And the Church will be as One

If you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, I want you to turn to Ephesians chapter 4 as we
continue our ongoing study through the book of Ephesians. Some of you know that since Redeemer
started, my prayer for our church has been the passage we're going to look at this morning.
It's been Ephesians 4.3, which is the prayer that God would preserve the unity of the Spirit in
the bond of peace. I have prayed. That we would be a church that would not be fractured by
division. And part of the reason for that is because I've been in churches where I've seen that
happen. When unity was not the priority that it should have been.
And that's why I have prayed that God would make it the priority of our lives here. Maybe that...
was influenced by the fact that I grew up in the 60s listening to pop songs in the 60s, and there
were a lot of pop songs in the 60s about unity and getting together. The Beatles said, come
together right now, right? All you need is love. We said, what the world needs now is love,
sweet love. We were all standing and swaying side to side saying,
I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love. grow apple trees and honey bees and snow
white turtle doves. I mean, that's what, but seriously, we were singing this in the 60s, but some
people were chemically altered to be singing that, all right? I'd like to see the world for once
standing hand in hand, hear it echo through the land, peace throughout the land. We were singing,
united we stand, divided we fall. Come on, people now, smile on your brother. Everybody get
together, try to love one another right now. I think it's so groovy now that people are finally
getting together. We did say groovy back then, okay. And there was a song in the church that became
popular, and everybody got out their guitars, and they swayed, and they sang, we are one in the
Spirit, we are one in the Lord, and we pray that our unity will one day be restored. And of course,
the song probably most well-known from the 60s and the 70s that talks about unity,
that's still sung widely today. is the secular anthem, the secular hymn by John Lennon.
Imagine. Imagine all the people living life in peace.
You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the
world will be as one. Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger.
Brotherhood of man. I mean, imagine. There is a deep longing in the heart.
I believe, of every human being for there to be unity, peace, brotherhood,
for us to be not in conflict with one another, but together with one another. There's a longing for
violence and hatred and war and strife to be put aside. Each of us wants to cry out,
can't we all just get along? Can't we live in harmony, in peace, in unity? And the answer is yes,
we can. The Bible tells us how we can. We were made to live in unity and peace and harmony.
And if it weren't for sin, for our own sin, our selfish, self-focused human nature,
we would be living in peace and harmony. Before sin entered the world,
there was peace and harmony. There was no strife. There was no division.
And here's what we're going to see in our text this morning. God in Christ has made it possible for
that unity. to come again. God has brought us together as his children in Christ so that we can
live in peace and unity in him with one another. And he's calling us as his children to maintain
the peace that he has bought for us. The unity that he has accomplished,
he's saying it's here, step into it and maintain it. He's calling us as his children to be eager.
to maintain the unity of the Spirit, the bond of peace. John Lennon wanted us to imagine what could
be possible experiencing peace and unity apart from God. He saw religion as an enemy of unity and
peace. And I mean, who can blame him? You look around at the way Christians have lived, and it's
easy to say, that's not the place where you're going to find unity and peace. They fight with one
another more than unsaved people do. But the Bible tells us... Unity is found when we step into the
unity that has already been made possible for us, already been put together.
It already exists. It has existed for all eternity. In fact, for all eternity, God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Spirit have dwelled together in perfect, unbroken, unbridled unity.
There's never been a time when God the Father and God the Son were crossed with each other, when
they didn't agree, when they didn't get along. There's always been that unity between them.
And this is the unity into which God's people are welcomed. But it's the church that may be as one.
When John Lennon wrote Imagine, he hoped we would join him and the world would be as one. But this
passage tells us there is a day ahead and we can taste it now when the church will be as one.
We can have a foretaste of what we will one day experience for eternity with God.
So I want us to read the first six verses in Ephesians 4, the verses that we'll be looking at this
morning. Before we do that, let me pray for us again. Father, we need Your Spirit now to come,
just as we sang. Come and be our teacher. Come and be the one who opens Your Word for us.
I pray that as we consider Your Word this morning, Your Spirit would speak to each of us,
addressing the issues that we need to hear. from you. And I ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Would you stand with me for the reading of God's word starting Ephesians 4 verse 1.
This is the word of God for the people of God. The apostle Paul writes this, I therefore and 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 in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit,
just as you were called to the 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. Amen. May God bless this reading of His Word.
The grass withers, the flower fades, the Word of our God will stand forever. You may be seated.
I have to tell you, I faced a dilemma as I sat down to work my way through this passage. My plan
was, we're going to cover four verses. I thought, that's pretty ambitious, four verses. We've been
doing a verse at a time, but I thought, we're going to cover four verses. And then here was the
dilemma. As I started to work on it, I thought, if we're going to cover four verses, we're going to
go long.
