"One Father, One Body, One Spirit" Ephesians 4:2-6 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This is the Word of God, Ephesians 4, verse 1.

Ephesians 4:1

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called into one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

I remember back in Los Angeles when I was an associate pastor at a church, there was a person I had to meet with.

He had tried to meet with the senior pastor, and it was staffed down to me.

And so I met with him in my office, and he began our conversation by saying, Don't you wish the church had more unity?

Don't you wish before the watching world the church was more unified?

And I was fresh out of seminary, I was a rookie at this job, and I took the bait.

Yeah, I wish we were more unified, certainly.

Yeah.

And he said, What a testimony to the watching world it would be if every Christian bought their insurance from the same place.

And I realized at that moment I had been hoodwinked.

Now you laugh because you know that would not be a demonstration of unity to the church if we all had the same health insurance provider or we all had the same life insurance broker.

That would not be a demonstration of real biblical unity to the watching world.

You understand that.

But let's talk about an example even perhaps more close to home.

You remember a few months ago there was a, oh, what was it, a presidential election a few months ago.

Do you do you recall?

And I had multiple people come to me and say, what a demonstration of unity it would be to the world if all Christians voted the same way.

Then they would know that we are one and united in Christ.

And you're not laughing now, are you?

And I hope that you recognize that likewise would not be a profound demonstration of unity, because our unity is not found in a political candidate or in a life insurance broker or in this, that, or the other thing.

And so you recognize that there's some you know comical examples and some more maybe personal examples that you would say, wait, wouldn't it be a profound testimony to the world if we did all vote the same way?

And I'm I'm telling you, it wouldn't be, because our our union is not found in those places.

You know, wouldn't it be a strong testimony of unity to the watching world if we all drove the same kind of car?

You know, some of you are out there with a pickup that's way too big for your lifestyle and it's guzzling gas and just parked in the parking lot, testifying to the world that you don't care about the environment.

Right now it's sitting out there, and aren't you ashamed of yourself?

After all, the disciples, when they were filled with the spirit, they all left in one accord.

So youth pastor joke, I can't help it.

It's it's in me.

No, it's not a testimony of unity to the world that all believers drive the same car or vote for the same candidate or respond to any gray area the same way.

Because our unity is not found in those gray areas, our unity is found in Christ.

And so we have unity presented before the watching worlds only to the extent that our unity is found in Christ.

When our unity is found in other things, then that unity is actually diluted, and the person of Christ is actually diluted as the real binding presence in our church.

Even if those other things are good.

And as I mentioned earlier, when it comes to gray areas, it doesn't mean that both sides of a gray area are equally correct or that strong, equally strong arguments could be made on both sides.

That is not the way the Bible approaches complex moral situations.

It's by saying, hey, if it's complex and if there's arguments on both sides, I guess it doesn't matter.

That's not what the Bible does.

So don't mishear me.

I'm not saying those gray areas are insignificant or that they don't matter.

Of course not.

But I am saying that they are not the basis or the expression of unity.

Rather, unity in the church is rooted in, I would say it this, a diversity that is bound together with love.

I mean, the churches have always been plagued by divisions and schisms.

See Yodia and Senectiche back in the book of Philippians, see Paul and Cephas in 1 Corinthians, Apollos versus Jesus.

People were saying, I was baptized in the name of Apollos, and I was baptized, or by Apollos, I was baptized in the name of Jesus, not by any of you.

And Paul's like, I did, glad I didn't baptize any of you except those seven I did, and I don't even remember your names.

You know, that kind of division has always been a temptation of the church.

And so we're not supposed to accept disunity or division as just the effects of living in a fallen world.

No.

Instead, we're supposed to recognize that there is a unity that Christians should have with one another.

It's we are bound together, is the phrase in verse 2, with love.

It's translated in the SV, bearing with one another in love.

And it's the word for being chained, yoked to each other.

We're tied up, and it is love that ties us one to another.

It is good for brothers to love each other.

Our God is a good God who has united us in harmony through love.

And that becomes our model for unity to the watching world.

This is where Paul calls us to holiness in Ephesians 4.

Remember, Ephesians 1 through 3 is kind of the robust doctrinal foundations of our Christian life, the grounds, the theological grounds of our sanctification.

Ephesians 4, 5, and 6 are all about how you're supposed to then live your life, how you're supposed to express that holiness.

