Prerequisites For Unity

if you have your Bible, and I hope you do, turn to Ephesians chapter 4 with me this morning. We're
going to wrap up what has been an extended look at these first six verses. in Ephesians 4 verses
that call us to live in a manner worthy of our calling to do so with godly character and to pursue
and maintain the unity of the spirit to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond
of peace. And the question we're going to tackle this morning that wraps all of this up for us is
how far does that unity extend? We're called to be united,
we're called to pursue eagerly unity. How far does that go? As we've seen over the past several
weeks, unity is a priority in Scripture. Jesus prayed that we would be one,
that all who are Christians would be one in Him. He didn't just pray for it, He died that we would
be one. And the passage we're going to look at this morning, or the passage we've been looking at
has told us that we should be eager to maintain that. And there are still borders to what that
unity should look like. We've seen that. We want to be careful that we stretch those borders as far
as we can while maintaining the essential truths of the gospel. And that's the tricky part.
And that's what I want to try to talk about this week. Last week we started looking at what some of
these borders should look like as we establish unity in the body. And we saw that we are pulled
together, we are brought together as part of one body, that we are united together in one spirit.
that we have one Lord who we have submitted ourselves to, we have one hope that we are looking
forward to, and this morning we're going to see three additional elements of unity that are in the
passage, prerequisites if you will. We are to have one faith, one baptism,
and one God and Father of us all. That's really what we're going to be looking at this morning.
To make sure we get through the passage, I'm just going to jump right in because there's a lot to
cover even though it's just a few verses here. So pray again with me as we turn to God's word.
Lord, we need your spirit now to come and to be in our midst and to speak to our hearts and to
awaken us, to revive us, to refresh us. Give us soft hearts. Give us ears ready to hear from you.
Give us hearts ready to obey you, we pray. And speak. O Lord, through your spirit to us,
through your word, we ask it in your name. Amen. Stand with me. This is the word of God for the
people of God. Ephesians chapter 4 beginning at verse 1. Paul writes,
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, with 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 and the flower fades. The word of
our God will stand forever. You may be seated.
Last Sunday we saw that in spite of the fact that there are many denominations,
many different perspectives on a variety of secondary theological and practical matters,
we are all in one body, the body of Christ. We function together as believers under our head.
in spite of those differences. We don't let those differences divide us. We saw that we are made
alive or we are animated by the one spirit who indwells us, who empowers us, who binds us together
in one body. We saw that we all have one hope as Christians. We for centuries have agreed upon and
looked forward to this one hope that is affirmed in the Apostles' Creed. where we talk about the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, the life everlasting. That's our great hope in
Christ. And we saw that we have one Lord to whom we all submit. Jesus is Lord,
as Rick was talking about this morning. He's Lord of all. One day every knee will bow, every tongue
will confess. We do that now voluntarily rather than waiting until the end when it will be done in
a mandatory way. We are bowing to Him now and surrendering to Him as our Lord and Master. Which
brings us to the next... statement in this sevenfold, the sevenfold marks of unity which is one
faith. And we're going to spend most of our time on that phrase, one faith and what that means.
What's the Bible talking about when it talks about us being people who have one faith? The word
faith is used in two different ways in the Bible. Sometimes faith is used to describe the act of
believing or trusting. We talk about having faith. We talk about exercising faith.
When Jesus rebukes his disciples he says, oh you of little faith.
He's saying you're not believing as you ought to be believing. You are not robustly believing.
He's talking about having limited trust in God. Other times we use the word faith to talk about
what it is we believe. Not about the act of believing but about the substance of what we believe.
So when we read in Jude where it says we're to contend for the faith,
it's talking about what we believe. When Paul talks about people who have departed from the faith,
he's talking about people who have abandoned what must be believed in order to be in the one body.
And to experience the one spirit we're talking about here. So the faith is the truth we believe and
faith is the act of trusting or believing in that truth. Make sense? We have to have faith in the
faith. Christianity is both content and a response to that content.
