OUR SEVENFOLD UNITY
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on April 23, 2023 under 2023 |
Bethany Bible Church Sunday Sermon Message; April 23, 2023 from Ephesians 4:4-6
Theme: Our unity as believers is preserved by keeping ourselves grounded upon seven unchanging realities.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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Today, we talk about something very precious and worth preserving. That ‘something’, dear brothers and sisters, is our unity in Christ.
Jesus once told His disciples,
“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
As His followers—in our relationships with one another within the contexts of our church, in our workplaces, in our homes, and in our times of fellowship with each other—we’re to prove to the watching world that we belong to Him through our union of love. But such unity can’t be convincing to the world if it can be brought about by merely human means. Instead, it must be a unity that’s based on something ‘out of this world’. It can only be brought about—in an enduring way—by focusing on the spiritual realities that are ours in Christ.
And that brings us to our passage this morning in Ephesians 4.
The apostle Paul had been writing for the first three chapters of this letter about the rich spiritual blessings that are ours through a relationship with Jesus Christ by faith. In Chapter 4, he wrote;
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (vv. 1-3).
He urged his brothers and sisters in Christ to conduct their daily lives—that is, to “walk”—in a way that is consistent with their high calling. And among the things that he calls them to do is to work hard to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”. It wasn’t their job to ‘create’ that unity. The basis of that unity had already been established for them as a gift of God’s grace through Christ. Instead, their job was simply to “keep” it and continue living in it. By the enabling power of the Holy Spirit in them, they were to ‘bear with one another in love’, and keep close to one another in ‘the bond of peace’.
That’s our task too. And how are we to do it? I praise God that we’re not left to wonder about it. Paul goes on in verses 4-6 to tell us what the basis of that unity is:
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all (vv. 4-6).
What beautifully balanced, short, almost rhythmic statements these are! Did you know that some Bible scholars have even suggested that Paul was reciting the words to an early church hymn?—something that was to be sung together and remembered together? In these words, Paul told his readers about seven spiritual realities that we cannot create. Rather, they are given to us by God and are made true for us in Christ. They are spiritual facts that will never change. And it’s on the basis of these seven things that we are—in actual fact—forever united to one another in the sight of God. Our task is to work out our relationships with one another in the light of them.
As Paul here shows us, our unity as believers is preserved by keeping ourselves grounded upon these seven unchanging spiritual realities. Nothing else could ever thoroughly unite such diverse people as we are except through these seven things—with Jesus in the center of it all. And it’s by keeping ourselves united through them that we show the world that Jesus is alive and that we truly belong to Him.
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So then; let’s look at these seven spiritual realities one at a time. Let’s consider how being grounded upon them helps us to maintain our unity with one another. First, consider that …
1. WE ARE ONE BODY.
In verse 4, Paul writes, “There is one body …” In fact, in the original language, the words “There is” do not appear. It’s as if he lays it down in a straight-forward, emphatic way: “One body!” Period. Just one. And what body is he talking about? He’s obviously talking about the body of Christ—the church of all His redeemed people throughout the ages.
Look at what he wrote in Ephesians 1:22-23. He said that God the Father has placed all things under the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ;
… and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22-23).
He is our divine head; and we are His body. He is not complete without us; and we cannot function without Him. We may be diverse parts of the body. As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 12, you may be an eye, someone else an ear, someone else a hand, someone else a foot, and I may be a nose. We all have different gifts and different functions. But Jesus doesn’t have many bodies. He has just one body—and we are all necessary parts of it. Paul wrote,
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:12-13).
And just as Jesus is incomplete without us, and just as we cannot function without Him, so each one of us is incomplete and cannot function without each other. We have been united to Jesus and joined together by God the Father into one body for a purpose—and that’s so that we can together provide what each other needs. As Paul puts it in Ephesians 4:15-16, it’s so that we …
speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love (Ephesians 4:15-16).
This is a spiritual reality that profoundly unites us—that there is only “one body” and no other. We all constitute just one body with all the believers who ever came before us, and with all who will ever come after us, and with all the ones that are sitting next to us today. We will always and forever be “one body”—even on into eternity. So then; if we ever have a hard time getting along with one another, we should stop and remember what is true of us. We are one body—with Jesus Christ as our divine Head—all joined together as that which is absolutely necessary for one another.
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Now; one single body may be constituted of several different body parts. But in order to truly be a body, they all must have only one single life flowing through them. And the same is true of us together as the body of Christ. This leads us to another basis for our unity; and that’s that …
2. WE HAVE ONE SPIRIT.
“There is one body”, Paul tells us; “and one Spirit …” The ‘Spirit’ that he is talking about, though, is not our individual inner human spirit; but rather is the one and only Holy Spirit who has been given to us. When Jesus ascended to the Father after being raised from the dead, He sent the Holy Spirit to minister to us in His place. And there isn’t one Holy Spirit indwelling you, and a different Holy Spirit dwelling in me. Nor is there more of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, and less of the Holy Spirit dwelling in me. We all share the same indwelling Helper—the same divine Holy Spirit—the whole Person—indwelling all of us as believers equally. We are one body—with the same life force flowing through us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Look at Ephesians 1:13-14. In this passage, Paul tells us about what Jesus has done to save us through faith in His shed blood on the cross;
in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory (Ephesians 1:13-14).