And so that's where Paul goes here.

And he begins by expressing our holiness through unity.

I want to give you an outline this morning, a very brief outline, three displays of unity.

And all of these displays of unity, all the, you know, you read verses 1 through 6 here, you see the word one over and over and over and over and over and over again.

It's obviously the theme of this.

The word one, we're united, we have unity in Christ.

Now there's three different displays, there are three different facets of that unity.

And so we're going to kind of walk through these verses backwards because we understand where Paul is going with this.

Now we want to kind of back it into the thrust in verse 2.

So we're going to start by seeing how unity is displayed through the Trinity.

And then we see that beginning in verses 4 and then 5 and verse 6.

So the first example of unity we have with diversity is seen in the Trinity.

And I say unity with diversity because Paul, where we're going here, just so you know where we're going to end up this morning before we take the Lord's table, is Paul arguing that individual believers in the church should be marked by unity with one another as they bear with one another in love and peace.

But in order to rightly understand what that means, you need to understand the example Paul gives, which comes in verses 5, 6, and 7, which begins with the Trinity.

You understand that the Trinity is our God.

Our God is triune.

We believe in one God who is three persons.

One God who is three persons.

There is only one God, but those three persons are real distinctions within the Trinity.

There really is a Father who is not the Son.

There really is a Spirit who is not the Father or the Son.

They're not interchangeable.

It's not right to say that the Father died on the cross for your sins or the Father regenerated you.

It is right to say that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings you new life.

The three persons of the Trinity are not interchangeable.

And yet the three persons of the Trinity share in all the divine attributes one with another.

You recognize that the Son is the image of the Father.

Every single thing that is in the Father is seen in the Son.

The only exception being the Father is the source, the Son is the Son.

So this is hinted at here.

We begin with the Holy Spirit.

There is one body and one spirit, Paul says in verse 4.

There is only one Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is divine.

The Holy Spirit is the fullness of God.

The Holy Spirit searches the inner parts of God and reveals all that is there.

The Holy Spirit has all of the divine attributes, all the glory and majesty and qualities of God.

Again, when you think about the Trinity, I think the most helpful way to understand the distinctions between the person is this.

The Father has an image of himself, the Son is that image, the Son is everything that is in the Father.

If you look at the mirror, the mirror is everything that is on the outside of you.

Something on your face, it'll show up in the mirror.

But the Son is not merely a mirror that shows the outside of the Father, so to speak.

The Son is a mirror that shows the inside of the Father.

Every single part of the Father is expressed fully in the Son.

The only distinction being the Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son.

The Son is the image.

The Spirit then proceeds from both the Father and the Son.

As the Son looks at the Father and the Father looks at the Son, there's real love.

And the Father loves the Son because he sees himself, and the Son loves the Father because he sees the Father and Himself, and the Spirit is that expression of love.

And so everything the Father and the Son see in one another is reflected or expressed in the Holy Spirit.

Every attribute of the Father is in the Son.

Every attribute of the Son is in the Holy Spirit.

There is no distinction except the Father is the Father, the Son is the Son, and the Spirit is the Spirit.

And so it is not right to view the Spirit as a lesser form of God, or the Spirit is having some of the attributes of God, but not all of them, though the Spirit is entirely divine.

And this is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 11.

1 Corinthians 2:11

For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him?

So follow Paul's argument here.

How do you know that your spirit is really you?

You know, you tell me, Jesse, how do you know that your spirit or your mind is really you?

Well, because it's me.

My spirit is me.

It's kind of hard to make a distinction between me and my spirit, or between me and my mind.

It is me.

My spirit searches me.

My spirit knows my mind.

You might even say your spirit can know your heart better than you even know your heart.

Even in the way we talk about ourselves, we make those kind of distinctions.

Paul's going to go from there to talking about the Holy Spirit.

So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

In other words, the one who knows the mind of the Father is the Holy Spirit.

He understands the Father fully because he is the full expression of the Father.

He's the full inspiration of the Word.

He's the full Spirit of the Father.

He proceeds from the Father and the Son.

And so Paul goes on to say in the next verse to 1 Corinthians 2.12 now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

So the Holy Spirit is the one who comes to the world and opens our minds to God.

This is God's own spirit.

And there's only one Spirit of God.

There's not many spirits of God.

There's only one.

