# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1906_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

8 Proceedings of the twenty-first convention

same. But here again a twofold interpretation is possible. For spirit can be understood either in a purely external sense, as human soul-activity, and then unity of the spirit would simply be unanimity, concord, and to that the Apostle also exhorts. But that appears here in the Epistle to the Ephesians to be too empty of content. Since we find that Paul in particular so often uses the expression pneuma in the sense that it denotes the new life worked by the Holy Spirit, which is in conflict with the flesh, this must be the matter of which he speaks here too.

As parallel passages in which the word spirit is used in just this sense we can cite the following: Gal. 5:16: "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh"; 6:8: "He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting"; 5:22: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance."

If we now ask what the content of this unity of the Spirit is, the short answer is: faith, love, hope. That is what the Holy Spirit works. Paul presents it likewise in 1 Cor. 13. The immediate context and the content of the first three chapters also yield this.

Paul continues according to our text: "There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." He adds these words to show how self-evident it is that Christians are diligent to preserve the unity in the Spirit. But when we look at the passage more closely, the intention seems to emerge from it of showing that it is precisely this which makes the Christian: faith, love, hope. That is what is characteristic of the Christian, and therefore we are to preserve the unity in it.

The Apostle speaks first of the one body. That is the thought which dominates the first three chapters. Having begun to speak of the blessings which God has poured out upon His Church, he already comes to it in chap. 1:3–14, but hints at the thought only from afar, namely in v. 11, where he explains that, as the Jews, so also the Gentiles have come into the inheritance. After the great hymn, chap. 1:3–14, he turns to the Gentile Christians in order to explain to them what has been said (v. 15) and to apply it to them. He asks God to give them the knowledge of the greatness of their salvation, which God has prepared for them with the same power that was shown in Christ. And what is that? God has raised Christ, whom He from the dead