What Does Ephesians 4:5 Mean?

(5) **One Lord, one faith.**—From the idea of “the calling,” the Apostle passes naturally to Him who calls—the “one Lord”—and to the method of His calling to Himself, first, by the “one faith,” and then by the “one baptism” at which profession of that one faith is made. It is on the indwelling of Christ in each heart by faith that the spiritual unity of all Christians—primarily with Him, secondarily with one another—depends; and that spiritual unity is “put on” in baptism (Galatians 3:27), in which we are “buried with Him and risen again” (Colossians 2:12), growing into the likeness of His death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5). Again we note that, with but few exceptions, all Christians, even in the divided condition of the Church, are still united in the “one baptism;” and if we look to such expressions of the one faith as are contained in the baptismal profession (*e.g., *of the Apostles’ Creed), it is clear that our divisions, great as they are, turn mainly on the fourth subsidiary Article on the “Holy Catholic Church,” and not on the three primary Articles of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In these the mass of Christendom has still one faith.