Ephesians 4

Ephesians 4 is the hinge. Three chapters of indicatives about what God has done in Christ now give way to three chapters of imperatives about how to walk in what God has done. The pivot is a single verb: I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called (4:1). The Greek verb peripateō (“walk”) will organize the rest of the letter, appearing five more times from this point on (4:17, 5:2, 5:8, 5:15, with the noun peripatēsōmen echoing in 5:8 and 5:15). The Christian life Ephesians has been describing is not a static identity to be admired; it is a walk, a way of going, a daily set of footsteps the gospel produces.

The chapter has two movements. The first (verses 1 to 16) names the corporate shape of the walk: one body, seven ones, the descended-and-ascended Christ who gave gifts, the fivefold ministries that build the body, the mature anthropos growing up into the head. The second (verses 17 to 32) names the personal shape of the walk: no longer the futility of the gentile mind, the putting off of the old anthropos and the putting on of the new, the daily ethics of truth-telling, work, anger-management, speech, kindness, and forgiveness.

What holds the two halves together is the chapter’s deepest claim: the new humanity that chapters 2 and 3 announced is now being grown in two simultaneous dimensions, the gathered body and the formed individual, and neither makes sense without the other. To walk worthy is to walk in both at once. The chapter that opens with one body closes with be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you (4:32). The cosmic Christology of chapter 1 has become household furniture by the end of chapter 4.

A · Ephesians 4:1-16 · One body, the gifts that build, the mature anthropos

¹ I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called, ² with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, even as you also were called in one hope of your calling, ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in us all. ⁷ But to each one of us, the grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. ⁸ Therefore he says, “When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to people.” ⁹ Now this, “He ascended”, what is it but that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? ¹⁰ He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. ¹¹ He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, shepherds and teachers; ¹² for the perfecting of the saints, to the work of serving, to the building up of the body of Christ, ¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a full grown man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, ¹⁴ that we may no longer be children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; ¹⁵ but speaking truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, ¹⁶ from whom all the body, being fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the working in measure of each individual part, makes the body increase to the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:1-16, World English Bible)

1. I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called (verse 1). The letter’s hinge. Therefore (oun) gathers everything that has gone before; the three chapters of indicative declaration ground the imperative that now begins. The verb parakalō (translated beg by the WEB, urge by the NIV and ESV, implore by the NRSVue) carries the pastoral force of coming alongside to call out. Paul is not legislating; he is appealing. The noun klēsis (calling) echoes the kaleō (called) that runs through chapters 1 to 3: chosen, predestined, called. The walk is not a way to earn a calling; it is a way to match a calling already received.

Word study: peripateō (περιπατέω), “walk,” the organizing verb of Ephesians 4 to 6

The Greek verb peripateō (literally peri “around” + pateō “to step,” to go on foot, to conduct one’s life) is the structural verb of the entire ethical half of Ephesians. From 4:1 it appears six times, each one specifying how the believer is to live. Walk worthily of the calling (4:1); no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk (4:17); walk in love (5:2); walk as children of light (5:8); watch carefully how you walk, not as unwise but as wise (5:15). The figure is Hebraic. In the Hebrew Bible, halak (“to walk”) is the standard verb for living out covenant faithfulness (Gen 5:24 of Enoch; Mic 6:8; Deut 8:6; 10:12). The rabbinic tradition’s word for the legal-ethical application of Torah, halakhah, comes from this verb: the way of walking. Paul’s choice of peripateō as the organizing imperative of Ephesians 4 to 6 is therefore not a generic ethical metaphor; it is the Hebrew Bible’s verb for living out the covenant, applied to gentiles who have been brought near in the blood of Christ. The Christian life is a walk, in the rabbinic sense: a daily way of going, not a static state to be admired. Where Ephesians 1 to 3 is the what is true, Ephesians 4 to 6 is the what you do all day.

