The Perfect Portrait
Paul doesn’t waste any time.
Right out of the gate in Ephesians 4, he gives believers a charge. A commission. A call to live a life worthy of what God has placed inside of you. With humility. With gentleness. With patience. Bearing with one another in love.
That is a tall order.
And if we are honest, most of us read those verses and feel the weight of them. Because living that way consistently, in every season, at every level, is not something we can manufacture on our own. It requires something deeper than discipline. It requires a model.
So Paul gives us one.
By the time we get to verses 8 through 10, we are no longer just looking at the charge. We are looking at the portrait. And the portrait is Jesus.
The same one who descended from the heights of heaven. Who emptied Himself. Who took on flesh and walked among us. Who humbled Himself not once but further, all the way to the cross. Who then ascended far above every power and every principality that exists. And who did not ascend to leave, but ascended so that He could fill all things. Every corner. Every broken place. Every member of His body.
That is the portrait Paul was pointing to all along.
What strikes me about this is the order. Paul commissions us first in verses 1 and 2, and then he paints the picture of the one we are commissioned to look like. As if to say, here is what you are called to, and here is the only one who has ever done it perfectly.
Because everything Paul calls us to in those opening verses, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, flows directly from what Jesus modeled in His descent and His ascent. You cannot separate the commission from the portrait. They belong together.
The life we are called to live can only be lived through humility. Not a surface level, one time humility. But the kind that empties. The kind that pours out. The kind that goes lower when everything in the flesh wants to go higher.
Layered humility. Consistent humility. The kind Jesus wore at every single stage.
And here is what I keep coming back to. Jesus descended so that He could ascend. He emptied Himself so that He could fill everything. He went low so that nothing and no one would be left without His presence.
That is the portrait. That is the standard. And that is the only way the charge of Ephesians 4:1-2 becomes possible in our lives.
Not by trying harder. But by looking longer at the portrait Paul placed right in front of us.
He’s speaking. I’m writing and listening.
The Golden Scribe | MaShani Allen
