Welcome to Gospel City Church. It’s great to see you everybody smiling, hugging. Erin is trying to go for the hard sell on the discipleship programs this morning. Did anybody get a sale? Anybody? Anybody? No?
Ok, happy New Year and welcome back to Gospel City Church. I know Pastor Tyler probably said that to you on New Year’s Day Sunday, but many of you probably got back into town around that time as I did. And so Happy New Year. It’s great to gather together in 2023 as the Body of Christ.
I was reminded this morning of how thankful I am for this church as we proclaimed the power of the gospel together in song. Right? Aren’t you glad that we’re not proclaiming what we can do or what we have done, but what our Savior has done? And as long as we get that right, the Lord will continue to be pleased to meet with us here in 2023.
Go ahead and open your Bibles to the book of Ephesians and we will be in chapter 4 verses 1 through 6 today. And as we get back to the book of Ephesians, we studied chapters 1 through 3 all through the fall and today we are starting a new series called “ONE” with the tagline “United in Christ.”
And chapters 1 through 3 of Ephesians were all about getting our identity right and what God has done for us and the mountain of truth that is the gospel that has saved you. Chapters 4 and 5 will be very practical as we together aim to get our walk with Christ in order. It’s going to start to shift focus on our conduct as believers saved by grace in the world.
And so before we dive in, let me just share what my heart is, what my prayer has been for us in this season. So there was a season of my life in 2004. I was a junior in high school and I was dating Nicole, who is now my wife. And we were at North Street Christian Church, a small church in Butler, Pennsylvania where my brother Jake is actually the senior pastor now.
And at the time, Pastor Bob Huber, who is at home in heaven, he was a great man of God, he decided to take our church through this book and this study that was called Seeking Him. And funny enough, it was written and put together by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. And many of you have been impacted by her ministry. Several of you probably work for her. And I’ve gotten to meet Nancy since moving here because she’s local to Buchanan and serve with her in different settings.
But this is an eleven-week study where it said to help the one who’s studying experience the freedom and joy of an honest and humble heart, true repentance, God’s amazing grace, genuine holiness, a clear conscience, radical forgiveness, sexual purity and walking in the Spirit. So the bok Seeking Him we studied it in small groups all through the week and then we would come together on Sunday and our pastor would unpack from God’s Word based on those topics.
But the book helped me as a believer zero in on what a holy life looks like, on the conduct, on the morality of the believer on the earth. And it was a very transformative time for me personally, but what I noticed was that as our entire church started to look into this and aimed to glorify God with our walk together, it became a transformative and unifying time in the life of North Street Christian Church because we wanted our walks to reflect what Christ had done in us and for us in the world.
And that is a powerful prayer that we could pray together, and that has been the prayer that I have been praying the Lord would take us into a season like that here at Gospel City Church, that He would revive us by His Spirit and that He would reform us to live according to His Word in a world that continues to move further and further away from the Word. That’s exactly what Paul is writing chapters 4 and 5 as he shifts from the doctrine of our salvation to the conduct of the believer.
So the big idea that I’ll give to you today as we dive in is this. When believers walk worthy of their wealth in Christ, the Body of Christ is built up in unity. When believers walk worthy of their wealth in Christ, the Body of Christ is built up in unity.
So I want you to focus on chapter 4 verses 1 through 6 this morning, and we’ll dive in in just a moment. Let’s allow God’s Word to speak to us and I’m going to pray, and then we’ll move into this season together.
Now hear the Word of the Lord. 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 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. (Ephesians 4:1-6)
Let’s pray together. Father, we come as feeble and weak people who have been made alive by the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank You for the opportunity to remember Christ’s body broken and blood shed even this morning as we’ve gathered to worship. And Lord, as we open Your Word and as we step into 2023, Lord I’m asking that Your Spirit would revive us. Father, I’m asking that Your Word would reform our actions to begin to reflect even more the rich wealth that we have because You are our Father in heaven and You gave us Your Son and You gave us Your Spirit to help us to walk in righteousness.
