“Becoming What We Are”

Let's take our Bibles please and turn to the Book of Ephesians, Chapter 4, we have been there, we will be there for another week or two and then we'll go back to the first chapter of this book and walk the rest of our way through it.  We are learning together what it is to be a church. We will always be learning that, that's just the way life is.

I want to read the few verses we're looking at, it is on Page 977 in your pew Bible if you want to follow along there, we're only looking at verses 3-6, and then I want to be transparently real. I know of no better place to be real than the safety of the church, but in its reality sometimes I know of no more dangerous place to be real than in the church.  It is because we have false definitions, false expectations of what the church is and what Christians are, so may God teach us by His Spirit some truth by the Word of God this morning.

Ephesians Chapter 4 beginning with Verse 3:  [interrupting the middle of a sentence, I realize that, but let's do it anyway]

Eph 4:3  eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.   [That's His command to us in this passage, at least one of them]

Eph 4:4  There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call--

Eph 4:5  one Lord, one faith, one baptism,

Eph 4:6  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Now, I bet if you were asked to pick the theme of those verses of scripture you wouldn't have a hard time picking it out, would you? It's the oneness of God and the oneness of his church or unity among God's people.  But the church is full of hypocrites!  Can I get an Amen?  [Laughter]  that is an excuse for some who have never been to church not to go and for some who used to go to church not to go.  I have never been anywhere in my life that the place wasn't full of hypocrites.  Most football coaches I had were hypocrites, especially in high school.  Most of them were fat, overweight, drank beer and smoked cigarettes and they were coaching a bunch of young boys how to be athletes!  What would you call that? If it is not hypocritical, it's stupid.  What makes you want to run and crash into people at the risk of your neck for some guy who is fat and can't walk around the block without having to sit down and take oxygen?  That's being hypocritical.  It happens in the workplace and it happens everywhere else.  Sometimes the issue of humanity gets in our way because we don't understand the work of God on earth.  It is his mercy that he doesn’t annihilate His fallen creatures.  And, for some reason, it is His mercy that once he saves us, He leaves us here for the sake of others who will believe through our testimony.  John 17, that's what He prayed.  He has justified every single person who has placed their faith in Christ; they are fully and perfectly saved.  They will never in their lives, in one sense, be more saved than they are and were the day they were converted.  However, there is the essence, not only of justification, but sanctification, which means you are becoming holy practically.  You are growing from a babe in Christ to maturity in Christ.  By the way, that type of growth won't even cease when you get to heaven.  Now, you won't have to battle with sin in heaven, you won't have to overcome bad habits in heaven, but you will have a positive growth because the finite "us" will never exhaust the infinite God and that excites me about heaven.  There is going to be a new heaven and a new earth and I think that new earth is a whole of creation.  I'm wondering if I'll finally get to be an astronaut in heaven.  Wouldn't that be cool?  I mean, we've got an eternity, so why not have an expansive universe to explore that is perfect.  It'd be great, wouldn't' it?  Well, that's not today's subject.  Today's subject is "we're here" and frankly we're really hard to put up with some days and we don't like each other some days.

Please, please, never let the ongoing work in one of God's children or yourself keep you from God.  You will not go to heaven based on some individual other than Christ who was the only perfect human. You should not let someone's imperfections in the church keep you from that One, Christ.  There are a thousand excuses to lose faith in God because of His faithless or unfaithful church.  Can I give you a few, please, that are extremely personal to me?

I remember getting a phone call when I was a sophomore in college.  God had radically rearranged my life and called me into ministry.  One of the men I looked up to was our next door neighbor.  He was a well known pastor, very effective, as well as a chaplain on the local police department.  My mother called me all shaken up, I don't know if this was the day of or the day later, and she said, "Tony, I've got something to tell you."  She proceeded to tell me that dad had gone to Deacon's meeting at our church and that she was at home doing something in the kitchen, as mom always was, and the doors were not locked, which they never were if we were at home, and all at once she hears noise, somebody yanking the door open, screaming to the top of their lungs running in saying, "He shot me, he shot me, he's after me, and he'll kill us both." And that was the pastor that lived next door.  He had shot his wife, to kill her [he's a bad shot because he didn't kill her] tried to make it look like a break-in and was leaving because he was involved in all kinds of immorality and wanted a new and different life.  Well, my mother was not harmed that day.  She took her, ironically, next door and on the other side, our other neighbor was the Chief of the Police Department in our community who is a believer and his wife is a nurse, and they saved the woman's life.  Mom called me and explained all that to me, and I can remember hanging up the phone and getting down on my knees in my college dormitory and weeping, because I wanted a model; I wanted somebody I could look up to. 