I'll be in trouble with my wife if we go long. That's basically what I was thinking. But you know
what? So I thought, I can either go long and we cover all the four verses,
or I can cut it in half and we just cover one verse. That's what we're going to do this morning,
just one verse. And I'll just say, it'll probably be a little shorter because we're covering one
verse. If you don't feel like you're getting your money's worth out of the sermon, you can ask for
a refund on your tithe, and we'll give you a portion of it back, all right? Here's what... to cover
this morning. I had planned to cover the priority of unity first,
so we could see where unity among God's children fits on His priority list.
And then the posture of unity, which is a posture of eagerness,
something we should pursue aggressively. And then the prerequisites of unity. which is the basis of
our unity, the things that are necessary for unity to exist. So one body, one spirit,
one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. That was the outline for
where we were going to go. We're going to get through two of those three this morning. Next Sunday,
we'll get to the prerequisites of unity, and there's plenty to cover there. But this morning,
we'll just look at the priority of unity and the posture of unity. So the priority of unity.
And I should first address, what are we talking about? When we talk about unity, we throw that word
around. Do we know what that word means? Unity, here's what it's not. It's not sameness.
Unity doesn't mean you and I are the same. It's not uniformity. It's not everyone having the same
personality or the same temperament or acting the same or dressing alike or the same hairstyle or
thinking alike on everything. That's not unity. It's also not just kind of a sentimental fondness
for one another. Sometimes when we talk about unity, I think we drift into this sentimental idea
that unity just means, oh, we like one another. We're just happy to be with one another.
In fact, as I was thinking about that this week, I thought, I wonder how many people in the
congregation would even know who this person is.
Okay. Is there anybody here who goes, I've never seen that or don't know who that is? Okay,
I just didn't know if it would still hold up or not. That is who? That's Barney the dinosaur,
right? And what was Barney's song? I love you, you love me.
We're a happy family with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you.
Won't you say you love me? Our new congregational hymn for this morning.
And I mean, that's nice. That's fine to teach kids that. And the Bible does say it's good and
pleasant when brothers dwell together in unity. I'm not against us loving one another, but the
unity we're talking about is not Barney's unity. It's not that, just sentimental unity.
It's not sameness. It's not sentiment. Here's my definition of unity. Unity in the Bible involves
different people being bonded together, that is glued together to create a new entity.
where we function together with a single-minded allegiance to a common purpose. I'll say it again.
It's up on the screen. Unity involves different people being bonded together,
glued together, to create a new entity where we function together with a single-minded allegiance
to a common purpose. metaphor for unity in the Bible, the best picture of what we're talking about
here, is a metaphor that the Apostle Paul has used and uses in this passage. He talks about us
being one body. You remember Rick Tartar back in January spoke to us from 1 Corinthians 12 about
the fact that we are all individual members of one body. That's the metaphor. A body is a single
unit with many members. And that's what unity looks like. It looks like all of the members of the
body functioning together under the head. So your head tells your body what to do and your body
comes together and unites in doing that. If I am sitting in a chair and my head says,
we're going to get up out of this chair. Sometimes my members say, no, I don't know if I want to do
that. Or I don't know if I can do it. But if the head says we're going to get up and we need to get
up eventually, my hands have to push and my core has to tighten and my legs have to bear the weight
and we all have to work together to get me up out of the chair.
And of course... In the background, my heart is pumping and the circulation is happening and my
lungs are functioning and I'm breathing and my spleen and my pancreas are doing whatever spleens
and pancreases do in order for me to get up. All my body parts, all the members of my body have
come together to accomplish the objective determined by the head. The head says we're getting up.
All the members say yes. We'll work together to make that happen. That's unity. And for us as
Christians, that means that In our church and in our homes, we need to understand that we are
members of the body of Christ. He is our head, and our assignment is to follow our head.
And whatever our head says, this is what you need to do, all of the members come together to say,
okay, what's my part in making that happen? That's what I'm supposed to do. And here's the thing.
There is joy and peace that comes when we are one with one another,
but that's a byproduct. Unity is not about accomplishing joy and peace.
It's about serving the head and what the head is calling you to do. The joy and peace come when
you're doing that. So we don't pursue unity simply for the sake of experiencing joy and peace.
We pursue unity because Christ has called us to it. Sometimes in the midst of pursuing unity,
there's not a lot of joy and peace.
But ultimately, when we are serving Him, we will experience that joy and peace. Unity means
joyfully embracing the headship of Christ and then with the other members of His body saying,
let's go. You do your part, I'll do my part. How can I help you? How can you help me?
