7 Reasons We Are Already One: Paul’s Call to Unity in Ephesians 4 | Christian Yoga Association

Seven Reasons We Are Already One: Paul’s Urgent Call to Unity in Ephesians 4 — And Why It Matters for Every Christian, Every Church, and Every Christian Yogi

I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1–3

There is a verse in Ephesians that should stop every Christian mid-argument, mid-judgment, and mid-assumption about the brother or sister standing across from them. It should halt the theological debates that divide denominations, silence the whisper campaigns that fracture congregations, friendships, communities, and dissolve the suspicion that too often greets believers who practice their faith in ways that look different from our own.

Let’s turn our attention to three verses that the Apostle Paul encourages all believers to adhere to: Ephesians 4:4–6:

There is one Body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one Hope when you were called; one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Seven times Paul says one. Not two. Not some. Not “one for your church and another for theirs.” One. And he doesn’t present these seven unities as aspirational goals we should work toward. He states them as facts. Present tense. Already true. Unity already exists…our job is simply not to break it.

This is Paul’s most concentrated argument for Christian unity in all of his letters, and it carries an urgency that the modern church, the modern Christian and the modern Christian yoga community desperately needs to hear.

Why Paul Wrote This — And Why It Still Matters

Paul wrote Ephesians from prison. Let that land for a moment. He wasn’t writing from a comfortable study or a megachurch greenroom. He was in chains. And from that place of suffering and limitation, what consumed his heart was not his own comfort but the unity of the church.

The Ephesian church was a diverse, messy, beautiful collection of Jewish and Gentile believers who had every cultural, religious, and social reason to distrust each other. They came from different backgrounds, different worship traditions, different understandings of Scripture. Sound familiar? Paul knew that the greatest threat to the gospel’s witness was not persecution from the outside, it was division from within.

So he pleaded. He didn’t command (though he had apostolic authority to do so). He beseeched. He appealed to their hearts: Walk worthy of your calling. Be humble. Be patient. Bear with one another in love. And then he gave them seven immovable reasons why unity isn’t optional, it’s the very nature of who we are in Christ.

Those seven reasons are as binding today as they were two thousand years ago. They apply to every Christian, every church, every denomination, and yes, every Christian yoga practitioner who has ever been told they don’t belong at the table of faith. Each of these communities can be critically divided. This division whether in the church, in relationships and family, and certainly the dis-unity in the Christian yoga circles breaks the heart of God.

In each of these realms mentioned, let’s focus on the Big 7 that Paul speaks of.

The Seven “Ones” — A Foundation No One Can Shake

1. One Body

“There is one body.” Not many bodies. Not competing bodies. One. Paul is talking about the body of Christ, the universal church that includes every born-again believer across every denomination, every nation and every century. The Baptist and the Pentecostal are in the same body. The high-church Anglican and the house-church believer in rural China are in the same body. The Christian who worships with hymns and the Christian who worships through movement and breath…we belong to the same body.

This doesn’t mean we all look the same. Paul makes this point earlier in 1 Corinthians 12 when he writes that the body has many parts; eyes, hands, feet, and that no part can say to another, “I don’t need you.” The body of Christ is designed for diversity. What it is not designed for is amputation. When we cut off members of the body because they worship differently, practice differently, or express their faith through unfamiliar forms, we are not protecting the body, rather we are wounding it.

For the Christian yoga community, this truth is foundational. We are not a separate body. We are not a fringe movement outside the church. We are members of the one body of Christ, using our unique gifts; movement, breath, stillness, and embodied worship to serve the whole.

2. One Spirit

“And one Spirit.” Every believer who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ has received the same Holy Spirit. Not a different Spirit. Not a lesser Spirit. Not a Spirit that is somehow diminished because of how we choose to steward our physical bodies in worship. The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in the believer who prays on their knees in a cathedral and in the believer who prays in Child’s form on a yoga mat. The Spirit is not confused by posture. He is not threatened by breath work. He is not offended by stillness. God created us in His image, formed our inward parts (Psalm 139) for worship. God is the Creator of all things (John 1:3, Colossians 1:16-17) and He has placed His Spirit within us (2 Corinthians 1:22).