That's Paul's point in verse 4, which we'll get back to in a few moments.

But he says in verse 4, there is one spirit.

Critical for understanding our unity is that there's only one spirit.

And I think we're I think generally we're pretty good at understanding that there's only one Holy Spirit, there's only one eternal Son of God.

I think generally we have reminds around that.

I just want to repeat it so we see where follow Paul's flow of his argument here.

He next says in verse 5, there's only one Lord.

One Lord, he says in verse 5.

And Lord here is a reference to the second person in Trinity, the Son, Jesus Christ, Himself, is our one Lord.

I've been reading the Gospel of Luke recently with my uh my 12-year-old, and we've been working slowly through the first few chapters, and something that just struck me this week that had never really res I'd never really saw before, because I don't think I'd ever gone through Luke 1 this patiently and deliberately before, is how many times the word Lord is used in Luke 1.

Uh by my count, I think 17 times or something like that.

It's probably the most common word in Luke 1.

Everything is about the Lord, the angel of the Lord, the law of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, Israel's Lord, David's Lord, the commands of the Lord.

Everything is about the Lord in Luke chapter 1.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

And then it builds to when Mary and Elizabeth meet.

Elizabeth then calls Mary the mother of my well, that's surprising.

Even the temple of the Lord and the Lord of the law and the Lord of the angels.

I mean, clearly talking about God.

And then the first time it's used differently is when Elizabeth addresses Mary, recognizing obviously that Jesus Christ in her womb is the Lord.

Later on in Luke 1, it says John will go before Jesus to prepare the way of the Lord.

In Luke chapter 2, Jesus is called Christ by the angels, Christ the Lord.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

So there's no ambiguity here.

When Paul is saying Ephesians 4, verse 5, there is one Lord, he's clearly talking about Jesus Christ who is divine.

Ephesians 4:5

Paul has picked up on Elizabeth's language and John the Baptist's language and on the angels' language that Jesus Christ is the Lord.

There's only one Lord.

And we see that in Jesus Christ.

And then thirdly, there is only one Father, verse 6, one God and Father of all.

Again, God, the phrase God here is connected to the Father because He is the source.

He's first in the Trinity.

The Son is the image of the Father.

The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but He is the one Father.

And when he says of all, appreciate what that means.

That God, our Father, is the Father of all.

All there includes Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God.

What it means that Jesus is the eternal Son is that the Father is the eternal Father.

He is the Father even of Jesus.

Therefore, the Father, notice verse 6, is over all and through all and in all.

And this is Trinitarian language here.

Do you appreciate that the Father fills the Son?

The Father and the Son fill the Spirit.

The person of the Spirit, the content of the person of the Spirit, you can say it that way.

The attributes, the characteristics, the quality of the Holy Spirit is derived from the Father.

The Father fills the Holy Spirit.

The Father fills the Son.

The Son is the image of the Father.

That's what if this sounds complex.

This is verse six.

He is over all and through all and in all.

So ask yourself, does the Father have an attribute?

If yes, that attribute is in the Son and in the Spirit.

This creates a very real unity in the Trinity.

A very real unity, one God.

You even see this in Deuteronomy chapter 6, probably the most famous Old Testament verse.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

Here, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

Shma Israel, Adonai Yahweh, Adenai, Ichad.

And that word Ichad there, it's like a pluralized word of one.

You wouldn't translate it this way, but it has this implication that here, O Israel, the Lord, Yahweh, the Lord is one.

The number is one.

There's only one God.

And yet there's this El Hainu, our God.

He's it's a plural.

Even the hints of the Trinity hidden in the Old Testament, the Father is the creator of the word world.

He creates with his own word, which is an expression of himself, while the Spirit hovers over the earth.

That's Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

You see all three persons of the Trinity.

They are distinct.

The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinct, yet they are one God.

That is the foundation of unity that we will see next when it comes to our salvation.

So you see unity with diversity in the Trinity, and you see unity with diversity in our salvation.

In our salvation.

So let's go through these verses again now that we have kind of the background of the Trinity, verses four through six, and talk about how that is expressed in our salvation.

Verse 4 there is one body and one spirit.

The one body here speaks of the universal church.

Every believer in the world, every true Christian in the world is a member of one body.

Local churches are little local expressions of that one body, but every member who is regenerate, every true believer who's a member of Dmanuel Bible Church is a member of the same body of believers as every true believer who's a member at Word of Life or at First Baptist Braddock or whatever, Braddock Road Baptist Church.