That's how you become a Christian. You believe in the content, you respond to the content of the
gospel. The content is the faith. The truth of the gospel and our response is a response of faith
where we personally trust and believe. So here in Ephesians 4 when it's talking about one faith
it's talking about the content of our faith. One gospel,
one body of truth, one pathway to him that we embrace and believe.
Paul is saying to the Ephesians, you all come from different backgrounds. You're different from one
another in many ways, economically different, racially different, you have different life
experiences, you have ethnic differences, cultural differences, all of that's true,
but our unity is grounded in the one faith that we align ourselves around.
The one faith that guides us. Now here's where it gets tricky. How do we determine what the borders
of that faith should look like? And let me give you an example of this dilemma. Back in 1999 the
folks at Fellowship Bible Church here in town decided to put on a citywide event that they actually
hosted for a decade or more. It's called ShareFest. And if you were here you may remember the
ShareFest event that they did. They asked churches from around the city to come together on a
particular day and to bring volunteers to do acts of service in our community.
They had found needed issues. So schools... needed a cleanup or a repair or public spaces,
parks that needed to be attended to that had gone into disrepair. And Fellowship got more than 100
churches, they got thousands of folks, I think they had more than 3,000 folks who on a Saturday
put on Sharefest T-shirts and went out and served in the community. And I was friends at the time
with the pastor at Fellowship who was put in charge of organizing this event.
And he called me one day and he said could we get together? I've got an issue I need help with.
So we got together for lunch and he told me he was excited about the response from churches that
this event was going to be happening. But then he said I got a call from the folks at the Mormon
church and they want to join us for Sharefest. He said what do I do with that? He said I told them
they can't but then I got a call from Christ the King Catholic Church and they want to be involved
too and I thought well. What about them? Then I got a call from the Church of Christ,
Pleasant Valley Church of Christ. They wanted to do it and I thought some people are going to get a
hiccup about that. He said, what do I do? Now this is where one faith,
the rubber meets the road, right? You've got to decide who's in, who's not. Where are the borders
of this faith? So I said to him, here's what I'd do if I were in your situation.
I would have a basic evangelical Protestant statement of faith.
Something like You may have heard of the Luzon Covenant. Luzon Movement is a movement that started
back in the 70s that's about worldwide evangelization. They have conferences regularly in Luzon,
Switzerland and they call together leaders from around the world to do evangelization around the
world and they came up with a statement to say this is what we believe, this is what we're
supporting. It's a broad evangelical statement of faith. I said you could take something like that
and make that your statement of faith for Sharefest. And that way when Christ the King calls and
says we want to do Sharefest with you, you can say great, we're asking all the folks who are doing
this to affirm the statement of faith for Sharefest to be a part of it. And then the Christ the
King folks are going to have to read the statement of faith and say can we sign this or not?
That's how you develop a standard. It's why we have on our website our doctrinal statement to say
these are the things we affirm and believe. This is what we believe the faith looks like.
This is the basis of our unity. And this is not a new idea. In Scripture there are statements that
are these kinds of faith statements. For example when Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 3
he says to him, I hope to come to you soon but I'm writing these things so that if I delay you may
know how one ought to behave in the household of God. which is the church of the living God,
the pillar and buttress of truth. So he's saying, I'm writing to you so you know what the behavior
should look like, but then he says it's in the household of God which is the pillar and buttress of
truth. That's a statement that's talking about holding up it's built on a foundation but it holds
it up, it holds the building stable, the pillar and the buttress. so that there's stability to the
building when the winds blow. He's saying there needs to be, the church is the pillar and the
buttress. And then he goes on to say to Timothy, great indeed, we confess,
is the mystery of godliness. And he makes these statements. He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed in the world,
taken up in glory. These statements about Christ, he's saying these are things we affirm and
believe to be true. And they form the foundation, the truth upon which the church is built.
