Church Unity

This morning, we are continuing our look at one of the most relevant truths that we can listen to because it applies to all of us sitting here. It's about the church. We're continuing our look at the church of God, and we're looking at the topic this morning of the unified church, a church that is united. When us Gold Coasters hear the word unity, we might smirk a little bit. When we hear Christian unity, we think of some far out mystical hippie-like spirituality or some awkward joint Christian service or some cheesy chain mail or Facebook meme that is sent around.

While many of these things are well meaning, they fall short of the radical unity that the Bible actually talks about. We see in God's word that God himself calls for a deep, lasting unity in his people, in his church. The other expressions, the cheesy one-liners, the once-off church services is temporary. But what God's talking about is deep, really deep. Let's have a look at how God views his church and what he desires us to be.

Turn with me to Ephesians chapter four, and we're going to be looking at the first six verses of this really practical, really moving piece of scripture. Ephesians 4:1-6. As a prisoner for the Lord then, Paul writes, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope when you were called. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So far, our reading. This morning, we see Paul writing to the church in Ephesus, make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.

Make every effort. Be unified at all costs. Start now. Keep it up always. Don't back down whatever the circumstances.

At all costs. In every way, a unified church. In other words, a unified church is not an option. A unified church is not a nice thing to have. It's an essential.

At all costs, every effort, be a unified church. So the questions we have to ask ourselves is what makes the difference between a temporary, cheesy, one-line, billboard bumper sticker unity, and a deep, lasting, God-inspired unity. The passage in Ephesians four this morning shows us, firstly, what unity is. Secondly, how to cultivate a deep unity. And thirdly, why it's important.

So firstly, what is unity? Well, Paul says that it's part of our identity. Unity is part of our calling. First, verse one, Paul writes, as a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

Chapter four in Ephesians marks a turning point, if you know the letter. Chapter four marks a turning point. In chapters one to three, Paul has explained to us what God has done in Jesus Christ. Paul moves from having explained how we were once dead in our sins, not just crippled, not just heavily hamstrung, dead in the water. How we were once that, but now have become alive through Christ, through what Jesus has done for us through His death and His resurrection.

He says that we have been saved by grace in order to do good works that God had prepared in advance for us to do. And in Ephesians three, that beautiful prayer that Paul writes to the Ephesians, this has been done in order that we may grow in maturity and into the knowledge of the power of God's grace, so to strengthen us in our inner being that we may be rooted and established in love. Saved by grace through faith that we may be rooted and established in love. And then from here, Paul gets really practical. From chapter four through to chapter six, Paul gets really, really practical.

And that's why he begins in chapter four verse one saying, therefore, in light of, live a life worthy of your calling. In light of everything that I've explained up till now about the radical free love of God and His grace, live in light of that life. See friends, Christianity isn't all about theory. Christianity isn't all about theory. And again, as us reformed people, we like the theory.

And it needs to be good, it needs to be solid, but that's not where it ends. It's about practice. It's the therefore. Therefore, in light of God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit's work, pouring blessings out onto us, His newly established people, those who have been reconciled back to God, to one another, therefore, live in a way that is worthy of the tremendous grace that you have received from God. Under this understanding the theory of God's grace, friends, is one thing, but understanding is visibly expressed in how we live.

Our understanding is visibly expressed in how we live, what our actions are. So how do we live a life worthy of God's grace? Paul says, maintain unity in the church. It's a funny thing to say. I don't know if I would have started there.

Live in unity in the church. Live as a community bound together and inseparable, not as isolated individuals. And this is where the real challenge comes in. Because we all conceive of ourselves as individuals. And we may talk about Western individualism, but obviously it was a problem in Ephesus as well.

We often define ourselves by distinguishing us from others. We shrink away from commonality. We make fun of people wearing the same shirt, for goodness sake. Individual diversity for us is a deep rooted value. This is especially true in a city like ours, where we are proud of our diversity.

We celebrate the unique. We celebrate the weird. We've got Ripley's Believe It or Not on the surface. Just think of how many different restaurants and music venues and pubs and clubs are out there expressing different values and different expressions of style or interest. We like to distinguish ourselves.

The music we listen to, the food we eat, and if we're honest, if we're really honest, diversity trumps unity. We have that soaked into our culture. Be unique. Be weird. Be hipster.

