Philippians | Union with Christ

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning, church.

My name is Jeremy Gonzalez.

I'm the student and family pastor here at Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Grateful you could be with us this morning.

We're going to be in the letter to the Philippian church.

So if you have a Bible, please turn in there to Philippians 1.

That's where we're going to start.

We're going to be kind of all over the place.

And before we uh get started with the sermon, I just want to make a plug.

I apologize, Jason and Webb, for not informing you, but better to ask permission or forgiveness than permission.

Something like that.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

I have uh Advent's right around the corner.

We have Advent devotionals for families.

And so if you have a family and you want to not to be cliche, but focus on the reason for the season, this is a great guide to help you and your kids do that this Christmas season.

So we'll have Advent Devotional Guides right out there at the info.faithfree desk.

If you have older kids in your home, uh maybe not young children, but maybe older students, uh, we have ones for those as well.

So we have something for the whole family if you're interested in an Advent devotional guide for this Christmas season.

Book of Philippians.

Um this morning that as I was going through my study of the book, which to preach an entire book in one morning is incredibly difficult.

But the theme that stuck out to me and in my study was this theme of unity with Christ and with each other.

And the question uh that I asked was what does Philippians communicate about our unity with Christ and our unity as a body?

If you can imagine for a moment a group of musicians coming together to form an orchestra.

Every musician brings their unique talent and skill to the ensemble, and individually they may be talented, but the true power of an orchestra is not in the individual, it's in the collective.

It is when they unite their efforts together that something truly extraordinary happens.

As the conductor raises the baton, the orchestra transforms into a harmonious entity.

You have the strings, the woodwinds, the brass, percussion, all coming together, all blending together, creating music that resonates with power and beauty.

Each musician listens intently to the others, adjusting their tempo and dynamics to match the collective sound.

And in this union, the orchestra creates something that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

The music swells and it will fill a concert hall, captivating the audience with its depth and emotion.

It's a testament to the strength and unity of the musicians working together towards a common goal.

Similarly, when believers in Christ come together in unity to form a spiritual union, it's powerful and transformative.

Every individual brings their unique gifts, talents, and experiences to the body of Christ.

And as they unite their efforts, they are guided by the Holy Spirit and become a force for God's kingdom in the world.

Just as the orchestra creates a symphony, the united body of Christ reflects the unity that is found in Christ Himself.

They're united together in purpose, in their mission, in their thinking, in their faith, standing as a shining testimony to the transforming power of the gospel.

This morning, we're going to be talking about unity within the body of Christ.

But in order to do that, we must first speak of unity with Christ.

And before I go on, I do want to say that unity with Christ in the book of Philippians is assumed, right?

It's assumed.

If you look at Philippians 1, 1, right?

Very first verse of this letter, written from the Apostle Paul to the church in Philippi.

He says, Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ.

To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi.

That statement assumes unity with Christ.

And what he speaks of in the rest of the letter is not an explanation of what that unity with Christ is.

He's not given a theological exposition of what unity of Christ is and what it looks like and how we get there or anything like that.

He speaks of implications of unity with Christ.

It's like me having a conversation with another guy because we talk about life, right?

We talk about family life, speaking with another guy about marriage.

He and I are probably not going to talk about how people become married or the purpose of marriage or why one might get married.

We will talk about the implications of married life.

We will talk about our roles as husbands and what that entails and what we do as life goes on.

And so the letter to the Philippians speaks in a manner that communicates the implications of unity with Christ.

But before we get to the implications of what Paul is talking about in the letter, we have to do a little groundwork.

We have to set the stage to first discuss unity with Christ.

You can't have unity within the body of Christ if the body does not first have unity with Christ.

I hope you're following with that.

So what does unity of Christ mean?

What does it mean, as Paul says here in verse 1, to be in Christ?

Piggybacking off of Pastor Anton's excellent sermon last week on propositional truth.

This is not something that it is that you can be wrong in.

It's not something we can agree to disagree on.

This is propositional truth here.

Colossians 1, 13 through 14.

Unity with Christ is the means of redemption.

Says he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption.

In whom we have redemption.

That's speaking of unity with Christ, in whom we have redemption.

Unity with Christ is reconciliation to God, talking about how we were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.

Christ has now reconciled in his body.

There's the union with Christ part, in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

Unity with Christ is reconciliation to God.

