![]() ![]() And he says we are one because God is one, and therefore we should express and experience that kind of oneness and unity in our community together. In other words, he argues from our doctrine of the one true God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - to our unity. We are one because there is one Spirit, there is one Lord, there is one Father. Why is it that we can be considered one? Well, he gives three arguments. If you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been given a spiritual unity with every other believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that spiritual unity is especially expressed in the local body of believers, in the local congregation.Īnd then in Ephesians 4:4-6, Paul spells out the basis for this unity. ![]() He says you have a unity that has been given you by the Spirit. And we noted the last time we were together that Paul didn't say strive to attain a unity that you do not yet have, or he didn't say strive to fulfill the latent potential for unity that exists in you, or strive to be unified like you will be one day in glory but, rather, express in peace the unity that you already have.Īnd it's an amazing statement. Now, when we looked at Ephesians 4:1-3, we said that Paul concluded that with this exhortation: that we were to preserve the unity that the Spirit has given us in peace, so that the Apostle is calling on us in the life of the church to preserve and to cultivate a unity, a communion with one another, that the Spirit has already given us. And that's the concentration of Ephesians 4-6. So Ephesians 4 moves from a discussion of the new, redeemed humanity, this new society, this new family that God has created in Jesus Christ, to the study of how we are to live or behave as God's new family or new society, or new community. ![]() …For several months now, and starting in Ephesians 4 just a few weeks ago, we emphasized on a number of occasions that whereas in Ephesians 1-3 the Apostle Paul has described what God has done in bringing believing Jew and Gentile into one body in Jesus Christ, and that in chapters 4-6 he's now going to tell us how we ought to live in that one body so that the first three chapters of Ephesians are about the indicative (what God has done and what we in fact are in Jesus Christ) and the second three chapters, chapters 4-6, are about the imperative (or what we ought to do because we are God's people in Jesus Christ). “One Body, Spirit, Hope, Lord, Faith, Baptism, God and Father” (Pt. ![]()
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