Ephesians 4:2-3,13 NASB
[2] with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, [3] being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
[13] until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
Colossians 3:14 NASB
Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.
The word “attain” in Eph. 4:13, is a word that means “to come up against,” or to “come face to face” with something. It carries the idea of “arriving.” In this verse it does not mean that you get something you don’t have. In light of what the other verses say that I listed above, it means coming face-to-face with something that’s already true. Notice in Ephesians 4:3 it says that we are to be diligent to PRESERVE the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. It’s not that you create unity, but that you preserve the unity that has obviously already been created in Christ. In verse two of Ephesians 4 he talks about humility and gentleness, and patience, showing tolerance for one another in love being the way to preserve the unity that Christ created. Colossians 3 says to put on love which is the perfect bond of unity. Again, Ephesians 4:3 talks about the bond of peace. Obviously, whenever love prevails, peace prevails because love does not tolerate the spirit of division and divisiveness. Bonds simply hold things together.
I will come back to unity in just a minute, but to fully understand what he saying we must look at the whole of verse 13 of Ephesians 4. Let me give you an amplified translation of that verse. “Until we all arrive into the unity of the faith and of the true revelation knowledge of the son of God so that we began to manifest spiritual maturity which is always measured by what the fullness of Christ looks like. Paul doesn’t say here that we grow in the accumulation of the fullness of Christ, because that would contradict other scriptures like Ephesians 1:23 which says, “the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. look at what Ephesians 4:10 says, “He who descended is Himself also He ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.” In His ascension Jesus poured out His spirit on all flesh, and according to Colossians 2:10, we have been made full in Christ. He, the one who is in all, is continually filling us with the fresh fullness of His life. Think as if we were pipes open on both ends and freshwater is continually being pushed through. It’s not like the pipe gets empty and then gets filled again, but instead it’s like a pipe that is staying perpetually filled with fresh water. Because you are in Christ you carry the fullness of the Holy Spirit and therefore the fullness of Jesus. As we grow in our knowledge of him according to Ephesians 4:13, we come face-to-face with the fullness of Christ so that we can manifest His Fullness more and more. This is what spiritual maturity looks like; it looks like an ever increasing manifestation of the fullness of Jesus that you have been filled with since the moment you became a Christian.
Now back to the unity issue. We were born into unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and one of the primary manifestations of the fullness of Jesus being released through the believer is the walk of love, that is the perfect bond preserving unity. When you were born again you were born into union with Jesus who is love. He doesn’t just have love, or do loving things; He is love. One of the great characteristics of the fall of man is the tendency towards division, divisiveness, and warring among ourselves. That is what the Old Man looks like, but that is not who you are as a New Creation. You are in Christ and you carry His fullness, and to the degree that you are manifesting the fullness of Jesus, division and warring among ourselves as believers is intolerable. When you’re being controlled by the love of Christ, out of your union with Him, then peace, not conflict will prevail. When we talk about manifesting the fullness of Christ we often think in terms of signs and wonders ministry, but I believe that one of the great signs and wonders of the New creation is the preserving of the miraculous unity that Jesus placed us all in when we became the body of Christ. People often think that unity is a hard thing to obtain, but the truth is we already have it in Christ, and our battle is not one of obtaining, but of preserving what Jesus has already obtained for those who are in union with Him.