Going to a different letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, and this is actually a text I go to often when I speak to somebody who's interested in baptism.

Because we who are uh credo-baptists, we believe that you have to come to saving faith in Christ before you get baptized.

Faith precedes baptism.

That's what we believe here.

And usually I go to Romans 6 because in that domain of Credo-Baptism, we usually simply uh say baptism is just a sign or a symbol, and indeed it is.

But it's more than that.

Baptism, according to Romans 6, is an act of unity with Christ.

Romans 6, verse 3.

Romans 6:3

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death.

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

In other words, coming to Christ in faith unites you yourself to Christ.

And baptism is an act of that unity we have with Christ.

Christ died.

He died for sin.

And if you are united to him in his death, your sin was placed on him, and your sin also died with him.

But Jesus didn't stay dead.

Three days later he rose again.

And if Jesus rose again, you also share in his resurrection, if you have been united to him in faith.

Unity with Christ is the promise of our resurrection.

And there is an implication individually of union with Christ, because 2 Corinthians 5.17 says that if anyone is in Christ, if anyone has union with Christ through faith, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away, behold, the new has come.

You are an entirely different person if you have union with Christ.

That has to be understood.

We can't talk about anything in the book of Philippians in terms of unity within the body if we don't fundamentally understand that unity with Christ fundamentally changes us.

It changes the way we think, it changes the way we act, it changes our priorities.

Before moving on and getting into the theme of the letter, we have to stop and ask the question Are you united to Christ?

Have you been joined to him in his death?

That means your sin has been put to death as well.

Have you been joined to him in his resurrection?

That means you have been raised to walk in the newness of life.

And some of you may have been walking with the Lord all your life.

You've grown up in the church, and yet you're starting to realize it's made no fundamental difference in the way you live.

Brothers and sisters, something's off there.

Because union with Christ means a fundamental change in who you are.

Nothing that I speak of is going to matter to you unless this is foundational to your very existence.

Union with Christ is a foundational, a foundation to the theme we're going to look at here because it is through our union with Christ that we then also have union with Christ's people.

Union with Christ's people.

And in the book of Philippians, we we see primarily three different ways that the church is united together.

We see a unity in mission, a unity in mind, and a unity in faith.

That's our outline for this morning.

If you're a note-taking type, I apologize, I don't have slides, okay?

When I preach, my mind is on fire, and I have very little capacity for anything else, let alone managing slides, okay?

So track with me.

That's our outline.

Unity in mission, unity in mind, and unity of faith.

Let's break it down real quick.

Unity in Christ united Paul and the Philippians together in the same mission.

They weren't on different programs.

The Philippian church was not focused on social justice, whereas Paul was focused on making the gospel more palatable to the masses.

They weren't on different programs.

They were united together in the same mission.

Going back to our orchestra analogy, imagine an orchestra coming together to play a symphony, but everybody brought their own music.

You have different players, different instruments playing different pieces.

They're going to be playing their instruments at different times, they're going to be playing different songs, and it's not going to sound pretty.

It's going to sound chaotic and discombobulating.

Similarly, the church is ineffective at what it is called to do if the church is not unified in its mission.

So, what is that mission?

I would say it's the mission of Christ.

Luke 19, 10 tells us that the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost.

That is Jesus' purpose statement was to seek and save the lost, not to not to be with those who are healthy, but to rather go to those who are sick.

It's the mission of Christ's disciples.

This is the mission he gave them, Matthew 28, 19, right?

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

That infers that the people we're making disciples are of are lost, and they need to be evangelized and discipled and taught everything that Christ commanded them.

It's the mission of the church.

1 Peter 2 9 says, You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.

But the church does not exist in and of and for itself.

He goes on in 1 Peter 2, he says, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Being united to Christ, Paul and the Philippian church were brought together for the same purpose and mission.

And we have to ask ourselves, I'm going to just pause right there, and ask, what is your understanding of the purpose and mission of the church?

What is your understanding of the purpose and mission of the church?

Many people will rightly say the mission and purpose of the church is to glorify God.

And to that I say, Amen.

That's excellent.

Yes.

So what?

What do we do with that?

We glorify God how?

Here's how God is glorified.

His church making disciples of the nations.

That is how God is glorified, and that is the mission of the church.

God is glorified as disciples are built up, not just so that we fill our heads with knowledge, and not just so that we build these cozy religious lives, but so that we can go out as missionaries into the community that we exist in.

