I need your help this morning. Let’s see if you can help me complete the following sentence:
Birds of a feather [flock together].
I’m sure all of us are familiar with that idiom that some sources indicate may go all the way back to the Greek and Romans cultures. It indicates that people who are similar tend to stick together. There are all kinds of different types of ties that can bond us together with others:
• There are family ties. For instance here are three photos from a recent husband of the year contest that depict the ties that bind husband and wife together.
• There are ties based on common interests. For instance you can go to just about any bar in town and find a bunch of guys hanging around watching Monday Night Football together because of their common interest in football and beer.
• There are ties based on common causes or beliefs. Many of you here are either Republican or Democrats based on your beliefs about political issues. Or some of you are Independents because you don’t know what you believe. [Just kidding].
You’ll remember that Paul began chapter 4 of Ephesians by describing the unity that the Holy Spirit establishes for followers of Jesus Christ and four attitudes that we need to develop in order to preserve that unity. He’s going to continue that train of thought in verse 4 by describing for us some common bonds that we share with other believers that are the basis for that kind of unity. Let’s read our passage out loud together:
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.
Ephesians 4:4-6 (NIV)
This is one of those passages that is fairly straightforward. And if we’re not careful, we can get so caught up in the details that we’ll miss the big picture. So we’re going to spend our time this morning trying to focus on the overall idea that Paul is trying to communicate here. Let’s begin with a couple of general observations about the passage:
• The key word in this passage is obviously the word “one”. This particular word indicates something that is united as one rather than something that is divided or consists of separate parts. It is a word that would be applied to one team, but not to one individual player who is part of that team. So I could use the word to say that the University of Arizona has one football team, but I couldn’t use it to say that Willie Tuitama is one player on that team. So even the word “one” conveys a sense of unity.
• Paul uses the word “one” seven times in this passage and I don’t think that’s an accident. The number seven in the Bible normally indicates completeness – like seven days make a complete week. I’m convinced that the seven “ones” Paul writes about in this passage are intended to indicate something that is complete – just what that is we’ll get to in just a moment.
Paul is describing for us in this passage seven things that all believers have in common that make them birds of a feather. But these bonds are much deeper than any ties based on common causes or beliefs, deeper than any ties based on common interests and even deeper than any family ties.
In fact, these are the deepest ties possible because they find their roots in God Himself. A careful study of these seven common bonds reveals that they are far more than just some random listing of what we have in common, but that Paul actually groups them in a manner that reveals the work of all three parts of the Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – in the lives of believers. These three distinct groupings are pretty obvious even in our English translations, but they are even more pronounced in the Greek.
I don’t think anyone here would argue with the premise that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit work in perfect harmony and unity to accomplish the purposes of God. In a February 2001 article in Christianity Today, John Ortberg described how the Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate to each other. He rightly pointed out how each Person of the Godhead defers to the others.
The primary function of the Holy Spirit is to point us to Jesus Christ. Dale Bruner, in his essay on the trinity, describes this as the “shyness” of the Holy Spirit. He never calls attention to Himself, but rather comes in the name of the Son, bears witness of the Son and gives glory to the Son.
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.
As we clearly see from this passage, there is only one Spirit and there is only one body into which He places the followers of Jesus Christ. Paul is obviously referring here to the universal church, or what is also called the catholic (with a small “c”) church. As Paul points out both here in Ephesians and in 1 Corinthians, God never intended for His church, the body of Christ, to be divided the way it has become today. I think that Paul would be appalled at the way followers of Jesus Christ have divided themselves today along denominational and theological lines.
As we’ll see in a moment, there are some legitimate reasons for rejecting false teaching and doctrine, but I’m convinced that as believers we far too often create divisions that just don’t need to be there. As a church planter I constantly ran into this mindset. I can’t tell you how many churches and pastors were reluctant to do anything to help us start a new church because they were afraid that they might lose some of their people to the new church. They viewed us a competition rather than as being on the same team.
Let me tell you that other Bible believing churches that proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ are not the competition. They are not our enemy. I don’t care if they are Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, or Independent. I don’t care I they have 20 members or 20,000 members. Our competition is the world around us that says there is no need for God and that denies the deity of Jesus Christ and what He did for us through the cross and the resurrection. And we need all the help we can get trying to reach that world with the power of the gospel.
The Holy Spirit has one more important function. As Paul writes, it is the Holy Spirit who brings hope to our lives. Paul has already described this function of the Spirit earlier in his letter:
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession - to the praise of his glory.
Ephesians 1:13, 14 (NIV)
It is the Holy Spirit who comes into our life as the guarantee that we’ll one day receive everything that God has promised to us. It is the Holy Spirit who provides us with hope that one day Jesus Christ will return to this earth and take us to be with Him for eternity where all the spiritual blessings that we experience in part now will be experienced in full.
2. The work of the Son
...one Lord, one faith, one baptism...
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that “one Lord” is at the very center of this sevenfold unity. In Paul’s day, Caesar and other political authorities had taken the title Lord. But Paul is emphasizing that if there is to be unity in the body, there can only be one lord, and that Lord is the Head, Jesus Christ. Everything that Paul has written so far makes Jesus Christ the very center of who we are as Christians. The idea of one Lord reminds of the words of Jesus Himself:
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
John 14:6 (NIV)
Unfortunately in our culture today, Jesus has even become the source of division among His followers. As much as I hate to say this, I think one of the greatest contributors to this kind of division was the “What Would Jesus Do?” movement several years ago. Maybe some of you wore the little rubber wristbands with WWJD engraved on them. But the problem with that is that each individual person had to try to decide what Jesus would do in any given situation. In a few situations, that answer would be pretty clear, but in most cases, unique individuals would come up with unique answers to that question in the very same circumstances.
