Summary

Good morning, everyone! It was great to worship with you all this morning. Before we dive into the Word, I want to share a couple of important things.

First, a quick reminder about next Sunday: we'll be voting on a new church budget. A video and letter went out this past week explaining the changes. If you have any questions about the budget, please ask them this week. Next Sunday, the vote will be a simple "yes" or "no" approval. You can find all the information on our website if you haven't seen it yet.

Speaking of our budget, a significant portion of your giving goes towards global outreach and missions. I'm incredibly excited to introduce Kelly, Thomas, and Logan, who are about to embark on a mission trip next week. Kelly shared a powerful update about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, where an estimated 400,000 people have been killed and over 13 million displaced. It's a brutal situation, largely ignored by mainstream media, but God sees them.

Our team will be going to an undisclosed location to meet with a remnant of believers who have come out of Islam. They'll be teaching them how to story the Bible from creation to the cross, providing trauma counseling, and distributing gospel resources to take back to their homeland. Your generous giving has made this trip possible, and we are so grateful.

Now, we need your prayers. Please pray for our team's health, safety, protection, and success in their mission, as well as for their families back home. Most importantly, pray for our Darphorian brothers and sisters—for their physical protection, spiritual and emotional healing, encouragement through the teaching, and strength to share the hope of the Gospel in what is literally "hell on earth" for them right now. If you'd like daily prayer updates, you can email missions@daretoadventure.org to join the Calvary Road Ministries prayer email list. We sent them off with a special prayer, extending our hands to cover them as they go.

Today, we're continuing our journey through Ephesians, specifically looking at chapters 4:1-10. Paul spent the first three chapters teaching us our identity in Christ—who we are. Now, for the next two-thirds of the letter, he's showing us how to live out that identity.

I've been learning a lot lately about the "true kingdom" versus the "counterfeit kingdom," and that's the lens we'll use today. The counterfeit Kingdom, like the "donkey meat" I unknowingly ate in Turkey, often promises something good but delivers a cheap imitation, always centered on self-worship, profit, and control.

Paul urges us to "walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called." When he says "worthy," he means our walk should weigh the same as the call. Our lives should testify to the value we place on God's calling. The call is God's divine summons to salvation and participation in the body of Christ—that's passive, God does it. Our walk is our active participation.

In the true Kingdom, our conduct aligns with God's Kingdom, reflecting holiness and pushing us towards growth in Christ. The counterfeit Kingdom, however, entices us with self-fulfillment, basing our worth on worldly success, leading to bondage and a constant desire for "just one more."

Paul then gives us four virtues for this walk: humility, gentleness, patience (or long-suffering), and love.

• Humility isn't making yourself small; it's understanding your smallness in light of God's greatness.
• Gentleness is controlled strength, like the older kids in Turkey yelling "pomuk" (cotton) to remind each other to play carefully with the younger ones, helping them grow.
• Patience means not responding out of anger when provoked, just as I learned to withstand a doorbell prank after teaching thousands of Turkish kids!
• Love is selfless, always seeking the good of others, overlooking harsh words and actions because Christ overlooked ours.

These virtues build relational harmony in God's Kingdom. The counterfeit Kingdom inverts them into vices: false pride, harshness, impatience, and exploitative love, building alliances based on fear and control.

Next, Paul tells us to "endeavor to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." "Endeavor" means work with a purpose. We don't create unity; Christ has already given it to us by breaking down all dividing walls. Our job is to guard and maintain it, like tending a garden. This unity is built on seven "ones": one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father. This foundation signifies completeness and wholeness. The counterfeit Kingdom, conversely, promotes multiplicity, division, and chaos.

Finally, Paul explains that grace is given to each of us, not just the "all." This means we can have unity without uniformity—we don't all have to be the same. This grace is the ability to use the spiritual gifts (which we'll explore next week) to build up the body of Christ and glorify God. It doesn't matter if someone seems to have "more" grace or a "bigger" gift; it all comes from the same conquering King.

Paul reminds us that Jesus, the one who descended to earth, died, and then ascended back to heaven, was not just a crucified man but a coronated King. He returned victorious, having freed the righteous dead, and He gave us gifts. The victory is already won! We get to live out of that victory.