That is the mission of the church.

That's the mission of this church.

The mission is to reach the lost.

And this shared mission, according to Paul's letter, is a source of Paul's joy, encouragement, and support.

The shared mission between Paul and the Philippian church is a source of joy.

For Paul, the joy, joy for a church is often expressed in his prayer life.

And in chapter 1, we see that, verses 3 through 7, Paul is thanking God of his every remembrance of the Philippian church in every prayer of his, making his prayers with joy.

Paul remembers the church often, he prays for the church often, and he prays joyfully for the Philippians because, verse five, of their partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

The Philippians and Paul have this shared mission, this partnership that they are actively working together in to reach people with the gospel.

They have been united to Christ and thus they have been united to the same mission.

And this unity makes Paul joyful, not just about their salvation, but because they are actively working together for the same objective.

Paul is joyful because of their partnership with him in gospel ministry, which is also a source of encouragement.

Chapter 1, verse 12, Paul speaks of his present circumstances as he writes this letter.

Paul is writing this letter from a jail cell.

Paul's the kind of guy that he just can't shut up about Jesus.

Everywhere he goes, he's talking about Jesus.

He's trying to convince people about Jesus.

He's annoying about Jesus.

He annoys people.

If you read the book of Acts, you'll be like, wow, a lot of people are annoyed about Paul.

So much so that they arrest him and throw him in jail.

And now he's writing this letter while he's in prison.

And to give you an idea of how laser-focused Paul is on the mission of Christ, he says that while he sits in jail, he is trying to actively convert all of his guards.

He just won't stop.

Those are his circumstances.

But he says, What has happened to me has served to advance the gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.

He's not dissuaded from his message to proclaim the gospel.

He's rather emboldened.

But then he turns in verse 29 to say that the Philippians are engaged in this same struggle.

He says, For it has been granted to you for the sake of Christ that you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

The Philippians share in that same struggle because they are doing the same thing.

They are both actively working together to try and convince people that Jesus Christ is Lord and Messiah, that he is the salvation of the world, that no man can come to the Father but by him.

That it is through faith in Christ that you can be saved and redeemed and have a hope and a future.

The Philippians and Paul are both engaged in this regardless of the circumstances, and that's why they're both so encouraged.

He wants to encourage the Philippian church to continue and persist in this shared mission, regardless of the opposition that they face.

And this shared mission between Paul and the Philippian church is also a source of support.

They help each other.

They help each other.

Chapter 4, verse 10, Paul says, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me.

You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity.

So Paul's acknowledging the Philippians had had concern for him, and it there's a lot of background to that, and I'll spare you of that.

There's a lot of concern about Paul.

But it's because the Philippians have shared in Paul's struggles.

Verse 14, he says, It was kind of you to share my trouble.

You Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only.

The Philippians have been active supporters of Paul because they're engaged in the same mission.

They're supporting one another for the same purpose and reason.

I wonder what it would look like for this church to be supportive of one another for that same end.

What would it look like if we were actively helping each other in the advancement of the gospel here in Grand Forks?

Again, what is the mission of Faith Evangelical Free Church and what is your part in that mission?

What is your part in that mission?

If you don't know where to start, I'll give you some here's some just helpful places, helpful starting points.

I'm gonna start with parents, because that's typically just on the forefront of my mind.

Parents, here's an easy way to start.

If you don't know where to start in your mission to share Christ with the world, let's start here.

Start with your family.

Parents, are you actively evangelizing and discipling your children?

Or are you counting on the church to do that for you?

Are you actively evangelizing and discipling your children?

It's very easy.

It's as easy as having time set aside every day to pull out the scriptures, read with your children, try and explain the scriptures to your children, pray with your children, maybe sing a song and pray with them as you tuck them into bed.

Super easy.

It can be at most 10 minutes.

And yeah, kids get fussy and squirrely, and that's fine.

Let them be kids.

Make an active effort.

What about your extended family?

Extended connections that you might have.

Maybe you don't have children, but you have cousins, uncles, aunts.

Maybe you have adult children who aren't walking with the Lord, who are opposed to the Christian faith, maybe that's a good starting point for you to evangelize and disciple your family.

How about this?

Maybe you could get to know your neighbors and look for opportunities to share the gospel with them.

Because each of us has a responsibility of fulfilling this mission individually.