That's a basic statement of faith for the early church. And I'll just point out in this statement
of faith it's saying godliness, which is the pattern of right living, having a right relationship
with God, flows from a right understanding of who Christ is. If you're trying to grow in godliness,
and you're just trying to do it on your own moral efforts, that's going to fall flat.
Godliness has to be founded in a right understanding of who Christ is. That's the foundation for
all of this. The mystery of godliness is that a life of piety and devotion rests on recognizing all
that Jesus accomplished. You will be changed by the Holy Spirit the more you grow in your
understanding of Jesus and the gospel. The early church saw the need to have this one faith defined
and codified so they had early statements like this in the Scriptures and then the churches got
together and began to develop creeds like the Apostles' Creed which was an early way of saying this
is the faith. This is what the faith... talks about. Later the Nicene Creed cleared up
controversial issues in their day, things that every Christian must affirm and believe.
And while both of these creeds are helpful and still relevant in our day, they're not comprehensive
in terms of defining the faith. They just help us with knowing where the borders ought to be.
So how do we know where those borders are? How do we set those borders? Do we use something like
the Luzon Covenant? It's a good place to start. But I'm going to make this as simple as I can for
you in terms of how you establish where the borders belong. What is the one faith?
And I'll tell you another story. I have a friend who worked for many years at the Moody Bible
Institute in Chicago. And Moody is a solid evangelical ministry. It's been around for 100 years.
There is a Bible institute. My friend worked for their radio network, which is a broad radio
network. And he'd been working there for a number of years. He was an active part of a Protestant
church, shared Reformed thinking. We talked about that often,
about our views on Reformed theology. He sent me an email one day and he said,
I wanted to let you know that I'm leaving Moody because I'm leaving the church that I'm in because
I'm joining an Antiochian Eastern Orthodox church. So he had been a part of a A Protestant
denomination, he was moving from that to the Orthodox Church. Now let me just, some of you go,
what is the Orthodox Church? I'm going to give you kind of a big picture. There are three main
groups that call themselves Christians. So the biggest group is the Roman Catholics.
There are about 1.3, 1.4 billion people who call themselves Roman Catholics around the world.
That's a big group. Then there are the Protestant denominations. maybe a billion people who are a
part of different Protestant denominations. That's everything from Anglican to Baptist to Methodist
to Lutheran. Those are all Protestant denominations. And then there are the Eastern Orthodox
churches or the Orthodox churches. And they have different groups or different branches. So there's
the Greek Orthodox, there's the Russian Orthodox, there's the Serbian Orthodox, there's the
Romanian and the Albanian and the Antiochian. Orthodox. My friend was becoming Antiochian Orthodox.
He joined that church. And he sent me in this email, he said, I'm leaving, I'm joining the
Antiochian church. And then he said, do you think I'm still saved?
Now how do you respond to that? I've left, I'm going to this church, do you think I'm still saved?
Well I wrote back to him and said, I don't know. Let's start with this. Here's my first question
for you. As a member of the Antiochian Orthodox Church what is your source of authority?
That's an important question. What's your source of authority? That's where we start this
conversation. And let me just say if you're Roman Catholic the answer to that question is my source
of authority is the Bible plus the infallible teaching that comes from the church. And they are
equal in their authority. What the Pope says when he speaks ex cathedra the Catholics say that is
on par with Scripture. Which is by the way why Catholics have a doctrine like the doctrine of
purgatory because while that's not mentioned in Scripture the Pope has said it's true and so
they'll put that on par with Scripture. And they will say well the Scriptures hint at it here and
there but The doctrine of purgatory is not a biblical doctrine, it's a church doctrine that comes
from the Pope. Catholics have two sources of authority.
They're not alone in that. Our Mormon friends have four sources of authority.
