John Mark Hicks

How do we maintain the unity the Spirit created? We walk in love. This means, in part, that we speak the truth to each other (rather than promoting lies), we manage our holy anger well (rather than sinning in our anger), we share our resources with each other (rather than stealing), we speak graciously for building up (rather than speaking evil), and we treat each other with kindness and forgiveness (rather than harboring bitterness and using abusive language). This is what it means to imitate God and to walk in love; to forgive as God has forgiven us in Christ and to love as Christ has loved us through his self-sacrifice.

This section began in Ephesians 4:17 when Paul reminded his Gentile readers to no longer “walk” (often translated “live”) as they used to walk (or live). The section ends with the imperative to “walk in love” (5:2). In other words, no longer walk as Gentiles immersed in the way of the nations but walk in the love of the God of Israel poured out in the Messiah.

The first half of the section grounded the call to walking in love in the work of God to derobe our old selves and put on a new self through God’s own renewal. God has created us to be, as God intended in Genesis 1, like God–renewed in God’s righteousness and holiness. We are new creatures, and this empowers our capacity to “walk in love.”

Walking in love is fundamentally relational, and it is deeply connected with the one body. How do we live as one community, the body of Christ, in the context of a world filled with evil, abuse, and violence? What sort of community are we to become and be?

Ephesians 4:25 is where the imperatives begin in Ephesians (except for Ephesians 2:12, “remember”). There are a total of forty imperatives through the rest of the book, and thirteen of them are found in Ephesians 4:25-5:2. They are:                   speak truth (4:25); be angry (4:26) but sin not (4:26); don’t let sun go down on wrath (4:26); don’t make room for Devil (4:27); no longer steal (4:28); labor to have something to share (4:28); let no evil talk come out of your mouth (4:29); don’t grieve the Spirit (4:30); put away all bitterness (4:31); be kind to one another (4:32); be imitators of God (5:1); walk in love (5:2).

The imperatives (commands) call us to walk worthy of our calling (Ephesians 4:1) and walk in the good works God has created us to do (Ephesians 2:10) in contrast with how Gentiles had previously walked (Ephesians 2:2). God has created us anew for this purpose: that we might become like God and embody the mystery of the gospel in our own lives.

This is primarily a communal calling in this text. Paul reminds us that “we are members of each other” (Ephesians 4:25). The imperatives are not primarily about individual behavior in isolation but about how we live together in community, just as Ephesians 4:1-3 expects we will keep the unity the Spirit has created. To dissolve this unity and mistreat each other is to grieve the Spirit (Ephesians 4:30).

The text easily falls into five sections:

• Don’t lie but speak truth to each other (4:25)
• Be angry but don’t sin (4:26-27)
• Don’t steal but share with the needy (4:28)
• Avoid corrupt talk but edify each other with words of grace (4:29)
• Avoid bitterness but be kind and forgiving to each other (4:30-31)

The last section–imitating God and Christ–forms the crescendo for the section (Ephesians 5:1-2). We treat each other this way because of how God has treated us in Christ. The Messiah has loved us and forgiveness us, and therefore we are called to walk with each other in that same love, including forgiveness.

The imperatives are about living in community. Remember that this newly planted congregation–as well as the young congregations in the region–live in hostile conditions. They are neither welcomed by Jews or idolatrous Gentiles (whether emperor worship or the great goddess Artemis). They live in the midst of economic, political, and religious tension. They have become outsiders. Consequently, it is important for the community to hang together in love and deal with internal problems in order to maintain the unity the Spirit has created.

The imperative to speak truth to one’s neighbor comes from Zechariah 8:16. The “neighbor” in the text is the community of Israel which has been restored as a remnant of God’s people. This is not a call to love all people (though that is a truth to remember) but a more specific demand for honesty within the church community. This is indicated by the reason given: because we are members of one another.