But as we do that, I don't want us to lose track that we also have a responsibility, just like the Philippian church, to do that corporately.

This is the mission of our collective church together.

Are we united in that mission?

Unity with Christ brought Paul and the Philippian church together for the same mission, but it also brought them together in their thinking.

In chapter 2, the Apostle Paul transitions from a shared mission to a shared ethic among believers that begins with how believers ought to think.

Back to the orchestra analogy.

The orchestra can only function if everyone is on the same page and has a shared mindset.

If everybody understands how the dynamics of the orchestra work, the strings can't just play as long as they want, however they want.

There are dynamics to the orchestra that everybody has to be on the same page for.

The same is true for the church.

Philippians 2, verses 1 through 2, Paul says that there are four incentives given for unity in the church.

Philippians 2:1–2

He says if there's to be any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy among the church, those four benefits, if those are to be present among the church, then the church must be united in how they think.

He says that in verse 2, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Gee, I'm noticing some repetition there.

How the church thinks is incredibly important to the Apostle Paul.

Unity of mind is expressed in how we think, but unity of mind requires and demands fellowship within the church.

If the church is going to be united in how they think, if the church, the way the church thinks, should be governed by love and harmony within the body, then you must be actively a part of that body in order to be obedient to what Paul is saying here.

He's not speaking to individuals and saying, have unity of mind with just kind of the church in general.

He's saying you must have unity of mind together.

It requires fellowship within the church.

He goes on to say in verse 3 through 4 that this mindset that we are to have.

He says, Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you not look not only to his own interests, but to the interests of others.

Let me ask you this.

How can you look to the interests of others if you refuse to be around others?

Unity within the church requires participation in the church.

And we live in a day and age where we look for every convenient excuse possible to remove ourselves from the body, but you won't experience the fullness of what Christ has for you unless you are fully connected to the body.

You won't experience the blessing of being part of a united church.

You won't be encouraged in Christ the way you ought to.

You won't be comforted from the love of Christ in verses 1 and 2.

You won't have any participation in the Spirit because the Spirit dwells in the believers that you come in fellowship with.

You won't receive any affection or sympathy.

You'll be a lone ranger, which is a completely foreign concept to the New Testament church.

It requires fellowship in the body.

But unity of mind is also Christ on display.

He says, I want you to be of the same mind.

Okay?

Be in a full of cord and of the same mind, right?

Think the same way.

And he explains what that means.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit.

In humility, count others more significant than yourselves.

Don't only look to your own interests, look to the interests of others.

And he could have just left it there.

But Paul continues on to show how unity in mind in the church is directly connected to the person of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 2, verse 5.

Immediately following the command, the imperative, he says, have this mind among yourselves.

Again, Paul is very concerned with how the Philippians are thinking.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

We have that unity language again.

Union with Christ produces union in the body, right?

Union in how we think collectively.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

But rather he emptied himself.

If you have a hard time grasping what that means, it means Jesus Christ stepped off his throne in heaven to come down to his footstool here on earth.

He took on human flesh.

Jesus Christ is the very expression of humility.

If you want to understand what a humble mind looks like, we look to Christ.

We are to have this mind among ourselves, which is ours in Christ Jesus.

And again, there's unity with Christ that precedes and produces a unifying effect among God's people.

The path to the Christ-like mind is to think of Christ.

Think of this: the God of the universe, Jesus Christ, the creator of heaven and earth, the one who made you, the one who is giving you breath right now, at this very minute, the one who is sustaining your life by the power of his word.

Jesus Christ came down to earth.

And he didn't just put on human form.

Isaiah prophesied that he had no appearance, that anybody should look on him.

In other words, he wasn't a handsome man.

He wasn't somebody that stood out from the crowd as somebody that you would be drawn towards.

Jesus was just, he looked like a normal person.

The son of a carpenter, born in a horse trough, grown up in obscurity, accused of blasphemy, lied about, betrayed, stripped naked, beaten, and crucified on a cross.

The God of the universe did that for you.

It makes a lot more sense now when we think about do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, doesn't it?

It makes a lot more sense when we talk about looking to the interests of others above our own.

Because that's the very God that we follow.

That's the very example and pattern of Jesus Christ.

Church that is united in humble thinking is a church that actively displays the very Jesus that we are united to.

Now, lest you think that this is something that you must achieve, that you must discipline yourself to think of, which I would say there is a place for that.

