Shownotes
Ephesians chapter 4 moves faith out of theory and straight into real life—how we speak, how we treat one another, and how we grow up spiritually.
It challenges believers to stop living on spiritual autopilot and start reflecting a transformed mind, a transformed heart, and a transformed community.
This chapter asks a bold question: If Christ truly changed us, what should actually look different today?
This episode walks through Ephesians chapter 4, shifting from theological foundations to the everyday, practical reality of living out the Christian faith. The focus is on what spiritual maturity looks like, how unity in the church is meant to function, and why believers are called to grow up rather than remain spiritually unstable. The chapter is explored as both a challenge and an encouragement—calling believers to humility, truth, love, and transformation in a culture that constantly pulls in the opposite direction.
Top Topics Covered
From Theology to Daily Living
Ephesians moves from rich theology into practical instruction. The episode highlights how belief and behavior are inseparable, emphasizing that calling and conduct must align.
Unity in the Body of Christ
Unity is not presented as an abstract idea but as a lived reality. One body, one Spirit, one hope, one faith, and one baptism describe a unity that requires effort, humility, and patience.
Spiritual Gifts and Shared Responsibility
Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are given not for power, but to equip the entire body for ministry. Growth happens when every part does its job.
Maturity Versus Spiritual Instability
Spiritual immaturity is compared to being tossed around by trends and false teaching. True maturity is grounded in truth, love, and a growing likeness to Christ.
Putting Off the Old Self
The call to transformation is not about surface-level behavior modification but about becoming a new person in Christ—reflecting God’s righteousness and holiness.
Practical Christian Living
Paul’s instructions address anger, speech, work, forgiveness, and kindness. Everyday actions become evidence of spiritual maturity.
Key Takeaways
Spiritual maturity is not optional; it is the goal of the Christian life. Growth happens through truth spoken in love, unity lived out intentionally, and every believer contributing to the health of the body.
Transformation is deeper than rule-keeping. Putting on the new self means allowing God to reshape desires, attitudes, and responses, especially in a culture driven by outrage and division.
Unity is built one step at a time. It is fragile, requires effort, and reflects Christ when believers choose kindness, forgiveness, and compassion over bitterness and anger.
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Transcripts
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What does maturity in Christ look like, and how do we know if we’re growing? That’s what we’re going to talk about today in Ephesians 4.
Hi everyone, Jill from the Northwoods. How are you? Hope you’re staying warm out there. Here in the Northwoods, it’s chilly.
So we’re talking about the Bible one small chapter at a time. And when we look at Ephesians 4—well, when we look at Ephesians in general—it’s a very interesting book. We get three chapters of Ephesians of theology: blessings in Christ, unity between Jews and Gentiles, and the unsearchable richness of Christ.
But now in four, we’re going very practical. How do we live it out? How do we walk in this manner that we’re supposed to, that’s worthy of what God called us to be?
Paul calls out at the beginning, saying that he’s a prisoner of the Lord. He’s technically a prisoner of Rome. He’s technically been persecuted by all sorts of religious authorities. But he’s saying, no, that’s not the case. I’m a prisoner of Jesus, because His suffering has a purpose.
So we just talked about this at church this morning, which came from Acts, where God tells Ananias, “Go find Paul”—or Saul at that point. He’s fixing his eyes, and they’re like, you know, “That dude was horrible to us. He’s been killing us. I’ve got to go fix him?”
And at the end of that part, it says that he’s going to understand, or he needs to understand, how much he is going to suffer for Me. And Paul did. Paul has gone through all these things.
Now he’s a prisoner, and he knows now that his suffering has a purpose. His purpose is to bring the Gentiles and the Jews and bring them to Christ. That’s his purpose.
And so now he urges the church to live with humility, gentleness, patience, and love. He wants them to maintain unity in the Spirit through the bonds of peace.
One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. I think there’s a song all about that. One God, Father of all.
This is a realistic unity. Not just a dream. Not just a theological fluffiness. This is reality. We’re called to live into this body of unity.
We’re not doing a good job of it.
So then Paul quotes Psalm:This is a picture of Jesus conquering sin and death, then giving spiritual gifts to all His people. To all His people.
And these gifts are listed in this chapter. You get apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds—who are pastors—and teachers. And some of these are mixed up. Some pastors are very good teachers. Some pastors are very good evangelists. Some evangelists aren’t pastors. Mixed bag, right?
So these aren’t roles about power. They are about equipping saints—all of us—for ministry.
When each part of the body does its job, the whole church grows in maturity and love.
Like I said, I think if I had a job, it would be a mouth. That’s my job.
