Becoming One in Christ audio
We come today to the core issue of the letter: If we’re to fulfil our destiny as a church, if we’re to demonstrate the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, as we read last week, then we must be united in heart and mind. But can we do it?
Here in ch 4, Paul begins to outline how being the new people of God is to be worked out in the down-to-earth, concrete realities of life. As we read on we discover that there are two challenges for us. First, it’s to build ourselves into a single united people without any of the social and economic divisions we see everywhere else; and then to be a holy people, showing in our lives the purity and righteousness that belongs with the people of God.
So today let’s think about the unity of the Church. How does that unity arise and how is it to be maintained?
A. It depends on our Christian character.
What do you need for unity in the Church? Paul lists 5 characteristics of the Christian that unity depends on: humility, gentleness, patience, mutual forbearance, and love.
Not surprisingly he begins his list with humility. In fact the word he uses is actually humility of mind. In other words it’s about how we think about ourselves in relation to other people. It’s about an attitude that recognises the worth and value of other people irrespective of what we think of ourselves. He’ll repeat this idea in the next chapter where he tells us to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
The trouble is this asks us to overcome both our inborn nature and our socially conditioned nature. Most of us are not naturally humble, even if we try to act that way. Our social conditioning is to put ourselves first, to insist on our rights, to overlook the other person’s needs if they interfere with our own personal needs or ambitions. But he begins his list here because humility is essential to unity. Pride and self-centredness almost always result in discord.
Gentleness is a tricky word. It’s too easily understood as weakness. The word here could be translated meekness. It’s the quality of moderation, of strength under control. So it’s the characteristic of a strong personality who doesn’t let their strength or their personal desires control them, nor uses that strength to control others. Rather they use what strength they have to serve others. Paul uses the term in his instructions in 2 Tim 2:24, 25 about how pastors are to deal with those who oppose the gospel: “The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, 25correcting opponents with gentleness.” Notice that humility and gentleness form a natural pairing. They’re how Jesus described himself: “I am gentle and lowly of heart.” (Matt 11:29).
The next two characteristics also form a natural pairing. Patience is a longsuffering attitude towards annoying people: the sort of attitude that God has to us I guess, while mutual forbearance is the sort of mutual tolerance without which no group of human beings could ever live together in peace for any length of time. Have you noticed how things are never done in exactly the right way unless you do them yourself? That’s what I find anyway. Well that’s why patience and forbearance are so important.
We’re hopefully going to get a new vicar in the near future and chances are they’ll have quite a different approach, a quite different set of ideas, to what we’ve been used to over the past 16 0r so years. So we’re going to need to exercise a good degree of patience and mutual forbearance if we’re to help him or her settle in to this new role and if we’re to maintain our unity in Christ.
The final characteristic in his list is love, which is more of an overarching quality that’s the foundation for the other four. I guess it actually leads to them being expressed. Paul will speak more of that at the end of this chapter when he speaks of personal holiness, but for now it’s enough to say that it’s the controlling force for everything else we do.
So here are five characteristics which make or break our efforts to live in unity: humility, gentleness, patience, mutual forbearance, and love. Let me ask you, which of those do you lack? Look at them again: humility, gentleness, patience, mutual forbearance, and love. Don’t think about anyone else. They’ll all lack one or more of those characteristics, I’m sure. Just think about yourself. If you fail to show one or more of those characteristics in your relationships with people then repent of it. Ask God to change you, to make you more like Jesus, so you can do your bit in making the Church more of the new creation that God wants it to be.
In fact ask God to make you more like him because that’s where the call for unity comes from.
B. It Arises from the Unity of our God
He says this is the reality into which we’ve all been brought: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
Notice that this long list of ones centres around the 3 persons of the Trinity. So there’s one body because there is only one Spirit who brings the Church into being and who fills each one of us. There’s only one Lord Jesus who is its head. There’s one hope, one faith, one baptism, because there’s only one Lord Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life. Finally, there’s only one family of God because there’s only one Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
So our unity derives from the fact that the one Father creates the one family, the one Lord Jesus is the focus of the one faith, hope, and baptism, and the one Spirit creates and empowers the one body.
When you think of it like that you suddenly realise what someone is doing when their actions damage the unity of the church. What they’re actually doing is denying the unity of the Godhead. Of course as you look around churches today you realise that we’ve been very successful at breaking down that unity, haven’t we? Well, the unity of the Godhead isn’t damaged but its outworking in the church often is. And there goes the church’s witness to the world. That’s why Paul makes this plea in v3 to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
You’d think the unity of the Spirit would be indestructible, wouldn’t you, yet we’re told to maintain it. Why is that? Because we live in a fallen world where spiritual realities aren’t always seen in the visible church. That means we have to work hard if we’re to make the unity of the Church a reality.