Because we want to accomplish God's purposes for us. Unity is the opposite of division.
If we're divided, I'm pulling one way, you're pulling another way. And instead of both of us
pulling together, as our head would have us do, we're pulling in our own direction.
Because we want what we want. The heart wants what it wants, right? Not what the head wants.
That's why in verse 3 of the passage we looked at this morning, it talks about the unity of the
Spirit. Because it's describing the unity that comes when we are empowered by and led by God's
Spirit. That's the source of our unity. Following Him,
it's the unity of the Spirit in Him. Let me mix metaphors for a second here. If we were a symphony
orchestra and all of us came to the symphony, you would come with your instrument. We would all
play different instruments. We would have different parts. We would have different notes that we
would be playing or different roles that we'd be playing. The worship team this morning playing
their parts to come together. But here's what you'd have to make sure you have for the... symphony
to work, everybody has to have sheet music for the same song.
If I came with one song and you came with another song and we sat down and we just started playing
whatever we wanted to, it would sound terrible. We have to have the same song. Now what's on our
sheets might be different because we're playing different instruments, but it's all tied together
in the same song. So we'd have to have the same sheet music for it to sound right. And what else
would we need? We'd need a conductor. Somebody who is directing us on what we're doing and telling
us how we do it. If you don't have the sheet music and you don't have a conductor, you're not going
to have unity.
church, the sheet music that we're singing from is the Word of God. And the conductor is God the
Spirit alive in us, pointing us in the right direction to do what He's called us to do.
The unity of the Spirit is that, playing off, playing together the same song from our sheet music,
following the conductor, the unity, the Holy Spirit. Now pause here with me.
I want you to think for a second. Who is somebody who comes to mind right now,
comes to your mind, somebody who's a brother or sister in Christ, and there's a lack of unity
between the two of you? A division. Somebody, they're a Christian,
you're a Christian, and for whatever reason, there's a division. Did somebody come to mind?
You think of somebody?
Now here's the question. If both of you are committed to following the head,
following the conductor, and you're committed to prioritizing what God wants over your own agenda,
if both of you are playing off the same sheet music, what's the issue?
How can we get to unity? The way you get to unity is to come together and say,
something's wrong. We're either not playing off the same sheet music or we're not following the
same conductor. Because if we were, unity would exist.
Are you together looking at the scriptures? Maybe with somebody helping you. asking,
okay, what part should I be playing in this song? What does the head want me to be doing here? Or
do you find yourself from time to time stubbornly saying, I don't like this song.
I'm not playing that song. It's hard to play. I don't like it. I don't like my part.
I don't like the other people in the orchestra.
Listen carefully here. Here's the priority that God puts on unity among brothers and sisters in
Christ. Jesus, knowing that he was about to be crucified on the night before he was crucified,
spent that last night in the upper room with his disciples. You can read this in John chapter 13
through 17. It's called the upper room discourse or sometimes called the farewell discourse.
Jesus met with his disciples for hours on the last night that he was alive before his crucifixion.
And the first thing he did was he trained them. in what's coming. He was getting them ready for
what it was going to be like for them once he was gone. How they were going to function as his
disciples when he was no longer here. And he said to them, among other things in that upper room
discourse, things like this. He said, a new commandment I give to you, love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this All people will know that
you're my disciples if you have love for one another. He said,
if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. He said, this is my commandment that you love one
another as I have loved you. And then after he had finished preparing his disciples to be ready for
what was coming next, he prayed for them. John 17. And what did he pray?
He prayed God would glorify him, that God would keep the disciples from the evil one,
that he would sanctify them, and then he wrapped up his prayer praying for unity.
He prayed this, John 17 20. I do not ask for these only,
so he's praying not just for the disciples but for those who would come after him, for all who
would believe in me through their word. I pray that they may all be one.
just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may
believe that you have sent me. You see the significance of that? I pray, Father, that they will be
united just like you and I are united, that they will be in the fellowship of unity that already
exists between us. I pray that they would come into that and experience that. He goes on, the glory
you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.
I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you
have sent me and loved them even as you have loved me. He says it over and over again.
I pray that they'd be one, perfectly one. I want them to be one. It's the burden of his heart. This
is the last thing Jesus prays for his disciples in the last time he is with them before he goes to
the cross.
It's the burden of his heart that his followers would have unity.
And by the way, I would suggest to you, this is still the burden of Jesus' heart as he's
interceding for his church today. He is today. interceding for us before the Father.
And I think he is burdened that his church would experience unity.
You want to know what Jesus is praying for as he prays for his people, for the church in 2026?