You know, there are no stoplights between my house and church.

I marvel at this all the time.

I don't have to go through a single stop, single stoplight going home after church.

But do you know this?

I will pass four other churches going home.

There are more churches between my house and Emmanuel than there are stoplights.

I think about that often.

And yet every true believer at every one of those churches is a member of the same universal church.

We're all members of one body.

Now, Paul ties that to us being members, being participants with one spirit.

Now you would think, if you were going to describe the universal church, that you would root the one body of Christ in the second person of the Trinity, the Son.

But Paul roots this idea that there's only one body of Christ in the earth in the singularity of the Holy Spirit, not the Son, because the Spirit is the one who saves you and makes you part of that body.

The Holy Spirit is the one who is building the church.

So critical to understand what's coming next when we get to spiritual gifts next week.

The Holy Spirit is the one who is building the church.

The Son is, in a sense, not the person of the Trinity who is building the church.

It's the Spirit who is building the church by giving you faith in the Son.

So when you come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, that's the Holy Spirit who did that in your heart.

And the same Spirit who saved you saves every person who is saved at every other church in the world.

The believer down at the southern tip, Sierra del Fuego in Argentina, is saved by the same Holy Spirit that saves you.

The believer in the most northern part of Canada, the most northern tip of the world, as far north as you can go, is saved by the same Holy Spirit that saves you.

You are all part of one body because there is only one Holy Spirit who is saving.

John chapter 3, Jesus says, No one can even see the kingdom of heaven unless they are born again by the Spirit of God.

John 3 · chapter mention

Ephesians 1, verse 13 says, You are made alive when you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 1:13

Ephesians 2.18.

We now have access to God, our Father, through the Holy Spirit.

So the Holy Spirit saved you, Ephesians 1, now seals you, Ephesians 2, which means he regenerates you, he gives you spiritual life, and he doesn't leave.

He seals you, he stays with you.

Then Ephesians 3.16.

The Holy Spirit now strengthens you.

So he saves, he seals, and then he stays.

He regenerates you, he seals you, and then he works from inside of you.

He's the seed that plants, the seed that has life, and the seed that grows.

The Holy Spirit is the one who's working in you.

That's chapters 1, 2, and 3 of Ephesians right there.

Building this point that every believer in the world is a participant with the same Holy Spirit, so there's only one body of Christ.

Only one.

One hope.

The hope that belongs to your call is the hope of eternal life.

The hope that our sins are forgiven, which is brought to us.

That's what we put our faith in by the Holy Spirit.

Verse 5.

There's only one Lord, therefore there's only one faith and one baptism.

The Lord here, remember the second person in the Trinity?

The faith here means that every person who is truly saved has the same faith.

Now I recognize your faith is different than my faith, my faith is mine, your faith is yours.

It's not by identity the same faith.

There's multitudes of faiths as there's multitudes of people.

However, the content of each believer's faith is the same.

The content of your faith is the same as the content of my faith if you're a Christian.

Because the content of our faith is the second person of the Trinity, the resurrected Savior.

That Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He was buried, he descended into the grave, he led souls captive from Sheol.

He ascends and resurrects on Easter Sunday morning, and then he ascends up to glory in heaven.

That is the content of our faith, that Jesus bore the penalty for our sins, bore the punishment for our sins from our heavenly Father who poured out wrath on him.

It killed him.

He surrendered his soul.

He died, buried, resurrected, and ascended.

That's the content of the faith.

So there is only one faith.

In other words, if there is more ways to be saved than believing in Jesus, there'd be more than one faith.

And people that say, oh, every, you know, every path leads to God.

Well, that's a violation of the whole Bible and every verse in the Bible, but also a violation of this verse.

That there is only one faith.

There's only one road, and the road is Jesus Christ.

And then finally, verse 5 says there's only one baptism.

Again, every believer who is baptized has a different, you know, your baptism is not, I was baptized at Grace Church in the parking lot in a little kiddie pool propped up with railroad ties so the water didn't flow at the edge by the elders of the church in the parking lot before an elder's meeting.

That's how I was baptized.

Some of you were baptized right here.

I saw it with my own two eyes.

Those are, in a sense, different baptisms.

No, it's all the same baptism, though.