So Holy Spirit, would You illuminate this morning the Word of God to our hearts that we might live to the praise of Your glorious grace. In Your mighty name we pray, amen.
Now point number one this morning as we dive in is this. Our walk should reflect our wealth in Christ. Our walk should reflect our wealth in Christ. Now unfortunately it is not unusual for people to claim that they love God or that they follow Christ or that they have been changed by the gospel but their lives do not reflect what the Bible seems to communicate about holiness, morality and conduct on the earth. And there may be nothing more confusing in the world than people who claim to have been changed by the gospel only to turn around and live in worldliness or to love what the Bible calls darkness.
And this only proves that too many are quick to claim the spiritual security, blessings and promises of the gospel but not many are willing to take responsibility in conforming to its standards and obeying its commands. It makes me think about the song, “Everybody wants to go to heaven; nobody wants to die.” You’ve heard that. Everybody wants the blessings of heaven. Everybody wants God to be on their side and God to be for them. But not many want to live the life that Jesus called us to live. Not many want to go the narrow path that Jesus called us to.
And this is not only a problem in our day and age, but it was a problem in the earliest ages of the church, and that’s what Paul is aiming to address as he continues in his letter in chapter 4. So he writes in verse 1 of chapter 4, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.
So his first word as he shifts in the book Ephesians, he writes, “Therefore.” Because as Paul’s letter to the Ephesians shifts from doctrine to conduct, which was normal for his letters, he’s using the word therefore to tie everything he’s about to communicate to everything that he’s already communicated in chapters 1 through 3. He does the exact same thing in the book of Romans.
The book of Romans is kind of a larger Ephesians if you will. And in Romans Paul takes eleven chapters to unpack the glorious wealth and the doctrine of our salvation. And then when he gets to chapter 12 verse 1, he writes, “I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God.” And you know what he starts to say. He starts to give a command that you would live your life as a living sacrifice that’s holy and acceptable to God based on everything that I’ve communicated to you in the first eleven chapters.
So in chapter 4 of Ephesians, his therefore is doing the exact same thing. It’s tying our conduct that he’s about to communicate to our wealth in Christ. And Paul is urging believers. The word is parakaleo. It’s the same word in Romans 12:1. He’s appealing. He’s exhorting believers to pay careful attention to something on the earth because of how they’ve been changed. And so this word is an exhortation. It’s a command.
But it’s also a comforting word. It’s a word that’s saying, “I love you, and because of what Christ has done, I can’t urge you enough to follow in these footsteps, to pay careful attention to the commands of God’s Word as you live on the earth.” Not because your salvation depends on it, but because your salvation is worthy of it. And because your salvation on the earth is made known through the way that you live your life.
And so if we rearrange Paul’s statement in chapter 4 verse 1 for emphasis, you could say, “Therefore, because of the calling to which you have been called, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy.”
So you’ve got to ask. What is therefore referring to? And what is the calling to which you have been called referring to? It’s everything that we looked at all throughout the fall. Let me remind you of the glorious mountain of truth this morning that is your salvation. You as the believer are blessed with every spiritual blessing that heaven has to offer. Every blessing that are in the heavenly places are at your disposal as a believer.
And get this. The Father chose you before the foundation of the world. He loved you before you ever loved Him so that one day you could love Him to the praise of His glorious grace. And He chose you to be holy and to be blameless. That speaks of your positional perfection before God. God sees you as perfect and as holy and as blameless because of His Son who has redeemed you through His blood and through His sacrifice at the cross. And Jesus forgave your sins so that you could positionally be perfected before God.
We also learned in Ephesians chapter 1 that you’ve obtained an inheritance if you are in Christ. And that inheritance is in heaven. But not only have you been saved, not only have you been given blessings, but all of that is already yours because you are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. How could it get any better? How could forgiveness be any better?