Living in community, there is sometimes a reason to be angry, and many times those reasons are good ones. When we have been abused, lied to, or betrayed, anger is a natural and godly response. However, anger must not control us; it must not dominate our actions. The sundown metaphor is not about timing but about obsession (it comes from Psalm 4:4). When we feed anger and cultivate, it will develop into bitterness, rage, and malicious talk (which Paul addresses in Ephesians 4:31). Anger in opposition to injustice and unrighteousness is a good emotion, and it can produce good fruits. However, if the anger turns to bitterness and dominates us, then it will destroy us and the community in which we live.

Living in community means we do not steal from each other or treat each other dishonestly. Even in the New Testament we can see congregations mistreating each other (like the widows in Acts 6:1-2, or the Corinthian hesitation to share wealth with the poor saints in Jerusalem in 2 Corinthians 8-9, or the cheating by Annanias and Saphira in Acts 5). Rather, the community is called to generosity through working for their living. The motive of work is not only for its own good (our vocations can serve humanity), or even to support our family (though that is an imperative in 1 Timothy 5), but to have funds to share with the needy in the community.

Living in community often means we have arguments, even shouting matches, that turn into rage and malicious or abusive talk. We have all seen this happen in families and churches, much less in national politics. A healthy community can talk with each other without developing bitterness or rage, without using abusive language. The focus of a Christian community is to edify each other and speak with grace to each other (Ephesians 4:29). We seek to develop healthy relationships in kindness and forgiveness. Therefore, we avoid bitterness and its fruits (which are named in almost a degenerative cycle in Ephesians 4:31-32) and pursue kindness and forgiveness, just as Christ has forgiven us.

The last line in Ephesians 4:32 leads directly to Ephesians 5:1, which reminds us of the ground upon which we live in community. We live this way because we are new creatures in Christ who were created to imitate the Father. We are the children of God.

Consequently, we walk in love, and we are moved toward this and enabled to do this because of what God has done in Christ. The Messiah has loved us and given himself for us so that we might the children of God. Consequently, we walk in love, not because we are under threat but because we are loved!

How should we walk? And how can we walk? (Ephesians 4:17-24)

Disciples of Jesus, those who learned about the Messiah, are to walk worthy of their calling (Ephesians 4:1). These first generation Gentile believers are called to no longer walk as they used to walk as people alienated from God, but to walk in the truth of Jesus the Messiah. They walk in the way of Jesus, not because they have the resources within themselves to do so, but because they have been created by God to be like God in authentic righteousness and holiness. We are able to walk because we have been new created to walk in the good works which God has prepared for us (Ephesians 2:10).

“Walk” is a key metaphor in Ephesians, though the literal word is obscured by most translations. Many translators believe “live” is a helpful dynamic translation for “walk,” and it does communicate the point. At the same time, it is important to recognize how Paul repeats this metaphor throughout Ephesians.

The metaphor implies a contrast. Walk this way, but not that way. There are two ways.

On the one hand, in their former lives as Gentiles alienated from God, they walked according the powers that are work among the disobedient (Ephesians 2:2) and they walked in the way of the nations like Gentiles (Ephesians 4:17). On the other hand, the Gentiles are now, as part of Israel’s commonwealth, are invited to walk in the good works that God has created us to do (Ephesians 2:10) and to walk worthy of the calling to which they have been called (Ephesians 4:1). There are two paths in which we might walk. There is the “way of the nations” (Jeremiah 10:2) and there is “the Way” of Jesus (Acts 24:22).

The ”two ways” motif is found through the narrative of Scripture.

• In the Garden of Gard, there were two ways: tree of life and the other tree.
• In Deuteronomy 30:19, there is way of blessedness and the way of cursedness.
• In Proverbs 9, there is way of wisdom and the way of foolishness.
• In the Psalm 81:13 and Psalm 82:5, we with walk in the ways of God or in darkness.
• In Psalm 1, there is the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked.
• In Matthew 7, Jesus tells the parable of the wise and foolish builder.
• In James 3, there is a wisdom that comes from above and one from below.
• In Revelation, worship God or worship the beast.