When Paul says “one Spirit,” he is reminding us that the Holy Spirit is the source of our unity, not our agreement on every doctrinal detail, not our shared worship style, not our identical opinions about what Christian practice should look like. The Spirit unifies us at a level deeper than preference. And when we judge another believer’s Spirit-filled practice as suspect, we are dangerously close to questioning the Spirit’s own work.

3. One Hope

“Just as you were called to one hope when you were called.” Every Christian, regardless of denomination, tradition, or practice, shares the same hope: the return of Christ, the resurrection of the body, eternal life in the presence of God. This is the hope that Paul says belongs to our calling. Not our hope in a particular church model. Not our hope in being right about secondary theological issues. Our hope is in Christ alone – His finished work, His coming kingdom, His promise that He is making all things new.

This shared hope should be the great equalizer among believers. When we remember that we are all heading toward the same eternal destination, the things that divide us on earth begin to lose their power. The Christian yogi and the Christian who has never stepped on a mat, the original church and the one that split from it, each share this hope equally. And that shared hope should be stronger than any disagreement about method, practice, or form.

4. One Lord

“One Lord.” Jesus Christ is Lord of all…not Lord of some. Not Lord of the theologically sophisticated. Not Lord of those who worship in approved formats. He is Lord of the contemplative and the charismatic. Lord of the liturgical and the spontaneous. Lord of the still and the moving. His Lordship is not threatened by diversity of practice only glorified by it.

When we declare “Jesus is Lord,” we are making the most unifying declaration available to us. It transcends every boundary we construct. It demands that we treat every other person who makes that same declaration as a brother or sister under the same authority. We may disagree about many things but if Jesus is Lord of your life and Jesus is Lord of mine, then we are under the same roof and the argument is an in-house conversation, not a reason for exile.

5. One Faith

“One faith.” This is not saying that all Christians believe identical things about every theological question. Paul himself spent considerable energy navigating disagreements within the early church. “One faith” refers to the core confession of the gospel itself. That Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He lived, died, was buried, and resurrected, that salvation comes through faith in Him alone, that He is coming again. This is the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3), and it is the faith that unites every believer across every tradition.

The temptation is to add to the “one faith” our own convictions about secondary matters and then treat those additions as tests of fellowship. When we tell a Christian yogi that ‘their practice disqualifies them from the one faith’, we have added a requirement that Paul never included. The one faith is Christ. Everything else is conversation and conviction, important, yes, but not grounds for division.

6. One Baptism

“One baptism.” Whether you were baptized by immersion in a river, by sprinkling in a cathedral, or by pouring in a living room church…if you were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as a declaration of your faith in Jesus Christ, you share the one baptism. Baptism is the outward declaration of an inward reality: we have died with Christ and been raised to new life. It is the initiation into the one body, sealed by the one Spirit, under the one Lord.

Baptism is meant to unite us, not divide us. And yet Christians have argued about the mode, the timing, and the theology of baptism for centuries, often to the point of breaking fellowship with one another. Paul’s point is clear: whatever our convictions about the details, the baptism that matters is the one that joins us to Christ and to each other. Every baptized believer belongs.

7. One God and Father of All

“One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” This is the crowning declaration. There is one God. He is Father. He is over all; sovereign, supreme, unchallenged. He is through all – working in and through every member of His body, every expression of His church, every act of faith-filled worship. And He is in all; dwelling in every believer through His Spirit.

This means that God is present in the megachurch and the micro-church. He is present in the traditional sanctuary and on the beach at sunrise. He is present in the prayer closet and on the yoga mat. He is not limited by our containers. He is not defined by our categories. He is the one God, Father of all who calls on His name and His Presence in His children is not contingent on our approval of each other.

What This Means for the Church — And for Christian Yogis

Paul’s seven “ones” are not abstract theology. They are a direct and urgent call to the church to stop dividing over things that God has already unified. The body is one. The Spirit is one. The hope, the Lord, the faith, the baptism, the God – all one. We did not create this unity, and we do not have the authority to revoke it. Our only job, Paul says, is to endeavour to keep it… to actively preserve what the Spirit has already established.

