Already One

The letter to the Ephesians spends three full chapters on what God has done before it asks anything of us. Paul writes of a people whom God chose before the world began, rescued through the blood of Christ, and sealed with the Holy Spirit, and he shows how God brought them near to Himself and to one another. When Paul finally turns to the way we live, at the start of chapter four, his first request comes as a surprise. He asks the believers to preserve a unity that God has already given them.

Paul calls this gift “the unity of the Spirit,” and the name tells us where the unity comes from. Each of us was joined to the Lord by the Holy Spirit, and Scripture says that the one who unites himself with the Lord “is one with Him in spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17). Since the same Spirit lives in a husband and in his wife, the two of them share one source of life long before they agree about money, chores, or how to spend a Saturday. For a married couple this is very good news. Our unity began when the Spirit came to live in each of us, and He has never withdrawn it.

Although this truth comforts us, it also corrects a habit of ours. During hard seasons we easily measure our unity by our latest conversation. When we argue less, we feel close, and when we argue more, we decide that something between us has broken. Paul’s wording points us to a firmer foundation, namely, God’s own work in us. The gift itself stays steady, while our living in that gift can grow strong or weak.

For this reason Paul attaches a word of effort to the gift, asking us to preserve the unity “with diligence.” Diligence implies that a gift this precious can be neglected. In a marriage we usually neglect it in small, ordinary ways, such as guarding our own rights in a disagreement and answering with an edge in our voice. None of these feels like a large sin at the time, yet each one draws us away from the Lord who joins us, and therefore away from each other. Preserving our unity begins with noticing those moments and turning to the Lord in the middle of them, asking Him to direct the next thing we say.

Verse 2 shows what this preserving looks like at home through four qualities: humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another in love. In daily married life, humility treats our spouse’s view as more important than our own, which Paul elsewhere describes as considering “others more important than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3); gentleness gives a soft reply at the very moment we feel accused, because, as Proverbs 15:1 says, “A gentle answer turns away wrath”; patience gives each of us years, not days, to change; and bearing with one another keeps us close when the other person is difficult to live with. Most of us find that we cannot keep up these qualities for long by our own effort, especially when both of us are worn out.

These four qualities come from Jesus Christ. When Jesus invited the weary to come to Him, He described Himself by saying, “I am gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29). The same character appears in Paul’s description of “the fruit of the Spirit,” which includes “patience” and “gentleness” (Galatians 5:22-23). Paul calls patience and gentleness fruit, which means that they grow out of a life, that is, the life of Christ, which the Spirit is forming in each of us over time. Thus, the way to preserve our unity is to let Christ grow in us until His patience toward us becomes our patience toward each other.

Verse 3 names the setting for this growth, “through the bond of peace,” and earlier in the letter Paul explains where that peace came from. He writes of Christ, “For He Himself is our peace,” and says that Christ reconciled both Jew and Gentile to God “through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility” (Ephesians 2:14, 16). In Paul’s day, Jews and Gentiles were divided by the law and by centuries of suspicion, which are far deeper differences than most husbands and wives bring into a home. If the cross could make peace between those two peoples, it can certainly make peace between the two of us. The cross also reaches our demanding self, which keeps our differences alive. Paul confesses, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Our families, personalities, and habits will remain different. However, when we agree with God that our demanding self was put to death with Christ, and when we choose to live by Christ instead, those differences lose their power to divide us.

The peace Christ made at the cross holds a marriage together in a way that Ecclesiastes pictures with an ordinary rope. The writer observes that two are better than one, because one can lift the other up, and then he speaks of “a cord of three strands,” which “is not quickly broken.” Two strands twisted together are already stronger than one, yet a third strand woven through them keeps the rope from unraveling. Many believers have seen in that third strand a picture of the Lord Himself, woven through a husband and a wife.

When we apply this picture to our own marriage, we may find areas where we feel more like two loose strands than one cord, such as our conversations and our money. Those areas are real, and they deserve honest attention. Still, the Spirit of Christ, who lives in both of us, joins us underneath them. Our first responsibility is to stay near Him and to bear with one another in love while He does His work in us.

Staying near the Lord can begin with one conversation today. Start by naming what already joins you and thanking the Lord for it before you look at anything that divides you.