So they have the Bible, they have the Book of Mormon, they have a book called Doctrine and
Covenants, and they have another book called The Pearl of Great Price. They see all of those as
equal in their authoritative nature. What the Book of Mormon says is on par with what Scripture
says and to be believed like that. If you're a Jehovah's Witness you have your own translation of
the Bible that they've come up with and the Jehovah's Witnesses will say it's infallibly
interpreted by our leaders in the watchtower. So if you want to know what the Bible teaches the
infallible interpretation comes from them.
We know to recognize Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses as cults We look at Roman Catholics and go,
how should we deal with that? And I'm saying here, one of the challenges for Roman Catholic
Orthodoxy is that they have different sources of authority.
This is interesting. I went to a Protestant website this week, a mainline church on the East Coast,
and here's what they had on their website about their sources of authority. They said, our beliefs
are founded on, get this, a rich blend of Scripture, tradition,
and reason. We believe Christian unity is found not in sharing identical beliefs but in the one
Lord who calls us together in loving service to the world. Now I read that and I said tell me more
about the one Lord because whatever you're going to say next is some system of belief that we need
to share. But they want to combine reason and tradition along with Scripture and say these are
equal sources of authority.
When we're talking about one faith, we have to start with this question, what is your ultimate
source of authority? Because one faith is built on that. Do you have something outside of or
alongside the Bible that is your source of authority? Let me just pause here for a second.
Some of you, like me, you have Roman Catholic friends who you believe know and love Jesus and are
Christians. I think that's possible. I think those Roman Catholic friends who know and love Jesus
either have rejected what their church teaches about multiple sources of authority or they're in
ignorance about it but they're functioning with the Bible as their sole source of authority in
spite of how the church is structured. So we have to be careful when we're talking about what the
Roman Catholic Church teaches and what your Roman Catholic friends might be or believe. Don't be
quick. To think that somebody who is in a Roman Catholic church can't be saved.
It's possible for them to be saved. But I would think that saved Roman Catholic would over time
find the disconnect between what the Bible teaches and what their church teaches and look for a way
out.
The point is we believe in what the reformers called sola scriptura. That the Bible alone is our
source of authority. It's how we come to understand God's plan for us.
And other people will argue for what they will call prima scriptura, that the Bible is prime
revelation but not exclusive revelation. When you have that, you have a difference between the one
faith we're talking about. You have two different groups. So back to my Eastern Orthodox friend,
he says... said to him, what is your source of authority? Well, it turns out that the Eastern
Orthodox Church, their view of Scripture is a prima scriptura view. It's not a sola scriptura view.
Scripture is important, it's primary, but it's not exclusively authoritative. So that raised a
yellow flag for me with my friend. I said, you have a different view of authority in Scripture than
I do. But then I asked him a second question. And these are the two questions that I think help us
define what is the one faith that we need to be a part of. I said, what's your source of authority?
Second question is, how is a man made right with God? What does your church teach about how someone
who is apart from God is made right with God?
I think those two questions are the two essential questions to help us define whether we're in one
body with somebody, whether we're sharing one faith. What's your source of authority? How's a man
made right with God? And that second question
The right answer to that is the gospel, how a man's made right with God. And however you answer it
is your version of the gospel. And the question is, is it really good news?
Is it the good news that the Bible's proclaiming? So I wrote to my friend and I said, explain to me
what you believe about how a man's made right with God. Now I won't go into all the details, we
went back and forth on this. Some of what he said I just couldn't understand. But he was basically
saying our view is that we are being saved, that justification and sanctification work together,
that we're a part of a family that is helping us become more like Christ and that's our ultimate
goal. And I said, so are you saying that you're not declared righteous?
He said, well, we reject Anselm's view of forensic justification. Now I'm getting into all kinds of
things. We had this theological dialogue about this going back and forth. But ultimately it became
clear that my friend would now answer my two questions, what's your source of authority and how's a
man made right with God, differently than I would. And he would answer them differently than he
used to answer them when he was in a Protestant church. And so I had to conclude my friend has
moved outside the circle of the one faith that's being talked about here. Now that's not an easy
thing to say or conclude about somebody. Somebody who's a friend. Somebody who would profess to
you, I love Jesus. I'll do whatever Jesus is calling me to do. Hard to look at that and say you're
outside the circle.