1. with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (verses 2-3). The first four character qualities of the walk. Tapeinophrosynē (lowliness, humble-mindedness) is, in Greco-Roman virtue lists, almost universally a vice; in the Christian moral vocabulary, beginning here and in Phil 2:3, it becomes a virtue, the cruciform reversal of the surrounding culture’s pride. Praūtēs (humility, gentleness) and makrothymia (patience, long-suffering) are added. Anechomenoi allēlōn en agapē (bearing with one another in love) names the daily friction of life together as something the church bears rather than escapes. The unity Paul is about to describe in verses 4 to 6 is not produced by these qualities; it already is (one body, one Spirit, one Lord). These qualities keep the unity that already exists.
2. There is one body and one Spirit, even as you also were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in us all (verses 4-6). Seven ones in three short verses. The structure is liturgical and the content is the Christian Shema.

Influence callout: the Christian Shema of Ephesians 4:4-6

The seven-fold one of 4:4-6 is widely read as Paul’s reframing of Israel’s foundational confession (Deut 6:4, Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one) around the apostolic gospel. Tim Mackie (BibleProject Ephesians notes, in influences/), N.T. Wright (Paul and the Faithfulness of God), and Marty Solomon (Bema podcast, Ephesians) all read this passage as the New Testament’s clearest Christian Shema. Wright is most explicit: one God and Father (Israel’s confession) is now sounded together with one Lord (Jesus, the kyrios applied here with the Septuagint’s vocabulary for the divine name) and one Spirit, in a single liturgical breath. The Shema is not abandoned; it is fulfilled and expanded around the risen Christ and the Spirit, in continuity with the One God of Israel. The seven ones run as three pairs and a culminating Triune confession: one body and one Spirit (the church and her animating presence), one hope and one calling (the eschatological direction), one Lord and one faith and one baptism (the confession of Jesus and the rite that makes it public), one God and Father of all (the climactic single source). Mackie’s reading of the same passage emphasizes that it is liturgical: 4:4-6 looks like a confession the early church was already singing, perhaps at baptism, perhaps at the eucharist, embedded into the letter as a piece of already-existing worship. The chapter that opens with walk worthy grounds that walk in the one confession that holds the worldwide church together across every former division (cf. the Shema and one new humanity).

1. But to each one of us, the grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ (verse 7). The transition from the one of the church to the each of the individual. The same charis (grace) Paul has been using for salvation (1:6-7, 2:8) is now used for the apportioned gift given to each member. The Greek henikastō (to each one) is emphatic: no member is left out of the giving. Grace as salvation (chapter 2) and grace as gifting (chapter 4) are the same charis operating in two complementary registers.
2. Therefore he says, “When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to people.” Now this, “He ascended”, what is it but that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things (verses 8-10). Paul quotes Psalm 68:18 with a striking twist. The Psalm reads you received gifts among people; Paul reads gave gifts to people, a textual change that scholars debate but that matches the Targum’s reading of the same verse (the Aramaic targum on Psalm 68 also has gave). The Christological move is clear: the ascended Christ, like the Psalm’s victorious king, distributes the spoils of his victory to his people. The descending-and-ascending pattern in verses 9 to 10 is the cosmic shape of the gospel: the Messiah’s downward movement (variously read as the incarnation, or as the descent into the realm of the dead, or both) precedes his upward movement far above all the heavens, and the purpose-clause is the same as 1:23 (the fullness of him who fills all in all): that he might fill all things. The cosmic Christology of chapter 1 is operative here. The gifts the ascended Christ now distributes (verse 11) are the dividends of his cosmic victory, distributed to a church that is the theater of his fullness (3:10).
3. He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, shepherds and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, to the work of serving, to the building up of the body of Christ (verses 11-12). The famous fivefold (or fourfold, depending on whether shepherds and teachers is one role or two) list of gifted ministries. The Greek construction joins poimenas kai didaskalous (shepherds and teachers) under a single article, suggesting one role with two facets (pastor-teacher); the other three (apostolous, prophētas, euangelistas) each get their own. The purpose is named carefully: for the perfecting of the saints, to the work of serving, to the building up of the body of Christ. The English punctuation matters. Older readings made the gifted ministers do all three (perfecting and serving and building), implying a clergy-only ecclesiology. More careful modern readings (Markus Barth, Lincoln, Cohick) read the second and third clauses as the result of the first: the gifted ministers equip the saints, so that the saints do the work of serving and the body is built up. The fivefold are not the doers of the ministry; they are the equippers of the doers. The church is meant to be a self-building body, with every member contributing, gifted ministers training the contributors.

