Ephesians 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul, writing as a prisoner, urges his readers to live in a way that matches the calling they received, keeping unity through humility, patience, and peace, since they share one body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism, and God. He says Christ gave each person grace and gave the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip God's people for service until they reach maturity and are no longer swayed by every wind of teaching. The second half tells them to stop living as the Gentiles do, to put off the old self and put on the new, and then gives specific instructions about truthfulness, anger, stealing, speech, and kindness.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • Paul appeals to the readers.
   • Paul is a prisoner in the Lord.
   • Paul urges them to walk worthily of the calling with which they were called.
   • They have been called.
2. 4:2
   • They are to walk with all humility.
   • They are to walk with gentleness.
   • They are to walk with patience.
   • They are to bear with one another in love.
3. 4:3
   • They are to be diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit.
   • That unity is kept in the bond of peace.
4. 4:4
   • There is one body.
   • There is one Spirit.
   • They were called in one hope of their calling.
5. 4:5
   • There is one Lord.
   • There is one faith.
   • There is one baptism.
6. 4:6
   • There is one God and Father of all.
   • He is above all.
   • He is through all.
   • He is in them all.
7. 4:7
   • Grace was given to each one of them.
   • That grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.
8. 4:8
   • Scripture says something, which is the reason for what precedes.
   • It says that when he ascended on high he led captivity captive.
   • It says that he gave gifts to men.
9. 4:9
   • The statement that he ascended implies that he also first descended.
   • He descended into the lower parts of the earth.
10. 4:10
    • The one who descended is the same one who ascended.
    • He ascended far above all the heavens.
    • He ascended so that he might fill all things.
11. 4:11
    • He himself gave the gifts.
    • He gave some to be apostles.
    • He gave some to be prophets.
    • He gave some to be evangelists.
    • He gave some to be pastors and teachers.
12. 4:12
    • These were given for the equipping of the saints.
    • These were given for the work of ministry.
    • These were given for the building up of the body of Christ.
13. 4:13
    • This continues until they all arrive at the unity of the faith.
    • This continues until they all arrive at the knowledge of the Son of God.
    • This continues until they arrive at a mature man.
    • This continues until they arrive at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
14. 4:14
    • The purpose is that they no longer be infants.
    • Infants are tossed about as by waves.
    • Infants are carried around by every wind of teaching.
    • This happens by the trickery of men.
    • This happens by craftiness.
    • That craftiness is aimed at a scheming method of deceit.
15. 4:15
    • Instead they are to speak the truth in love.
    • They are to grow up into him in all things.
    • He is the head.
    • The head is Christ.
16. 4:16
    • The whole body derives from him.
    • The whole body is fitted and joined together.
    • This joining is through every joint that supplies.
    • This works according to the effective working in the measure of each individual part.
    • The body produces its own growth.
    • This growth is for the building up of itself in love.
17. 4:17
    • Paul says this and testifies in the Lord.
    • They are no longer to walk as the other Gentiles walk.
    • The Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind.
18. 4:18
    • They are darkened in their understanding.
    • They are alienated from the life of God.
    • This is because of the ignorance that is in them.
    • This is because of the hardness of their heart.
19. 4:19
    • They have become past feeling.
    • They have given themselves over to sensuality.
    • They do so to practice every kind of uncleanness.
    • They do so with greed.
20. 4:20
    • The readers did not learn Christ in that way.
21. 4:21
    • It is supposed that they heard him.
    • It is supposed that they were taught in him.
    • The truth is in Jesus.
22. 4:22
    • They were taught to put off the old man, which belongs to their former manner of life.
    • The old man is being corrupted according to the lusts of deceit.
23. 4:23
    • They were taught to be renewed in the spirit of their mind.
24. 4:24
    • They were taught to put on the new man.
    • The new man was created according to God.
    • The new man was created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
25. 4:25
    • Therefore they are to put away falsehood.
    • Each is to speak truth with his neighbor.
    • They are members of one another.
26. 4:26
    • They are to be angry and not sin.
    • The sun is not to go down on their anger.
27. 4:27
    • They are not to give place to the devil.
28. 4:28
    • The one who stole is to steal no longer.
    • He is instead to labor, working the good thing with his hands.
    • The purpose is that he may have something to share with the one who has need.
29. 4:29
    • No rotten word is to come out of their mouth.
    • Only what is good for building up what is needed is to come out.
    • The purpose is that it may give grace to those who hear.
30. 4:30
    • They are not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
    • They were sealed in that Spirit.
    • They were sealed for the day of redemption.
31. 4:31
    • All bitterness is to be put away from them.
    • All rage is to be put away from them.
    • All anger is to be put away from them.
    • All clamor is to be put away from them.
    • All slander is to be put away from them.
    • All malice is to be put away with these.
32. 4:32
    • They are to be kind to one another.
    • They are to be tenderhearted.
    • They are to forgive one another.
    • God in Christ forgave them.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

Paul is writing from actual custody, not using a figure of speech: he was under arrest when the letter was sent. The KJV's "vocation" does not mean a job or profession. In 1611 the word kept its Latin sense of a summons or a call, and it translates the same Greek root as "called" at the end of the verse.

4:2

"Meekness" in 1611 English means gentleness and a refusal to throw one's weight around, not timidity. "Longsuffering" is a literal rendering of a Greek word for a long fuse: slowness to anger under provocation. "Forbearing one another" means putting up with each other, not holding back from something.

4:3

"Endeavouring" sounds mild now but the Greek word means to hurry to do something, to treat it as urgent.

4:4

Calling a community "one body" was a familiar political image in the Greek and Roman world, used by speakers to argue that a city or an army was a single organism whose parts could not do without each other. This chapter takes that image and runs it out at length.

