Sunday, June 8, 2024 Summer Session 2

Unity in Ephesians 2 and the Group Project Discussion

Alright, so, that was a big assignment, but I saw for the majority of you, you were able to get into the group project, kind of begin talking about the various references that you see in Ephesians 2 that are really talking about unity, and then beyond just the scripture references, looking at those key terms that seem to be very essential for unity.

And then, checking over in chapter 4 to see if those terms are also there. Did anybody find anything interesting about the different selections being made about the verses about unity, or was there one verse that really just kind of stood out that almost everybody agreed on, do you think?

Anybody want to share one of those verses, one of those references? Good, good. We have one group that was in unity about their verses. Very good.

Yes?

Who's putting us all together, and in what fashion?

Okay.

Anybody else?

Yes?

Yeah, very strong emphasis when you read chapter 2, chapter 4, alongside. So, on the key terms, Kyle mentioned several, but usually in reference to many facets or many parts, or many members, but there's all being brought together as one.

Certainly, an acknowledgment of individuals, but being seen together in unity. Dwight, did you have your hand up?

Yeah.

So, that's a good point to make, that the unity being described is dynamic, it's in motion, it's growing, it's walking, it's not a unity wherein the only way to stick together is nobody move, but it's a moving together in progress, so that's a good observation from Brother Dwight.

Expectations, Importance, and Concerns About Church Unity

Now, our discussion question is this, what are your expectations concerning church unity? By expectations, we could mean a couple of things. One, you could say, what are the ideals that I would like to see come about within a local church, regional church, global church, and so on, that these ideals need to really be achieved in reality for me to agree that there's actually unity.

So it could be kind of that expectation, or it could be the other side of it, what I think is actually going to happen when it comes to the theme of unity. When I think of the local church and unity, I expect that probably such and such will happen, or it may not be unified.

Maybe your expectation is that there will be disunity. Maybe your expectation is that unity is a pipe dream. Maybe your expectation is that there might be a surface unity, but not a genuine unity. There might be more of a disappointed side to that.

But either way, what are your expectations concerning church unity? You can ponder that for a moment and then share. Also, how important do you think it is? Now, that will also be tied in to what we think unity ought to be, and then what our expectations are in a church for unity.

For instance, if we don't think it's absolutely vital and important, our expectations might be that we won't find it or see it or experience it. You see what I mean? So there's a connection between those two.

And then the last one is also tied to it. What concerns do you have about unity? You might interpret that question one of two ways as well. You might say, my concern is that this particular dynamic or this particular characteristic will keep us from achieving unity.

Or you might have a concern with the idea as a whole that calls to unity within a church, you tend to find troublesome. That it might be being used in a way to ignore important issues. You see what I mean?

So in this discussion question, I'm sure something has sparked a thought in your pondering. So let's discuss this. What are our expectations? How important do we think it is? And what concerns do we have concerning this theme of unity?

Anybody want to share?

Yes.

Unity Requires Honesty, Truth, and Peace

So it's important to note, Kyle is pointing out, that in talking about unity, we're not talking about the absence of honesty and truth. So that, for instance, it may look like there is a unity of everybody in an airport sitting around.

Nobody's bothering each other. They're all just sitting and waiting. They seem to have a common purpose. But nobody there is getting into anybody else's business. There's no fighting. There's peace and order.

But is that unity? That's not unity. That's just a lack of conflict, the absence of conflict. So simply a bunch of people in the same area being orderly and peaceable, that isn't actually the presence of unity.

Honesty and truth need to be there. So there's not an actual peace in a positive sense, the presence of peace, not the absence of conflict. There's not a real presence of peace unless you have honesty, as R .C. Sproul was famous for saying, we cannot kill truth in the streets for the sake of peace.

I would say that there is a, speaking of the dynamics of unity, there should be a unifying around Christ who brings us forward. I've seen a lot of folks who would be in disagreement with some fairly important truths of the Bible and they start off not in agreement, but being drawn along by Christ, they come into agreement.

Now if they decide to reject Christ, yes of course, there's no fellowship between an apostate or a false teacher, somebody who is in rebellion against Christ and the church, there certainly is no fellowship there.

However, if we build too many brick walls and too high of a brick wall, then many will not be able to be brought along and discipled. I'll give you an example. We have a statement of faith in our constitution and bylaws that is basic to the essential truths of Christianity.

There are many confessions of faith that are extremely detailed and have a lot of information in them and there are some churches that are labeled as confessional churches, which means they ascribe to a confession and those things can be very helpful and full of great information about Bible doctrines and they are very, very detailed.

