Keep the Unity

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS

KEEP THE UNITY

Eph 4:1-6

4:1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit— just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

NIV

Now that we are completely humble and gentle. Being patient, bearing with one another in love, or at least that is how we are supposed to be, we now see there is something else we have been urged to do. We are to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. It is interesting the Greek word spoudazoo has this direct meaning to either make haste, to endeavor, to exert oneself. Therefore, we are to make every effort, that means we are to put forth, exert ourselves, be pro-active to keep the unity of the Spirit. We wonder why we are to keep the unity of the Spirit. Is Paul saying that we already have this unity of the Spirit or is he making a point that we should make every effort to first attain this unity and then do everything in our power to keep it? Nevertheless, the question is whether we are making every effort and if we are, what does that look like? When we consider this keeping of the unity of the Spirit is done through the bond of peace, we also note that we should have a bond with all the saints. This bond is our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We think somehow, we might have lost this bond because of the continual expansion in the number of denominations. That seems more like there is no bond with all the saints because we cannot agree on many secondary and tertiary points, yet if we all agree that faith in Jesus Christ for our salvation, we should be in unity. Then we consider how that unity in the Spirit through the bond of peace might look like in a local church. Even if there are various clichés in the church, the unity is based on our faith in Jesus. It should not matter if there are factions or clichés in the church, but they do help create hurt feelings us those left out of one of them. We know we all have different personalities and there are some people that are simply drawn together by their similarities, such as spinsters, widows, or divorcees (single older women), people with small children, men with the same interests, etc. then there are people who are like fingernails scraping on a chalkboard, referred to as irregular people in our lives. With all those divisive areas in the local church, does that interfere with having a bond of peace among us all? Are we all making every effort to keep this unity of the Spirit through this bond of peace? If there is one among us that is not making every effort, but instead is keeping from themselves from any effort, what does that do to the bond of peace in the local church? What we do know is if there is to be this bond of peace, it rests on us to make effort to keep this unity of the Spirit and be bonding through peace.