This guy's a good guy. He's a smart guy. Not a nice guy. And I don't want to be the one concluding
that his new beliefs have left him outside the circle.
Have put him in fear of damnation. That's what I'm saying when I say he's outside the circle.
Ultimately, listen, that's in the Lord's hands. I'm not his judge. I don't know his heart.
I'm going to back away from that and say that's in the Lord's hands. But I had to say to my friend,
based on what you've told me, I'm concerned about the state of your soul.
You see, the key issue here in terms of the one faith we're talking about is not if somebody's
sincere or somebody's kind or somebody is virtuous. The key issue is based on what we read in
Scripture, do you believe what God has revealed to us? Do you understand it or have you come up
with a faith different than the one once for all delivered to the saints? Now here's where this
gets tricky. When a friend or a family member says, so do you think I'm going to hell? Have you
ever had anybody ask you that question? I mean, that puts you on the spot,
doesn't it? How are you going to answer that question?
And here's what I'd do in that moment. I would say, you know, that's not my call to make,
whether you're going to hell. Whether I think you're going to hell or not is not really the issue.
The issue is, what does God's Word say? And you're going to have to face that with Him.
See what the Bible says about that. And He says, yeah, but what do you think? I would say,
Let me be clear. If you're asking me do I think you're a nice person or a good person or a sincere
person, the answer is yes. You're nicer and better than a lot of other people I know. But what
determines whether you're going to hell or not is not how nice or good you are. What determines
whether you're going to hell or not is whether you've submitted yourself to the authority of
Scripture and you have believed the Gospel as it's been revealed. Do you believe Jesus is Lord?
Do you believe He's the Christ? Do you believe He's the Son of God, that He came in the flesh, that
He died for our sins, that He was buried and raised from the dead, that He alone is Savior, He'll
come again? That's a good starting point, but you've got to go beyond that. Do you believe in what
are called the fundamentals of the faith? Do you believe in the authority of Scripture, the deity
of Christ, His virgin birth, His substitutionary atonement, that salvation is by grace through
faith alone? that he's coming again, that he was resurrected bodily, do you believe those things?
And I boiled all that down into those two questions, what's your source of authority and how's a
man made right with God? Gavin Ortlund who wrote the book that I told you about a few weeks ago
called Finding the Right Hills to Die On says one way you determine whether somebody is in the
circle, whether they're embracing the one faith is this, he says the doctrines,
the first ranked doctrines they must believe that are essential are the ones essential to the
gospel itself. Some first-rank doctrines are needed to defend the gospel.
Others are needed to proclaim the gospel. A theological issue is primary when denying it would
compromise the gospel itself. So if what somebody is saying about God, about the Bible, what they
believe, and that's compromising the gospel, or it's inhibiting the proclamation of the gospel,
that's an issue. Our unity in Christ is a unity that exists among people who share.
A common faith. A common gospel message. One faith. I've said a lot about that and it's tricky
territory but I hope it's been helpful to understand that our faith has borders.
That there are lines to this circle and that you're either on the inside or on the outside based on
your source of authority and what you believe is true. Now it goes on to say that in Ephesians 4
not only do we have one faith but we have one baptism. Now you may read that and go no we don't.
I mean we have a different idea about baptism than our friends at the Presbyterian church have.
This may strike you as ironic that he would say one baptism because historically baptism has
divided Protestants. Throughout history and down to today people disagree on who should be
baptized, when you should be baptized, and how you should be baptized. And what's true if we're
talking about the ceremony of baptism or the ordinance of baptism is that we don't see it the same
way. It's a disagreement about how it should be practiced. But the ordinance of water baptism comes
after someone has experienced the reality of spirit baptism. And the one baptism that's being
talked about here that will be manifest in water baptism. The one baptism is spirit baptism.