Influence callout: Lynn Cohick (NICNT) on the gifted ministers as equippers

Cohick’s NICNT commentary documents the grammatical and theological case for reading 4:12 as three phrases in sequence rather than three parallel commissions. The Greek preposition shifts: pros (toward, with a purpose) for the first clause, eis (into, as the destination) for the second and third. The gifted ministers are given toward the equipping of the saints; the equipping is into the saints’ own work of service and into the building up of the body. The flow is from the equipper to the equipped to the work and to the building. The historic English reading that treats the comma after saints as a list-comma (so that apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers do all three jobs) reflects later clergy-laity divisions imported into the verse. Cohick’s reading restores the original ecclesiology: a church in which every member is a worker, and the gifted ministers are trainers. The pastoral consequence is direct. A church organized around a hired ministerial class doing the work for everyone else has stopped being Ephesians 4’s church. A church organized around equipped saints doing the work in their own callings is the church the chapter is forming.

1. until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a full grown man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we may no longer be children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine (verses 13-14). The telos of the equipping is maturity. The Greek eis andra teleion (translated by the WEB as to a full grown man, by the NRSVue as to maturity, by the NIV as to a mature man) uses anēr here rather than the broader anthrōpos of 2:15. The text is naming the mature human God is forming in Christ. The image is corporate (we together attain) and individual (the maturity is a measure each member grows toward). The contrast is with children (nēpioi, infants, the same word Paul uses negatively in 1 Cor 13:11) who are blown about by the every wind of doctrine of those who manipulate the immature. The Christian goal in Ephesians is not retained childhood faith but adult faith, robust, formed, weathered, with the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ as its standard. The chapter that named the one new anthropos in 2:15 now names the mature anthropos growing toward that fullness.
2. but speaking truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom all the body, being fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the working in measure of each individual part, makes the body increase to the building up of itself in love (verses 15-16). The corporate-organic image. The verb alētheuontes (speaking truth, or truthing, the verb form of aletheia) is unusual; English does not have an exact equivalent. Truthing in love is what makes the body grow up. The architectural verb of 2:21 (synarmologoumenē, “fitted together”) returns here, now applied not to stones but to joints: the body is fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies. Every part contributes to the growth of the whole. The image is anatomical and ecological. The church is not a building plus a body plus a temple plus a family; she is all of these at once, an organic system that grows through the contribution of every member.

Where this lands: the mature anthropos is the goal

Modern Christianity often treats spiritual maturity as a private interior achievement, the depth of an individual’s prayer life, the steadiness of an individual’s character, the breadth of an individual’s theological reading. Eph 4:13 will not let maturity be private. The mature anthropos is one, attained together, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. You do not become mature alone; the body becomes mature, and you are part of the body. The pastoral implication is daily. The way I become more like Christ is not first private discipline; it is the slow, fitted-and-knit-together work of being equipped by the gifted ministers, contributing to the body in my own gift, bearing with siblings in patience, speaking truth in love even when speaking it costs me. Ephesians 4 forms a Christianity in which spiritual growth has a location: the body. To leave the body is to leave the conditions under which maturity is possible. To return to the body is to return to the place the New Testament thinks Christ is growing his own fullness in the world.