So, here's the challenge for you today: Which Kingdom are you going to live for? Are you going to live for the true Kingdom, walking in humility, gentleness, patience, and love, serving the true King and your neighbors? Or will you serve the counterfeit Kingdom, creating division, seeking self, and operating out of false pride and manipulation? Your life will testify to the Kingdom you live for.

I urge you to serve the true King in the true Kingdom, starting today.

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This morning, we have an amazing task in front of us. We are going to start looking at and learning what it means to walk in a manner worthy of the calling we have been called to.

To begin, I want to read the text that we will be looking at today. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4, beginning with verse 1. We are going to read through 10 today. If you don’t have your Bibles, the text will be on the screens.

If you have been with us during our study on Ephesians, you might remember that for the first 3 chapters, Paul has been helping the Ephesians understand who they are in Christ; their identity. The letter to the Ephesians has roughly 2,422 words in the Greek, which is the original language of the letter. It also has 6 chapters. When Paul wrote this, as well as his other letters, he didn’t include chapters or verses. Why not? Because he was writing letters, and when we write letters, we don’t have chapters and verse numbers.

Fun Fact: The modern system of dividing the Bible into chapters is credited to Stephen Langton (c. 1150–1228), an English scholar, professor at the University of Paris, and later Archbishop of Canterbury (and a key figure in the events leading to the Magna Carta). Around 1205–1227, he developed these chapter divisions while working in Paris, where the need for a standardized system arose from the diverse chapter schemes in Latin Vulgate manuscripts and the international student body's need for uniformity for study and preaching.

If were to look at the letter we would see that chapters 1-3, which concerns who we are in Christ, has roughly 720-730 Greek words. If my math is correct, an often it isn’t, that means Paul devoted about 1/3 of his letter to the Ephesians on their identity in Christ.

Chapters 4-6, which are devoted to exhorting the Ephesians, or telling them how to live out that identity, contains about 1,020 Greek words, which is about 2/3 of the letter. Now I know you are thinking that 730 plus 1020 doesn’t equal 2,422. The missing numbers include articles, participles, inflections, etc. The point is that Paul didn’t just tell us who we are in Christ, he also told us how to live out who we are and why we are to do it. He devoted a chunk of this letter to that end.

Which brings us to this section. You’ll notice that verse 10 isn’t the end of a section in your Bibles. It’s right in the middle of a paragraph. The reason we stopped at 10 is that verse 11 is going to get very specific about the gifts we are laying the foundation for today.

Here’s how we are going to lay the foundation. We are going to look at this text through the lens of what the Lord has been teaching me lately. Namely, True and Counterfeit. One of the beautiful things about the body of Christ is that though we are united, or at least, supposed to be, we are also diverse. That means I teach differently than Austin, than Rhody, than Dan, and so on and so forth. So, when Austin is teaching, he is teaching you, in theory, through the lens of what he himself is learning.

What have I been learning? We live in the midst of two kingdoms: the TRUE Kingdom and the Counterfeit Kingdom. One Kingdom is the true, original Kingdom, and with it, its true King. The other Kingdom and its king(s) look eerily similar and try to pass themselves off as the original, maybe even better than it, but they are, in fact, counterfeit.

Living in Turkey for many years, we would often enjoy hamburgers as a family. It was like our comfort food. We had the restaurants that we liked, and we would frequent them. We would often talk of how good the meat was. The restaurants would even have marketing materials out there touting how the meat comes from grass-fed cows living their best lives. It made you feel good eating it. But without fail, about once every year or two, there would be a scandal about a restaurant that got caught selling horse or donkey meat as beef. The same ones that we tasted and loved, who had the great materials to make you feel better about eating it, were the ones who would get caught using counterfeit meat in place of real beef. And the reason was ALWAYS the same. The owner of the restaurant wanted “more.” More profit, more money to buy more things to pursue the Gospel of the counterfeit Kingdom, self, or you. The Gospel of the Counterfeit Kingdom is the worship of self.

