![]() The church is, at present, divided into many denominations. The meaning here is, that as there is really but one church on earth, there ought to be unity. Such are the reasons and motives obliging the true disciples of Christ to love and unity with one another reasons and motives most powerful surely to bind them together in peace and harmony, and such as manifest discord, contention, strife, and division, to be unspeakably unreasonable.īarnes' Notes on the BibleThere is one body - One church - for so the word "body" means here - denoting the body of Christ see the notes on Romans 12:5 compare notes on Ephesians 1:23. One God and Father of all - Whose real people, whose true worshippers, whose beloved children, whose living temples you are who is above you all - Ruling you as his subjects, and presiding over you as his children through you all - By his enlightening and directing word and in you all - By his quickening, sanctifying, and comforting Spirit. One Lord - And Master, of whom you are all servants one Redeemer and Saviour, who hath assumed our frail nature, lived and died for us, that he might unite us in bonds of mutual, fervent, and everlasting love one faith - In that one Lord, and in the truths of one and the same divine revelation, all which are designed and calculated to bind the disciples together in the pleasing bonds of love and unity one outward baptism - Or seal of the covenant of grace, and emblem of the washing of regeneration. ![]() And in this one body there is one Divine Spirit - Which enlivens, actuates, and fills it, and under his influence it should be your constant concern to act even as ye are called in one hope of your calling - To the expectation of one and the same common heaven, one and the same glorious abode in the eternal world. There is one body - One mystical body of Christ, of which he is the living head, and ye all are members and as such should sympathize with, care for, and assist one another, as the members of the human body do. The apostle proceeds to remind the believers at Ephesus of some of the many very powerful considerations which had force enough, if attended to and laid to heart, to induce them to cultivate and preserve the unity to which he exhorts them. Hence the communion of saints is perhaps most clearly realised in the times of high spiritual aspiration, and in the near presence of death.īenson Commentary Ephesians 4:4-6. In this, in spite of all natural and spiritual inequalities, and in spite even of our divisions and strifes upon earth, all Christians are still actually one. Since the grace of the Holy Spirit is not only the “seal” of regeneration, but also the “earnest” ( Ephesians 1:14) of future perfection, the mention of the one Spirit suggests naturally the “hope of our calling” ( i.e., the perfect unity of heaven). and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”Įven as ye are (or rather, were) called in one hope of your calling.-The connection, though not at first obvious, is clear on consideration. Under the same idea we have (in 1Corinthians 12:13), as a description of the first entrance into the Church of Christ, “By one Spirit are we all baptised into one body. The “one body” is the Body of Christ, “from whom it is fitly framed, joined together, and compacted,” so that in every part “it grows up into Him.” But this communion with God in Christ being “the life eternal,” the Holy Ghost, by making it effectual alike to the Church and to the individual soul, is the “Lord and Giver of Life.” Hence, His presence is spoken of as being to the body of Christ what the spirit is to the natural body-the uniting and vivifying power for all its members. ![]() Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(4) There is one body, and one Spirit.-The words “There is” are not in the original, which starts with a striking abruption, and with that terse concentration of thought and word which marks out an embryo creed.
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