Ultimately, this method of thinking, this way of thinking is not produced or born out of human will and effort.

In chapter 3, Paul instructs the Philippians to be careful of false teachers who will bring in deceptive forms of legalism, saying that you have to do certain things, and namely circumcision.

If you don't know what circumcision is, ask your parents.

If you're an adult who doesn't know, ask Pastor Jason.

Paul makes the case that if obedience to the law is what makes you righteous before God, then he would be the most righteous person above all.

He was circumcised on the 18th, according to the eighth day, according to Old Testament law.

He descends from the tribe of Benjamin.

He's a Pharisee of Pharisees, meaning he grew up knowing and understanding God's word, and not only that, but he taught others and expected others to obey God's law.

He was so zealous for God that he persecuted the church whom he thought was blaspheming God.

But Paul considers all of his religious qualifications as garbage in comparison with simply knowing Christ and adopting this mindset of looking out not just for himself, but for others.

And in verse 15, he says, let those of us who are mature think in this way, not conceited about who we are, not only looking out for number one, but looking out for others, thinking less of ourselves, more of others just like Christ, because that's not the basis of how you are saved.

He says, Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.

Right there, that that last part there implies that it is God who reveals this type of thinking to his church.

This is not something you can merely strive toward.

You can't just concentrate really hard and try and be less conceited and think less of yourself.

This is a product of union with Christ.

This is born from God, not from you.

It's an act of God.

And I want to clarify real quick, because unity in mind, I might have even said that's thinking the same.

Unity of mind is not uniformity.

You understand the difference?

Unity, the way each of us thinks is different.

Some are more analytical, some of us are more creative, some are more practical.

But unity means that we are thinking about the same thing.

Uniformity means we think the same way.

It is possible, and I think, even good within the church for us to think about the same thing in different ways.

Warren Wearsby would say it this way: uh unity and diversity must work together, or one will destroy the other.

Unity without diversity is uniformity, but diversity without unity is anarchy.

So if we have all these different ways of thinking, but we're all thinking on different things, we're all going to be going in different directions.

We're not going to be looking out for the interests of others, we're not going to reflect the very nature of who Christ is.

But if we bring how God made us and the way we think, and we focus our attention by God's grace on the example of Jesus Christ, then this church will be united in the mind of Christ.

Unity with Christ brings the church together in its mission.

Unity with Christ produces a shared mind, a way of thinking.

And finally, unity in Christ brings a shared faith.

Last week, Pastor Anton led us well in considering the importance of propositional truth.

Not everything can be right.

There are some things that are wrong.

And we gotta be okay with that.

And I would say unity requires that some things be wrong and other things need to be right.

Unity cannot be preserved at the expense of what is true.

The Philippians are exhorted to hold on to certain doctrines, to be vigilant for false teachers and to imitate godliness.

But in order to do that, they must have a common faith.

And just as a caveat, I don't have time or bandwidth right now to sift through what are the essentials of truth within the church.

But we do have to understand that division will grow out of a church that looks the other way in matters of doctrine.

Division will grow out of a church that looks the other way on matters of truth.

And so we see, what do we do then?

We first look to the scriptures.

Unity in faith is holding to the scriptures.

Back to chapter 2, verse 12 through 16.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish, in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.

Obedience to God in verses 12 through 13 is how we work out our own salvation, which is evidence of God's work in our lives.

God who works in you is again a reference to union with Christ.

But also it is a reference to union together as a church, right?

It's like all y'all, right?

It's not just you as an individual, it's the church collectively, working out your salvation, not as individuals, but together.

Verses 14 through 15, Paul gives a specific command, do all things without grumbling.

And then in verse 16, he tells us, how is this all accomplished?

How do we obey God?

How do we work out our own salvation?

How do we conduct ourselves as children of God in a crooked world?

We hold fast to the word of life.

We hold fast to the scriptures.

We do that collectively together.

Holding fast means to firmly fix and hold the attention of.

All that Paul desires for the Philippian church will not be accomplished apart from them collectively being worked on.

Through the work of God, through the Word of God.

2 Timothy 3.16 tells us that all scripture is breathed out by God and useful for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in godliness so that the man of God may be complete, lacking nothing, and equipped for every good work.

You want to have a church that is equipped to do the good work that God has called the church to do?

We hold fast to the Word of God.

