek: equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, for the work of the ministry to build up the body of Christ. As each of us operates in the role God has given, we build up the body.

The Goal Is Maturity, the Path Is Unity, the Standard Is Jesus

Verse 13 says, "until we reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ's faithfulness." This is the third point: the goal is maturity, the path is unity, and the standard is Jesus.

We all love a graph that goes up and to the right—our retirement, our performance. It would be wonderful if our spiritual walk looked like that. Mine looks more like an EKG, all over the place—big moves some days, small moves others, sometimes nothing at all. On the days that seem hopeless, remember we are saved by the grace of Jesus, not by our performance. When things are awful, that's not because I performed poorly; when things are great and it feels like God is parting the Red Sea through me, He doesn't love me any more than before. His love is constant. We strive out of love, not to earn love.

The standard is Christ's fullness. We start somewhere on a line, with the fullness of Christ at the other end. Don't expect to fly up the scale. Paul himself wrote, "I am the chief of sinners"—not because he was doing worse things, but because he had a clearer picture of who he was. The closer I get to Jesus, the more I realize how far I am from Him, because His standard is so beautiful and mine is sometimes so not.

How do we get closer to that standard? Spend time with Him, like any relationship—in His presence, in worship, in His word. But unity with Christ requires breaking ties with anything opposed to Jesus. Some things just fade away—like when you get married, your single friends start disappearing because your goals are different; then when you have kids, you find yourself drawn to people who also have kids. Different goals require different paths. Other things must be intentionally severed. You cannot walk the same path with someone going to a different place; if you try, you'll just get tired and torn. Some of you know God is telling you something has to stop—stop it today. It may be painful, and we may need to apologize to people we misled into thinking what we were doing was right when we knew it was wrong, but we still need to pick the path Jesus lays out.

Stability, Truth, and the New Self

What's the effect of walking closer with Him? Paul says in verse 14, "We will no longer be little children tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching." The picture of immaturity is being kicked around by every new thing—I watched a Netflix documentary and now I can't eat meat and I have to wear two left shoes. Maturity is being rock-solid in the path of Christ.

Verse 15: "But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ." Speaking the truth in love forces us into interactions we'd like to avoid with a convenient lie. We have a friend in her pre-Christian stage, still trying to fit Jesus in with everything else she believes. It's easy to say, "Oh, she'll figure it out." But speaking the truth in love means: I value our friendship, and Jesus is not going to fit in the box with transcendental meditation. We join Him; He reaches out, but we have to move toward Him.

Verse 16: "From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for the building of itself up in love, by the proper working of each individual part." Titles tend to divide us. As soon as people find out you're a pastor, the conversation goes stilted, the adjectives disappear. My first real job was on the trucking docks—I've heard all of it and participated in just about all of it. It's not shocking to me how the world speaks. But the most painful thing is when someone finds out I'm a pastor and starts saying, "Well, sir"—don't "sir" me, please. We are each individual parts. No part is unimportant; the body is strengthened as each of us is strengthened.

Don't Walk Like the World

Verse 17: "You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them and the hardness of their hearts." We tend to read that and say, "Yep, that's the world, we're done with them." But what do they need? A renewing of their hearts and minds through relationship with Jesus—and how does God generally do that? Through us. He left us here because He has work for us to do. This doesn't mean everyone outside is a hateful degenerate—some are, but it's our job, through the prompting of the Holy Spirit and the bond of peace, to minister to those people and show them a different way.

The hallmark of a life without God is impurity, promiscuity, and an unquenchable desire for more. Good thing those behaviors don't occur inside the church, right? Ouch. All too often the church looks too much like the world. If the church is no different, why in the world would the world embrace what the church is doing? Why would they believe any of our claims about Christ if we walk the way they walk?

Paul says in verse 20, "But that is not how you came to know Christ." This is the fourth point: when we walk like the world, we are walking in opposition to Christ. We cannot walk like the world and successfully walk with Jesus. So Paul says, "Take off your former way of life, the old self... be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity and truth."

It's like changing a uniform. Russell Wilson, Seattle's best quarterback for a long time, got traded to the Denver Broncos—I don't even like to say that—and put on a new uniform. But there was a problem: he kept using his old Seahawks audibles and signals. His former teammates would hear him call an audible and shout it to the defense, who shut it down. The results were predictable. He changed his jersey but not his playbook. We do the same—operating out of our former self's playbook instead of completely embracing our new life in Christ, and the results are just as disastrous.

When I had my first kid, I knew everything about parenting. I'm now on my fifth, my last minor child, and I'll tell you I don't think I know anything about parenting. The key to putting on the new self is not that we'll understand everything right away—it's doing it over and over. We put on the new self minimally daily; sometimes I have to recheck my jersey 50,000 times a day. I'm not on the team that screams at people in traffic or savages some poor person at Costco or Burger King. I'm on the team that loves people and speaks the truth in love. It requires putting on a new jersey and repenting frequently.

Living It Out: Truth, Anger, and Forgiveness

What does this look like lived out? Verse 25: "Putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another." Who's my neighbor? The Good Samaritan answered that—are you around them? Congratulations, that's your neighbor.

Then: "Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger; do not give the devil an opportunity." He doesn't say don't be angry, because we will be angry—in a world opposed to Christ we'll have good reasons, and as sinners we'll have selfish ones. But we're called not to sin in our anger. Too often when we're angry we give ourselves permission to act in ways we know are wrong. There is no "fly-off-the-handle" exemption in the body of Christ, no "oops, I lost my temper" exemption. Don't marinate in your anger; anger embraced and encouraged becomes entrenched and poisons future interactions—Hebrews calls it a root of bitterness.

"Let the thief no longer steal," and "let no foul language come out of your mouth"—yes, that includes swearing, but not only swearing. Many ungodly things have been said in Christian lingo. At VBS, someone overheard a worker speaking about her husband in glowing, loving terms. That's a blessing to overhear, because so often it's not that. I thanked her, and she said, "My husband's not a believer. If I said something critical and it got back to him, what would that do to his coming to Christ?" Sainthood, right there.

"Do not grieve the Holy Spirit, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." What grieves the Holy Spirit is His people working in opposition to His purpose.

The last verse: "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ." The kindest, most compassionate thing we can do is forgive like Jesus—no ulterior motives, no grudges, not savoring our hurt. We have to put those things to death, but they're like zombies; we have to kill them over and over because they keep coming back. If we forgive like Jesus did, that will make the biggest difference.

The fifth point is the same as the third: the goal is maturity, the path is unity, and the standard is Jesus. If we can embrace that, the body of Christ is going to be unstoppable.

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, what an amazing thing it is that You have called us Your body, that You've given us the opportunity, the calling, and the equipping to live out the mission You've given us. Lord, we don't always do it well—sometimes I flat-out do it poorly. But thank You that You love me regardless, that Your mercies are new every morning, and that we can continue to put Your jersey on and get out on the field. Lord, help us to draw others close to You and to maintain that unity. In Jesus's name, amen.