But to be a part of a confessional church, you have to sign off and say, I am in agreement with this entire confession. And so the idea is that we are protecting the church against disunity because we're all going to agree to this 63 point confession with all the sub points and the scripture references and so on.

The problem with that is that some people are going to want to be a part of that fellowship and grow in Christ and enjoy the blessings of the Spirit and be brought along and they don't know what half the confession means and at first glance they may be in disagreement with some of it because they don't really understand it, so on and so forth.

I think we have to be, the honesty part of it, the truthfulness part of it, includes the idea that we are being sanctified not only in our behaviors and our affections but also in our beliefs. I do not believe the same things that I did 10 years ago when I came as pastor, does that disturb you?

But I'm not cast in granite, Christ is working me over, he's working the church over, he's washing the bride with the water of his word. So we ought to be growing and if we make the test of fellowship something too high and too hard, then we are going to fail in making disciples.

But we cannot compromise where in there are the essential issues. But there also is long suffering of patience. How patient was Jesus Christ with his disciples? Pretty patient, and they said some awful things, they said some awful things.

So in 1 Corinthians 8, Romans 14 and so on, we are encouraged to worship with those of like faith and practice, not to go against conscience, to go against faith would be to sin. So we would not agree with certain convictions and understandings of the Bible from that.

Perspective.

And so we would say, well, I think it's going to be against your conviction if you try to be a part of our fellowship here and you want to baptize your infants and make them non-regenerate members of the new covenant by the objective sign of the new covenant, which you would call baptism.

So we don't agree with that. We don't find that in the scriptures and we wouldn't be able to do that here. And so you would need to fellowship somewhere of like faith and practice where you would not be stumbling others and you would not be stumbled by.

And I think that's a great, I think Jesus is amazing in the fact that we have so many different churches that are unified on the essentials, but we were able to worship in like faith and practice where we're not stumbling each other.

And we're learning how to love one another. So I would not, yeah, we would not, but we're not saying to them, we're not in unity. We can have unity within a group of churches, even though we don't have the same fellowship together.

I mean, there are some folks that, well, there are some folks, for instance, that if they come to a worship service and if we're not singing only Psalms, and if the ladies do not have head coverings, okay, and if we don't have communion every Sunday, they're going to be so stumbled, they're going to have a hard time sleeping that night, okay?

And are they the stronger brother or the weaker brother? I don't know. But I love them and I want them to be able to worship in like faith and practice. And there are churches, praise God, that are there and that they have all of that, okay?

So there is a unity that doesn't necessitate that everybody be in the same building with the same worship practices and so on. So, yeah, Chris. So thank you for bringing that up. Okay, any other thoughts before we move on to the text?

Yes.

Yeah, slow to speak, quick to hear, slow to anger, quick to forgive. Very essential. Okay, we left off on our acronym of unity. In Ephesians chapter four, we were about to talk about a toilsome peace.

Ephesians 4:1–6 and the Call to Preserve Unity

So let's read the scripture passage again, Ephesians four, verses one through six. 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.

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 was above all and through all and in you all. Now when we think of peace, it says here to endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Endeavoring is a word for hard work, diligent work, speedy, efficient work. In fact, the Greek word is where we get our English word speed from, speedo. We get our word speed from that Greek word. This idea of diligence.

Now notice in the text, there's an endeavoring to keep. You could translate it another way, speeding to stand, racing to contain. There's an idea of diligence to get into position so as to preserve something.

We ought to be swift to hear, swift to forgive, as Mom mentioned. We've got to be ready for that. We need to race to stay with each other. I've often sped towards keeping what unity God has granted. Do you know that pastors hear things through the grapevine?

Usually about three or four or five times removed. By the time I hear it, difficulties or challenges in the church have already been festering and going on for just a little while, sometimes a lot longer than that.

By the time I hear it, I know I'm racing against the clock. I often move very fast, very swift. I bother people by how fast I move on things like this, but I want to race towards unity, to speed towards keeping the love and the unity that Christ has given.

And this is a preserving endeavor. It's hard work, but it's also a spiritual type of unity. This is a unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. It is of the Spirit. Notice in verse 18 of Ephesians 2,.

For through him, through Christ, we have access by one Spirit to the Father. We have by Christ in the Spirit unto the Father a unity. Isn't that great? Our unity ultimately is found by the grace of God bringing us into fellowship, into his triune oneness.

Where you have the individual persons of Father, Son, and Spirit, and yet the unity of the Godhead as one, where do we get the idea that there can be individual persons, parts, members, and yet be an essential oneness?

