Ephesians 04:We Fight For Unity

Unity doesn’t happen by accident. We open Ephesians 4 with a hard truth: people drift toward division, offense, and noise, so followers of Jesus must choose a different current—humility, gentleness, patience, and love that bind us together in peace. From there we trace Paul’s sweeping vision of one body, one Spirit, one hope, and one Father who holds it all, then zoom into how the ascended Christ leads captives to freedom and hands out gifts for the good of the church.

We get practical and a little provocative as we unpack the equipping roles—apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers—and reset what healthy leadership looks like. Pastors aren’t hired to do ministry for spectators; pastors train a people to become a ministry. When every part does its work, the church grows stable and resilient. We also tackle a classic question: did Jesus descend to the dead, or is Paul only referring to the incarnation? You’ll hear two faithful views and why either way the point holds—Christ fills all things and fuels a unified church.

The episode lands where life is lived: throw off the old self, be renewed in the Spirit, and put on the new. That means honesty over spin, reconciliation over simmering anger, work and generosity over taking, and speech that helps rather than harms. We address the “is cussing a sin” question by aiming higher: do your words represent Jesus well and build others up? Finally, we confront the habits that grieve the Holy Spirit—bitterness, rage, slander—and replace them with kindness, tender hearts, and forgiveness anchored in the cross. Unity costs effort, but disunity costs everything. Walk with us through Ephesians 4 and take your next step toward a church that’s healthy, growing, and full of love.

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The More We Dig. The More We Find.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Welcome And Theme: Fight For Unity