Because it's all a baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You were lowered into the water and you were raised in newness of life.

You were buried and resurrected in Christ.

That's why your baptism here is tied to the one Lord.

There's one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

You know, a practical application of the one baptism thing is understanding that every believer shares that baptism.

We are all united in the body of Christ.

We've all died and resurrected in the same way with faith in the same person.

Verse 6.

There's also one God and Father of all.

One God and Father of all.

The Father is the source of all this.

Our salvation comes from him.

Back in Ephesians 1, he's the one who predestines.

He's the one who elects.

He's the one who sends the Son in Ephesians 2.

He's the one who has appointed good works for us to walk in from before time in Ephesians 2.

He is the one with the manifold riches of glory in Ephesians 3, verse 16, which he grants us through faith in the Son and through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 3:16

He is the source of all of our salvation.

That's why he's over all and through all and in all.

So recognize, even in the Trinity and your salvation, you're seeing a unity with this diversity.

The Holy Spirit saves you.

You're saved through faith in the Son, and the source of all this is the plan of the Father.

Father, Son, and Spirit.

They're not identical.

There's diversity there, but there is a very real unity that your salvation understands because it is celebration.

Notice how even the persons of the Trinity operate with each other.

The Father declares from heaven, they're always pointing at each other.

The Father declares from heaven, This is my son with whom I'm well pleased.

Listen to him.

That's how the Father is expressing his unity, his Trinitarian unity, is he's telling people to listen to his son.

Jesus tells people, I'm going away and I will send you a helper, and it's better that I go away, because then you receive the Spirit.

So the Father is pointing to the Son, the Son is pointing to the Holy Spirit and saying, He's better than me.

The Holy Spirit comes and gives you faith, and the faith is not in the Holy Spirit, the faith is back in the Son.

And then the Son, you're adopted in the Son, you're hidden in the Son, and the Son presents you before the Father, so that all things are all in all.

So even within the Trinity, every person of the Trinity is pointing to each other as an expression of their unity.

The Father points to the Son, the Son points to the Spirit, the Spirit points to the Son, the Son delivers back to the Father.

This is what real unity looks like.

I wish we had more time to look at this verse.

There's just an ocean of truth here, but 1 Corinthians 15, 28, when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him, who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

This is speaking of the end of the millennial kingdom.

At the end of Christ's reign on earth, the earth will be destroyed, and new heavens and a new earth will appear.

Jerusalem, our heavenly city, will descend from above, and we will always be with the Lord.

And when all things are all in all at that point, Jesus surrenders all things back to the Father, and then all things are complete within the Trinity.

Meaning there's this celebration of unity with diversity for all time, forever and ever and ever.

What a fascinating thing to think about.

This is the grounds, this is the example, this is the expression of unity in the church.

It's the triune unity with diversity within the Trinity, a scene in our salvation, and finally a scene in our sanctification.

We saw this unity with diversity in the Trinity.

The three persons of the Trinity are not the same, although they are one God, but the Father is not the Son and not the Spirit, etc.

The three persons of the Trinity reveal their unity and salvation as they point to one another and save us.

And now these three persons of the Trinity are on display in our sanctification.

And how our sanctification reveals the unity with diversity.

So this is why I wanted to go backwards to these verses to bring us back to verse one and two to see how we're supposed to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called.

You were called to faith by the Holy Spirit, the voice of the Father through the Son, the Spirit comes to you and gives you faith.

That's how you've been called.

Now you're supposed to walk, and I think to help you understand how cool verse two and three is, let me start by asking you this question.

Now we're getting into the real, the real fun part of this passage.

That was just warming up for me.

I'm excited about this.

Okay.

If I were to challenge you, I want you to write three chapters about what the holy life looks like.

Three chapters about what Ephesians 1, 2, and 3 lived out in your life.

So set the theology aside, make it practical application, describe holy living, and it'll be inspired.

So every believer is going to have to read what you write about the holiness of the Christian life and do it.

You get three chapters, go.

Just think for a second.

Where would you start with that?

How would you describe the holy life to people?

I mean, you'd probably say, listen, read the Word of God, go to church, fellowship, pray, tell other people about Jesus, evangelize.

You know, don't listen to worldly things and, you know, take thoughts captive kind of stuff.

You'd probably go down that road.

You probably have a lot of do's in the list.

And Paul will get to the do's.