B · Ephesians 4:17-32 · No longer the gentile walk: put off the old, put on the new

¹⁷ This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, ¹⁸ being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their hearts. ¹⁹ They, having become callous, gave themselves up to lust, to work all uncleanness with greediness. ²⁰ But you didn’t learn Christ that way, ²¹ if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: ²² that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, ²³ and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, ²⁴ and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. ²⁵ Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak truth each one with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. ²⁶ “Be angry, and don’t sin.” Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath, ²⁷ and don’t give place to the devil. ²⁸ Let him who stole steal no more; but rather let him labor, producing with his hands something that is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need. ²⁹ Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but only what is good for building others up as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰ Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹ Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander be put away from you, with all malice. ³² And be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you.

1. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind (verse 17). The second use of peripateō in the chapter, now negative. The believer’s walk is no longer to look like the walk of the rest of the Gentiles. The phrase is striking because the readers themselves are gentiles (cf. 2:11, 3:1). Paul is making a categorical distinction not by ethnicity but by new-creation identity. Gentile believers in Christ are no longer simply gentiles; they are part of the new humanity (2:15). The walk of the rest of the Gentiles (without Christ) is to be left behind. The diagnosis of pagan life that follows (verses 17 to 19) is not a polemic against any particular cultural group but a description of life under the powers (cf. 2:1-3): futile in mind, darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God, hardened in heart, callous, given to lust and greed. This is the climate the gentile believers have been called out of, and the walk Paul is now describing is the alternative.
2. But you didn’t learn Christ that way, if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus (verses 20-21). The Greek phrase emathete ton Christon (you learned the Christ) is unique in the New Testament: nowhere else is Christ himself the content learned. The believer does not just learn about Christ; the believer learns Christ, like learning a person, a discipline, a craft. The phrase kathōs estin alētheia en tō Iēsou (even as truth is in Jesus) sets Jesus as the standard of what is learned. The Christ taught is not a Christ of the disciple’s imagination; it is the Christ in whom truth actually resides.
3. that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth (verses 22-24). The central image of the chapter’s ethical half: put off the old, put on the new. The verbs apotithēmi (put off, like removing a garment) and endyō (put on, like donning a garment) are clothing language. The old anthropos (the WEB’s “old man”) and the new anthropos are the participatory categories the letter has been building: the old anthropos is the pre-incorporation life under the powers (2:1-3); the new anthropos is the renewed identity in Christ (2:15). Two interpretive points matter. First, the new anthropos has been created (perfect passive, ton ktisthenta) in the likeness of God in righteousness and holiness of truth: the new anthropos is image-of-God language refigured around the new creation (cf. Gen 1:26-27; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10; see image of God and the vocabulary of humanity). The new anthropos is the image of God restored. Second, the put-off / put-on is participatory, not effort-based: the believer puts off and puts on a state that is already true in Christ (2:6, raised with him and seated with him), not a state she has to manufacture by moral exertion. The walk is the wearing of what is already the case.

Word study: anthropos in Eph 2:15 and 4:13, 22-24 (the corporate Adam refigured)

Three of Ephesians’ most theologically dense uses of anthropos (the bare Greek noun for human, person) form a single trajectory through the letter. 2:15 names the kainon anthropon, “one new human / humanity,” that Christ has created from the two (Jew and gentile, see one new humanity). 4:13 names the andra teleion, “mature man / mature humanity,” that the equipped body is growing into. 4:22-24 names the palaion anthropon (old anthropos) to be put off and the kainon anthropon (new anthropos) to be put on, the latter created in the likeness of God (echoing Gen 1:26-27 directly). The shape of the doctrine is Adamic: the first anthropos (Adam) collapsed the image of God and broke the family; the last anthropos (Christ) is the new Adam (Rom 5; 1 Cor 15) in whom the image is restored and the family refounded. The believer is, by union, in the new anthropos (corporately) and putting on the new anthropos (personally). The two senses are inseparable. The Greek word that names humanity itself is the word the gospel uses to name what God is making in Christ. See the vocabulary of humanity and the image of God.

1. Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak truth each one with his neighbor, for we are members of one another (verse 25). The first of the chapter’s ethical specifics. Paul quotes Zech 8:16 (the post-exilic prophet’s instruction to the returning community). The reason given is new-creation ecclesiology: we are members of one another. Falsehood between Christians is not first a private moral failure; it is a wound to one’s own body. Lying to a sibling in Christ is, in this reading, anatomically self-destructive. The same logic will appear in 4:29 (corrupt speech, again as a wound to the listener) and 4:32 (kindness as the body’s natural state).
2. “Be angry, and don’t sin.” Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath, and don’t give place to the devil (verses 26-27). Paul quotes Psalm 4:4. The Hebrew is debated; the Septuagint (which Paul is reading) renders it as a permission to be angry under the condition of not sinning. The realist note is striking: Paul does not forbid anger; he assumes it as a normal human response. What he forbids is the carrying of anger past sundown (the metaphor for carrying it forward in time, prolonging it) and the yielding of topos (place, foothold) to the devil. Anger held too long becomes a doorway. The line is also one of the New Testament’s clearest acknowledgments of an active personal-spiritual antagonist (cf. 6:11-12, the powers passage). The walk worthy includes the discipline of letting anger expire.
3. Let him who stole steal no more; but rather let him labor, producing with his hands something that is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need (verse 28). The trajectory of the verse is striking. The thief is not just told to stop stealing; the thief is told to work and to give to him who has need. The instruction redirects the economic capacity that was previously oriented toward taking; the same capacity is now oriented toward producing for the sake of the needy. The verse is a small window onto the chapter’s larger ethical logic: the new anthropos is not the old anthropos minus the bad behavior; it is the old anthropos redirected in its energy, capacities, and outputs.
4. Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but only what is good for building others up as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear. Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption (verses 29-30). Speech that builds up (oikodomēn, the same building-up verb of 4:12 and 4:16) gives grace to the hearer. The verb of verse 30 is unusual and tender: mē lypeite to pneuma to hagion tou theou (do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God). The Spirit is grieved, not just displeased; the Spirit is a person whose relationship with the believer can be wounded. The reference to the seal echoes 1:13: the Spirit who marked the believer as God’s own (the day of redemption, the eschatological completion) is the same Spirit whom corrupt speech grieves. The chapter is, here, briefly Trinitarian: God in Christ has forgiven (verse 32), the Holy Spirit can be grieved (verse 30), the believer is in him who is the head (verse 15).
5. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you (verses 31-32). The chapter ends with a vice-list balanced against a virtue-list, both grounded in the cruciform pattern of God’s own action in Christ. The five vices to be put away (the same verb as 4:22, put off the old) are followed by the three virtues to be cultivated (kind, tender-hearted, forgiving). The grounding clause is the chapter’s climactic Christological note: as God also in Christ forgave you. The believer’s forgiveness is not a moral muscle exerted; it is a re-enactment, a participation in the forgiveness already received. The chapter that began with walk worthy ends with forgive as you have been forgiven. The walk Ephesians 4 is forming is the walk of the forgiven, doing what forgiveness produces.

Reflection prompts

1. The verb that organizes Ephesians 4 to 6 is walk, the Hebrew Bible’s verb for living out the covenant. The Christian life is not a static identity to be admired but a daily way of going. Where in your life are you trying to be a Christian without daily walking as one, and what specific footstep is the chapter asking you to take this week?
2. Eph 4:13 says the mature anthropos is attained together, not alone. Where in your spiritual life have you been pursuing maturity in isolation (alone with your Bible, alone with your podcasts, alone with your thoughts) instead of fitted and knit together with the body? What would it look like to receive the equipping the chapter is talking about?
3. The chapter ends with forgive as you have been forgiven in Christ. The forgiveness is first received, then re-enacted. Where in your life right now is a specific re-enactment being asked of you, and what part of as God also in Christ forgave you are you having the hardest time letting be the ground of it?

Frameworks at play in this chapter: one new humanity, in Christ: participation and union, the Shema, the vocabulary of humanity, the image of God, cosmic Christology, [the cruciform hermeneutic](/fr