The fact that God took you, the sinner, and placed you in the heavenly places beside His beloved Son. You have resurrection power available to you here and now on the earth. Because you were dead in your trespasses and sins. Remember? But God, who was rich in mercy, He made you alive in Christ Jesus. Something glorious that Christ has done for you. He extended His mercy toward you.
And then you’ve been made God’s workmanship through His grace, reflecting God’s glory on the earth. And you have been joined to a Body that is growing and becoming the dwelling place of God on the earth. And you’ve been made one in Christ, both Jews and Gentiles alike. All of the nations, all of the world, will come and glorify our Father who is in heaven.
And guess what? He’s able to do all of this and far more abundantly than all that we could ask or think. Isn’t that amazing? That is the truth of the goose. That is our rich wealth in Christ. And after Paul spent three chapters unpacking it, what does he say? Therefore. Hey everyone, therefore, you’ve got to do something with the truth that has radically changed your life. You didn’t earn it. You don’t deserve it. And so now your life should reflect the glorious wealth and identity that was given to you by the grace of God.
Do you think that God did all of that so that we could pat ourselves on the back? Do you think that God did all of those things in chapters 1 through 3 so that we could live our best life here and now on the earth or so that we could be our own God and do life however we want?
I had somebody recently say to me, “Jesus died on the cross so that I could live my life how I want to live my life.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. And yet I think that that’s a lot of times the way that people live their life and the way that people view the glorious truth of the gospel. Jesus came and He took all the bad so that I could do whatever I want and live in His grace.
But God saves dead sinners to the praise of His glorious grace. Therefore a life that has truly been chosen and adopted and redeemed and sealed by God walks not as if they were owed their salvation, but as if they owe everything to the God of glory who gave it freely through His Son.
So Paul, after giving us these three beautiful chapters promoting our identity and wealth in Christ, he lovingly exhorts believers to walk in a manner worthy of what’s been given to us, to build a life, a lifestyle, on the glorious foundation given to us by grace. You are already holy and blameless and seated in heaven, so work at becoming what you are to God. That is to the praise of His glorious grace. That is pure adoration and worship on the earth. This is dying to ourselves that we might live unto Christ. And this brings unity in the Body of Christ as God creates a dwelling place for Himself with man.
Now I want you to zero in on the word “walk” for a moment. Because like I said, now the shift in Ephesians is moving to focus on this word “walk,” really the walk of the believer. The word “walk” in the New Testament describes the daily conduct and day to day living of the believer. It’s describing a lifestyle of someone who has been made alive by grace.
So you remember in Ephesians chapter 2 that talked about walking. But when you came into this world you were dead in the trespasses and sins. That was your position. So the only walking that you did was following the course of this world. That’s the way that the world is going. You were following the prince of the power of the air. That’s Satan and his army. You were on that train. And you were by nature sons and daughters of disobedience.
But grace made you alive so that you would no longer walk in the way of the world but now you walk in righteousness. Now you walk in the light. Now you walk in the holiness that God has called believers to in His Word. So this word “walk” refers to the habitual, day to day courses of action that you should be involved in as a follower of Christ. And as it shifts to focus on our walk, it tells us to walk in a manner worthy.
Ephesians 4:17 says that you should no longer walk in the futility of our minds. So not as the Gentiles used to walk. But don’t walk in the futility of your mind. Don’t do what you used to do. Your life is different now.
Ephesians 5:2 tells us to walk in love. Ephesians 5:15 says, Walk not as fools, but as wise.
And this is where people have a rub with the Bible. This is where people start to say, “I don’t know if I want to give my life over to Christ. Why does God gotta tell me how to live my life?”
And the answer is because God loves you so much and He wants to spare you from so much heartache and pain that this world wants to throw at you. I love my kids, and so I tell my kids not to do certain things. I tell my kids, “Hey, don’t do that. These are things that you should not do that the world glorifies. These are things you should probably add to your life that the Spirit of God will help you with.” I don’t tell them that because I want to oppress them. I don’t tell them that because I’m mean and because I want to hold them back in life. I tell them those things because I love them and I want their lives to be spared from so much sin and darkness that this world aims to glorify.