Or have you ever hear anyone say, “The Jesus I know wouldn’t...[you fill in the blanks]” Or “The Jesus I know certainly would...[you fill in the blanks].” And they use that kind of reasoning to try to justify their behavior.
I read this week about John McNeill, a great Scottish pastor, who created an imaginary conversation between the man who had been born blind and was healed by Jesus, as recorded in John 9, and another blind man that was healed by Jesus as recorded in Mark 8. The difference between the two is that in John 9, Jesus had spit on the ground and made mud which he used to heal the man’s eyes and in Mark 8 He had just touched the man’s eyes.
When the two get together and began to relate their stories to each other, the man whom Jesus had healed with the mud says to the other, “That’s great, but you forgot the part where Jesus spit on the ground and made mud to put on your eyes.”
“I don’t know anything about that. He just touched my eyes.”
The man from John replies, “But that’s not the way Jesus gives sight. If he didn’t spit on the ground and make mud to restore your site, then I’m beginning to doubt if you can even see at all.”
So the first denominations were created: the Mudites and the Anti-Mudites. That’s what happens when we get our focus on Jesus’ methods rather than making Him Lord.
Because there is only one Lord, there is only one faith as well. Commentators seem to be split on what Paul means by one faith. Many view it as meaning one body of belief, or faith in the same doctrines. Others view it as meaning one kind of faith or our experience of faith. It seems to me that we don’t necessarily have to choose one or the other. There are aspects of both at work here. We can see that if we go back and see how Paul has used the word “faith” earlier in his letter:
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:
Ephesians 1:1
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,
Ephesians 1:15 (NIV)
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God
Ephesians 2:8 (NIV)
In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Ephesians 3:12 (NIV)
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith...
Ephesians 3:17 (NIV)
Every one of these verses clearly connects faith to Jesus Christ. There is only one kind of faith that can save us and that is faith in Jesus Christ alone.
So in a sense, there is only one body of belief, one body of doctrine that unites us. Obvious the practical problem with that is in deciding what that body of beliefs consists of and we obviously won’t answer that question this morning. But I can tell you this – that body of belief certainly is centered in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us.
But there is also the sense that we all have the same kind of faith. It is a faith that trusts totally and completely in Jesus Christ alone as the basis for our relationship with God. It is acting on the words of Jesus when He claims to be the way, the truth and the life and the only way to the Father.
The third element of the work of the Son is one baptism. Once again, commentators are split on whether this refers to Spirit baptism or water baptism. But for those who argue that this is a reference to Spirit baptism have to try to explain why it’s clearly linked to the Son rather than to the Spirit in this passage. Once again, I’m not sure we have to choose one view or the other since in the early church one without the other was considered to be an anomaly.
About a year ago, we discussed the topic of the baptism of the Spirit as part of our study of the first four chapters of Acts. At that time we discovered that the baptism of the Spirit is something that occurs in the life of every believer at the very moment that he or she exercises the kind of faith that we just discussed. At that very moment the Holy Spirit comes to live permanently in the life of a believer.
In order for us to understand why Paul connects baptism with the Son, rather than the Spirit, however, let’s return to a verse we looked at earlier:
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)
Let me make a couple of observations about this verse. First the word “baptize” is a word that means “to place into”. That’s why we believe that the appropriate means of water baptism is full immersion or being fully placed into the water. The second thing I want you to notice is the word “by”. The way we read this sentence in English, it makes it appear that the Spirit is the one doing the baptizing. But the word “by” as it is used here actually indicates the means or the instrument through which the baptizing is taking place. That idea is supported by the last part of the verse that indicates that we are all given the Spirit. Which leads to the question: “Then who gives the Spirit to us?”
We can easily answer that question by going back to the words of John the Baptizer:
I baptize you with water, but he [Jesus] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
Mark 1:8 (NIV)
John makes it very clear that Jesus is the one doing the baptizing and that He baptizes us with the Holy Spirit. As we might expect, Jesus confirms this concept with His own words:
For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
Acts 1:5 (NIV)
So there is unity in the body because each and every one of us has been baptized by Jesus with the Holy Spirit who comes to reside permanently in our lives. Although water baptism is merely an outward symbol of what has already taken place within us, it should be an important part of every believer’s life. I think one of the reasons Paul doesn’t really make it clear here which baptism he is referring to is because he couldn’t conceive of one without the other since in the early church the two went hand in hand.
3. The work of the Father
...one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
There is actually a very logical flow to Paul’s writing in this passage. He begins by describing the unity within the body that is brought about through the work of the Holy Spirit. But how did that body come into existence? Through the work of the Son. And why did the Son do all that? Because it all flows from the Father who is over all and through all and in all.
Unfortunately this verse has been taken out of context and used by those who would try to claim that God that God is the Father of all. They use this verse to try to make the point that everyone is a child of God. These are the same people who would claim that there are many roads to God and that it doesn’t matter which road you take just as long as you are sincere.
But to use this verse in that way, one would have to completely ignore everything Paul has written in the first three chapters of his letter. When Paul writes that there is one God and Father of all, he is clearly saying that is true within the context of the church. He is writing here to believers and he is trying to stress the idea that they are to be unified because they all have the same heavenly Father, regardless of whether they are Jews or Greeks, male or female, slave or free. Here’s how he made the very same point in another of his letters:
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26-28 (NIV)
In the church, both universally and in our local bodies, we spend far too much time focusing on our differences. And when we do that, we destroy the unity that God has established among His children. But perhaps even more tragically, we also deny the unity of God Himself. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are certainly birds of a feather. And if we are to be part of God’s family, then we need to follow His example and focus on the things that unite us rather than the things that divide.
