"4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift."
Ephesians 4:4-7
We note, then, that Paul moves from doctrine to the practical outworking of that doctrine in the demonstration of the unity that God has created. That is to say, the unity of the Spirit as created by God Himself, is to be preserved by the exercise of the virtues mentioned in 2 - lowliness and meekness, long-suffering and forbearing one another in love. This indicates the real direction in which desires and hopes of Christian unity should go. It is a question of realising our position in Christ, and entering into the fullness of our inheritance in Him. It is in this context that unity is possible as an experience. The recovery, therefore, of unity which has been so tragically lost, lies in the recovery of the true values of the Faith and of the vocation wherewith we are called. We are bound to concede that this approach of Paul's is very different from what the Ecumenical Movement has seemed to stress in its programme for the unity of the Church today. For it seems to reverse the Pauline order, emphasising outward, organisational unity, which they think will bring about the inward spiritual unity for which so many long. It is no part of the exposition of Paul's words here to go into a long excursus about the Ecumenical Movement and the flaws in its fundamental arguments. Statements have been made in past years about this, in the Congregational Record Letters from April-June 1966 and March 1967. Arguments are made fully in these documents for any to see if they can lay hands on back copies.