I think it's safe to say he's praying that we would experience joy and power, the peace that comes
from finding our life in him. In fact, as I reflected on this passage this week, I thought back to
a thought experiment. that I'd done before. Imagine that after the service this morning, each of us
was going to be dismissed individually, and you were going to get five minutes in the fireplace
room, and Jesus was going to be there. Just you and Jesus. And when you got there,
Jesus says to you, how can I pray for you this morning?
Now, you might start by saying, well, I got a whole list. Can you fix my spouse? Can you fix my
kids? Can you fix my finances? We need money. Can you fix me? Can you heal me physically,
emotionally? And all of that, by the way, is okay. The Bible says to bring your cares, cast your
cares on him. He will sustain you. But what if when you got with Jesus and he said,
how can I pray for you? What if you said to him, you know, you know what I need better than I do.
Why don't you just pray for me?
Because you know what my need is. Well, as I read Jesus' prayer in John 17,
I think it would be safe to say that somewhere in his prayer for you, he would be praying that you
would be fruitful and effective in reaching people with the gospel and then that the unity you
would have with other believers, that that would be a critical part of the effectiveness of
reaching a lost world, that he would prioritize this,
that you would be in lockstep with him under his headship, under his leadership, and that you would
know that unity.
Jesus shows us in his high priestly prayer that unity is a priority for him.
And then the next day he goes to the cross to make us one. Now how can I say that?
That on the cross he died to make us one. He didn't just pray for our unity, he gave up his life
for our unity. And we saw this when we were back in chapter 2 of Ephesians. In fact if you've got
your Bible open, just flip back a couple of pages. In Ephesians 2 beginning at verse 14,
Paul is addressing the great division that existed between the Greeks and the Jews,
between the Gentiles and the Jews. These were two people that didn't get along, weren't on the same
page about anything. They hated one another. And Paul says in Ephesians 2,
he himself Jesus is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the
dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in the ordinances. He
has made us both one. That's the key. We don't create unity.
He does. We maintain the unity He has already created.
That's what this passage says. Maintain the unity that He created for us. And then it goes on to
say that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two.
So making peace. This is one body. One new man is all of us together as the body of Christ.
And there is a connection between unity, as we see here, and peace. Because when you are
functioning as he has created us to in unity, we will experience the peace of God.
He goes on to say he did this that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross,
thereby killing the hostility. That's the point. Jesus died on the cross to reconcile us and to
create this organic unity. He died to make us one. And then verse 17 says,
He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through
Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
You see the Trinity in that verse. Through Him, Jesus, we have access by the Spirit to the Father.
And it is through the Spirit to the Father that gives us the unity that He died for.
All the persons of the Trinity are involved in making us one. Jesus prayed for us to be one.
He died for us to be one. Here's my question. Does unity among Christians matter as much to you as
it does to him?
Do you care as much about the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace as Jesus does?
Keep this in mind. As we've seen over the last couple of weeks, The turning point here in Ephesians
4, from looking at what God has done for us in Christ to now how we should live, the turning point
says you are to walk in a manner worthy of the calling. And then it says,
and you're to do it full of patience. What is it? Do it full of humility,
gentleness, patience, and forbearance so that we can maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond
of peace. You're not walking in a manner worthy of the calling. if you're not in unity with your
brothers and sisters.
This is the first thing Paul addresses when he talks about what it looks like to walk in a manner
worthy. The first thing he addresses is unity.
So back to my question. Does unity among Christians matter as much to you as it does to Jesus?
Do you care as much about maintaining the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace as Jesus does?
Is it a priority in your life? If you are not in unity right now with a brother or sister in
Christ, what are you doing to pursue the unity, to maintain the unity, to reestablish and restore
the unity? Which brings us to the second point that I wanted us to look at this morning,
which is the posture of unity. And the posture of unity really is two words in this passage.
The first word is eager. We should be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit.
Eager, the word in the Greek here, is a word that comes from a word that means to hurry up or make
haste. Eagerness means you hurry toward this. You drop everything else to attend to this.
You take this seriously. This is a priority over anything else that could distract you. That's
eagerness. If you work in a hospital, you know when a code blue is sounded,
you are eager to get to where that is because it's life or death.
You drop everything. when there's a code blue. And this word eager here involves two elements,
an internal predisposition, a sincere commitment to this cause,
and a diligent and concerted effort. So you care about this, and then you act on that care
diligently to preserve unity. It's your heart and your hands. It's your desire and your actions
coming together. That's what eager means. And this is the posture Paul wants us to take when it
comes to unity. In his body. All of us functioning together in harmony with one another.
That's a code blue posture. A posture of eagerness.