We, dear brothers and sisters, are all sealed and guaranteed for eternal glory by the same indwelling Holy Spirit. And what’s more, it’s that same Holy Spirit who works in all of us to empower us and to help us live as the Lord Jesus wants us to live—enabling us to glorify Him together on earth. As Paul went on to say in Ephesians 3:20-21;
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen (3:20-21).
The Holy Spirit is a divine Person. He loves each one of us infinitely; and desires to live the life of Jesus in and through us fully. When we disobey Him or resist Him, the Bible tells us that He is grieved with us. He is able to speak His grief to our consciences, and move us toward repentance and obedience. And do you know what this means? It means that when you and I have differences between us, I can trust the Holy Spirit to speak to you and work in you; and you can trust the Holy Spirit to speak to me and work in me. He is able to help both of us move increasingly toward Christ-like behavior. He is able to help us love one another and bear one another. But it also means that I can rejoice in the ways that Jesus’ life is lived-out in you, and you can rejoice in the ways that Jesus’ life is lived out in me; because it’s the same Holy Spirit mightily at work in us all together.
So; here’s another basis for our unity. We have the same Holy Spirit.
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And look at what else Paul then goes on to say. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling …” And so; another basis of our unity is that …
3. WE SHARE ONE HOPE.
Now; why does he use the unusual phrase, “just as you were called in one hope of your calling”? It’s because he had just been speaking of the Holy Spirit. It’s the Holy Spirit who seals us and guarantees us—as it says in 1:14—for “the redemption of the purchased possession”. Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from our sins—and to bring us into the fullness of His own glory—so that we will share with Him in His eternal inheritance. That’s our high and holy destiny in Christ. That’s our “calling” from God. And it’s the Holy Spirit Himself who indwells in us to protect us, and to preserve us, and to perfect us in this life, and to guarantee that we will ultimately be brought all the way to that glory … and ultimately be presented to Jesus.
And brothers and sisters in Christ; just as you and I have the same Holy Spirit, so also we share in the same hope of our calling. “Hope” here refers to ‘a sure and certain expectation’. It speaks of our guaranteed outcome. We absolutely will—one day—be fully glorified with Jesus! We will be like Him, and will share in His inheritance together forever! I do not have one destiny, and you do not have a different destiny. We share together in but ‘one hope of our calling’ from God the Father—guaranteed to us by the Holy Spirit living in us. As Jesus’ redeemed people—sealed by the Holy Spirit—we cannot fail to be brought into the destiny that Jesus purchased for us by His blood! As Paul puts it in Ephesians 1:9-12 with regard to the Father’s plan for us;
having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory (1:9-12).
So then; we should bear with one another and not give up on one another. You should love me in spite of my failings and foibles; and I should love you in spite of your failings and foibles. We are all called in Christ to “one hope of our calling”; and we are destined—in due time—to be glorified with the glory of Jesus Himself. We can be patient and look forward to each other’s glorification—and to endeavor to keep our unity in the process.
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As we read on to verse 5, we find another basis of our unity. And that is that …
4. WE SERVE ONE LORD.
Paul says that we have “one Lord”. And that means that we have but one Master. I am His bondservant; and, dear brother or sister, so are you. As the Bible tells us, we are not our own. We were bought with a price. And now, we all owe our whole heart’s devotion and obedience to our one and only Lord and Master, Jesus.
When we lose sight of this fact, disunity is the result. There was great disunity among the believers in the church of Corinth. Paul wrote to them—in 1 Corinthians 1—and told them;
For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household, that there are contentions among you. Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1 Corinthians 1:11-13).
They lost sight, you see, of the fact that they didn’t each have their own unique ‘lord’. They had but only one Lord and Master—Jesus; and no other. And unity with each other would only be restored when they each resubmitted themselves to Jesus’ sole lordship over them all.
This always makes me think of what a wonderful invention the old-fashioned ‘pitch pipe’ was. I used to have one because, believe it or not, I used to play the violin. (You can take it from me … and in fact, after hearing me play it, some people got together and did so!) I played violin in a local youth orchestra; and my parents bought me a pitch pipe to go with it. I could blow A on it, and tune up the A string—and then all the other strings from it. It didn’t help me to play very well. But at least it ensured that whatever scratches I made on the violin were in tune with the other instruments in the group. And I believe that, in the same way, the Lordship of Jesus in our lives as believers is our divine “pitch pipe”. If He is my one and only Lord and Master and I obey Him from the heart—and if He is your one and only Lord and Master also, and you also obey Him from the heart—then, to the degree that we are submitted to Him, we will automatically be unified with each other. We’ll be in tune.
