“I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you therefore to walk worthy of the calling wherewith (or, according to which) ye have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love; using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace.” (Chapter 4, verses 1, 2, 3, JND)
Again, the dear apostle, writing from his Roman cell, refers to himself as Christ’s prisoner; in the third chapter it was as “prisoner of the Christ Jesus for you nations,” and here he writes as “the prisoner in the Lord.” He was in bonds because of the testimony which he had borne to the truth of what God had done for both the Gentiles and the Jews, and in particular His forming by faith, out of both, one body united to Christ. And in what connection does Paul now make mention of his imprisonment? First of all, to express the wish that what should characterize their lives was lowliness; forbearance with one another in love; walking worthy of the heavenly calling; while using diligence to keep the unity which the Holy Spirit has made in the uniting bond of peace. Now this unity of the Spirit is exactly that; it is not one of persons who are naturally of the same mind, but a oneness of the members of the body of Christ established by the Holy Ghost, maintained in a practical way by a walk according to His directing, or as we may say, according to the Word of God.
“There is one body and one Spirit, as ye have been also called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in us all. But to each one of us has been given grace according to the measure of the gift of the Christ” (verses 4 to 7, JND).
“There is one body”; how important, yet how little understood by the children of God! As has been said by one often drawn from in these pages (W. Kelly):
“When they hear of the body of Christ, the idea is scarcely more than that they are forgiven, are children of God, and are going to heaven. How very little all this is a measure of what is implied in the body of Christ! Many true believers suppose it to mean the aggregate of those who are reconciled to God—the objects of His favor who are not left to die in their sins. But one might have all these privileges without any of the characteristic features of Christ’s body, or God’s habitation through the Spirit. It would have been quite possible, if God had been so pleased to order it, that Christians should have been children of God, conscious of their redemption, knowing their sonship, fully expecting to be glorified with Christ in heaven, and yet never have been joined together as one body in Christ, with God dwelling among them by a special presence of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. This was a super-added privilege over and above redemption, through the blood of Christ. And this is so true that if you search all the Old Testament through, you will find that never are the saints of God spoken of there as members of Christ’s body, the habitation of God through the Spirit.
“But more than that. The prophets are full of a glorious scene yet to be enacted on this earth, when the Lord will put down Satan’s power. There is a time coming when evil will no longer be permitted to go unpunished, nor good to suffer here below; and when that day comes, Scripture is plain that although God will have a people for Himself upon earth, they will not be joined together as one body, nor will they form His habitation through the Spirit. It is between the two advents of Christ, between the grace which has appeared, and the glory which is going to appear (Titus 2:11-1311For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, 12Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; 13Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; (Titus 2:11‑13)) that we hear of the special vocation wherewith we are called.
“For let us consider what the body of Christ is—His body, of course, I mean, not as predicated of Himself personally, but as composed of and applied to those who believe in Christ now, that spiritual corporation to which belong all true saints of God now found upon the earth and ever since Pentecost. What are the blessings which constitute it? What does the Holy Ghost mean by membership of this body? I answer, the cross, being the witness and expression of the guilt of the Jews more especially (the guilt, doubtless, of all men in general, but preeminently of the Jews), gave occasion for God to dissolve completely, for the time being, the peculiar place of favor which the Jewish people had previously possessed. God Himself blotted out the landmark which separated Israel from the Gentiles, and instead of making Israel to be the one channel of His promise, on the contrary the tide of blessing turns decidedly and conspicuously toward the Gentiles. He gathers out of Jews and Gentiles a people for His name, and joins together this election out of them both, who believe in Christ, in order to the possession of new privileges that never had been tasted in like mode or measure before.
“One most remarkable feature of the blessing is that the distinction between Jew and Gentile is gone. In the cross they united in wickedness before God. But what does God use it for? He says, as it were, I will take that very cross which man has made the scene of his outrageous rebellion against Me—which proved that My ancient people were grown violent in hostility against Me in the person of My Son, and I will make the cross to be the pivot on which I will turn fuller, richer blessing than had even been hoped for by believing men in this world before. Thus, as the cross was the rallying point of Satan to gather men in an unholy union against God and His Son, so God makes it to be the precious center where He forms the Jews and Gentiles that believe in His Son, into a new body, where all such distinction are blotted out forever ...
“God will accomplish all that He has spoken of in the prophets in the days of heaven upon the earth. But meanwhile the Messiah that was promised to bring in the glory, came, and has been rejected. Instead of having a throne, He had the cross; and far from taking the earth for His inheritance, He was cast out of it and went up to heaven. A new state of things consequently was opened, and for this order, altogether different from that contemplated generally in the prophecies; we have the New Testament revelation. ... You might have expected, had God been then acting upon principles of righteousness, that at once, the universe of God would have been convulsed, at least Jerusalem and Rome destroyed in His fiery indignation. Far otherwise. Heaven opens, but it is to receive the crucified Jesus, not to judge His murderers; it is, furthermore to send down the Holy Ghost on earth, to form by grace this new body, the church of God; it is to bring those vile murderers of Jesus, if they only received Him, into a place of blessing whose breadth and length, and depth, and height never had been enjoyed or known before. And this is grace ... ”
“There is one body, and one Spirit, as ye have been also called in one hope of your calling.”
Here is blessing indeed, for the child of God. “One Spirit” is essential, for it is He who makes the “one body” a reality here on earth; and with this gift is the “one hope of our calling” —the Christian hope of the coming of the Lord. Until the close of the church’s history on earth, when all the living believers, together with the dead in Christ, rise to meet Him in the air, the Holy Spirit will continue to make the bright prospect of 1 Thessalonians 4:15-1815For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18Wherefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:15‑18) a living hope in the Christian’s heart; this is the “one hope of our (heavenly) calling” (John 14:2-42In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 4And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. (John 14:2‑4); Titus 2:1313Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; (Titus 2:13), “that blessed hope”; Rev. 22:2020He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. (Revelation 22:20)).