4:5

Baptism was a washing with water that marked a person's public entry into the community of Jesus' followers. It is listed here alongside "one Lord, one faith" as a single shared point of entry.

4:7

"Grace" translates a Greek word for a freely given favor or gift. Here it is pictured as being handed out in portions, each person receiving a measured share.

4:8

The quotation is Psalm 68:18. The psalm pictures a victorious king going up to his city after a battle, a column of prisoners behind him and spoils to hand out. "He led captivity captive" is a Hebrew way of saying he led away a whole body of captives. The Hebrew of the psalm says the king received gifts from men; the form quoted here says he gave gifts to men, a wording also found in some ancient Jewish versions of the verse.

4:9

"The lower parts of the earth" can be read two ways in the Greek, and the phrase is genuinely disputed: either the low region that is the earth itself, set against the heights, or the region beneath the earth, the realm of the dead. The wording does not settle which.

4:11

"Apostle" means one who is sent out, a commissioned messenger. An "evangelist" is an announcer of good news, the word used of a herald carrying word of a victory. "Pastor" is simply the Latin word for shepherd, and the Greek here is the ordinary word for someone who keeps sheep. In the Greek, "pastors and teachers" share a single article, which may mean one group described two ways or two overlapping groups.

4:12

"Saints" does not mean an elite of especially holy people. It translates a word meaning those set apart, and Paul uses it of every member of the community. "Perfecting" translates a word used for setting a broken bone and for mending fishing nets: putting something into full working order. "Edifying" is a building word, from the Latin for putting up a house, and the building image runs through the next several verses.

4:13

"Perfect" in 1611 English means complete or full-grown, not flawless. "A perfect man" here is set against "children" in the next verse: an adult, at full height. "Stature" means bodily height, and "fulness" means the complete measure of it.

4:14

"Sleight" is the same word as in "sleight of hand," and the Greek behind it is a dice-playing term for cheating with the dice. "Cunning craftiness" translates a word for being willing to try anything to get one's way.

4:15

The Greek rendered "speaking the truth" is a verb formed from the noun for truth, and it covers more than speech: being truthful, dealing honestly, living in the truth. Translators differ on how wide to make it.

4:16

The picture is anatomical, close to the language of ancient medical writing about how a body holds together. The word rendered "joint" can mean either a joint or the ligament that ties one part to another; either way it is the point of contact through which one part supplies another. "Effectual working" means active functioning, each part doing the job it is for.

4:17

"Gentiles" means non-Jews. Paul's readers in Ephesus were themselves non-Jews by birth, so he is not telling them to stop being what they are; he is using the word as a Jewish writer would, for outsiders and the way they live. "Vanity" in 1611 does not mean conceit. It means emptiness, futility, the quality of leading nowhere.

4:18

"Blindness" here translates a Greek word for hardening, the callus that forms over a broken bone or on worked skin; many translations render it hardness rather than blindness. In ancient usage the "heart" was the seat of thought and decision, closer to what we would call the mind, not chiefly the emotions.

4:19

"Past feeling" translates a medical word for having lost sensation, gone numb. "Lasciviousness" means unrestrained, shameless conduct, often sexual, with the sense of not caring who sees. "Uncleanness" is impurity, a word taken from the vocabulary of what was fit or unfit to bring near God. "With greediness" renders a word for always wanting more than one's share.

4:21

"If so be that" does not express doubt. It is the KJV's rendering of a Greek construction that takes the thing as true: since you did in fact hear him.

4:22

"Conversation" in 1611 English means a person's whole way of living and behaving, not talking. "The old man," and "the new man" in verse 24, mean the old self and the new self. "Put off" and "put on" are the ordinary Greek words for taking off and putting on clothes.

4:23

"The spirit of your mind" is an unusual phrase in Greek, and translators divide over whether "spirit" here means the human disposition or attitude, or God's Spirit at work in the mind.

4:24

"Which after God is created" means created according to God, that is, in his likeness. The wording deliberately echoes the account of humanity's creation in Genesis 1.

4:25

The wording echoes Zechariah 8:16, "Speak every man the truth to his neighbour." "Neighbour" there means a fellow member of the community, the person beside you, not simply someone who lives nearby.

4:26

The first clause quotes Psalm 4:4 in its Greek version. The Greek grammar is disputed: the command form can be read as a plain instruction, as a concession meaning "if you do become angry," or as a condition, and translators have taken it all three ways. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath" is a way of saying deal with it before nightfall, inside the same day.

4:27

"Give place" means give room, a foothold, an opening to work in. The word translated "devil" means slanderer or accuser.

4:28

Manual work was held in low regard by much of Greek and Roman society, which thought of labor with the hands as fit for slaves. The Greek word for "labour" means working to the point of exhaustion.

4:29

"Corrupt" translates a word used of rotten fruit or spoiled fish, food gone off and fit only to be thrown out. "Communication" in 1611 English means talk. "Minister grace unto the hearers" means give the listeners a gift or a favor, something that does them good.

4:30

A seal was a stamp pressed into wax or clay with a signet ring. It marked ownership of goods and guaranteed that a sealed item reached its destination unopened. "Redemption" is a commercial word: paying a price to buy something or someone back, as when a slave or a prisoner of war was bought out of captivity.

4:31

"Clamour" means shouting and brawling, raised voices in a quarrel. "Evil speaking" translates the Greek word blasphemia, which in ordinary use meant abusive talk about anyone, not only about God.

4:32

"Tenderhearted" translates a Greek compound meaning roughly "good in the inward parts." Greek and Hebrew writers located compassion in the internal organs, much as English locates it in the heart.