Paul employs the same strategy in Ephesians 4:17-24. He contrasts two ways. There is the way of the Gentiles, and there is the way of the Messiah. There is the way of the nations, and there is the way of the Torah.

The description of the Gentiles is Ephesians 4:17-19 is classic Jewish rhetoric. It is like Romans 1:18-32. The Gentiles, as a generalization, were soaked in ignorance, stubbornness, sexual immorality, and greed.

But, and this is the turn in the text, “That is not the way you learned from Christ!” You were not taught or discipled by Christ to walk in the way of the Gentiles. The verb “learn” is the same root as the noun Matthew uses for the disciples of Jesus; they are learners (Matthew 5:1. His disciples followed him. “Take my yoke upon you,” Jesus said, “and learn from me” (Matthew 11:29). Jesus is the truth of God, and we must learn from him.

In other words, we have learned to walk a different way. That way will be described in 4:25-5:2 with some specificity. At this point, Paul describes the basis of our ability to walk in a different way and the purpose for such a life.

The fundament teaching is describe with three infinitives (Ephesians 4:22-24):

• Put away your former way of life (ἀναστροφὴν), the old person or self.
• Be renewed in the spirit of your minds
• Put on or clothe yourself with the new person

There may be a baptismal allusion here because the practice of immersion in water involved a taking off of one’s clothes and putting on new clothes, and the waters of baptism are a means by which God renews or regenerates (John 3:5; Titus 3:5). But that point is not explicit even though it may lie in the background as all the believers in Ephesus had experience baptism (implicit from Ephesians 4:5).

The first and third infinitives are in the aorist (past) tense. Since the infinitives are dependent upon the verb “learn” in Ephesians 4:21, it is likely that these verbs refer to their conversion, that is, a moment in the past when they learned of Christ. They were converted, or, if a baptismal context, when they were baptized.

Renewal is in the present tense which perhaps indicates that renewal is always a present reality. It may have begun when they learned of Christ, but it continues in the present. Believers are always experiencing renewal or being “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18).

This declothing, renewal, and reclothing is a divine act of creation. We were created to live a different way of life. We are created, like in the beginning in Genesis 1:26-28, to be “like God” as we were made in the image of God. Now, God has created a new people—one new human (Ephesians 2:15)—to become the likeness of God in the world, to represent God in the world. Moreover, this also entails participation in the life of God (Ephesians 4:19)—once we were alienated from that life, but now we participate in it.

The ultimate point is ethical—as new creatures, we live a different kind of life. We live in the way of the Jewish Messiah, the way of the Torah, and the way of God rather than in the way of the nations. It is a contrast between the two ways to live life. This chart in DeSilva, Commentary on Ephesians, p. 228 is a good illustration of the contrast in 4:22-24.

There are two ways. We were created for walk in one, and to walk in the other is to subvert the truth of God who created us from the beginning to be divine icons or images of God’s own life.

Now, in Ephesians 4:26-6:9, Paul will begin to explain what walking in the likeness of God looks like. What does it look like for those who were once alienated from God but now participate in the life of God to walk like God? The invitation act like God fills the rest of the letter.

Psalm 123 finds pilgrims standing in the gates of Jerusalem and looking up to the God who is enthroned in the heavens and between the Cherubim of the ark of the covenant. The only petition is: “be gracious to us” (a word used three times in the space of four words). It is a communal prayer for people who have been mistreated by the wealthy, powerful, and arrogant. When we find ourselves in times of trouble, we cry, “mercy” and “grace” to the God of Israel who promises to bless us, keep us, and be gracious to us in Aaronic Blessing of Numbers 6. This prayer should be on our lips constantly, especially in the context of current events.

If if had not been that God was on our side . . . (Psalm 124). Paul probably had this Psalm in the back of his mind when he asked, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” The pilgrims on their ascent to the temple of God, confess: God is for us, even is humanity is against us; the Covenant God (Yahweh) will not give us up, and our helper is the Creator of heaven and earth.