We're getting to the do's like chapter five, they're coming 100 miles an hour.

You're gonna get hit by a bus full of do's in chapter five.

But he doesn't start with the do's in chapter four.

He starts with nothing on the outside at all.

He starts these three chapters on personal holiness with internal attitudes.

Things that you won't even see on the outside.

That's where holiness begins.

It begins on the inside.

It's gonna build to unity in the church.

That's where he's going.

It's gonna be an expression of unity in the church.

But he begins with this list of worthy walking, what it looks like.

His main point is that holiness expresses itself in unity.

But what does unity in the church look like?

Well, it begins in verse 2 with humility.

That's where it starts.

Paul's arguing that the unity in the church is best seen when you are not seen.

When you are humble, when you die to yourself and exalt Christ, when you think less of yourself and more of Christ, that's the pathway to unity and holiness in the church.

Appreciate that the biggest threat to unity in the church is not the world.

It's not politicians, it's not communists or capitalists, it's not feminists or abortionists.

The most dangerous threat to the church is you.

You are the threat to unity in the church.

Your own heart.

The world and the devil, they can shoot their arrows at the church all day long.

That's not going to produce disunity in the church.

Disunity in the church will come from the inside and it will come from you.

And so Paul says, You want unity in the church?

Pursue humility.

Humility is not insisting on your own way.

Humility is crucifying yourself.

Humility is making less of you.

This word could be translated lowliness of mind.

Humility is saying, who I am in church doesn't matter.

What I want in church is insignificant.

I die to myself for the sake of the church.

One of my favorite things I learned this week, studying this passage.

I'd never heard this before, but I saw it found it in several commentaries.

That this word for humility that Paul uses here was a brand new word with the New Testament.

This was not a virtue in the Roman world.

The Romans didn't have this word.

This is a word that was invented.

This word lowliness of mind is invented as a virtue to describe the life of Christ.

That Christ never insisted on his own way, that Christ yielded himself.

He didn't defend himself.

This was an attitude that was in Christ Jesus.

That though Christ had the form of God, he didn't consider a quality with God something to be held on to, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming obedient, coming as a likeness of men, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

That's what Christ's humility looks like.

So you want unity in the church, don't insist on your own way.

You want unity in the church, don't try to make other people match your preferences.

You want unity in the church, die to yourself and put Christ in the front.

Pride wants to be recognized and listened to.

Humility wants to be crucified.

There's an ocean of difference there.

So, you want unity in the church?

You want holiness in the church?

Pursue humility.

Second, gentleness.

Gentleness.

This is the word for meek.

Some translations even render it meek.

It's just a word, it means strength under control.

It means that you are a strong person, but you're restrained.

You're not taking revenge.

You're not avenging yourself.

You're not defending yourself.

This is the strength required to turn the other cheek.

You know, and I'm glad the ESV doesn't translate it meekness, because meekness sounds like such a kind of effeminate, mousey kind of word, like you know, meek is a mouse kind of thing.

That's not this word at all.

I mean, this is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed are the meek.

This is having the strength to turn the other cheek, to get punched on one and turn the other, to have your coat taken and give your jacket as well.

That's this kind of strength, which takes an inner reserve of strength to do those kind of things.

This word, this gentleness is how the ESV renders it, but this strength under control, it never retaliates, it never avenges itself.

This was a virtue in the Roman world.

Aristotle has a whole section that he wrote describing this virtue.

He said, and Aristotle says it this way I want to give you kind of a non-Christian perspective on this word.

He says, This is the person who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time.

That's how he understood that virtue.

I think that's probably a pretty good way of understanding it.

You're never angry to defend yourself, you're never eager to defend yourself, you are angry when the Lord is offended and the Lord is crossed.

So humility kills yourself.

Gentleness restrains yourself.

I'll tell you, most Christians do not have those two virtues down.

Amen?

Walking around like Frankenstein's in church, yelling about your own rights and your own wrongs and who's crossed you and your own preferences and everything.

You have to crucify that.

You have to humble yourself and crucify that.

And you pursue humility followed by meekness.

By the way, meekness does not make a good leader in the world, does it?

You have a meek leader, he gets pushed over by everybody.

Because there's nobody to defend him.

That's why the church is so different.

Meekness in the church makes a powerful leader, because people in the church don't need to defend themselves because we have the Lord.