Like children, with every new teaching and every new flashy trend—there is real temptation in this world. And the world is obsessed with the next new thing. We see that. And we’re still like that, 2,000 years later. We’re obsessed with the next new thing.
But maturity is found in truth, in love, growing up.
The head of the body is Christ, and we need to grow up. And that’s important.
We have a serious job ahead of us. We have serious issues in this world. And it’s time that we grow up, stop getting tossed around with the world, and start doing our part in this world and in our church.
And so then he uses this really great imagery: that the church, as a body, is joined together, held together—every joint and tendon and everything working together.
That’s what happens when the body builds itself up in love.
You think about your own body, right? I screwed up my tendons in my ankle. My entire leg chain went out. Everything from my hip to my knee to my ankle just disintegrated because one little tiny tendon in my ankle went kablooey.
That’s how we are too. We have to be working together. We need every single part. Everything else struggles when one of the parts is broken.
And when the parts are doing what they’re supposed to do, it’s amazing. It’s beautiful. It’s stable. It’s mature.
And it means that we’re not going to be easily shaken. It means that we’re not going to glance our eye every single time something flashy comes this way and that way.
You know, you should see me. I’m ADD all over the place, right? I used to go to nerd conferences—Star Trek and all those kinds of things—and Jill in one of those conferences is like, “Look at that. Look at that. Look at that.” I was all over the place.
That’s the way the world is. We are very much like that as a people.
But instead, when we do these things, we’re going to continually grow, mature, contribute, build each other up, and we love one another in truth.
That’s the important part. We hear the word love, and what it means to all of us is, “Well, I have to do the loving thing.” You know, me telling the truth about sin—that’s not very loving.
No. It’s love in truth, right? The truth is important. Christianity is a faith about truth, and that’s always going to be the important aspect of it.
Paul shifts gears then and reminds the people in Ephesus: don’t live like the Gentiles. In this case, the Gentiles mean the people who don’t know God.
Again, this community is filled with all sorts of multi-spheres. The big Artemis temple is there. They made money off Artemis. There’s a lot of things to follow going on in this town.
I was thinking about that—I forgot what I was watching. Oh, I was watching this new Merlin TV show. And I was thinking about how these people became Christians, and immediately she’s like, “I love you, we should just sleep together,” and he goes, “No, no, no, we’re doing this inside of marriage.”
And I thought, it must have been so wild to live in a pagan world where you did whatever you wanted whenever you wanted, and then suddenly say, “Wait a minute. I can’t do that. That’s not following God.”
You’re fighting the whole culture. And we’re fighting the whole culture too.
So anyway, he says don’t live like the Gentiles. They walk in the futility—uselessness—of their minds. All this effort goes to nothing. They’re darkened in understanding and alienated from the life of God.
They’re just so far separated. They don’t understand it. They don’t see it. Their hearts are hardened, and their behaviors are corrupted.
This church is trying to grow in that environment.
Instead, we’re supposed to put that old self away—the deceitful desires, the corruption that exists in our own hearts—and put on the new self, created in the likeness of God.
You know, I did that mirror series about God. We are trying to reflect God. We may reflect many other people. We may reflect bad images in our culture from time to time.
But what we’re aiming for—what we’re growing to do—is reflect God.
That means we’re a new self, in the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness.
This is language about transformation. The Christian life isn’t about behavior modification. It’s not just, “I’m not going to do those things.”
Instead, it’s about transforming who you are. And when who you are is transformed, you become a new person in Christ.
Paul gets practical with that too. And like I said, this is incredible. He talks about the immensity of God’s glory, and then he tells people exactly what to do.
Speak truth to your neighbors. We all belong to each other.
Be angry, but don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Don’t give the devil a foothold in your life.
I always think of cracks and crevices. I have a big cracky driveway, right? Water worms its way in, and suddenly those little cracks become holes. That’s how a foothold works. It expands.
Let the thief no longer steal. Let them work with their hands and share. Don’t let people take something for nothing. Let them contribute to society.
Watch your words. What you say should build others up and give grace. Grace is something someone doesn’t deserve.
Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit grieves with us. God isn’t just disappointed—He grieves.
Let go of bitterness, wrath, anger, slander, and malice. Those things poison us, not other people.
Be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving, just as Christ forgave us.
That last verse is a great one to memorize: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
We live in a culture fueled by outrage. Social media thrives on anger. But those sealed by the Holy Spirit are called higher.
We are one body, one Spirit, one faith, one baptism.
Unity won’t happen overnight. It happens one act at a time, one small step at a time.
Thanks so much for being out there. I appreciate you. Have a great day.
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