If God is for us, nothing can separate us from God’s love.

Bobby Valentine and John Mark Hicks discuss Psalm 124, which is the fifth Psalm of Ascents.

Unity is not only a given but a process. Paul calls us to maintain the unity the Spirit has created (Ephesians 4:3), but then calls us to grow up into unity (Ephesians 4:13). In other words, God has created unity, and we are one! But this unity is not always visible or realized in our lives and communities. Unity is not only something the Spirit creates as a foundation, but it is a process by which we grow into the full measure of the Messiah. Leaders equip us for this process, and each member of the body is gifted to participate in the process. As people foundation on the unity of the Spirit (the 7 ones of Ephesians 4:4-6), we are no longer infants tossed about by deceiving winds but we speak and do the truth (that foundation) in love until the whole body matures into the likeness of the Messiah.

Unity (Eph 4:1-6): the unity (ἑνότητα) of the Spirit

1. Relational: Mutual Forbearance in Love (Eph 4:1-3; ἐν ἀγάπῃ)
   1. Oneness: The Mystery of Christ (Eph 4:4-6)

Diversity (4:7-16): growing into the maturity of the faith

1. The Exalted Christ Gives Gifts (Eph 4:7-11)
   1. The Function of Gifts in Love: Maturation (Eph 4:12-16; ἐν ἀγάπῃ)

Functioning almost like an inclusio, “each one” in Eph 4:7 (ἑνὶ δὲ ἑκάστῳ) and Eph 4:16 (ἑνὸς ἑκάστου) highlights how every part of the body is gifted to participate in the maturation of the one body in love (αὔξησιν τοῦ σώματος ποιεῖται εἰς οἰκοδομὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἐν ἀγάπῃ).

The Mystery of Christ (Ephesians 4:8-10)

The Messianic Centerpiece:  A Theological Reading of Ps 68 (Eph 4:8-10).

The text describes an ascent and a descent, and after the ascent, there is the distribution of gifts. The topic is Christological, that is, this is the pattern of the Messiah’s activity for the salvation of the world.

• The Son descended to become incarnate: God become flesh.
• The incarnate Son as Messiah died on the cross
• The incarnate Son as Messiah descended into the realm of the dead.
• The incarnate Son as Messiah was resurrected from the dead.
• The incarnate Son as Messiah was exalted to the right hand of God.
• The incarnate Son as Messiah gave gifts to people for the mission of the church.

Psalm 68 celebrates God’s victory over enemies, the march through the wilderness to Sinai, the trek to Israel’s inheritance, and then enthronement in Zion where Yahweh resides and receives the processional praise and honor due to the divine king (in which women participate and announce the good news; 68:11, 25). From this exalted position in the sanctuary, where the “kingdoms of the earth” offer praise, the God of Israel distributes blessings and gifts (“gives power and strength to his people,” 68:35; cf. Psalm 67:1, 6-7).

Ephesians 4:8 quotes Psalm 68:18, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts (δόματα) to his people (ἀνθρώποις)”.

      a. Psalm 68 celebrates the movement of Israel from Egypt (v. 7) to Sinai (v. 8) and then to Canaan (vv. 9-14) whereupon God ascends the throne on Zion in Jerusalem (vv. 15-18). Paul uses Psalm 68 to describe the ascension and enthronement of Jesus in Ephesians 4:8. Jesus rose from the grave, ascended to the throne, and gave gifts to the church (people, ἀνθρώποις) through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

b.  Psalm 68:25 places women in the liturgical procession of singers and musicians to the temple. Like Miriam, young women played tambourines as part of the procession. They visibly participated in Israel’s public worship in the assembled congregation.

c.  Psalm 68:11 reads: “The Lord gives the command; great is the company of those who bore the tidings” (KJV). In the Septuagint “bore the tidings” is the same word as in the New Testament for “preaching the gospel” (εὐαγγελιζομένοις) or evangelists.

d.  Significantly, in Hebrew, the word is feminine. Psalm 68 envisions a great company of women who declare the good news (ASV, ESV, NIV). In the light of Paul’s application of Psalm 68 to the ascension of Christ, we hear an echo of the gifting of women to preach the gospel when God poured out the Spirit and gifted the church with a variety of functions. This included prophets and evangelists (εὐαγγελιστάς; proclaimers of the gospel) in Ephesians 4:11.