Now it's also true that God loves diversity, obviously. I mean, we see it around us. The fact that God created a million different types of beetles shows that God enjoys and values diversity. God created even His church and the members therein to have different gifts, different personalities, different cultures. It's even rooted in the nature of God, one God, three persons.

But God wants our diversity to be rooted in something deeper than individuality. God wants our diversity to be rooted in something deeper than individuality. Apart from Christ, Paul says in Ephesians chapter two, we gratify every sinful inclination that's out there. The ruler of the kingdom of the air holds sway over our lives. In other words, Satan.

He holds sway over our lives, yet the irony is that as we incline ourselves to all these different expressions of sin thinking it's diverse and unique, the irony is that while we think we are free, Satan is calling the shots. We really aren't our own. We are ruled by the whim of a culture, by the machinations of corrupted reason or peer groups. But when we are born again, we are like fresh, healthy babies with life.

We come to realise that these things that we were inclined to follow and run after don't last. And our desire is to reach out to a God who does last, who is always steady, who is continuously faithful. In the 1987 movie, I don't know if you've seen this, called Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, a movie with Steve Martin and the late John Candy, John Candy wasn't involved with... In one scene, John Candy's character, I love that actor. He's so great.

John Candy's character inadvertently drives his car onto the interstate highway against traffic. Right? He's going against the flow of traffic on this major highway. And at one point, there are motorists travelling on the other side of the highway alongside these guys yelling at them, you're going the wrong way. Now turn around.

Now John Candy's character, a real proud guy, turns to his buddy Steve Martin and laughs them off and says, they're drunk. How do they know where we're going? You're going the wrong way. Now the Ephesians, just like us Gold Coasters, wrestled with unity. But what God wants us to understand is that at one point, we were dead in our sins, but not anymore.

We were going the wrong way, but God has turned that around. He has literally picked us up from that interstate going at a hundred k's an hour and placed us on the other side. But that other side is heading in one direction. That one side is a unity that we find amongst brothers and sisters heading in the same way. For unity to be deep and to be sustained, it has to go down into the core principles of who we are.

As a Christian, it will be a value deeper than diversity. And that's a radical thing to say. But in fact, it requires unity around something other than unity. Let me say that again. That value of unity requires an agreement around something other than just the sake of unity.

God doesn't just save loose individuals to throw them into an occasional church service. He's got a much more profound agenda for humanity. God calls us to walk a life worthy of the costly grace by being a unified community, not through independent diversity. The question is, how? And this is how Paul goes on in verse two.

Paul gives us four words, four virtues, four characteristics of God's people for fostering or exemplifying this deep unity. He says, be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. Humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance. Notice these expressions are again one another expressions. You have to have someone else involved in this thing.

Like we said last week, talking about belonging to a local church, they are communal. They are not individual attributes. So we'll have a look at them again. Humility, the first one there. In a sense, and this is why Paul begins with this, if you get this right, the rest of the things should follow.

The opposite of humility obviously is pride, isn't it? Pride is divisive. Pride holds a grudge, but humility unites. A proud person can use all these other virtues of patience and gentleness and forbearance for their own ends. A proud person will be very patient with someone that brings affirmation to their life.

Take, for example, very practically, child rearing. It's one of the most judged aspects of our society, how you raise your child. And mums may be able to sympathise with this the most perhaps. A proud person will be more prone to patiently overlook the wrongs another parent who shares their philosophy of parenting may be doing. But look out for the person who is practising a different child rearing philosophy.

When they forget something, they are the worst person in the world. They are corrupting this child. They are destroying this child's life. They are a monster. Pride, the opposite of humility, looks down on those who don't agree.

Pride divides, but humility unites. And it can be denominational differences, traditional differences, differentiate differences of style. Pride divides, but humility unites. The proud parent creates two sets of parents in their mind, those who agree with them and those who don't. Those who affirm them and those who don't.

But the humble ask for forgiveness and they realise that they are broken and make mistakes all the time. They realise that they have no reason to hold a grudge because Jesus bore the grudge of God's wrath towards them. The humble person realises their identity is in Christ. Not in their cultural habits, which seem very nice, not in their language, which is very comfortable, nor in the values their family have passed on to them. When humility in light of the gospel, when humility in the light of the gospel gets deep into our DNA, what unites us is greater than the petty things that divide us.