V1. Paul begins with this call to action. He says I urge you, or beseech you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. But notice he doesn’t just say I, Paul. Instead, he says, “I, Paul, a prisoner for the Lord.” Now this should give us pause because last I checked, he wasn’t in God’s jail; he was in Rome’s jail. And I am pretty confident that Paul would not call Rome God. So, what is he saying? He is saying I am here, not because I did something wrong in the eyes of the law. I’m here because I serve the living God, and He is counter to the world. Paul could have used his apostleship to make the plea to live like the saints he just spent the previous 3 chapters telling them they were. Instead, he appeals to them based on his connection to and love for Christ, and nothing else.

Paul uses the word “worthy” in verse one to qualify how we are to walk. We are to walk “worthy of the calling to which we have been called.” The word “worthy” is the Greek word axiōs. Now that form of the word is an adverb, but if you look at the adjective form of that word, it carries the meaning “having the weight of (weighing as much as) another thing.” Essentially, Paul is saying to the believers that the total of their experience and the life they live, aka their testimony, should weigh as much as their profession of Jesus being Lord. In today’s language, we would say, “Practice what you preach.”

To further instill in us what we have been learning as we have walked through Ephesians, notice the active and passive actions in this sentence. Our walk is active, meaning we do it. Our calling, though, is passive. Meaning we didn’t do it. It was done to us. Therefore, because of the calling to which we have been called, we now must walk in a manner worthy of it, or carrying the same weight as the calling. So, if we consider the calling worthless, then our walk will show that. If we consider the calling worthy, then our walk will also show that.

In Turkey, there are some really interesting last names. In the past, they didn’t have last names. Still, in the 1920s, a man named Mustafa Kemal Atatürk came along. He reformed Ottoman Turkey from an Islamic Caliphate into a secular republic, and part of those reforms mandated that everyone have a last name. The cool part was that you got to pick your last name. The not-as-cool part was that if you didn’t show up to pick your last name, it was picked for you. For example, there are many people with the last name “Slept In” because they literally were sleeping when they needed to be at the Ministry of Population Management picking their last name. Now you also have last names that are essentially the person's profession or calling. Last names such as “Rice Farmer”, “Sword-maker”, “Shoemaker”, “Bread Maker”. You might also have last names like “Son of Rice Farmer” Son of Wide Sword,” or “Son of Lion.”

Back then, your profession was your calling. The calling that Paul talks about here isn’t your job, per se. It’s who you are. The calling is a divine summons in which God offers us salvation and enables us to accept it. That’s the first 3 chapters of Ephesians; You are a saint because of God. The next three chapters are “Now live saintly or live as a saint; as one who has been remade. Not in the image of the world and its counterfeit king, but in the image of the True King.

Let’s talk about this call to worthy living in Verse 1, looking through the lens of the True Kingdom and the Counterfeit Kingdom.

• True Kingdom Perspective: Paul urges believers to align their conduct with their high calling as members of God's Kingdom. This "calling" refers to the divine invitation into salvation and participation in Christ's body (Ephesians 1:18; 4:4). The true Kingdom is not just a future hope but a present reality where believers walk in holiness, reflecting God's character (1 Peter 1:15-16). It's a realm of purpose, where one's life testifies to the transformative power of the Gospel, fostering growth toward maturity in Christ (Ephesians 4:13-15).
• Counterfeit Contrast: Satan's Kingdom entices with a false calling rooted in self-fulfillment and worldly pursuits, leading to bondage rather than freedom (Romans 6:16). It promotes a "worthy" life based on personal ambition, power, or pleasure, but this is deceptive—Satan disguises himself as an "angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14) to lure people into lives of futility and spiritual death (Ephesians 4:17-19)

In Verse 2, we begin to see the virtues that should accompany our walk and their purpose. He lists four virtues: Humility, Gentleness, Patience, and Love or in Love.

Let’s start with Humility. The actual Greek word used here does not carry great meaning. It means something like “groveling, abject servility, or mean-spirited disposition.” It’s not a good word. BUT true humility isn’t about making ourselves small; it’s about understanding the smallness of ourselves in light of the Greatness of God, as revealed in Christ Jesus. This same word is used in a secular document from around the same time to describe the Nile River at its low stage. It’s still the Nile River, but there’s less of it. And the Nile isn’t making itself smaller; it’s being made smaller by less of what makes it the Nile, namely, water, being poured into it.

