The letter to the Ephesians devotes much of its content to establishing the unity of both Jew and Greek in the body of Christ (the dividing wall has been torn down between us), familial identity ( we are all children of God, adopted through Christ into this one family) and the new heavenly citizenship this entails. A soaring crescendo of all of these themes is found in Ephesians 4:1-6. Having established our common heritage, Paul calls on the members of this family to “live in a manner worthy” of God’s call (4:1).

What are the attributes of such a manner of living? “Humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace” (4:2-3). These, intended to be the attributes of our common life in Christ, have always been a challenge to me, not that I do not think that humility, gentleness, patience, love and peace are a worthy call. It is just that I am not certain what it means practically in the context of Paul’s letters. Humility and gentleness certainly do not mean Paul will accept a challenge to the integrity of the Gospel, as a quick reading of Galatians makes clear. Patience does not mean that Paul will put up with anything, as his letters to Corinth demonstrate. Bearing with each other in love does not mean you approve of sinful behavior. Preserving unity in peace in no way indicates compromise for Paul either in the Christian way of life or the content of the Gospel message. (And to those who would argue that Ephesians is not an authentic letter of Paul, all of these admonitions can be found in those letters accepted by all as genuine Epistles of Paul.) So, these calls do not indicate that one should abrogate the truth to keep the peace or that disagreements be swept aside in misplaced attempts at unity.

I think Paul does suggest, however, that even when disagreements do arise that we always maintain humility and gentleness in teaching the truth, that we be patient with those whose opinions we do not share, and that we seek to understand the positions of our Christian brothers and sisters. It is not a call to subvert the truth for a false peace; this is a call to avoid malice, spitefulness, mean spiritedness, and a sense of superiority and arrogance when confronted with views we do not share and even behavior we think wrong. If this attitude were brought by Christians to all of our dealings, we would constantly be reminding ourselves that we are a part of “one body, one spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (4:5-6). We would ask ourselves, “Could I be wrong? What must I change?,” not to avoid the hard choices that must be made or to relativize the truth, but to be certain that in our speech, in our attitudes and in our behavior we see the common bond that ties us to those with whom we are at odds and that we do not avoid the log that may be in our own eye in order to concentrate on the speck in our neighbor’s eye. I prefer to be right (how come everyone can’t see that I am? I often ask myself), while God prefers that we be righteous.

 

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.