God loves you that much that He gave us a whole book that’s not only commands; it’s filled with all of the glorious truth of what He does for us. But then He gives us commands taht we would follow and obey so that our joy would be full.
Psalm 16:11 says, You make known to me the path of life and in your presence there is fullness of joy. And at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Obedience to God’s way and God’s law always brings joy. Obedience brings joy. So God’s way is not that you would stay dead, walking in the way of the world. But God desires that you would have fullness of joy as you walk out righteousness on the earth.
As I was thinking about this over the past few weeks, I couldn’t help but think about a foundation and a home that it’s built upon. So if chapters 1 through 3 are like the foundation and chapters 4 and 5 of Ephesians are like the house that’s being built. Think about it. If you don’t have a foundation but you have a big and glorious house, you’ve got nothing. Right? If you have no gospel, you have nothing. If you have no identity in Christ, you have nothing.
But a lot of the world wants to focus on the house. A lot of the world wants to focus on the lifestyle that we’re building up and what we can do. And so we try to build this impressive frame and do all the right things and be a good person. But if you don’t have a foundation, when the storms of life come, the pressures of life come, your house will be nothing more than like the house that was built on the sand that Jesus talked about. No one can stand up to the pressures of life. No one can stand up to the holiness of God. If the law does anything for us, it only shows us that we cannot keep it, therefore our house will be blown away.
But the opposite is also true. Many know the content of chapters 1 through 3 in Ephesians and many can say the right words of the gospel message. Many actually claim to have been changed and redeemed by the gospel. And if that’s you, then you know how impressive the gospel message is. We’ve seen how magnificent our salvation is that only comes from the grace of God.
But the problem is many who claim to know Christ do not live like they’ve been changed by Christ. Many don’t seem to have a house that’s worthy of the foundation we’ve been given when it comes to the gospel. Many are living in a teepee of morality on a castle’s foundation.
Think about how ridiculous that is. You have this big castle’s foundation, which is the gospel and our identity and Christ. And how ridiculous would it be if I built a little tent in the middle of that foundation? And yet that’s how a lot of people’s life looks when it comes to their relationship with God. We claim the blessings and the benefits, and our lives do not reflect the wealth that we have been given.
I’m trying to paint a picture for you of how important all of this is and how it goes together. You can’t focus on one versus the other. It all goes together in order to move us toward righteousness in the likeness of Christ. God’s Word is showing us, Paul’s letters are showing us, the format of his letters are showing us that right doctrine informs right living. Right doctrine is essential to you living a life that pleases God.
And so you’ve probably experienced different levels or pieces of this in your own life. But right living without proper doctrine leads to works-based legalism where the emphasis will always be on you, the doer. Some of you grew up in that type of system where they only focused on Ephesians 4, 5, and 6. And it was do, do, do, do, do. And pretty soon you find out I can’t do all those things right! I can’t do all those things perfectly and I don’t want to be a part of that thing because all that they do is condemn me for what I can’t do. That couldn’t be further from the truth. That couldn’t be further from what God has called us to. That is legalism.
But the opposite is also true. Right doctrine without right living is hypocrisy that dims the light of Christ that He came to save us from, the light of the world. Right doctrine without right living is hypocrisy. And so right doctrine that informs right living leads to a unified Body that reflects God’s love, that reflects Christ’s lordship and a new society of people set aside for future glory.
When we get our identity right it should move us to action, to live in the way Christ calls us to live, that we might reflect that Jesus is our King, that God is our Father and that we have been joined to a Body that will be the dwelling place of God.
Paul, he sort of gives us a posture of it when he calls himself a prisoner for the Lord in Ephesians 4:1. Paul paints for us this posture. A prisoner doesn’t really get to do whatever they want. And yet Paul is calling himself a willing prisoner of the Lord. He was a prisoner at the time, but he doesn’t give Rome the credit. I’m a prisoner of the Lord. wherever I end up in this life, I am bound to Christ and I will my life as Christ lived His life on the earth. That’s the attitude of someone who has the identity and the rich wealth of Ephesians 1 through 3 in their hearts and in their lives.