Then we get Gentleness. Gentleness is not weakness. Gentleness is controlled strength. You have the strength to do something, hurt someone, etc., but instead, you control it. In Turkey, they have a great way of showing this. Older kids are really good about letting younger kids play with them when they do things. And the older kids will tell one another “Pamuk” or “Cotton.” That means that instead of going full force in this soccer or basketball game, restrain your strength and talent to include the younger kids and let them enjoy the game as well. That means that the older kids are enjoying the game less for the betterment and enjoyment of the younger kids. They were exercising gentleness.

Next, we have Patience or Long-suffering. Patience is that thing we all want but don’t actually want to walk the road to get it. We want to fall asleep, wake up, and have our patience magically increased. Patience comes from the Greek word “long + temper/fury.” Essentially, you endure being provoked without losing composure. Let me give you an example. I had a coworker who, upon my first day at the office, hid a doorbell in my ceiling and kept the remote. He would consistently push the remote from his office, causing the doorbell to chime in my office. I quickly realized what was happening and remained unfazed. Why? Because I have four kids and because I taught English as a Second Language to 1000’s of children who had been Gentle-Parented and had no problem having fits at every possible moment. I had learned, through fires of life, to hold my composure in the face of provocation. After a while, my coworker gave up trying to provoke me because his attempts fell far short of what was needed.

Does not God show us patience in that He has every right to annihilate us and reduce us to ash because of our rebellion against Him, and yet He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and patience? Yet how quickly are we to lose our patience with our brothers and sisters in Christ?

The last of the four virtues that Paul lists here is Love or In-love. He says, “bearing with one another in love…” Love cannot be self-seeking. If it is, it isn’t love. To bear with someone in love means to overlook harsh words that may have been spoken or actions that have hurt us. Not to minimize them, but to remember that Christ overlooks our offenses and He loves us, despite the things that we do wrong. His love is forgiving, and ours should be the same.

So, let’s look at it through the lens of True Kingdom and Counterfeit Kingdom.

• True Kingdom Perspective: These qualities embody the Spirit of God's Kingdom, modeled by Christ Himself (Matthew 11:29; Philippians 2:5-8). Humility involves submitting to God and others; gentleness reflects controlled strength; patience and forbearance stem from love that overlooks offenses (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). In the true Kingdom, these virtues build relational harmony, echoing the Sermon on the Mount where the meek inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5). They flow from the indwelling Holy Spirit, enabling believers to live as "children of light" (Ephesians 5:8).
• Counterfeit Contrast: The Kingdom of darkness inverts these virtues into vices: pride instead of humility (Proverbs 16:18; Isaiah 14:12-15, where Satan's fall began with arrogance); harshness or manipulation over gentleness where we restraining strength for selfish reasons instead of controlling it for selfless reasons; impatience and grudge-holding in place of patience; and selfish "love" that exploits (2 Timothy 3:2-4). Satan fosters division through envy and strife (James 3:14-16), counterfeiting unity with superficial alliances built on fear or control, as in false religions or cults that demand submission to human authorities rather than God (Colossians 2:8).

Verse 3, in the ESV which we are using, begins with “eager” and continues with “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Some translations have verse three beginning with “endeavor”, and I must admit that I like that word better here.

Let’s say you are in the bustling metropolis of downtown Dallas, NC, just taking a stroll. The mayor walks up to you and says, “Hey! What are you doing on this beautiful day?” You would not respond with, “Oh, I’m just endeavoring.” Why? Because endeavoring implies purpose towards a goal. It’s a purposeful effort. And if we are to endeavor, we must know that it will take effort. D-Day was a huge endeavor. Building skyscrapers is a huge endeavor.

Paul urges us to endeavor to maintain or keep the unity of the Spirit. This idea of “keep” carries an understanding of “guarding or keeping a watchful eye over” as we exert effort in our endeavor. This means we must work at it. We cannot be apathetic or complacent. Maintaining the unity of the Spirit takes work, hard work. Now I don’t have all the life experience as many of you do out there, but I can tell you that I have learned that if something is good, it’s probably hard. A good lawn takes effort to create and maintain. Ask Austin! A car with 300,000 miles requires effort and work to maintain. And the unity that we have in the Spirit is no different.

