One Body, One Spirit, One Lord
1 I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called, 2 with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, even as you also were called in one hope of your calling, 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in us all.
The letter's hinge is a single word, and the first thing asked of the readers is the hardest to legislate.
I therefore is the seam of the letter. Three chapters of statement end, three of instruction begin, and everything in the second half rests on the first — the letter asks nothing until it has announced everything.
The self-description is repeated and unchanged: the prisoner in the Lord Ephesians 3:1. A man in chains begs rather than commands, and the verb is a request.
What he asks is to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called. Worth is measured against something already given, not against a standard to be reached — and the four qualities that follow in verse 2 are all about enduring other people: lowliness, humility, patience, bearing with one another in love.
That is the substance of the instruction, and verse 3 states it as work: being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit. Keep, not create. The unity exists; the effort goes to maintaining it, and the letter locates that effort in a bond of peace.
Then verses 4 to 6, and the sentence has no verbs at all — seven nouns, each preceded by one. One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father.
The list is the theological ground of the instruction, and its shape is the argument: nothing is asserted, only counted. And it closes by widening from the congregation to everything — over all and through all and in us all — so that unity is not a policy for a congregation but a property of the God being worshipped in it.
settled What this mark means