The Lord will defend us.

People in the world don't have that.

If they don't defend themselves, nobody else will.

People in the church have that.

We don't need to defend ourselves.

The Lord is our defender.

His eyes are on us.

Well, if you have humility and you have meekness, you will need patience.

If you have humility and you have meekness or gentleness, you're gonna need patience because you're gonna have to put up with a lot of foolishness even in the church.

Honestly, most Christians are on the struggle bus when it comes to humility and gentleness, and so you don't get to patience.

But patience is this Greek word macrothermia.

It means long suffering.

You will deal with anything the Lord has for you.

That's what this word means.

The Lord can give you whatever he wants to give you, and you will deal with it.

You will receive it as from the hand of a loving father.

A global pandemic that ruins your plans for your senior year in high school or for your retirement or whatever it is, you receive that as from the hand of a loving father.

Cancer, Lord, I receive it from you.

If it's from your hand, I receive it.

I take it.

Health difficulties, family difficulties, whatever they are, this is what this word means.

That you have patience to receive them from God, including people in the church that are not humble, people in the church that are not meek, people in the church that are running around like you know rhinoceros knocking everything over, you receive them as well with patience.

That's the kind of patience that just takes what the Lord has for you, from COVID to cancer to persecution, whatever, God.

I receive it from your hand.

That's his patience.

Which leads to bearing with one another in love.

That's the phrase, you're linked together by love.

You're giving out your love.

This word for love, agape here, you understand this.

Eros is the kind of love that only takes.

Philo is the kind of love that takes and gives, like a friendship kind of love.

It's a give and take.

This is agape.

It's the kind of love that's only giving, only giving, only giving.

So you have humility, you have patience, you have meekness, and then you're giving yourself all the time.

That's what produces unity in the church in this life of unity.

And when you have all that, look where Paul goes with this in verse 3.

You're eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit.

Now, in the way the English is translated here, you don't get how jarring this would be in the Greek.

The word in the Greek for eager here is the word for hurry up.

So where the Paul tells Timothy, 2 Timothy, Timothy, hurry up and bring me my jacket.

It's this word.

Paul's saying, if you have all this, you will hurry up and maintain.

I mean, that doesn't make any sense, does it?

Hurry up and well, we have the expression in English, right?

Hurry up and wait, and it's meant to be funny.

Hurry up and wait.

That's this word right here.

This is the same idiom.

You hurry up and you maintain.

So listen, everything this morning is building to this right here.

This is my main point this morning.

So tune in.

You cannot make unity in the church.

You can contribute nothing to church unity.

Oftentimes, the most disunifying person in the church is the one who is, you know, leading the charge for unity.

Look out.

Unity in the church is an ontological reality.

It exists right now because we are baptized in the Holy Spirit to the one body of Christ with faith in Jesus Christ under the authority of God our Father.

We have unity right now.

What you contribute to the church is disunity.

By putting yourself forward, it creates disunity.

So the secret to unity is crucifying yourself, humility, humbleness, meekness, patience, bearing with one another.

Then you have the attitude that you're eager to not create, not invent, not procure, not hold on to.

You're eager to maintain the unity that is there.

You get yourself off the stage, and what is left on the stage is unity.

Because it's in Christ.

You want unity in the church?

Exalt Christ.

Because He is the one who unifies the church.

You want disunity in the church?

Exalt other things.

Put forward your other gray areas and say, we need to be united on this.

That will be our source of unity.

Hogwash.

Our source of unity is not any of those things.

Our source of unity is you killing yourself and exalting Christ.

That's where you have unity.

Anything else is a distraction.

We'd be unified if everyone did not what they wanted.

We'd be unified here.

If everybody just listened to what I say, we'd be unified.

I mean yikes.

No.

We'd be unified.

Not if he listened to me or if he listened to you.

We'd be unified if we did what Christ did.

You know what Christ did?

Like a lamb before it shears was silent.

He did not open his mouth.

He humbled himself, went to the cross, making atonement for our sin.

Lord, we're grateful that you died for sinners so that we might live.

And that our holiness in our church is expressed through exalting you, not through ourselves.

We want to make much of you and make little of us.

Help us do that.

We know we are quick to defend ourselves, eager to defend ourselves and vindicate ourselves.

I confess that sin to you right now.

We're thankful that you are holy and exalting and forgiving.

We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.