(24:20)
All right, so here’s point number two this morning. Our walk with Christ imitates Christ for the sake of unity in Christ. Our walk with Christ imitates Christ for the sake of unity in Christ. Look at verses 2 and 3. He begins to describe for us a walk that is worthy of the calling to which we have been called, and it looks like this. 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.
So first, who do those characteristics remind you of? Who do they remind you of? Jesus, right? Jesus perfectly fulfilled the characteristics that the Bible begins to unpack when it talks about the life of believers on the earth. Paul in Corinthians said, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” And Scripture wants to help us as we continue in Ephesians to imitate Jesus on the earth.
But second, remember the situation that Paul is writing this letter into, ok? You have Jews and Gentiles who not long ago had a wall of hostility between them. They hated each other. They disdained one another. They avoided one another.
And now all of a sudden they are said to be a part of the same family. You are the same Body. You are called to love one another. That is a lot of room for dysfunction. I mean that could cause some problems, right?
And as impressive as it was then, it’s still as impressive now. Would you look around the room for just a moment? I mean we’ve got probably 600 in this room or a little more, and there are kids on the other side. You love your kids. There’s a lot of room for dysfunction in a church like this. There is a lot of room for infighting and getting at one another.
And yet because we have come to understand the glorious foundation of our salvation, we work together at this. Not because of what we do, but because of what Christ has done. And that’s just Gospel City.
Think about Michiana. Think about the world. There are people all around the city who claim the blessings of following Christ who have been changed by the gospel, but they’ll never come to Gospel City, and that’s ok. We’ve come to agree on some things. There are brothers and sisters in this community who disagree with some of the things that we would probably hold up.
And Scripture has to be our measure for those things. But we are called to love those who think differently than us. We are called to love and pray for those because we’ve been joined to a Body where Jesus Christ is the head.
So as Paul instructs believers how to walk with and among one another in the family of God, it doesn’t look like how our flesh is naturally prone to operate when things don’t always go our way or when things get hard or when you’re joined to somebody that we maybe had a problem with in our past life. It looks like humility and it looks like gentleness and it looks like patience and it looks like bearing with one another and being eager to maintain unity for the sake of peace. Because together we reflect Jesus Christ on the earth.
So let’s look at these qualities together going into 2023. I don’t know what your resolutions were. I came into 2023 pretty slow. I’m coasting in, ok? But God’s Word is going to help us reform our lives. These are some resolutions for the believer as we step into 2023.
The first thing that Paul calls us to. If you have the wealth and your identity is in Christ, then your life should reflect humility. And Paul often holds up humility in his letters. It’s often tied to unity because you can’t have unity where you don’t have humble people. So humility is the opposite of arrogance and it’s the opposite of pride and pridefulness.
Tim Keller defines it this way. He says, “The essence of gospel humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself. It is thinking of myself less.”
David Brooks, who is a writer in the New York Times, I love what he says. He says, “It’s not thinking lowly of yourself, but having an accurate view of yourself. It’s as if you are saying God has given me tasks that I am unable to accomplish without the help of God. Arrogance paired with the gospel is always an imposter.”
I’ve met arrogant Christians. Have you ever met an arrogant Christian? You’ve met prideful people who kind of have a brain full of everything that the Bible says and yet they’re kind of rude? They’re kind of sharp. They’re kind of prideful in the way that they live their life. I think that’s very damaging. It does not display the very thing that Christ modeled, and ultimately gave us in the message of reconciliation called the gospel.
It’s Philippians 2 that tells us that we need to consider others as better than ourselves and we as the Church need to have that same mind among ourselves, which is ours in Christ Jesus. And Jesus modeled it. He was in the form of God, but He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He humbled himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. That’s Christmas time. And He humbled Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. Dying on a cross in your place as a substitute for your sins.