Where did that ever come from? Except from the God who made us in his own image. This is a preserving endeavor. It's hard work. It's not laying in the hammock, not that kind of peace. It's a spiritual unity.

It's not just about being in the same place. It's about being in the same God. And it's a peaceful bond. The bond is made up of peace. It's like the fibers that are put into the fabric to make that which binds us together.

It's peace. Shalom, or peace, is brought about by Shiloh, the man of peace. He is our peace. We are sealed by his Spirit. In him we are united. We can't really envision salvation as simply a matter of between me and God.

It's not a matter of, well, that's between me and my physician, and that's nobody else's business. Salvation is indeed personal salvation, forgiveness of our sins. I can say full-throatedly, I am a child of God.

Singular, personal, pronoun, all of it. However, if I stop there, then I'm missing out on a vast array of salvation and blessings because I'm also brought into the family of Christ. I can't envision salvation as only about me.

I have to see the fact that I am saved unto Christ and unto one another. We are members one of another. And because it's not all about me, right? When I open the Bible, it's not, hey, this is all about me.

Actually, it's not. It's about somebody else. In all things, Christ has the preeminence. In all things, Christ has the preeminence. So that should be also when we study the Bible, when we think about our fellowship with one another.

I can't really write upside down, so you can just fill in the blank on your paper. But it's yielding, yielding is the Y, yielding to preeminence. You can look up preeminence in Colossians 1. Yielding to preeminence.

A division sets in most often when somebody is saying, I, I, I, me, me, me. That's when division really sets in. But notice the seven-fold oneness that we have in verses 4 through 6. I'll read it again.

There was 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 was above all and through all and in you all. There is one body.

Why? Because there is one Christ. Verse 14 of chapter 2 says, For he himself is our peace, who has made both one, Jew and Gentile, broken down the middle wall of separation that was erected in the temple, that said no Gentiles past this point, and the point was the point of the sword.

So Christ broke that down. Verse 15. Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.

There is one body because there is one Christ. He is the head of the body, which is the church. Ephesians chapter 1 says. And so, Jesus also informed Saul of Tarsus that to persecute the church was to persecute him.

If you afflict Christ's body, you attack Christ himself. And so, there's one body because you have to be of the head if you're of the body. There's one Christ, so there's one body. There's one spirit.

There is one Christ, so there is one spirit. We've already read verse 18, but also look at verse 20. We have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom, I'm sorry, chapter 2, verse 20, now verse 21, chapter 2, in whom the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

The new covenant temple is living stones quarried from the nations, brought together by the architect Christ. He is also the cornerstone and the capstone. We are being built up in Christ as a living temple, and the Holy Spirit is given to all believers, all Christians, all members of the new covenant.

The Spirit is, he is the sign, Pentecost Acts 2. He is the seal, Ephesians 1 tells us. The Holy Spirit is the sign and the seal of the new covenant. Jesus said, I will not leave you orphans, I will send to you another comforter, the Holy Spirit.

Some people think that this makes the new covenant very subjective and hidden and invisible, but when you read the New Testament and you read about the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the signs of the fruit of the Spirit just flowing out of Christians and the love by which we are known is poured out by the Holy Spirit among us, then we can say that the new covenant is very objective because the Holy Spirit is shining through.

Also, we have one hope of our calling. We have one hope of our calling because there is one Christ. In verse 13 of chapter 2, we read,. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

See, you were far off, so there was calling, Hey, you over there far off, why don't you come near? That's the whole idea of a calling. And there's one hope of our calling because there is one Christ. He alone saves, He alone delivers.

We all have the same hope, the same calling, the same Savior. We could share in our testimonies some degree of variety about how it is that I came to faith in Jesus Christ. There can be some interesting notes from personal histories that sound awfully different from one another, but we all have the same hope, the same calling, the same Savior, the same forgiveness.

We all came in by the exact same credentials, the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We all came in by the very same sacrifice and suffering, that of Jesus Christ. We came in exactly by the same delight and favor of God, the smile that He has on His only begotten Son with whom He is well pleased.

That's how we all come in. The same Savior, so the same hope of our calling. And one Lord. We have one Lord. There is one Christ, so we have one Lord. We have one Master who has purchased us. We have one King who rules us.

We have one Husband who leads us. We have one Shepherd who keeps us. We have one Messiah who saves us. The tyranny of ten thousand lords is often chosen in the name of freedom, but it is enslavement. Do you want ten thousand lords telling you what they expect of you and how you ought to model your life and how you ought to behave and what you ought to do, or do you want one Lord?