And therefore, the second word there is gentleness. We will be gentle. We will be soft hearted, seeking to raise up instead of tear down. When I think of the word gentleness, I get this image in my mind, and you may have also noticed it, when a young child is given something fragile for the first time, like a ladybug or a little puppy or something like that, and you tell them be gentle. Make sure you don't hurt it.

They are gentle to the nth degree. They make sure that they don't do anything that's going to harm this little bug or puppy or anything. You can see it on their face. Their entire attention is focused on this little thing in their hands, making sure that they don't do anything that's going to hurt it. Every effort is made to ensure the health and the wellbeing of that creature.

As Christians, we are called to be gentle with one another, making every effort to ensure the health and the wellbeing of our fellow brother and sister. Patience. If we're truly humble and gentle, patience comes. Why is that? Well, impatient people get frustrated or down because things are getting out of control.

Fundamentally, impatience is an emotional response to not being in control. The gospel again reminds us that we are not on our own, that Jesus is Lord, that God is in control, so we don't have to be. The patient are not easily flustered because they know every obstacle falls under God's providence. Jesus said that not even a bird will fall to the ground apart from the Father's will. So the patient person trusts in God's providence, knowing that they don't have to be in control because God is.

So the question, bringing it right back, is there someone that annoys you in church? Someone that grinds against your gears? Someone that you just have an urge to clip over the head from time to time to correct their theology, be patient with them. Why? Because we shouldn't forget that God is also concerned over them.

Don't forget that He, who is God, has much more at stake in their lives than you do. God's glory is at stake in their lives. So trust me, God's not gonna forget. God's not lazy. Be patient, stand by, and love them through prayer, through intercession.

And the last virtue that Paul raises here is forbearance. Now that's an old timey sounding word. Paul says, bear with one another in love. Now when I hear this word bear, I immediately think of that phrase grin and bear it. You know that we use?

Oh, I'm just gonna grin and bear this. The idea of smiling and pretending that things are all right. But bearing doesn't have that meaning. It's not being fake. It's not being pretentious or pretending.

To bear actually means to come alongside the other person and to carry their suffering with them. To bear means to carry, and it's the image of standing next to someone with a huge weight on their shoulders and holding it up with them. Bear with one another in love does not mean smile and pretend. It means you have to do something. It means to empathise or to sympathise regardless of whether you agree with where that person is at or what their pain is and the cause thereof is.

To bear with one another means to come and be with them and to ease the burden. Now these four characteristics or marks of unity is what should make up the church. Do we understand this? Do we understand these things? Do we think of our Christian life in terms of humility and gentleness and patience and bearing with one another in love?

When a church lives, when it exists, it lives because the people within it are living, are active. When a church dies, it means the people have withered and died. There's a true story of a young minister in the United States in Oklahoma who was an idealist, and he was called to a small church, a long standing church in a particular town. Now this young man had great hopes for the future and stars in his eyes, and he thought that he could turn around this struggling church. And he gave it his best effort and his best shot week after week, but to no avail.

And finally, he had one last idea. He announced in the local newspaper on Saturday that the church had died and that they were going to hold a funeral service for the church itself on Sunday. And all who wished could attend and say goodbye, could say their peace. For the first time in all the years that he had been there, the place was packed. In fact, people were standing on the outside on tiptoes looking through the window to see this most unusual funeral service take place.

To their shock, there was actually a casket in the front packed, loaded with flowers. He told the people that after his eulogy was finished, they could actually come by and see the remains of the dearly departed. And the people could hardly wait to see what was inside the casket. He finished his eulogy, slowly opened the casket, pushed the flowers aside, and gave the people to walk by one by one. One by one, as the people came past and looked inside, they left one by one very sheepishly.

And of course, everyone waiting in line became all the more curious to see what was inside. The reason for their sheepishness became evident when they discovered that inside the casket was placed a large mirror. And as they walked by, they saw the church that had died. These values are not theoretical. These values are not theoretical.

They are realities which must exist in order for unity to exist, in order for the church to exist. They are part of the ministry of this church and we are the church. So be humble, be gentle, be patient, bear with one another. And then we come to the last part in this passage, the reason why. Why we should do this.

Why live in unity? Why should we desire to be unified in the first place? Can't we simply overcome this whole problem of having issues and annoyances and hurting one another and sinning because of it, by simply not having a church, by simply not being part of one. Why live in unity? And Paul tells us in verse four, because there is one body and one spirit.

