Ephesians 4:1-3
1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

Though he’s addressing the ancient Ephesians, the apostle Paul could be writing to any modern Christian church. He urges us–not just suggests to us–that we as Christians should live a life that praises God, that is worthy of the sacrifice Jesus made for us. Part of living that God-honoring life is to be “completely humble,” “gentle,” “patient,” and unified in spirit when we Christians deal with each other on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. We should “bear with one another in love.”

But how often do we see this “Christian love for each other” cast aside in the church when a petty disagreement erupts into a full-on social feud? How often do we see gossip flow around the church faster than encouraging words? And how often in the church do we see impatience, pride, and verbal brutality passing itself off as “honesty,” instead of humility, gentleness, and patience?

The answer: far too often, far more often than any of us would care to admit. We might be Christians, but we still sin, and social sins which occur within the church are sometimes the hardest to expunge because we want to pretend they don’t exist. The Ephesians were having difficulty with this concept, too–this is not a new problem. That’s why Paul wrote to them, to encourage them to relate to each other as Jesus related to us, to see each other as God sees us.

What does this entail? This means forgiving someone who took “our” parking space at church last Sunday, or speaking an encouraging word to that person who never seems to have a good word for anyone. This means accepting a fellow member’s admission of guilt when they have done something wrong, and not holding their past sins over their heads as if we have the power to judge and forgive.

This seems like such a simple concept, but it is VERY hard to enact in real life–thus, why Paul has to repeat it a lot in his letters. We must make an effort, every time we are in church, to see the other people around us as children of God, spiritual works in progress, and to treat them accordingly. That’s how we become ONE family of God, not “a bunch of different social cliques who all happened to show up at the same building on Sunday morning.”