Oh, the liberty of one Lord, where I don't have to fear man and live up to all these different expectations of man. I have one Lord, one Master. And we have one faith. There is one Christ, so there is one faith.

The household of God was built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, but notice how they are aligned. Jesus Christ Himself is the cornerstone. So everything the prophets and the apostles said is aligned up with who Jesus Christ is, because He is the revelation of God.

He is the highest, brightest, clearest revelation of God, and so everything the prophets said, everything the apostles said, is in direct alignment with Jesus Christ. He is the interpreter of the Word.

He is the light of the world, so He is the light of the Word. He reconciles all things in Himself, even the Old and New Testaments. So, we have one faith. Faith is not a subjective experience or substance that saves.

I'm a person of faith, therefore I'm saved. Our trust in Jesus Christ, which is the gift of God, that no man may boast, means that we hold fast to Christ. The faith is the description of who Jesus is.

Who is it that we're believing in? If you and I lived on the same street, a couple of houses apart, and we both began talking about our neighbor Bill, and I was talking about Bill who likes to go out on the lake and fish, and you're like, no, he's a paraplegic.

We're not talking about the same Bill, right? And so it's not a matter of everybody having a warm experience in their gut. It's about who Jesus Christ is. There's one faith because there's one Christ.

There's one Savior. Who is it who is revealed in the Scriptures to us? And one baptism. One baptism. We have one baptism because there's one Christ. Now, the oneness of the baptism is not about the mode, but about it's the person who we are allying ourselves with.

Changing the mode of baptism from sprinkling to pouring or to immersion actually does change the meaning, by the way. We used to be said, well, it doesn't matter how it's done. It all means the same. Actually, it doesn't, as it turns out upon further reflection and study.

However, the baptism that Christ exhorts us to is to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that is the Christian baptism. And also, Galatians chapter 3 explains it this way, and I think this is the real truth of it, of the oneness of our baptism.

In Galatians chapter 3, in verse 26, Galatians chapter 3, verse 26, Paul writes,. 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, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.

You are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. There's absolute unity in Christ. We are not going to be identified as primarily and restricted in our worship and in our relationship to God and in our position in the covenant based on all these other factors.

Am I a free man? Am I a slave? Am I a Jew? Am I a Gentile? Am I male or am I female? Those things mattered greatly in the old covenant, but they do not have bearing on your covenant standing in the new covenant.

Because your standing in the new covenant is Jesus Christ alone. And that's what baptism is declaring. In the Old Testament, not everyone got circumcised. It was only male children of certain tribes, descendant from Jacob, on the eighth day, that was it.

There was a lot of distinction there. But if you're in the new covenant, you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you get baptized, and you say, Hey, everyone, I'm part of the family. The last statement in our text in this sevenfold oneness is one God and Father of all.

Why is there one God and Father of all? Because there is one Christ. There is one Christ. His God is our God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus said upon the cross. His God is our God. His Father is our Father.

We can only have God as our Father and God as our God if we have Jesus Christ. He who denies the Son does not have the Father either. And so, by Christ, in Christ, we are adopted. Jew and Gentile have the same Father.

The Jews should no longer say, Abraham is our Father. The Gentiles should no longer call others their Father. We should all recognize God as our Father in Christ. He is above and through and in us all.

He's above us all because He exercises authority over all. We find Jesus Christ always doing what is pleasing to the Father, even in His reigning now. The whole goal, according to 1 Corinthians 15, is that Jesus Christ reigns until all of His enemies are placed a footstool for His feet, and then the end comes where He presents the kingdom to the Father and says, Here, Father, look what I did.

And He says, Well done. He's still doing everything He does in pleasing the Father. And God and the Father through us all. Not one of the saints, not one of us, is without our Father. He's above us all.

He has all authority. But it is not as if He is not with us. Throughout all of the saints, there should be the cry by the Spirit, because of the Son, Abba Father. Throughout all of us, we would be able to say God is our Father.

And He is in us all. Christ did not leave us orphans by sending the Holy Spirit, by whom we cry Abba Father. We are indwelt by God, and so He is with us and communing with us. We are not orphans. We have a Father.

Closing Prayer and Transition to Maturity

Okay, so that's our first section in Ephesians chapter 4. It will help set the trajectory. Remember that Christ calls us to unity. Therefore, or thus, we are going to look on to maturity, which is the next section in Ephesians chapter 4.

Let me close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank You for the time You've given to us in Your Word. I pray that it will be a blessing to us, and that You would foster increasing unity and love in our midst.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.