The World Needs Beautiful Churches
So how should we live? Maybe that’s what the churches in Ephesus were thinking as they read the first half of Paul’s letter to them. The first half is full of theology and doctrine and amazing truths about God, mankind, and the whole world. It’s not until chapter 4 that Paul starts to get really practical. He starts to tell them how to live based on the truths that he just laid out. The very first thing he tells them is to be holy sinless blameless stop cursing faithful in marriage unified. Ephesians 4:1, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Why would Paul start here? Why is it so important that we are eager to maintain unity with each other?
A Unified Church Is A Beautiful Church
You and I are unity destroyers. That’s probably not what we want in our relationships or in the church, to destroy unity, but it’s how we all end up acting in ways. We don’t naturally have those qualities that lead up to unity: humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with each other. We are naturally bent to break unity, which leads to ugly relationships and ugly churches. I’m sure some survey out there says that a very high percentage of people who’ve left the church did so because they church seemed ugly to them. It was full of hypocrites, full of people who talk behind each other’s back, full of people who can’t get along. I just heard it in the last few weeks that this guy left the church because he couldn’t handle all of the internal fighting. He was the middle kid in the back seat with his brother and sister fighting on each side and he just said enough already, I’m out of this family! Our world needs beautiful churches. Which means our world needs unified churches.
Unity happens when a church lives out the character qualities Paul mentioned here. First, humility. Humility was despised in the world when Paul wrote this. Only slaves were humble. The person who was self-sufficient and didn’t need anyone else was the most praised. This culture valued independence instead of interdependence. They would have loved Mauro Morandi, the 78 year old dude who has lived completely alone on an island in the Mediterranean for the last 28 years. That dude obviously doesn’t need anyone else. I can’t handle being alone in my car for a drive into town! I have to make a phone call (hands free) or listen to a podcast, that’s how fragile I am. But God hasn’t called us to be Mauro Morandi. He’s called us to be brothers and sisters. Tight, in the back seat, on a long road trip. He’s called us to be around people who are likely to fight and annoy and irritate us. The message of the Bible isn’t that we isolate, it’s that we humble ourselves, and live in unity. That’s beautiful.
Husbands, when you and your wife have a disagreement, do you in your pride isolate yourself and pull away from your wife? Do you shut down and make her be the person to try to restore the unity? Do you make your wife do your job. That’s your job men, to pursue your wife. Jesus pursued unity with his church. He didn’t make the church come crawling broken to him. That’s what we’ve been seeing with Hosea with Gomer in our community groups. But many of us dudes make our wives pursue unity in our relationships when that’s our job. Ladies, when you have a disagreement with one of your friends, do you in your pride refuse to budge or admit that you were wrong and let the division fester and boil until it overflows into gossip or slander or bitterness or hatred? Pride leads to disunity. And it leads to ugly relationships. It leads to an ugly church. Humility produces unity, beautiful relationships, and a beautiful church.
Maybe you’ve been wondering why there’s so much drama in your relationships; so much disunity. Part of it has to be that each of us is broken in these areas. We come into every relationship with some pride, with some harshness, some impatience, and the desire to hold a grudge. We’re all walking expressions of disunity on our own. Which is why Paul starts with unity. What if you just assumed for a second that this is true of you. That right now you’re contributing to disunity into some of your relationships. Where would it stem from? Not being gentle? Not being patient? Holding onto wrongs? Pride? Maybe you need some time where you and you spouse can be honest with each other and ask each other if you do any of these things. Ask a trusted friend if they see any of this in you. Ask God to root it out and kill it in you.
A Unified Church Is A Growing Church
A unified Church is a beautiful Church is a growing Church. One way that it’s gonna grow in it’s leadership. In verse 11 it says that Jesus gave leaders in the church certain gifts—apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers. He gave gifts to those leaders so that they would equip the rest of the church to follow and serve Jesus well. He gave leaders to help keep the unity of the church. And do you know what aspect each of the roles has in common? Teaching. The way God wants his church to grow and be unified is through gifted leaders who are teaching.
Do you value the teaching of your local church? Here’s one way you can tell: do you regularly apply the teachings of your church to your life? Like, do your regularly actually change the way you live based on what is preached in your church or taught in your small groups?
When gifted leaders are teaching, and the church is absorbing and applying that teaching, then there’s another way growth happens in a unified, beautiful church. Look at verse 13 again: “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of that stature of the fullness of Christ.” What kind of growth is that? It’s growth toward maturity. Sometimes when we evaluate the successfulness of a church we look at their numbers. Oh they had to move to a new building because they exploded. Things like that. Hey that’s great, especially if a church is growing because people who didn’t know Jesus are coming to him. But growth in numbers isn’t the goal here. It’s growth in the maturity of the people in the church. Because guys it’s very possible to be a believer in Jesus but still be immature about what it means to follow Jesus. An immature christian is pretty similar to an immature kid—fickle, unstable, gullible, easily influenced by what’s popular in the world. And that’s how we all are when it comes to following Jesus. Thankfully God gave kids parents who can teach them and the kids can grow in maturity. Thankfully God gave us the church and gifted teachers who can teach us and we can grow in maturity.
Maybe God is calling you to be a part of this in your church. Maybe He’s calling you to lead a small group and teach His Word. Maybe He’s calling you to teach in the kids ministry and make disciples of the children in the church. He’s definitely called you to be eager to pursue the unity of the church He’s called you to, and one of the main ways you can be eager to do that is to teach the Bible.
The unity of the Church is beautiful because it reflects the Unity of our God. The unity of the church exists because our Triune God is unified in his person. So when we display unity, we are literally displaying God. God is beautiful. People are looking for beauty. In John 17, Jesus is praying for his church, and look at what he prays: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” When people see the church living out the unity that reflects God, they’ll be drawn to it and the church is gonna grow.