Birds Of A Feather Series

And Jesus didn’t go around calling attention to Himself either. Instead, He submitted to the Spirit who led Him into the wilderness and He told his Father, “Not my will but yours be done.”

And even the Father, both at the baptism of Jesus and at the Transfiguration, commanded those there to listen to His Son, in whom He was pleased.

Ortberg summarizes the relationship of the trinity like this:

I was raised in some ways to think of God as a proud, almost arrogant being who could get away with his pride because he was God. The doctrine of the Trinity tells me it is not so. God exists as Father, Son, and Spirit in a community of greater humility, servanthood, mutual submission, and delight than you and I can imagine. Three and yet One. Oneness is God’s signature.

And it is the oneness of God that is the model or the basis for the oneness of God’s people. That’s why I think Paul very deliberately and clearly arranged these seven bonds in a way that they point to the work of each Person in the Godhead. So, although I’ll briefly touch on each of the seven individual bonds, my approach this morning is going to be to try to focus more on this overall principle:

THE ONENESS OF BELIEVERS IS BASED ON THE ONENESS OF GOD

Paul does something rather interesting here. He begins with the work of the Holy Spirit and then progresses to the work of the Son and finally to the work of the Father. That seems kind of backwards from the normal progression we would expect. For instance if you go back and read chapter 1, Paul begins with the work of the Father, then writes about the work of the Son and finishes by describing the work of the Spirit.

But if you remember our passage from last week, you’ll remember that Paul ends verse 3 by describing the unity of the [wait for answer] Spirit. So it makes sense that Paul would start there in verse 4 and then work his way to Jesus and the Father.

The seven bonds are arranged by Paul into two triads that correspond to the work of the Spirit and then the Son and he finishes by describing the work of the Father:

1. The work of the Holy Spirit

...one body and one Spirit - just as you were called to one hope when you were called...

All three of these bonds clearly relate to the work of the Holy Spirit. As we’ve already seen in Ephesians and as we find in the rest of Scripture, it is the Holy Spirit who causes a person to see his or her need for a savior by convicting that person of his or her sin. And, as we most clearly see at Pentecost, it is the role of the Holy Spirit to place people into the body of believers we call the church. Paul makes that point in his first letter to the church at Corinth.

For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body - whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

1 Corinthians 12:13 (NIV)

We’ll come back to this verse in a few minutes when we talk about baptism, but for now what I want you to see is that the Holy Spirit is the Person of the Godhead through whom believers are placed into the body of Christ.