Now Paul is not suggesting that the Ephesians should casually or passively respond to unity that
he's given us. No, he is saying we should actively and earnestly guard it.
Maintain it. And that's the second word that I want us to look at. We're to do it eagerly and we're
to maintain it. The word maintaining spiritual unity means you keep a focused energy and effort and
treat it urgently. Maintaining it, if you have a job, if you're a maintenance person on your job,
here's what your job entails. You make sure that all of the things that are under your care are
running the way they're supposed to run. That's what a maintenance guy does. You make sure that
This piece of machinery and this piece of machinery are functioning the way they're supposed to
function. That when you turn it on, they work. That there's a gas and oil in them so that they're
ready to go.
One of my jobs in our marriage is maintenance of our vehicles. So I do the preventive maintenance.
I make sure that the oil gets chained, tires get rotated, that the safety checks are done, that the
car's going to run the way it's, that the spare tire is working, all of that.
When it breaks down, it's my job to go to the mechanic and say, it's broken, this needs to be fixed
because we need to get it back on the road.
God wants each of us to be the maintenance staff for unity. He wants each of us to be a part of the
team to make sure that unity is functioning the way it should. We saw last week that in order for
unity to function the way it should, you need the oil of humility and gentleness and patience and
forbearance.
And when unity seizes up, when the engine is not working, when it's not,
when something's gone wrong, it's a code blue. You stop and you get it back up and running.
That's the posture, eagerness to maintain. The question is,
is that your posture when it comes to unity? When there is discord or division in the church or in
your own life with another believer, do you see that as a code blue?
Or do you go, well, that's just the way it is in a fallen world. I'm just not going to talk to that
person.
Now there's a caveat here. Let me say this, as important as unity is, it has to be a unity that is
anchored in truth. And we'll see that next week when we get to verses 4,
5, and 6 that say this is the basis of our unity. The one faith, one hope, one baptism.
But we should be careful not to be casual. About disrupting the unity that Christ prayed for and
that Christ died for.
Our default setting as followers of Jesus. should be unity,
not division. We should be seeking to live in harmony with all who profess the name of Christ and
to all who affirm the essentials that are in this passage that we'll look at next week. So if you
are in discord with a brother or a sister in Christ, in the church, in your family, in any setting,
what do you do? In humility, with gentleness and patience, you seek peace and pursue it.
That's what the Bible says. Those who would see good days, let them seek peace and pursue it.
Romans 12, 18 says this, if possible, as much as it depends on you,
be at peace with all men.
God calls us to pursue peace with all so that we can experience unity.
Warren Wiersbe, a well-known Bible teacher, said this. He said, the lost world cannot see God,
but they can see Christians. And what they see in us is what they will believe about God.
If they see love and unity, they will believe that God is love. If they see hatred and division,
they will reject the message of the gospel.
Unity isn't just about you and how you feel about things. It's a priority.
When you are divided, when there's discord, when there's a lack of unity, especially when it's
around secondary matters or around relational matters that need healing.
You're impeding the work of the gospel by not seeking to preserve that unity,
to maintain that unity.
I thought about this, I thought if I could sit down with John Lennon and say,
let me propose a rewrite. You wrote with Paul McCartney, I'll just move Paul aside and you and I
will write this one. What about this lyric instead? And by the way, I'm not the first person to
imagine a different... lyric for Imagine. You can go on YouTube and find all kinds of people who
have come up with their own lyric for Imagine. But I thought, what about this? What if it was,
imagine there is a heaven. It's easy if you try.
No pain and no more sorrow. No darkness, no more night. Imagine there's a Savior who died upon a
tree to cure our sin and sorrow and set the prisoner free. Imagine all the people walking in that
grace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the
world will finally, truly be as one. Let's pray together.
Father,
we thank you that unity is what you have accomplished for us,
that you have united us together with yourself, and that nothing will separate us from you.
We thank you that even when we stray, we do not lose our unity with you,
that nothing separates us.
Father, I pray that where there is division or discord in our body or in your church,
we would be people who would seek peace and pursue it. We would see the unity that you've called us
to as the priority of our lives.
Help us to be united in you.
Lord, I pray for any who are here this morning who have not experienced unity with you because
they've never surrendered their lives to Jesus.
I pray that they would see this morning their great need for what we talked about earlier,
to be justified, to be made right with you. I pray they would see the reality of their sin and the
glory of Christ. And they would say, I want unity with the Father through the Son.
I want the Holy Spirit to be leading my life. I'm tired of being the one leading and what that
produces.
Lord, would you by your spirit press that truth into their hearts and bring new life.
We ask this in your name. Amen.