It's being immersed into the body of Christ. The water baptism is a public declaration of an inward
reality. You go back to the Greek word baptizo, it means to be immersed. And when someone is
baptized into Christ, they are immersed into him. They're immersed into his body.
There's no part of them that is left untouched. By Jesus. That's the immersion process.
That's being baptized with the Spirit. And when somebody goes down into the water that's a picture
of what that immersion in Christ looks like and it's already happened.
So the one baptism that Paul talks about when he talks about it in Ephesians chapter 4 is the
baptism he's talked about in 1 Corinthians 12 where he says in one spirit we were baptized all into
one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, all were made to drink of one spirit. One immersion into
one body with one spirit. That's what he's talking about here in Ephesians chapter 4. This one
baptism claim does not resolve modern disputes but it does point to a deeper unity that exists
despite our differences.
one faith, one baptism, and then he wraps it up by saying one God and Father of all.
He's making it clear to his Greek audience that there's only one God.
Because they've grown up thinking, what? Lots of gods. You've got Zeus,
you've got Apollo, you've got Athena. We have a temple to Athena right here in Ephesus. People go
down and worship her. We've got Artemis, it's a temple to Artemis. We've got Hermes and Poseidon,
Apollo, we've got all of these gods. And Paul is saying no, they're not gods. They're not even
real. They're made up. They're idols. There is one God. It is the God who created the heavens and
the earth. It's the God who the Jews have worshipped for years. It's Yahweh. Greece, there's one
God. Get rid of this idea that there's more than one. And then Paul is making clear to his Jewish
audience that this one God is now the father of all. Because if you grew up as a Jew you grew up
thinking that God is the father of the Jews. He's the father of Abraham's descendants.
And so you had to be a descendant of Abraham to be in the family of God. And Paul is saying no,
the one God is the father of all including your Greek friends.
They're in the family just like you're in the family.
By the way that's how you should understand the word all here. When he says that God is the father
of all he's not saying all humanity. The Bible makes that clear. God is not the father of all
people he's created. He's a creator of all but he's not the father of all. We see that in John 1
where it talks about Jesus says he came to his own and his own people did not receive him but to
all who did receive him who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God.
You don't become a child of God just because you're a human. You become a child of God because you
believe in Jesus.
Galatians 3, now that faith has come you are no longer under a guardian for in Christ Jesus you are
all sons of God through faith. It's in Christ Jesus that you become a child of God. Romans 8,
all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. So when he says God is the God and Father
He's talking about all who are in Him because He is the Father of all who are in Him.
And then he wraps it up by saying about God, this is the God and Father of all who is over all,
through all, and in all.
This is Paul's way of saying that God's sovereignty is comprehensive.
The fact that He is over all means He transcends everything. There is no place in creation where
God is not sovereignly in control. Rick talked about that this morning, where He is the Lord of
all. Every detail, every facet of life is under His control.
And by the way, that means every detail and facet of your life is under His control. When we think
of His comprehensive sovereignty, we think of it, He's managing the universe. Yes,
and He's paying attention to every issue. that you're dealing with. That's our God who can manage
the universe and care about the burden of your heart. He is over all and then it says He is through
all which means He holds it all together. He's the glue that holds the universe together.
Paul told people when he was preaching on Mars Hill he said that God gives life to all mankind,
life and breath and everything. He holds everything together. So he is over all,
he's through all, and then he's in all. This transcendent high and holy God is near.
He's in everything.
Now here's a danger that you've got to make sure you avoid.
There are some people who become so fixated on the transcendence of God that they lose sight of the
fact that God draws near. God is high and holy. He's inapproachable. He dwells in light.