This is the ultimate picture of humility and it’s why we as believers need to understand our wealth in Christ. That’s why you have to understand chapters 1 through 3 of Ephesians because you know if you get the gospel, you don’t get to boast about it. You didn’t do anything to deserve it. So you don’t pat yourself on the back for the fact that you have been saved. You give all the glory to God and you come as a humble servant because of what Christ did in your sinfulness. Not because of what you have done.
If you focus on what you can do, you will be prideful and you will be arrogant. But if you focus on what Christ has done through the power of the gospel, you can give all glory to God and it will take shape and root in your life.
The second characteristic that He calls us to is gentleness. The Greek word that Paul uses for gentle is the same word that Jesus used on the Sermon on the Mount for the word meek. I know Pastor Tyler unpacked the word meek with you last week as Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Paul uses the same word to describe the worthy walk of believers on the earth. And this word is a great word. It doesn’t describe powerless, weak people. The word meek or gentle describes people who have put all of their power under the control of God.
So any of your gifts and any of your abilities and any of the leadership positions that you have been given in this life is now under the control of the God of comfort who is able to shine through you and use your gifts for His glory over your personal gain. And let me just tell you. When you’re focused on using what you have for the glory of God, you will find gain in this life that this world knows nothing about. You will find gain from the Father in heaven.
So the believer is not domineering. That’s not a characteristic of believers. The believer is not domineering, but dependent on God. And the believer is not timid, but the believer is mild and self-controlled toward others and toward moments where our humanness can tend to rise up in force. We all face things like that. We all face moments where we’re out of control.
So is gentleness coming from your life because of your rich wealth in Christ and because of your dependence on the Spirit of God? Or are you rising up in anger and force?
Paul also says that we should be patient. We should have patience in chapter 4 verse 2. Similar things could be said of the word patience. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes lack gentleness because of the sin of impatience in my life. I can get impatient, and so it causes me to say something sharp or to act a certain way or maybe to lose my patience, get frustrated. And I lack gentleness in my communication when I am impatient. Patience is a lifelong pursuit of the believer.
In pursuing patience we learn to endure. What do we endure? We endure the annoyances of people. People are annoying. How do you think my wife stays married to me? I am an annoying person. But she loves me and endures and puts up with me, which is another thing that we’ll look at.
But you learn to endure the challenges that present themselves. You learn to endure relational challenges and financial challenges and work challenges. But the believer should work at being unoffendable because there are a lot of things that will test your patience and offend you this side of heaven.
I think we live in one of the most offendable, offended cultures right now. Why? Because we’re sweeping away our identity. Like no one knows what their identity is, so they’re offended at everything. But if your identity is locked and loaded on the gospel of Jesus Christ, nothing should offend you.
You should realize that you are secure and sealed by the Spirit of God, and so that is how you live your life. And so you can be unoffendable when the world throws insults at you and claims that you are a bigot or claims that you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to the conduct and morality that you are called to live this side of heaven. The believer who is patient understands that things are not as they should be, but a perfect kingdom promises to come.
So until that day, we patiently await Christ’s return, being patient with the shortcomings of others, because Christ has been endlessly patient with me.
The fourth quality that he says is that we should bear with one another in love. Said less spiritually but just as accurately as you unpack it, we should put up with one another in love. The world would be a beautiful place if it wasn’t for us people. I mean, right? It would be. Because we tend to screw things up. But with Christ we can put up with one another even when we do the stupidest things because Christ has first loved us in our brokenness.
1 Peter 4:8. It’s on the screen. But it says, Above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sin. Love covers a multitude of sin. I don’t know what someone has done toward you, what someone has done against you. But love covers a multitude of sins. Love is patient and love that is kind, which are characteristics worthy of your wealth, are able to love sinners because it recognizes that we are one and the same, being built up by a Savior who has given us grace.
