Ephesians 4:1–3
1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
For the next 2 days we are going to be meditating on these 3 short verses which are so powerful.
This verse marks the major transition in the book (see the Bible project poster below). This transition is marked by "therefore". Remember whenever you come up to a "therefore" you have to find out what it's there for. 😂 Grammar jokes are so funny! Seriously though, this is connecting the 2 major sections of the book. Chapters 1-3 are largely describing the theology of the unity that the Jews and Gentiles share. Chapters 4-6 get into the practicality of how they ought to live in light of this truth. Paul structures the book of Romans the same way (chapters 1-11=theology; chapters 12-16=application).
Paul includes that he is currently imprisoned while writing this letter. Likely he is imprisoned by the Romans which you can read about in Acts 21-28. He includes this here to inspire them. He believes so strongly in what he his telling them that he is willing to be imprisoned for it.
He tells them to "walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called". What he means is to live in light of the new life and unity they have received in Christ, drawing from the previous chapters. They had previously walked in trespasses and sins (see 2:1-2), this is how they are to walk now. Verses 2 and 3 summarize in general terms how they are to walk in this new calling.
There are lots of different way to take the phrases of v. 2-3. All 4 (with humility and gentleness being taken as one idea) could be taken separately as unique statements as the ESV translates it. Or the participle "bearing" could be taken to modify patience as the NIV translates it, with "eager" being separate. Or both "bearing" and "eager" could be taken to modify patience. In any case it doesn't affect the meaning much. For some nerdy grammatical reasons, which I won't bore you with, it seems best to take them as 4 individual statements.
Humility is almost universally used in a negative sense in other Greek literature of the day. It typically refers to servility and weakness and a broken spirit which was the opposite of a noble spirit. This became an object of ridicule towards the Christians (who valued humility) by the early second century.
Humility and gentleness should be taken together, reflecting the same idea, as most major translations take it. The lexical definition of the word translated "gentleness" is "the quality of not being overly impressed by a sense of one's self-importance." (BDAG, 861) As I mentioned on Sunday, this definition is so unexpected and on the nose in a scholarly lexicon, but it gets the point across.
For today, listen to Skye's sermon that I linked you to below and reflect on how you can express humility and gentleness in this time of crisis. Tomorrow we will cover the other 3 qualities we should walk in as followers of Jesus.