Moses had to hide his head in the rock. You can't see God. That's how holy he is. And if you dwell
on that you think he doesn't come near me. He couldn't come near me. So one danger is to forget the
imminence of God because you focus on his transcendence. The other danger is to become so focused
on the fact that he draws near that you forget that he's high and holy.
That's the danger that God's your buddy. That he's your pal.
And he is. He's a friend who sticks closer than a brother. But he's God. And both of those we have
to hold in tension. He's the high and holy God who is inapproachable. He's the God who says come to
me. Who draws near. Who is with us.
There's a famous prayer some of you have heard from St. Patrick. The Irish St.
Patrick's Day. He was a missionary to Ireland and led a revival there. And there's a prayer that
has stayed with us throughout history from St. Patrick called his Lorica. Lorica is the word that
means breastplate. So this is, the Bible says put on the full armor of God, put on the breastplate
of righteousness. This was St. Patrick's breastplate, his Lorica. This is the prayer he would pray
every morning as he was putting on his spiritual armor every day. And the prayer,
you may have heard this before, Christ be with me. Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ where I lie,
Christ where I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of
every man who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
What St. Patrick was praying is God who is overall through all and in all.
So as we wrap up these six verses in Ephesians 4 and as we prepare to come to the table this
morning and to celebrate the Lord's Supper, some things for us to think about just in reflecting
back over these verses. First of all,
is it your heart to want to walk in a manner worthy of your calling?
Do you long for your life to put the glory of God on display and to show people that Jesus is worth
all you have and all you are? Is that the desire of your heart? That's the right response to the
gospel.
Secondly, are you seeking to grow in godly attributes like humility, gentleness,
patience, bearing with one another in love? It should be our desire to want to be conformed to the
image of Christ and to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in that process.
Do you make unity with your brothers and sisters in Christ a priority?
Even your brothers and sisters online, by the way, when you interact with them on Facebook or when
you interact on X or wherever you're interacting, are you making unity a priority?
Are you eager to maintain unity? Or are you quicker to draw lines that divide?
This circle of unity that we've looked at here, this circle of oneness, it's a circle that God
invites us into. It's a circle... already exists where Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit together have enjoyed this unity for eternity and were invited into it.
Are you in that circle?
Are you part of the one body? Are you animated by the one Spirit of God who is with you and in you?
Are you longing for and clinging to the one hope that we will be with Jesus now and forever?
Have you pledged your allegiance to him as your one Lord and are you living your life in submission
to him? Are you re-pledging your life to him each day?
Have you embraced the one faith that we all share, that unites us,
the one gospel? Do you know what that is? Do you understand it? Could you articulate it to somebody
else? What's your source of authority? How do you believe a man is made right with God?
And as you go through the day, Are you immersed in Christ?
Is he with you and before you and behind you and beneath you and above you on your right and on
your left? Are you an adopted son or daughter of the king living in his family?
If those things are not true for you the good news is they can be today true for you because God
invites you into that circle. He is calling you to that circle to come in and celebrate and there's
joy there and there's life there and there's peace there and in Jesus when you are in Christ life
finds its ultimate purpose and meaning. Jesus is saying come.
The question is have you come? Will you come? Do you keep coming? Let's pray.
Father we are grateful for the fact that you call us to draw near to you.
And we acknowledge the desire for unity that you have created.
We recognize our need to be eager to maintain that.
Lord as you call us into this circle of fellowship with you I pray that any who are not in that
circle would come as you have called them and I pray that those of us who are there would be eager
to maintain unity with our brothers and sisters who share our love for you and
who share the truth of the gospel.
I pray that you give us wisdom and discernment to know where the circle of unity starts and where
it ends and give us wisdom and grace to deal with those who are outside that circle or those who we
wonder about. Just help us to know how to be bold and gracious simultaneously as we interact with
those who may profess faith but who give evidence that they're outside that circle.
Lord, I pray that our hearts would be bent in the direction that you call us.
And that we would follow hard after you. And I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.