You see, it wasn't the first time it had happened in my life.  The pastor that baptized me, there's a handful of people in this church who know him and know the church.  I was playing with some friends in the church back lot once and one of them said something about why the pastor left.  I said, "No, that can't be the truth." So I went home and asked mom and dad about it.  I didn't know why they began to let us stay home on Wednesday nights during business meetings.  It was because the people of God were acting so ugly they didn't want their children to see it.  You see, the pastor had developed a drinking problem, and also got involved with a woman in the church and they ran off together.  That was the man that baptized me.  I could be really ticked off at the church.  I could be ticked off at God.  I mean, Why?  Why, come on, God, don't you have the power to do something about that? And then after a 20-year friendship, my very best friend in life, who was a pastor, committed adultery with his best friend's widow. Shortly after his death he was involved in an adulterous affair with his best friend's widow. That  is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You say, Oh, Tony, don't say it like that!  Well, can we let the Bible say it to us? Jesus came, he lived a perfect life, he died on the cross to forgive us of or sins, he was buried, he was raised the third day to prove he could do that, he walked on the earth for 40 days; 10 days later the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost.  He filled and shook the place where the people were and filled the people.  Peter went out and preached and 3000 people that day were saved, just like that!  Man, that's terrific!  Just a few chapters later they are at each other's throats because this group of widows isn't getting any food and this group of widows is.  Before that, Ananias and Sapphira saw that Barnabas got a lot of notoriety because he sold a piece of property and gave the money to the apostles.  So they connived together, they sell a piece of property, they keep money back for themselves and they make it look like they give all the church the money, and you know what God did?  They were lying to the church and to the Holy Spirit of God.  And I'm glad God doesn't do this to all liars in the church. He killed them on the spot! Oooh!  That'll make you back up, won't it? They were lying to the Apostle Peter.

Boy, aren't you glad you're not that way.  Have you sinned since you've been a Christian?  Have you sinned greatly since you've been a Christian?  Is it really possible to do that?  Why in the world in a thing on unity would I do this? Because the church, in the Bible, is the church born perfectly, fully, by the grace of God, yet while we are here the Holy Spirit is among us, and in the church, according to the Bible, there are moral deficiencies, Ananias and Sapphira, the case of incest and other things related through the New Testament churches.  There is hypocrisy even among the leaders.  So Peter had to be confronted over his own hypocrisy.  There is fallout.  What about the verse "Demos hath forsaken me having loved this present world and has departed unto Thessalonica."  There were arguments even between leadership.  Now, won't that make you want to become a church member?  Kind of makes you want to be one of us, doesn't it?

Oh, that's not the whole story and you know that, but that is part of the story. 

Ephesians Chapter 4, Verse 3.

Has God failed?  By no means! It just stands to show us God saves, all the glory goes to Him, none of the glory goes to us and the bigger God is in our mind, the bigger His grace is in our hearts, the closer we will stay to him.

Unity is the them, and "One" is used 7 times in this passage of scripture.  7 times.  Now just to make sure I put it in context, have you ever been to a meeting in church, if your churches had business meetings, to where people got ugly? Come one, you bunch of wimps! [Laughter]  Yeah.  Have you ever had an argument with anybody in church?  Do you ever think they're just off their rocker?  Have you ever been called names? If you want that job just be a pastor; then you get to calling names issue.  One is used 7 times; 3 times the word "one" refers to God, to the three persons of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.  Four times the word "one" refers to us, the believer, in relationship to this Triune God.  So the first point I want to see is we are what we are because God is what God is.  In this passage of scripture you have to recognize there is the truth of what God has made us in Christ, there is the real and radical truth of what we presently are that God is still working with; it is very similar to this. When I was saved I was completely saved, but while I'm living this completely saved life, I can still sin.  Whether all those people I told you were true believers, I don't know.  I am convinced my friend is, that committed adultery with his wife, I am totally convinced of that.  We can fall.  We saw it in the Bible and we better beware of pride. "Let him who thinks he stand take heed lest he fall."  But it is sin in the body of Christ that causes us to have disunity.  So God first lays the groundwork to tell us what we are so we can become what we are.  What is the reason for this unity?  There is one body because there is one Spirit.  We are what we are because God is God.  There is one body because there is one spirit.  Verse 4: that's exactly what God is saying, it's simple:

Eph 4:4  There is one body and one Spirit--

1 Corinthians Chapter 12 Verse 13 tells us that "by one spirit we were all

baptized into one body."

When you become a Christian you are baptized in the Holy Spirit, Jesus said that would happen.  When that happens you are forever sealed by God's grace and you are a part of one body.  Each local church is not a part of the Body of Christ, they are a representation locally on earth of the heavenly Body of Christ that we will all be one day from every tribe, tongue and nation.  There is also one hope, one faith and one baptism because there is one Lord.  Now we see that in verse, as we go on and read further, it says….