The final characteristic that Paul unpacks is that we should be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. You shouldn’t simply want unity and peace among the Body of Christ. You should be eager for it. You should be a contributor to the unity in the Body of Christ by using your gifts through service. You should be actively pursuing peace with others where there seems to be dissension or division.
You got dissension or division with somebody in this church? Go across the aisle. Go and ask them why. Go and seek their forgiveness. Don’t let those things fester. Paul is instructing this because we should be the most unified people on the planet because of what Christ has done.
Get this. If you have sinned and been called to repentance by people who genuinely love you, you should be quick to restore fellowship through repentance, reconciliation and righteous living. God has placed believers in your life and at times they will need to call you out on your sin. That’s why we encourage accountability in small groups. It’s why we get guys with guys and women with women in small groups so that they can share with one another the real struggles that they face in the world.
But if you’re harboring your sin and you have brothers and sisters who are calling you to repentance, they love you and it’s because they care for you and it’s because they want you to walk in righteousness and glorify God with your life. And it’s because they want you to experience the joy that comes from obedience.
And so sometimes when we’re the ones harboring sin, we want to stiff arm everybody that’s calling us out rather than restore fellowship, rather than repent, rather than follow Christ. That is the actions of someone whose identity is rooted in Jesus Christ. Quick to restore. Quick to repent. Quick to find peace among one another. And this beautiful worldwide organism that is the Church has the ability to image our triune God on the earth, but we must be willing to walk in a manner worthy of our calling so that it will.
Now point number three this morning is this. Our unified walk is a cause of one gospel confession. Our unified walk, it’s a cause of one gospel confession. Look at Ephesians 4:4-6. Paul goes into this doxology, this moment of worship. He says, “There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to 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.”
Paul moves from unpacking conduct that is representative of a worthy walk to emphasizing where our unity in the Spirit comes from and how it’s been made possible. He gives us these seven statements that begin with the word “one.” Most likely would have been an early creed that was quoted by the church. Maybe Paul is writing this and they began quoting it even from his letter. But it shows the singularity of the Christian faith and it shows the oneness that people from all walks of life can experience through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Let’s look at them real briefly. It says one body. That’s the Church. Christ is the head of this Body that is being built up. And we are many members with different functions, but all equally important. And we have been joined to this Body that is growing and being built up in Jesus Christ and will become the dwelling place of God on the earth.
There is one Spirit. We learned in chapter 1-3 that the Holy Spirit is the only one who seals for eternity and illuminates the manifold wisdom of God to our hearts and helps us to walk out our salvation. Paul says there’s one hope for the believer, only one. One hope in this hopeless world.
I want you to see what he says in Ephesians 2:12. Interesting thing to note. So in chapters 1 through 3 there’s only one command. This is it. Remember that you were at the time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promises, having no hope and without God in the world. So the one command in chapters 1 through 3. Remember that you have no hope apart from the gospel.
Now he’s moving into forty commands for the believer. Forty commands in chapters 4, 5, and into 6 that will help us see how we live out our hope in the world. He says that there’s one Lord. This is Jesus Christ, who is the cornerstone of salvation. And to say that Jesus is Lord in your heart is to believe that He is fully God and that He is reigning King.
For the early Christians to say that Jesus is Lord was for them to say that Caesar is not king, that Jesus is the King. For the early Jews they were saying that Jesus is the Messiah of the Old Testament, the God of the Old Testament, the Messiah that they had waited for that the prophecies had pointed to. And to truly confess Jesus as the Lord of life, which is the only way to receive Jesus, is to know Jesus and to be saved by Jesus.
The Bible says that if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, that He is King, that He is sovereign, that He is reigning, you will be saved. Paul says that there is one faith. This is our reliance and trust in the one true God and the truth that He’s called us to obey.
There’s one baptism. Those who are truly saved have a common experience of being spiritually immersed into Christ. There are a lot of different testimonies in the room, a lot of different walks of life represented here today, one thing that we all have in common if we are in Christ is if we have been baptized into Christ, we have been immersed into Christ, this is an inward baptism that has transformed someone from death to life.
