Ephesians 4:1-16

Ephesians 4 Sermon: One Body, Maturing Together

Ephesians 4 gets preached when a congregation is fractured, when a church is training leaders, or when a pastor wants to address spiritual gifts without turning the sermon into a personality inventory. The chapter moves from a plea for unity, through a list of gifts, to a picture of a body growing up into Christ, and it quietly asks the preacher to hold doctrine and behavior together rather than picking one. Preaching Lab exists for texts like this one, where the crowd-pleasing paragraph on gifts can crowd out the harder verses on unity and maturity.

The text at a glance

1. Paul opens by begging the church to walk worthy of its calling, and the first mark of that walk is not zeal but humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another in 4:1-3.
2. Verses 4-6 pile up a sevenfold unity, one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, before the chapter ever mentions a gift, so unity is given, not achieved.
3. Verses 7-13 turn to Christ's gifts to the church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, given not to staff a program but to equip the saints until the body reaches maturity and the unity of the faith.
4. Verse 14 names the alternative to that maturity, being tossed by every wind of teaching and human cunning, which makes doctrine and unity two sides of one concern rather than competing topics.
5. The chapter ends with the body building itself up in love as each part does its work, so the growth in view is corporate and slow, not an individual's private progress.

Three ways a sermon can go

Where sermons on this text commonly slip

Five questions to ask afterwards

1. Did the sermon name a specific unity problem in this congregation, a conflict, a faction, a silence, or did it only speak about unity in general terms?
2. Did the sermon read or reference all seven ones in verses 4-6, or did it move past them quickly on the way to the gifts list?
3. When the sermon discussed the offices in verses 11-12, did it name that traditions differ on whether some of them continue today, or did it assume one view without saying so?
4. Did the sermon give a concrete picture of what every wind of doctrine or human cunning in verse 14 looks like now, or did it stay at the level of an abstract warning?
5. Did the application point to a specific action with a specific person before next Sunday, or did it end at let us love one another or let us walk in unity?

Keeping the application on the ground

A landed application here names a person and an action, not just the value of unity: call the person you have avoided since the last conflict lands, while let us pursue unity floats. Because the text ties unity to gifts, a useful check is whether the application also asks the listener to use whatever gift they have for someone else's benefit, not just admire the metaphor of the body.

• Send one message this week to someone in the church you have avoided, asking to talk before next Sunday.
• Write down one gift you have and one specific way you will use it for another member this week.
• In a small group or at home, name one opinion or teaching currently pulling people apart, and pray for that situation by name.

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Related passages

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• 1 Corinthians 13 Sermon: Love Among a Quarreling Church

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• Philippians 2 Sermon: The Mind of Christ in a Divided Church

  Philippians 2:1-11

• Galatians 5 Sermon: What the Fruit of the Spirit Actually Requires

  Galatians 5:16-26