This matters profoundly for the Christian yoga community. For too long, Christian yogis have been told – by well-meaning but misinformed brothers and sisters – that their practice places them outside the bounds of Christian fellowship. That moving the body in certain ways, breathing with intention, or practicing stillness on a mat somehow compromises the one faith. But Paul’s criteria for unity says nothing about worship style, physical posture, or the form our devotion takes. His criteria are Christological and Trinitarian: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God. If a Christian yogi confesses Christ as Lord, is sealed by the Spirit, holds the hope of the gospel, and has been baptized into the one faith — they are in…fully…without caveat.

The Christian Yoga Association exists to affirm this truth and to foster unity within the body of Christ across every expression of faith-filled, embodied worship. We don’t ask anyone to abandon their convictions. We ask only what Paul asked: walk worthy of your calling. Be humble. Be patient. Bear with one another in love. And endeavour – actively, intentionally, persistently – to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Keeping the Unity — Not Creating It

One final and critical distinction. Paul does not say “create unity.” He says “keep” it. The Greek word is tēreō; to guard, to preserve, to watch over. Unity is not something we manufacture through programs, conferences, or social media campaigns. It is something the Spirit has already accomplished. Our task is to not destroy it. To guard it like something precious. To refuse to participate in the division, the suspicion, the theological gatekeeping that fractures what God has joined.

This is a call to every Christian, every church, and every Christian yogi: we are already one. You are already in the body. You already share the Spirit, the hope, the Lord, the faith, the baptism, and the God. The question is not whether we are united, the question is whether we will live like it.

May we choose unity. 

May we choose one another. 

May the world know we are His disciples by our love.

 

Founded by Michelle Thielen, the Christian Yoga Association is a global community of believers united in the one body of Christ, practicing embodied worship through movement, breath, and stillness. Become a member today.

Notes

  1. Eph 4:1–3 (KJV).
  2. Eph 4:4–6 (NIV).
  3. Eph 3:1; 4:1. Paul identifies himself as “the prisoner of the Lord” (KJV) and “a prisoner for the Lord” (NIV), indicating he wrote this letter during one of his imprisonments, traditionally understood to be his Roman imprisonment ca. AD 60–62. See F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 229–31.
  4. Eph 2:11–22. Paul addresses the former division between Jewish and Gentile believers, declaring that Christ “has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph 2:14, NIV).
  5. Eph 4:1–2 (NIV).
  6. Eph 4:4 (NIV).
  7. 1 Cor 12:12–21 (NIV). See especially v. 21: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!'”
  8. Eph 4:4 (NIV).
  9. Rom 8:11 (NIV).
  10. Eph 4:4 (NIV).
  11. Rev 21:5 (NIV).
  12. Eph 4:5 (NIV).
  13. Cf. Rom 10:9 (NIV); Phil 2:9–11 (NIV).
  14. Eph 4:5 (NIV).
  15. See Gal 2:1–10; Acts 15:1–35 (the Jerusalem Council and circumcision controversy); 1 Cor 8:1–13; Rom 14:1–23 (disputes over food offered to idols and matters of conscience); Gal 2:11–14 (Paul’s confrontation of Peter at Antioch).
  16. Jude 3 (NIV).
  17. Eph 4:5 (NIV).
  18. Matt 28:19 (NIV).
  19. Rom 6:3–4 (NIV).
  20. Eph 4:6 (NIV).
  21. Eph 4:3 (NIV): “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
  22. Eph 4:1–3 (NIV).
  23. The Greek verb τηρέω (tēreō) carries the meaning “to keep, guard, observe, watch over.” See Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. Frederick William Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1002. Note: some translations render the primary verb in Eph 4:3 as σπουδάζω (spoudazō, “to be eager, make every effort”), with τηρέω expressed as the infinitive of purpose — “make every effort to keep” — reinforcing the urgency of actively preserving the unity the Spirit has already established.
  24. John 13:35 (NIV).

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