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Every day, we take one chapter of the Bible, dig deeper, and discover that the more we dig, the more we find. You can find out more at the BibleBreakdown.com. Now let's grow in God's word together. Well, everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Ephesians chapter 4. And if I could give this one a title, it would be Fight for Unity. Fight for Unity. Have you ever been in like what they call it a lazy river? What that is, is it is just a man-made river where, you know, kind of usually a loop that has like it's all kind of the current's all going in one direction. And all you got to do is just lay there. Just get in the inner tube and just lay, and it'll just go. Or have you ever been in a river where the current was all going in one direction? Well, a lot of times when you get around people, there is a current that is automatically flowing in a particular direction. And the only way you can fix that is you have to go against the grain. We're going to talk about what that looks like and talk about what we as followers of Jesus, especially when it comes to coming together as the church, what we have got to constantly fight against, and that's going to be disunity. We're going to get into that in just a moment. But as always, if you like what we're doing here, make sure you like, share, and subscribe to the YouTube channel. We love, love, love, love. How many of you, so many of you that are liking it, sharing it, telling other people, thank you so much. We're trying to get past a thousand. And so if you were listening on the podcast, I'd love you to take a moment, go to the YouTube channel and hit subscribe, hit like. Doesn't cost you anything, but it helps us get over that. Speaking of that, thank you so much for my podcast listeners. You will always be my favorite, mainly to aggravate our YouTube listeners. But I want to say thank you so much to Tommy Youngung. I noticed, Mr. Tommy, that you left us a five-star review and you said that you are learning so much just by listening to this podcast. And I want to tell you, I love you. I'm thankful for you. Thank you for listening to this podcast. It means the world that we get to connect like this. Well, if you have your Bible and you want to open it up with me to Ephesians chapter four. Oh, by the way, don't forget to go to our Facebook discussion group. Okay, throwing that out there because those those guys, they are worth mentioning every day, right? But if you want to open your Bible to Ephesians chapter four, I want to talk about this idea of why we fight for unity. I don't know if you've ever noticed this or not, but in general, we as people, as human beings, we don't drift toward unity as people. We drift toward disunity. We drift toward separation. We drift toward controversy and different things. We we don't drift toward peace and harmony. It reminds me of one time I was reading this uh book about J.R.R. Tolkien, the famous author who wrote The Lord of the Rings. And I don't know if you know this, but once upon a time, he actually thought about writing a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. He started dabbling with some ideas and even wrote some things down. And when he got pretty, you know, not very far into it, you know, pretty quickly, he decided to abandon the project. And the reason why is because he, as he started to write and started to think about how things would have naturally unfolded, he said, people grow weary of peace, and he wanted to leave the world he had made at peace. And I've thought about that so much because as people, as fallen creation, we don't drift toward peace. We drift toward intrigue and disunity. You ever heard the phrase that says that uh a lie can make it around the world three times before the truth can even get its shoes on? You know, and that's just kind of the way it goes. Therefore, we have to fight for unity. We have to fight to forgive one another, to make allowances for one another, to not take things personally. I know a lady who, like her lifelong mantra was, I refuse to be offended. And I think that's a lot of what the Apostle Paul is, he actually uses the word beg. He's begging the church in Ephesus to do. Now, if you remember, he loves this church. They got a lot of skin in the game together. All the way back in the book of Acts, you know, they they had to deal with a lot of things, and and this church is very spiritually aware of what's going on, and they realize that there's a lot of spiritual warfare that's going on, and one of the things we have to fight for, both physically and spiritually, is to remain unified. And so what Paul's gonna do is that now in the first three chapters, he's talked about that we are God's masterpiece and and we're never gonna actually fully know the love of God, but we can pursue a mature walk with God. Now that he's done that, he's gonna pivot to say, this is how, in the context of community, we grow and mature in our faith. So if you got your Bibles ready, in Ephesians chapter four, he's gonna challenge us on how we grow together in unity and fight for it together. You ready? Here we go. Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1 says this. Therefore, I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling. For you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle, be patient with each other, making allowances for each other's faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all. However, he has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. That's why the scriptures say when he ascended into the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people. Pause. I love this phrase when it says he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives, and he gave gifts to his people. Now it's kind of lost on us in our modern context, but what that means is ascending to the heights would have meant that he was ascending to heaven as a victory. And when it says he led a crowd of captives, a lot of times we think that that means like like the devil and demons and all that stuff. He's actually talking about us. Because what would happen a lot of times is whenever a soldier or whatever a military general would conquer a city, what he would do is he would march them back to where he was from. He would march all the captives, and those captives was his trophies. And what Paul is saying is that when Jesus rose again and he went back to his throne, he led all of us, his trophies. He he led those who had been captive back into his kingdom. And so it's this wonderful picture of the fact that we are the trophies that Jesus won when he rose again. We are his quote unquote captives. We're his spoils of war, and he gave us gifts as a victory for what he had done. So it's this wonderful picture of we are the spoils of war. Like he won our freedom, and he gave us gifts so that we could minister to one another. Okay, back to verse nine. Notice that it says he ascended. This clearly means that Christ also descended into our lowly world. The same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself. Pause again. Now, in this lies a controversy. There's a controversy that says that one of two things is being said when Paul wrote this. I'm gonna read it again because it says, if he ascended to heaven, this clearly means that Christ descended to our lowly world. Now he's talking about that scripture just before, which a messianic prophecy about what Christ would do. Some people say what that means is when Paul says, Well, if he ascended, that means he first descended to our lowly world. Some people say what that means is, is that just simply means that he was in heaven and he came down to earth. There's other people that say that that's proof that when Jesus died on the cross for three days he descended into hell, a certain type of hell. There's basically two compartments in hell. There was what we think of as hell, a place of torment for the unrighteous dead, and then there was a place called paradise, also known as Abraham's bosom. It was a place for the righteous dead as a place of waiting for the Messiah to come. I know that gets into Christianity 401, a little deeper thing, but what that would then have meant is that Jesus went to paradise in order to bring those into heaven with him. It's a very interesting topic, and I would encourage you to do some research to see because it's very interesting to look at what happened to Jesus during the three days that he was in the grave. All right, let's pick up from there, verse 10, or excuse me, verse 11. Now, these are the gifts Christ gave to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and to build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever that they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of the body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly as each part does its own special work. It helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy, growing, and