The Gifts (Ephesians 4:11):

                  “the apostles, and” (δὲ),

                        “the prophets, and” (δὲ)

                                    “the evangelists, and” (δὲ)

                                                “the pastors [shepherds] and (καὶ) teachers.”

Purpose (Ephesians 4:12-13):

to equip the saints for (εἰς) the work of ministry, for (εἰς) building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity (ἑνότητα) of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity (εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον), to the measure of the full stature of Christ (εἰς μέτρον ἡλικίας τοῦ πληρώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ).

Result (Ephesians 4:14-16):

We must no longer be children (νήπιοι, infants), tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine (διδασκαλίας), by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love (ἀληθεύοντες δὲ ἐν ἀγάπῃ), we must grow up (αὐξήσωμεν) in every way into (εἰς) him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is supported, as each part (ἑκάστου μέρους) is working properly, promotes the body’s growth (αὔξησιν) in building itself up (εἰς οἰκοδομὴν) in love.

Pilgrims enter Jerusalem excited to experience authentic community, thanksgiving, and justice. They come to the house of the Lord to experience shalom (peace) and ask God to give peace the place where the Lord dwells.

What does it mean to pray for Jerusalem? How might we pray for Jerusalem today? Psalm 122 guides in the light of what God has is accomplishing through the son of David, the Messiah.

We lift our eyes to the hills from whence our help comes! This familiar line is followed by a commentary on the Aaronic Blessing (Numbers 6:22-27), particularly the word “keep” (used six times in six verses). The Lord God of Israel preserves, guards, and protects the people of God as they journey to the hills to worship God. This trust Psalm expresses our confidence that God will not fall asleep on the job (like pagan deities) and will protect us from harm from the pagan deities (sun and moon). God will give Israel her “travel mercies” on their coming and going.

The focus of Paul’s prayer is not that the Ephesians would be filled with information (though Paul does want them to understand the mystery of Christ and live with wisdom) but that they might be filled with the fullness of God. He prays that through the Spirit strengthening their inner persons and Christ dwelling in their hearts they might be overwhelmed with the breadth and depth of the love of Christ, and that they might experience (to know intimately) what is beyond knowing, that is, the love of Christ. In this way, believers are rooted and grounded in God’s love for us.

This is where our security lies, and it dispels anxiety and fear. We know we are loved not simply through information or cognition, but we experience the love of God deep in our hearts and inner persons. Paul wants believers to have an intimate knowledge of God whereby God’s love for us stabilizes, grounds, and roots us through God’s work in our hearts.

To God be the glory in the church and in Christ because God is able to do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Below is a chart that compares the prayers in Ephesians 1:15-23 and Ephesians 3:14-21.

Psalm 100 invites all the earth to make a joyful noise and come into God’s presence in order to acknowledge that God is the creator and all peoples belong to him, give thanks, and bless God’s holy name. This invitation is grounded in the goodness of Yahweh whose steadfast love endures forever and faithfulness shapes all generations. Bobby Valentine and John Mark HIcks explore the riches of this invitation to come into God’s heavenly courts to serve Yahweh, to worship Yahweh as an assembly of God’s people.

Probably the most beloved and memorized Psalm in the modern world, Psalm 23 is filled with wonderful images and metaphors that function are multiple layers: salvation history, communal stories, and personal testimony. At the center lies the assurance, “You are with me!” Immanuel. God is with us–to protect, guide, nourish, welcome, host, and commune. Bobby Valentine and John Mark Hicks explore the Psalm to discover its richly diverse and powerful message.