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Yet another basis for our unity is in the fact that …
5. WE’RE SAVED THROUGH ONE FAITH.
Paul wrote that there is “one faith”. And this has made Bible teachers and commentators scratch their heads a bit and ask, “What is the nature of the ‘one faith’ that he’s speaking about?” Is it ‘one faith’ in an objective sense? That is, does he mean that there is only one basic, fundamental ‘content of faith’ about Jesus’ saving work for us—given to us in God’s revealed word and expressed in what we call ‘the gospel’—that we all must believe in order to be saved? Or is it ‘one faith’ in a subjective sense? That is, does he mean that we can all enter into a relationship with Jesus only through a personal act of belief in Him and trust in His work on the cross for us?
There’s good reason to believe that both senses are possible. Paul speaks of the unifying power of the objective content of saving faith in Ephesians 4:13; when he writes,
And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God … (4:11-13).
That’s obviously talking about the objective content of our faith—those things which are most surely believed among us. But he also speaks of the unifying power of a subjective, personal faith in what is declared to us in the gospel. In 1:15-16, he wrote;
Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers … (1:15-16).
But here’s the point. You and I—dear brothers and sisters in Christ—can be saved in no other way than by a personal faith in the one and only gospel of Jesus Christ; the faith, as it says in Jude 3, “which was once for all delivered to the saints”. I am not saved by one gospel and you by another. We are saved by only one gospel. And we are not saved in any other way than by a conscious, personal faith in that gospel. There is for us but one faith. This is our unity.
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Similarly, Paul goes on to tell us of another basis of our unity; and that is that …
6. WE RECEIVE ONE BAPTISM.
Paul writes that there is only “one baptism”. And here again, Bible teachers and scholars struggle. Is Paul talking about the spiritual work of the Holy Spirit by which He ‘baptizes’ us into Christ? The Bible tells us that that’s a work that the Holy Spirit does for us when we believe on Jesus. Just as a fabric worker, in ancient times, would dip a piece of cloth into a vat of dye—thus permanently identifying that cloth with the color of that dye; so the Holy Spirit also places us in Christ—thus permanently identifying us (along with all other believers) with Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. Is Paul speaking of that one and only spiritual ‘baptism’ in the life of each believer?
Or is Paul speaking of the ordinance that our Lord commanded us to observe together in the church family? Is he speaking of how each one of us—upon our profession of faith in Jesus—are to publicly declare that faith by being baptized in water? Is he speaking of the fact that we only need to observe that ordinance in our lives—but that it is that one and only ordinance by which we publicly declare our faith to the world?
Personally, I believe that both meanings are involved in Paul’s affirmation of but “one baptism”. You and I are brought into full spiritual identification with the work of Jesus on our behalf in no other way than by the Holy Spirit ‘baptizing’ us into that work. We are united by the common work of the Holy Spirit in baptizing us into Christ. And what’s more, we are also united by the public declaration of our faith in the work of Jesus for us in no other way than by being baptized in water.
It’s this “one baptism” that unifies us. As Paul puts it in Galatians 3:26-28;
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26-28).
If you are a baptized believer in Jesus, and I am a baptized believer in Jesus, then we are united by “one baptism”.
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And there’s one more unchanging spiritual basis for our unity. You might say that it’s the main point of this passage; because all these others lead us to this one great unifying point. In Ephesians 4:6, Paul said they are united to each other by the fact that …
7. WE BELONG TO ONE GOD AND FATHER.
Paul writes that, for us who are in Christ, there is “one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” I don’t worship one god; and you don’t worship another god (which is a thing that’s almost blasphemous to even say). No! We worship but one God—the one true and only God. But more; this one true God—the Creator and Upholder and Possessor of all that is—is also our Father through faith in Jesus. He has adopted us; and now, we are together His children. He is ‘above us all’—that is, all believers—in the sense He is exalted over us and we all worship Him. He is ‘through us all’ in the sense that He is the one who works in us and leads us according to His will. And He is ‘in us all’ in that He is as close to us as He could possibly be—so much so that He makes us His dwelling place.
Now; just think of what a basis of unity this is for us! After Jesus died on the cross for us and rose again, He met Mary the Magdalene in the garden. She was so overjoyed that she clung to Him. But He had a message for His disciples, and told her;
“Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God’” (John 20:17).
He was now their Brother. They were now brethren to Him because they now had the same Father as He.
And we must always remember that that’s now the case for you and me. We are family under one God and Father. We can take this to be the absolute truth from no greater a source than the Lord Jesus Himself. This means that we may have disagreements with each other, and that we may have challenges in our relationships with one another. After all, almost all family members do at times. But we remain united in love with each other, and work hard to protect and preserve our unity with each other; because you are now my brothers and sisters, and I am your brother. We are family members of one God and Father. As the apostle John once put it;
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him (1 John 5:1).
And so, we work out our differences, stay bound to each other, and maintain our unity.
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What a bond of unity we have! “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” And do you notice that all members of the Triune Godhead are involved in helping us with this unity? We have one Father, one Lord, and one Spirit. They all three are one; and they all help us to be one also.
So; dear brothers and sisters in Christ; let’s show the world that we truly belong to Jesus by endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. We have an unchanging ‘sevenfold’ basis for doing so!
AE
