Catholic Commentary
The Call to Walk Worthily in Unity
1I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called,2with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love,3being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1–3 calls believers to conduct themselves worthy of their divine calling through humility, gentleness, and patience, actively maintaining the spiritual unity already given by the Holy Spirit through the bond of peace. Paul grounds this ethical appeal in his own suffering as a prisoner in Christ, modeling the humble entreaty rather than authoritative command he prescribes.
Unity isn't something the Church creates—it's something the Church must actively guard through the daily grind of humility, patience, and love.
Verse 1: The Prisoner Who Pleads Paul opens with a striking self-identification: "I, the prisoner in the Lord." This is not incidental autobiography. Writing almost certainly from Roman captivity (c. AD 61–63), Paul grounds his moral appeal not in apostolic authority alone but in suffering borne in the Lord — that is, suffered as a direct consequence of his proclamation of the Gospel to the Gentiles (cf. 3:1). The Greek parakalō ("I beg/urge") is the language of pastoral entreaty rather than command; Paul models the very humility he is about to prescribe. The appeal is made to believers who have already been theologically situated in chapters 1–3 as recipients of an extraordinary calling (klēsis): chosen before the foundation of the world (1:4), adopted as sons (1:5), sealed with the Holy Spirit (1:13), and incorporated into the one Body of Christ (2:16). The word axios ("worthily") implies a correspondence of weight — one's manner of life (peripateō, literally "to walk," a Semitic idiom for moral conduct) must bear weight commensurate with the dignity of what God has done. This is not salvation by merit; it is the moral seriousness of grace received.
Verse 2: The Virtues of Unity Paul names four interlocking virtues in rapid succession. Tapeinophrosynē ("lowliness" or "humility") was, in the Greco-Roman world, a term of contempt — associated with servility and social inferiority. Paul, following Christ, radically revalues it as the foundational Christian disposition (cf. Phil 2:3). Praütēs ("meekness/gentleness") is not weakness but power under control — the quality attributed to Moses (Num 12:3) and claimed by Christ Himself (Matt 11:29). Makrothymia ("patience" or "long-suffering") is the willingness to bear delays, provocations, and the failures of others without retaliation or despair. John Chrysostom noted that this virtue is specifically relational — it is patience not with circumstances but with persons. The participial phrase "bearing with one another in love" (anechomenoi allēlōn en agapē) specifies the arena where all four virtues operate: the daily friction of communal life. The en agapē is crucial — it is not mere tolerance or indifference but the active, willing endurance of the other out of love. Notably, agapē here recalls the great hymn of 1 Corinthians 13, where love "bears all things" and "endures all things."
Verse 3: Eagerness, Not Passivity The verb spoudazontes ("being eager/making every effort") is strong and urgent — the same word used in 2 Timothy 2:15 for the diligent handling of Scripture. Unity is not a static inheritance simply to be admired; it must be actively kept (tērein). Yet Paul says "keep," not "create" — the unity already exists as a gift of the Spirit (it is "the unity of the Spirit"), established in the one Baptism, one Lord, one faith he will enumerate in verses 4–6. What believers must guard, through the virtues of verse 2, is the bond of peace (syndesmos tēs eirēnēs) — the living ligament that holds the body together. In Colossians 3:14, Paul calls love itself the syndesmos tēs teleiotētos, the "bond of perfection." Peace here is not the absence of conflict but the shalom of right relationship — with God and, inseparably, with one another.
Catholic tradition sees in these three verses a microcosm of ecclesiology: the Church is simultaneously a divine gift and a human vocation. The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (§13) insists that the unity of the People of God is not merely sociological cohesion but a participation in the very unity of the Triune God — a communion (koinonia) that must be visibly expressed. Paul's exhortation finds its deepest grounding here: to fracture ecclesial peace through pride, impatience, or contempt is to act against the nature of the Church herself.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2219, §1827) connects the virtue of charity with the patient bearing of one another, rooting it in the theological virtue infused at Baptism. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 136) treats makrothymia as a part of fortitude — it takes genuine courage to bear with difficult persons without abandoning love.
St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on Ephesians (Homily 11), observes that Paul places humility first because it is the root from which all the other virtues grow: "As a building is not solid unless it has a good foundation, so neither is a Christian unless he is humble." Pope John Paul II, in Ut Unum Sint (§21), quoted this Pauline passage directly in his appeal for Christian unity, noting that "the unity willed by God can be attained only through the adherence of all to the content of revealed faith in its entirety." The Catholic reading thus holds together two truths: unity is already given in the Spirit, and it must be perpetually re-enacted in love.
Contemporary Catholic life is fractured in ways Paul would recognize: ideological divisions within parishes, the hardening of camps around liturgical preferences, the erosion of charity in online discourse between Catholics themselves. These three verses cut directly against the culture of polemics. Paul does not ask for agreement on every disputed question before extending patient love; he asks for eagerness — active, energetic effort — to preserve what the Spirit has already given.
Practically, this might mean choosing not to weaponize a doctrinal disagreement in a parish meeting; it might mean staying present to a difficult family member at the Sunday table rather than retreating into self-righteous silence. For Catholic leaders — priests, catechists, parents — verse 1 is particularly pointed: Paul's authority is credible because it is clothed in suffering and entreaty, not domination. The peripateō — the daily walk — reminds us that the unity of the Church is not preserved in documents alone but in ten thousand small acts of forbearance, humility, and love enacted in ordinary time.