Eph 4:4  There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call-- [Now that call is seated in what God teaches us in Chapter 1; that he chose us in Him from before the foundation of the world. It's the call that He gives through the voice of the preacher that causes this to be real in our lives.  You are called by God.]

…just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.

Eph 4:5  one Lord, one faith, one baptism,

Now, how do I tie these to the Son?  There is one hope because Jesus is the blessed hope.  Paul told the Colossians that Christ in you is the hope of glory, and that's what the Ephesians were hoping for.  Look over in Chapter 1 for just a minute please.  They were hoping for the day, they understood this gospel to have a permanent reality and in Ephesians Chapter 1, Verse 4:

Eph 1:4  even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

Now…I'm not there yet.  Positionally I am.  Before God as He sees me, I am holy and blameless before Him in the Heavenlies.  But as Tony is right now, I've got lots of unholiness and lots of blameless spots.  I still can lose my temper.  You can name them, you've got them yourself.  I've got to stop using myself as the only sin object lesson.  Here, come up, let me pick somebody to use as a sin object lesson. [Laughter] But, that calling that He's given us, that salvation He's given us, is that one day we will be before Him and one day we will be holy and blameless.  It's expressed  another way, in Verse 12. 

Eph 1:12  so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

We are already to the praise of His glory as He's defeated our sin and defeated Satan, but one day in Heaven, as he manifests all creation, we long to share His glory as Jesus prayed for us in John 17 because that  is our highest hope, and that hope is in Christ because he is our blessed hope, we hope for his return.  There is one faith because we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  There is one object of faith and that is Jesus.  God wants to be known but God is only known through Christ and there is one baptism because we have all been baptized into Christ.

And there is also… let me repeat that.  There is one body because there is one spirit, there is one hope, one faith, one baptism because there is one Lord and there is one Christian family because there is one Father.  We see that in Verse 6.

Eph 4:6  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Paul wants us to know the nature of God.  He wants us to know God because the nature of God is what is reflected in the church.  What you are by being baptized in the Spirit is you are given life in Him.  What you have done by believing in Jesus is acknowledging that He is the way, the truth and the life, and the one who can forgive your sins, the only one.  What you have done in bowing in submission to Him is to call God in Heaven, who is mighty over all, Father.  You are what you are because God is what God is. 

Now, how do we begin to apply that?  Those seven "ones" those 7 unities are fundamental unities on which the Christian faith and life are based, but I guess here's the most difficult point of what we have to look at.  Actual unity came at great cost to God.  Visible unity comes from great work by us.  You would have to be blind not to admit the difference in how the Bible describes the church as one and how the church displays herself in current time as one.  Now, we've all had high points to where there are times of great unity in the church, revival, love overflowing.  We've all seen those points of great contention.  But the Bible has never wavered that the church is one.  You can no more divide the church than you can divide God.  But, as John Stott said, "It sure appears that we have succeeded in doing in the impossible by dividing the indivisible."  Denominations galore.  Fights within denominations.  Fights within churches.  Disturbances.  How is that? 

Well, first of all, after Paul lays down, or before he lays down these strong voices for unity, basing the very unity of the church on what God has done in us and for us, He's baptized us in the Spirit, he's given us one hope, He's given us one faith and that faith is not my faith that I believed, actually that faith represents what Jude called "the faith once for all delivered to the saints."  There is not another faith to believe in and there is one baptism and that baptism is into Christ, and one father over the whole family.  It's unified.  We are what we are because of what God is.  But then, don't you find it strange? I find Verse 3 a strange verse, look at it.  Now, he's telling us that these are true things about the church, you are one as God is one, then he says:

"Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit."

He admits again the unity the church has is of the Spirit of God; it is created by Him, but we are to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  Oh that at first confuses, but brings me such peace.  There are things God commands me to do I cannot do because He's going to see to it that it gets done.  I am to seek to maintain something He has done.  Now, wait a minute, if He's done it, it's already done, isn't it, so why would I need to maintain it?  Have you read Philippians 2?  "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure."  Oh, wait a minute, I thought God saved me, I don't think I have to work that out! Oh, wait a minute, we've got to have a discussion, we've got to straighten that out, He's got a couple of things confused here.  Now, God, is He like blind to what we're like?  Can He not look down on the earth and see what the church is like? Oh, yeah!  I'm so happy you came, because of that I can be a member of it.  If he demanded perfect union and perfect people, now let's just close our books and go home.  We are simply people who by the grace of God who have been brought to a faith in Christ, struggling on our way, slipping and falling a lot because we are not here to look at a person, we are here to look at God.  People will always let us down, sometimes hugely so, but God will not.  That's why we learn by faith.  We struggle through these things and we look at the discontinuity  between a promised unity and a dis-unified or un-unified church, what's going on here?  Take a look at it.  In verse 3 He gives us a command:  "Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." 

