Ephesians 4:2

2. With It must be specially noted that St. Paul here specifies the virtues conducive to the unity which he is preparing to enforce.

Lowliness The reverse of the love of “pre-eminence,” imputed by St. John to Diotrephes, (3 John 1:9,) the greatest of all sources of dissension in Churches. Chrysostom truly says that it is a self-undervaluation, even under consciousness of higher worth. The greater the man, the truer the magnanimity that consents to become nothing in order to common unity.

Trench, Alford, and Eadie very inconsiderately deny this statement of Chrysostom; the last going even so far as to say that such a lowliness would be mere simulation. Not at all. The apostle does not prescribe a false intellectual self-estimate, or a pretended one. He prescribes a temper and a will, which, while truly conscious of an entire superiority in fact existing, is willing, for holy ends, to accept a lowly estimate or “a back seat.”

Meekness, with longsuffering As lowliness implies a cheerful submission to a lower rank, so meekness implies a serene self-possession under immediate insult or injury, and longsuffering a calm endurance under the pressure of permanent wrong. These are passive virtues, which paganism underrated, and Christianity, if it did not first transmute into virtues, did yet bring out into a new and beautiful lustre. Though passive virtues, they imply in their true nature greater strength of character, and greater real magnanimity, often, than the more showy and turbulent heroisms. Having these virtues in full possession, then forbearing one another will be easy. The forbearing will be the simple manifestation of the three antecedent graces of the heart. And when this forbearing is truly exercised, the true result is what the apostle is here preparing for, divine unity.