We must also note that if we are to maintain this unity, it implies that the unity has already been given. We don’t strive to attain unity; we are given it in the Spirit and are given the endeavor, or work, to maintain it.

The bond that we have, the thing that binds us all together in this great endeavor, is peace. It’s the peace that Christ has made available to us through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. Think about it like this: Christ broke down the literal and spiritual walls that kept us from being in the family of God, or in communion with God. If He broke down the largest barriers for us to be in communion with God, then we should walk with one another in the freedom of unity instead of division. But we must make that choice.

Let’s put on our True Kingdom and Counterfeit Kingdom lenses.

• True Kingdom Perspective: Unity is a mark of God's Kingdom, preserved diligently because it's already given by the Spirit (John 17:21-23). The "bond of peace" refers to the reconciliation achieved through Christ's cross (Ephesians 2:14-16), binding diverse believers into one family. This reflects the Kingdom's inclusive nature—Jews and Gentiles united under one King—promoting shalom (wholeness) that transcends human divisions (Galatians 3:28).
• Counterfeit Contrast: Satan's realm thrives on discord and fragmentation, sowing "tares" among the wheat (Matthew 13:24-30) and inciting conflicts (Genesis 3:1-5, where division entered through deception). He counterfeits peace with temporary truces or false harmonies, like worldly ideologies that unite against God (Psalm 2:1-3) or demonic influences that create deceptive bonds through shared rebellion (Revelation 17:13). The result is chaos, not true peace, as the "god of this age" blinds minds to divide and conquer (2 Corinthians 4:4).

Now we get to the foundation of our Oneness, or unity. Now I like numbers, and one of the really interesting things about the Bible is that numbers carry meaning. The foundation to our Unity or Oneness is described in this sevenfold “one” declaration. In Hebrew, the number seven is a number of completeness. So, I don’t think that Paul, in laying out the foundation to our walking in a worthy manner of our calling, by using seven ‘ones’ is coincidence.

Now, how verses 4-6 directly connect to the previous verses is stated really well by K.S. Wuest. Wuest, quoting Vincent, says, “The connection with the preceding verses is as follows; “I exhort you to unity, for you stand related to the Church, which is one body in Christ; to the one Spirit who informs it; to the one hope which your calling inspires; to the one Lord, Christ, in whom you believe with one common faith, and receive one common sign of that faith, baptism. Above all, to the one God, and Father.”¹ Wuest, K. S. (1997). Wuest’s word studies from the Greek New Testament: for the English reader (Vol. 4, p. 96). Eerdmans.

That is the foundation upon which we walk with humility, gentleness, patience, and love. The One foundation. Any other foundation will crumble.

Now listen to the Counterfeit Kingdom. The counterfeit Kingdom promotes multiplicity and relativism to undermine God's Oneness with its own false oneness. Satan, as the "father of lies" (John 8:44), offers many "bodies" (divided factions), spirits (demonic entities, 1 Timothy 4:1), hopes (false promises of utopia or afterlife), lords (idols or self, Romans 1:25), faiths (pluralistic religions), and baptisms (rituals without power). He mimics God's fatherhood with false paternity, leading to polytheism or atheism where "gods" are man-made (Isaiah 44:9-20). This creates a fragmented domain where division reigns, as seen in Babel's confusion (Genesis 11:1-9), in contrast to God's unifying work at Pentecost (Acts 2).

Where God is one, and His Church is one, the counterfeit Kingdom offers many that each claim to be the one. Many false religions. Many false ways to God. Many forms of the afterlife. And the list goes on and on. We are called to one God and Father, and in Him we are united.

Paul has told the Ephesians who they are in Christ, Saints. Paul has now laid the foundation by which we live as saints, or “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called.” But to build upon the foundation, we need tools. We know the manner in which we are called to work, namely humility, gentleness, patience, and love, but we can’t build without tools. Verse 7 is the opening of the doors of the greatest hardware store in the universe.