The Bible, what that first is, is an admission that though there is this promised unity by God, I am aware, God is saying through Paul, there is not a visible unity on earth and so I want you to seek to maintain that as best you can to show the world what heaven might be like, but it admits that that unity won't always be visible because we have to be eager to maintain it.  And though it is there, amazingly we are asked to do this.  To maintain the unity that God's Spirit created.  How do you do that?  Well….. the burden, my friend, as far as this verse is concerned, falls on you.  It falls on your shoulders, it falls on mine.

Go back to what we looked at a few weeks ago in Verse 2.  We've been called to walk worthy of the calling to which we have been called, how do we do that? How do we maintain this unity? Verse 2:

Eph 4:2  with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,

Oh…. So we look at Jesus the crucified one and realize when he was reviled he did not revile again, when he was hit he did not strike back.  He rested in his Father's care, so you see the bigger my Savior is to me, the less offenses are to me.  The bigger the Cross of Christ is to you, the less offenses are to you.  Heaven is as good as now.  You're going to go there and so we look at these light and momentary afflictions.  What? We're going to gripe about some irritant  in the church when some of our forebears in the Christian faith were burned at the stake for their faith?  You know, we could be called Christian sissies today, because we've got it so easy, and frankly that's probably why there are some divisions.  We don't have enough to stir us up to unify.  Amazingly we're asked to do this by being humble, gentle, patient and bear with one another all in love.  Do you know what the word eager means?  The way it's written it is emphatic.  And it means basically if you are going to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, that you spare no effort at gaining and maintaining this unit.  The way it is written in the present tense, it means it is something we will always be about doing with diligence. One writer said, "The meaning of the word is hard to grasp, the flavor of it that someone in this day would have understood.  He says it has the issue of meaning your whole person.  That it involves your will and your sentiment and your reason, your physical strength, your total attitude with the essence of do it now!"  Now that's not going to eliminate bad things happening in the church, but what it will do, it will show the world a picture of how the church rightly deals with troubles.  The world doesn’t look at a church and think, "Oh, that's a perfect place, I want to be there."  They want to see people who live in the same real world they do, but handle their problems differently because they're secure in the grace of God and we can do that corporately.

Do you think personal growth in Christ is hard? God is warning us that corporate growth towards unity will be difficult and it takes the work of every single person in the church to have that.

John Stott says of this unity, that it's not a unity at the cost of the truth, and I quote him. "We cannot possibly foster a unity which pleases God either if we deny the doctrine of the Trinity, or if we have not come personally to know God the Father through the reconciling work of His Son Jesus Christ and by the power of the Spirit.  It is not a unity that says, we don't believe anything, it's a unity that says 'based on this truth we come together unto Christ."

So why do we do it, and a little bit more about how we can do it.  What's our call as a church?  Our call as a church is to show what God has done.  Our call as a church is to show what God has done.  People ought to be able to look at us, to look at you, to look at me and at least recognize something different in our lives.  Dave Abernatha prays with us on Sunday mornings before everything starts around here and he said he can remember saying, going by the church, that I think his wife had maybe taken him to visit to the Wednesday night dinner, he said, "Now, when we have children, I want our kids to have what they've got."  Dave wasn't saved yet.  He had a lot of things, he said he wasn't happy in his heart, and those people were.  That was a good picture of the Body of Christ.

So, how do we show what God has done?

1.                 We have to know it's not easy!  There are some days you are going to walk in this church and it's going to feel so loving and you're going to feel so loving towards other people, and there are other days you're going to walk in here, your countenance is going to be so down because something went wrong at home or at work, you really don't want to see any body.  You ought to feel the emotional confusion that goes on when you wake up on Sunday morning and don't want to go to church, and you're the pastor!  [Laughter]  That really provides some emotional dilemmas.  It's not easy.  God was so right to tell us that.  It's work!  You've got to be eager to do it all the time.

2.                 It comes from bowing in humility before this great and Triune God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, who worked for us this salvation by his free grace, who has taken us into Him at great cost to Him.  The actual unity in the church came at the cost of God's Son.  The visible unity in this world as we show what God has done comes from great work by us, but it is not a work of legalism, it is a work of love and devotion as we recognize the greatness of this God.  One of the Christians' and the church's chiefest problems is their God is too small.  God is God!  He is sovereign over all things.  I can rest in Him.  And when we bow before Him in humility, then we are ready to learn his truth, that's maturity.  The passage deals with that next.  Then we're ready to love one another; that is unity.  But the question the passage asks of us is how eager are we?