We become united in faith around the scriptures.

Unity in faith is holding to the scriptures, but it also generates vigilance.

In chapter 3, Paul advises the Philippians to be alert.

Verses 2 through 3, Paul tells the Philippians to be alert for the dogs and evildoers, men who mutilate the flesh.

Again, a reference to circumcision.

He's speaking euphemistically about false teachers who are infiltrating the churches and teaching obedience to the old covenant law, plus Christ equals true salvation.

And Paul asserts that that is not true.

In fact, in verse 3 he says, we are the circumcision, or rather, we are the ones that have been marked and separated by God for God.

If we've been united to Christ by faith and united to each other just the same, then none of that matters.

None of the laws that are being heaped upon them matter.

That shared faith then ought to develop in the church a type of vigilance that seeks to prevent anyone from trying to preach a different gospel.

Holding on to scripture and holding on to doctrine together as a church creates a church that is vigilant, that is looking out for the infiltration of lies, false teaching, and false doctrine.

And then lastly, here, unity and faith imitates godliness as the church is brought together in a shared faith through the word of God, being vigilant for false teaching.

Unity and faith imitates godliness.

He says in chapter 3, verses 17 through 21, Brothers, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

There are positive examples, and then he goes on in verse 18 to say that there are negative examples of what authentic faith looks like.

Paul urges them to follow his example, but not just his example, the example of those who are living out what he is saying.

Someone who has demonstrated the mind of Christ and has repeatedly sought the interest of others above his own.

They've observed Paul's passion for the gospel to the point that he is now in prison.

They have witnessed the all-consuming glory of Christ in this man's life, and they have are exhorted to follow in the same pattern.

They are examples, as I said, in the opposite direction.

Those who Paul says walk as enemies of the gospel, who worship their appetites, they glory in their shame, and their minds are set on earthly things.

And again, being united in faith requires that we understand who is outside the faith and who is in, who to look out for and who to look to.

If our citizenship is in heaven, as Paul says, then we ought to follow the pattern of those who act accordingly.

And why does any of this matter as we close?

Why does any of this matter?

Why does it matter whether a church is unified?

What difference does it make?

Ephesians chapter 4 tells us that God's people are commanded to walk in a manner worthy of their calling as God's people.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Unity within the church is not heaping on an extra Christianity 102 or 201 or whatever.

It is reflective of the calling that God has extended to you.

Unity is a symptom of a church that aspires to live in such a way that it reflects the glory of King Jesus.

And it's ultimately a reflection of God and a reflection of our hope.

If the church is divided, then it reflects to the world that Christ is divided.

If the church is divided in its faith, then we're saying there are multiple faiths.

There are multiple gods to follow.

Where Paul says in Ephesians 4 there is only one body, one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

The implications of division are dire because that reveals we are not united to Christ.

Unity in the church is incredibly important because it's a reflection of the soul of a church.

What does a church do then that is not unified?

It's very simple.

Unity is not something that we as a church necessarily strive towards, although it is something that we can help cultivate.

Here's what a church does when a church is not unified.

We return to the source.

Our union with Christ.

We cannot produce unity within the church.

Christ produces unity within his church as his church draws closer to him.

A.W.

Tozer said it this way: unity in Christ is not something to be achieved, it is something to be recognized.

It's something that is observed.

It is observed of a people who draw close to Christ.

God our Father.

Strengthen our union with him.

As we are drawn to Christ, may we remember that we have been united with him in his death.

We have been united with him in his resurrection.

And we have been united with him in life.

And it is through our union with Christ that we have forgiveness, salvation, redemption, and hope.

And it is through our union with Christ that we have union with the body, the church.

Lord, draw us near to each other this morning.

Strengthen the union within this fellowship.

May we be unified in our mission.

May your desire that none should perish be the desire of every person here this morning who calls themselves by your name.

May we be unified in our thinking, Lord.

Looking to the example of Christ who humbled himself to the point of death.

Not looking to his own interests, but to the interests of those who hated him.

May we be unified in our faith.

As Jesus prayed in John 17, we are to be sanctified by your truth.

Your word is truth.

Lord, do not let us settle for shallow calls of unity at the expense of what is right and what is true.

Lord, make us ever vigilant for the dogs and the cowards who seek to infiltrate this church and mutilate our faith into something unrecognizable to you.

Preserve us, Lord, according to your word we pray.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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