full of love. Now pause again. Notice what he said. God gave to the church people that are going to be gifted to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Now notice it doesn't say anything about those ever going away. So I'm one of these people. They call people like me a continuationist, which means that when Acts chapter 28, the birth of the church, now is comes to a complete completion at 28, nothing changed about the offices or the gifts of the Spirit. They're still here. We just have to make sure we understand what an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a pastor, and a teacher are. A lot of people don't have a problem understanding there's pastors and teachers. They don't have a problem understanding that some people are gifted with this gift of evangelism. Now, we're all called to spread the gospel, but some people just have a special gifting to really spread the gospel. We have evangelists. Some people are okay with prophets. There's two different types of prophecy there's foretelling and forth telling. Four telling something that hasn't happened yet. Fourth telling is telling the word of God in a public manner or a fourth, kind of putting it out there. The one that a lot of people have trouble with is the first one, and that is apostles. And one of the reasons why is because we have a hard time figuring out what exactly though that kind of thing is. Well, you have two different kinds of apostles. You have the big A apostles, capital A apostles. That's the first twelve, including Paul, then, you know, and so you have those, but then you have little A apostles. And you can see that throughout the book of Acts. They were people that were acting in these different kinds of roles, but they weren't those. And so we we don't have any capital A apostles anymore. That's that's the first twelve. We have little A apostles, and a good way of thinking about that is the gift of an apostle, according to God's word, is these were people that were basically church planters. They were mercenaries, mercenaries, ha ha ha. Not mercenaries. They were, I don't can't think of the word. That's the that's ridiculous. Not mercenaries. I'm trying to pioneers. That's not even close to the same word. Why did I say mercenary? Oh, Lord help me, I need to pray. Not a mercenary. This is great. Best podcast ever. Pioneers. People who would go and blaze a trail, start a church, go to a new city, go to a place where the gospel had never been before. That's what an apostle would do. Someone who had a vision for a city and would go and plant a church. So we still have those people today. They're like missionaries, but we still have the other offices as well, non-mercenaries. And we'll keep saying that over and over again. But then also notice what Paul says that a pastor is supposed to do. I want to say something and be kind of controversial, and then we're going to move on and finish this chapter. The pastor is not in charge or responsible to be the event planner at your church. The pastor is not responsible for reaching all of your friends and family for Christ. The pastor is not supposed to be the chief soul winner of your church. Now, he has the responsibility as a child of God to reach the lost because he's a Christ follower. But that's not the primary role and goal of a pastor. God's Word just told us what the primary role of a pastor is. The primary role of a pastor is to equip God's people to do the work of ministry and to build up the church. And build up means to educate, encourage, challenge, and inform. The pastor is not supposed to be the one doing all of the work. The pastor is supposed to be teaching, equipping, and establishing the church so that we, the church, can do the work of ministry. One of the reasons why that's so difficult is because we've gotten this twisted up a lot. But one of the things we have to remember is the person who's primarily responsible for reaching your lost friends and family is you. God wants you to be a bringer of peace and hope into your world. That the goal of the pastor is to teach you how to do it. And then when we do that together, the Bible says we will no longer be immature children, we won't be tossed about, but we will instead speak the truth in love and be ready to do every good work. I think that's awesome. All right, let's finish up this chapter together about fighting for unity. Verse 17. When the Lord's authority, with the Lord's authority, I say, live no longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. Their minds are full of darkness, they wander far from the life God gives, because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him. They have no sense of shame. They live for lustful pleasure and they eagerly practice every kind of impurity. That's what it looks like when we live where we just go with the flow. And we let, you know, that lazy river I was talking about at the beginning, we let that lazy river just kind of let us drift. We drift toward every lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity. But this is what it looks like to go against the grain. Verse 20, but that isn't what you learned about Christ. Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God, truly righteous and holy, and stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors the truth, for we are all part of the same body. And don't sin by letting anger control you. Don't let the sun go down while you're still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil. If you are a thief, quit stealing. Stop it. Instead, use your hands for doing good hard work, and then give generously to others in need. Don't use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them. Pause one more time. One of the things I hear people, you know, will ask me as a pastor all the time, is Pastor, is it a sin to cuss? I said, Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it? Because in some cultures, one word is considered inappropriate, where in another culture a word is fine, right? So here's the question Is if Jesus were walking on the earth, would he use that language? If not, then you shouldn't. Because when we become a Christ follower, we're no longer following or representing ourselves. We're representing Christ. And so should you cuss? Should you not cuss? Is it a sin to cuss? I don't know that it's a sin, but I don't know that it's helpful. Because if we're representing Christ, then we should only use language and words that represent Christ well, right? Okay, let's finish this up, verse 30. And do not bring sorrow to God's Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, slander, as well as all these types of evil behaviors. Instead, keep or excuse me, instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. Wow. Quite a mouthful, a lot to ingest, as Paul is telling us. This is not easy. It is not easy. It is it is not easy to be part of a church where you have someone who is trying to teach you and they don't always get it right themselves. It's not easy to not let anger control you. It is so easy to do the first part. You know, that when it said, you know, just letting darkness control you and having lustful desire, all that, all that is just gonna happen by itself. That's the current constantly causing us to slowly drift toward division, discord, disunity, all of that. It takes constant effort to not bring sorrow to God's Holy Spirit by the way we live. It takes effort to fight for unity, to fight to forgive one another, to fight to not give up on each other. But the reason why we do it is because God is worth it. What God has done in our life, we forgive others because he's forgiven us. We give someone another chance because God gave us another chance, within healthy boundaries, of course, but we fight for unity because unity is worth it. There's a lot here to dissect, a lot here to mess with. I want to hear from you in the comments below on YouTube and our Bible breakdown Facebook groups. A lot here to break, break up into and to really talk about. But I want to ask you this question Are you fighting for unity or are you drifting toward disunity? What next step do you need to take in your family, in your relationship with God, in your small group or life group, and in the local church? Are you actively fighting for unity? If not, you might be drifting toward disunity. Let's pray together. Father, thank you so much for your goodness, your mercy, your kindness. Thank you that you're with us more than we can imagine. I pray, Holy Spirit, that you only reveal what you intend to heal. So whatever you revealed in our hearts, we trust God that you're also working right now. We thank you for all things. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. But don't forget God's word says in Ephesians 2, verse 10, for we are God's masterpiece. And he's created us anew in Christ Jesus so that we can do the things he planned for us long ago. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for Ephesians chapter 5.