And in the church we recognize physical baptism on the right side of your salvation because it’s an outward expression of what happened inwardly to a dead, rotten sinner who has been made alive in Jesus Christ. You go under the water and you are raised to walk in newness of life. It’s a representation of what Christ has done in your heart, in your soul, in your life by His grace.
And last but not least, he says one God and Father. All of this comes from the Father who has chosen us from before the foundation of the world and adopted us as his sons and daughters and lavished his love upon us. And all of it was to the praise of His glorious grace.
And as I land the plane this morning, I want you to notice the nature of our triune God that was mentioned in these statements. This is our example in the Body of Christ. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit existed in perfect harmony and oneness together before the world was ever made. There are specific functions represented among each member, and yet they are one and they are equal and yet there is submission.
Jesus submitted to the Father, and the Holy Spirit revealed the Son to your heart and on the earth. John 17, the Spirit keeps bringing us back to Jesus’ prayer in John 17. But I want you to see what Jesus prayed. Jesus prayed that they, believers, 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. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:21-23)
Jesus, He’s not talking about an individual. He is talking about a Body of believers to experience the same oneness that he experiences with the Father and the Spirit in the Trinity. An individual that’s been transformed, that’s pretty amazing. What’s even more awesome is a Body of believers transformed and united and being built into a cosmic temple and dwelling place for our God. That’s us. And it’s happening all around the world.
So why does our conduct matter in all of this? And why is Paul shifting to focus on our walk? Because when believers walk worthy of their wealth together, it images the unity of our triune God on the earth.
In John 17 Jesus prayed that “The world may believe that you have sent me.” The world will see and believe that Jesus is Lord as they see our oneness in our walk, not within these walls, but outside of these walls. All of this goes together. The glory of the gospel and the righteous conduct and holiness of the believer, all of it is sanctifying us according to the Word of God. All of it is making us holy as our God is holy.
What a great prayer for 2023. God, make me holy as You are holy. Make me more like Christ. Make me reflect the triune God within the Body of Christ in 2023. All of it is building us up together for the new heavens and the new earth. And I’m anticipating just a season of challenge. You know when you’re studying the doctrine, it kind of bends your brain a little bit, right? And then you leave contemplating deep things. Now it’s going to be conviction and it’s going to be application. And it’s going to be us growing up together and dealing with sin together and being unashamed to rip out the secret places of our hearts where Christ wants to make our heart His home.
And I believe we can just do this and come and check the box and go through the Scripture. Or we could actually pray that the Spirit would do something in this church for the glory of the gospel in Michiana.
And so we’ve got a few minutes left. I’m going to send us to prayer groups to close this service, ok? Maybe with somebody beside you or with four or five people in your row that you can circle up with. Here are some prayer points on the screen that I want you to pray.
Lord, I confess that my walk hasn’t reflected my wealth. And I’m asking You to help me change “blank” (that’s a blank) so that others would see Jesus in the way I live.
Number two, Holy Spirit, I need help with the characteristic of “blank” (maybe it’s humility, gentleness, patience) in order to imitate Christ and eagerly contribute to the peace among believers.
Number three, Father, unify Gospel City in this season around the oneness of the gospel and move our congregation to holiness so that (you fill in the blank). What do you want to see happen through this Body? What do you want to see happen through this place that You call Your Church home?
And lastly, let’s pray some bold prayers together in 2023. Add to our Body here in Michiana in 2023 souls that are transformed, because together we are imaging the beauty of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit together.
Could you pray prayers like that? Could you pray that the joy that is among us would be contagious to the world around us? So go ahead. Stand to your feet and circle up with a few people around you. Try to keep the talking and introductions down and let’s just go to prayer together. I’ll close us in about four minutes, ok? Can we pray together? Let’s lift up prayers all around the room. Go ahead. Let’s pray.