Just as you were called to one hope when you were called one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. Why do we live in unity? Firstly, we live in unity because unity means oneness, and if there is only one, there can't be two. That sounds very philosophical. But if there is only one body and one church and one spirit that breathes life into that church, there is no alternative.

There is no alternative. There is no plan B in this story. There is no other church and therefore there is no such thing as a solo Christian. Friends, hear me, there is no such thing as a solo Christian. There is one body and one spirit.

If you aren't in that body, you are dead. Like we saw last week, if you're a hand amputated from the body, you're not a hand anymore, you're a piece of rotting meat. You are ununited. You are divided. You can't be humble or gentle or patient or loving because you are not living those things out in a church that God has called you to.

One body, one spirit. Verse five tells us how this happens. Because you were called to one hope, made available to all of us through one faith and one baptism, or one initiation because of one Lord Jesus Christ. It's possible because of what our one Lord, the only Lord Jesus Christ did. Christianity, friends, is exclusive.

There is only one way. And because there is only one way, all of us together know that we are on this same journey. We are heading on the highway or the interstate together. We worship the same Lord. We serve Him with the same heart.

We all understand our terrible predicament without Him. We believe together in the creeds of the universal church. We stand together on the same promises of the Apostles Creed that was written over a thousand years ago. A creed, a confession that millions of men and women have believed, have professed before us. We have one hope.

We have one glorious, life enriching, peace enduring hope, and there is no other. And therefore, we stand together. Therefore, we live together. Therefore, we sing together. Therefore, we love together because there is only one.

There is not two hopes. But not only one faith, not only one baptism or initiation, not only one Lord and one Saviour, but a Father God. This is how He ends. With a Father God who is in all and through all and over all. This is not one faith among many.

It is the only faith. And although it is exclusive in all its claims about the one truth, there is also the amazing fact that there is only one God in control in humanity. There's only one God in control. He is omnipresent. He is omniscient, and He is omnipotent.

Over all, through all, in all, there's not one inch in this entire world where God does not say that is mine. That is mine. It means that this one faith we cling to, we don't have to be too precious over because it's God's world. It means when we see something wrong in the church, we don't have to be too fearful because although there is a ruler of the kingdom of the air, God rules even over him. When we inadvertently hurt one another or even not so inadvertently, we don't have to be too bitter because we know that God is working in all things, in all people.

And when we forget that, that's when we start getting impatient and angry and bitter. So this morning, there's a call for unity from God Himself who's actually working in our hearts right now as we speak. And so as we finish this morning, I'd like us to stand together and profess this one faith we hold to. We're going to do that with the Apostles Creed. Now, again, ideally, we would have had it up on the screen, but we thankfully have some of our green books here, our books that contains our creeds and our confessions.

So if it is somewhere near you, we're going to try and read this and profess this together. Standing upon the shoulders of the church that has gone before, the church that will continue perhaps even after we are gone. Yeah. It's on page 11 in this book here. As a sign that we unite ourselves together with one another, with God and with those who have gone before, let's stand and proclaim together the Apostles' Creed.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day, He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From there, He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we stand this morning united, not as a cheesy sign, but as a sign, Lord, that we are aware of our inability to do this by ourselves and that we need You, God the Father, over all and in all and through all to be doing this in our hearts. Father, forgive us for when we have been impatient, for when we have not been gentle, or when we have not been humble or loved one another.

Father, at the same time, show us, reveal to us individually, personally, how we can live a life worthy of the calling You have given to us. People called to a radical new life, made alive in Christ. Father, let this church be a church that lives out the truth, a unity, Lord, that You prayed for in John 17, Lord Jesus, that we may show other people the love of God through the love we have for one another. Father, for those of us who are wrestling with pain and hurting from other people, I do pray for comfort and healing. And for the real effects of sin, Lord, and the real disappointment.

Father, give us so much grace. Give us strength to endure. Give us strength to love and overcome. Father, for those of us who have to really deal with forgiveness in our hearts, Lord, let us not forget to do this. Let's not forget to be real about this and to confess it to one another.

Let us not become lazy, Lord. Holy Spirit, we invite You again to work in us this morning, to clean us, to sanctify us, to make us holy like You are holy. Father, we commit ourselves into Your care. We commit ourselves to one another. And again, Lord, we say, do with us what You please.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.