Paul has just gone from the Church as a whole in verses 1-6 to the individual members of the Church in verse 7. Now, what he does in the Greek here is really interesting. He uses words that pit each against the all, or the individual members against the Church as a whole. And what he is doing there is saying that while we are unified, that doesn’t mean we are uniform. I know this because in verse 11, which we will look at next week, we will see that some people get certain gifts and others do not. If we all got the same gift to do the same thing in the same way, then we would be unified and uniform. But we aren’t given the same gift, but we don’t use them to the same end for the same purpose, which means we are unified, but not uniform.

When he talks about grace being given according the measure of Christ’s gift, he is saying this: “Each gets the grace which Christ has to give, and each gets it in the proportion in which the Giver is pleased to bestow it; one having it in larger measure and another in smaller, but each getting it from the same Hand and with the same purpose.”² Wuest, K. S. (1997). Wuest’s word studies from the Greek New Testament: for the English reader (Vol. 4, pp. 97–98). Eerdmans.

Some people get more; some get less. I don’t know why. All I know is the same God gives it, and it’s for the same purpose. And in this particular purpose, the grace is for the gifts that Paul is going to mention in verse 11. Meaning the grace mentioned in verse 7 isn’t for general Christian living. It is to serve the church and build it up. Think of it like the skill with which the tools are used.

Now we get to verses 8, 9, and 10. Now, a lot of people will skip over these verses because, frankly, they can be confusing, and explaining them isn’t always easy. And I went back and forth about how much I explain these verses because what I don’t want to do is create confusion. However, I would like to create a little curiosity.

This is a quote of Psalm 68:18, BUT it’s a changed quote. Psalm 68:18 says, “You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men…” But Paul, who knew the Psalms, writes it as “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. “ In some translations it says, “When he ascended on high, he took the captives captive; he gave gifts to people.”

In the Psalm, you have gifts being given to the one who ascended, but here you have the ascending one giving gifts.

Now Paul gives some commentary on the Psalm he just quoted. We see it in verses 9 and 10.

There are, traditionally, two ways to look at this. The first is that the descension is Christ coming to earth at his birth, then he ascended 40 days after his resurrection from the grave, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. The second way to view this is, and how I personally view it based on my reading of scripture, is different. I know others who don’t view it the same way I do, and I still love them and am united with them in the bond of peace.

The second way to understand it is this: There is a word in the Hebrew called “Sheol,” and it means underworld. And the Jews understood the underworld, the “lower regions of the earth,” to have two parts. The first part is for the Righteous Dead. In Luke’s Gospel, it’s called “Paradise” (Luke 23:43) as well as “Abraham’s Bosom” (Luke 16:22). This place is where people like Abraham, David, Isaiah, and all those people who were waiting for Christ to come were waiting. The place beneath that, or the second part, is the place of the Unrighteous Dead. This is the prison house for fallen angels (2 Peter 2:4) and for people who don’t submit to Christ.

Now, there are some incredibly interesting things I could expound on regarding that second way of understanding verses 8-10, but I don’t have time today. Here is what, I think, the important thing to take from those verses is.

Christ descended, defeated sin and death, fulfilled the promises of God and all the prophecies, and ascended not the crucified man, but the coronated King of Kings and Lord of Lords who is seated at the right hand of God. He has the position of Power and Authority because He earned it. You better believe that Satan and all the powers and principalities tried their hardest to stop that from happening, but they failed! And when he does come back, he’s coming back wearing white, not as a meek lamb but as the Lion of Judah, and he has no intention of losing.

Just because the True King and His Kingdom have come and are coming, doesn’t mean that the Counterfeit king and counterfeit Kingdom aren’t battling, aren’t endeavoring. The war is won, but the battles continue. Upon the foundation that Paul helped us understand here, we walk in unity in the victory that Christ has won, remembering that his death removed the things that divided us from God and from each other. Now, through His peace, we are bonded together and charged to live out this calling victoriously.

Challenge: There are two kingdoms. One is True and Original, and its citizens endeavor with love to unity, and they love and serve the True King and their neighbors. The other is counterfeit, and its citizens serve themselves. They make gods in their image and demand that others bow down to worship. They bring chaos and disorder. Which Kingdom are you living for? 

Discussion Guide