For those with a scientific bent what we have here is analogous to the second law of thermodynamics. That is the universe naturally descends into disorder (entropy) unless an external force or energy is applied to it to maintain its stability. In the case of a church’s unity, it’ll dissipate and be broken down unless we continually work at building it up. We can’t afford to take it for granted. We need to keep on asking ourselves “Am I doing all I can to bring about that unity that God desires?”
That’s why Paul says do your best to maintain that which is the spiritual reality. If you call yourself by the name of the one God and Father, by the one Son; if you rely for your spiritual life on the one Spirit, then make sure you live in the church that way.
C. It’s enriched by a diversity of gifts
Thirdly, our unity is enriched and built up by the diversity of gifts in the Church. If you look at the great diversity of people and gifts and personality types in any given church you might well despair of ever reaching unity. There may be only one Church and one God, one Spirit, one Lord, etc., but the church itself is made up of a whole lot of individuals, every one of us different from all the rest. So how are we to come to unity from that sort of base?
Well, Paul says, it’s not actually as bad as it looks. Although we’re all individuals, there’s a reason for our difference. “Each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift.” That is, the differences you see are often the result of the different things Christ has for us to do. Someone once likened the Church to a jigsaw puzzle, particularly one of those puzzles where no two pieces are the same. And not only are the pieces different, but they each have sections that stick out or in, that other pieces link into and the task is to work out what piece fits in where. Well, that’s what the church is like. We’re like a jigsaw puzzle where every piece has a place, and where if one piece is missing, the picture is incomplete.
Notice though, that the gifts that he mentions here are of a particular type. This is a different list to the one in 1 Corinthians 12 for example. So what’s the difference? Well, the gifts he lists here, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers are all gifts with the same purpose: to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. They’re all gifts that in one way or another bring God’s word to people, whether it’s for the first time as in apostles and prophets, or in the form of the gospel in the case of evangelists, or in a systematic and applied way in the case of pastors and teachers. And why is this important? Look back at 2:20: The Church is built upon this foundation: of God’s word left for us by the apostles and prophets. So these gifts are particularly important for building up the church because our growth, our unity will depend on us understanding and following God’s revealed word. That isn’t to say that other gifts aren’t important, but when it comes to the church achieving the unity that God desires, these gifts are to be prized by the Church.
D. It demands our growth to maturity.
Finally, notice why these gifts are given. They’re not just given so we can be built up. We’re not being built up for fun. No, the body of Christ is being built up until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. If we’re to achieve unity, then this is what we should be striving for: maturity! To be grown up. It’s what all children long for isn’t it? But in the case of the Church, maturity equates to attaining the full measure of the stature of Christ. That is, the same sort of unity that Christ experiences with the Father.
Do you remember what Jesus prayed on the night before his crucifixion? Let me remind you: “11Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one … 20I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:11-21)
I want you to think for a moment about the other people in the room here, or if you’re at home, then the other people who may be watching online along with you. I imagine most of them aren’t particularly like you. Some will have similar ideas, a few will have similar experiences but none will be exactly like you.
Yet Jesus has asked for a miracle to take place. He’s asked that the Father would change us to the point that we can look at those other people and fell a connection with them that’s so deep that it equates to the connection between God the Father and God the Son. This is what Paul is talking about. He wants us to reach the measure of the full stature of Christ. He wants us to get to the point where we’re one with each other and with God the Father; so that we’ll be able to stand against all the winds of misfortune, all the blasts of the evil one. “No longer children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. 15But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” Can we find that solidarity with one another that helps us remain firm in our faith, never swayed from what’s true, firmly anchored in the truth that God has given us in his word?
If you want to grow to maturity then make sure you’re fully connected to Christ who is our head. Notice what he means by head here, by the way. Too many Christian teachers talk about the husband being the head of the wife, as we’ll see in 2 weeks’ time, meaning the leader, the boss, like a headmaster. But that isn’t what’s described here. No, the head is the one “from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love." The head is the one who empowers the body to do its thing. And again, every part is needed. Every part needs to be working properly for the body to be built up.
So, how can a diverse body like the church achieve the sort of unity that God desires? By growing in maturity. By becoming more like Christ as we learn from him.
By speaking the truth in love and growing into Christ who is our head.
What can you and I do individually? We can make sure that we do our part in encouraging one other to grow to maturity, to unity, to the full stature of Christ.
