One: the Loneliest Number
Ephesians 4:4-6
February 10, 2013
I’m not sure how many of you remember a group named Three Dog Night. This is what they looked like and what they wore when they were popular. They were popular way back in the late 60's, early 70's.
Just so you know how old they are, this is what they look like today. They had some great songs, like Jeremiah was a bullfrog. One of my old favorites. Anyways, they had a song called One is the loneliest number. . The first stanza went like this,
One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It's the loneliest number since the number one
It isn’t an uplifting song. But there’s truth to what they’re saying. 1 can be a very lonely number. Yet, one of the beauties of the church, and one of the selling points of the early church was their ability to work together and care for one another.
Last week we began looking at the what the church is, and we’re focusing on the words of Paul to the church in Ephesus. Let’s look at what Paul said last week ~
1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.
2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.
3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. – Ephesians 4:1-3
Paul reminds us to make every effort to keep the unity, and calls us to be completely humble, gentle, patient and to bear with one another in love. So, that’s our ending point from last week, as Paul continues this week in verses 4-6. He tells us ~
4 There is ONE body and ONE Spirit—just as you were called to ONE hope when you were called —
5 ONE Lord, ONE faith, ONE baptism; 6 ONE God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:4-6
This passage is really pretty straightforward. But we can get caught in the details and miss the big picture of what God wants for the church. There’s a key word in this passage. Anyone take a guess at what that word is?
ONE! The key word in this passage is obviously the word ONE! It indicates something that’s united, not something that consists of separate parts. It’s a word which would be applied to one team, but not to an individual player who are on that team. For example, I could say Indianapolis has one football team called the Colts, but I couldn’t use it to say that Andrew Luck is one player on that team. The word ONE conveys a sense of unity.
Paul uses the word ONE seven times in this passage; as he describes 7 aspects of Christianity believers have in common that make us one unified body. I believe the potential and hope is that these 7 aspects have more of a unifying glue and go deeper than even many of our family relationships. After all, you choose to be here, but you didn’t choose your family. If you want to be part of the fellowship of your family, you don’t always get to choose who you put up with.
But in the church world, we do choose. We can decide we want to be here or there, or even nowhere for that matter.
Paul groups these in a manner that reveals the work of all 3 parts of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each aspect of the Trinity lives in perfect harmony with one another. In a community of greater humility, servanthood, mutual submission, love and power than we can imagine. No wonder we long for heaven.
For example, the Holy Spirit points to Jesus Christ. In an article on the trinity, Dale Bruner wrote about what he called the “shyness” of the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit never calls attention to Himself, but rather comes in the name of the Son, and gives glory to the Son.
And Jesus didn’t go around calling attention to Himself either. Instead, He submitted to the Spirit who led Him into the wilderness and to His Father, proclaiming, “Not my will but yours be done.”
And even the Father, both at the baptism of Jesus and at the Transfiguration, commanded the people to listen to His Son, Jesus.
Let’s look at what Paul wrote ~ 4 There is ONE body and ONE Spirit — just as you were called to ONE hope when you were called —
Remember, it’s the Holy Spirit who causes us to see our need for a Savior by convicting us of our sinfulness.
Now Paul is beginning to outline his ONES. There’s ONE body, ONE Spirit and ONE hope. When he talks about one body, Paul is referring to the universal church, or what is also called the catholic (with a small “c”) church. Paul wouldn’t be very happy with all of the different denominations, let alone the different denominations within each denomination. For example, there are over 100 different types of Baptists. http://askville.amazon.com/kinds-Baptists-list/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=374133
American Baptist Churches
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
General Six-Principle Baptists
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches
Old Regular Baptist
Regular Baptist
Primitive Baptist Old Time
Missionary Baptist
Progressive National Baptist Convention
Original Free Will Baptist Convention
Reformed Baptist
Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists
Pilgrim Predestinarian Regular Baptist Church
Duck River and Kindred Associations of Baptists
Paul would be appalled at the way followers of Jesus Christ have divided themselves along denominational and theological lines.
I believe all too often we create divisions that just don’t need to be there. Other churches aren’t the competition; we’re on the same team. The competition is the world around us that says there’s no need for God, that mocks God and denies who Jesus Christ is and what He did for us.
So, we’re part of one body, the church and we have one Spirit. There are no other Spirits we’re competing for. It’s the Holy Spirit. And it’s through the Holy Spirit where we experience hope.
A great example is in Romans 5:3-5, when Paul says ~ 3 We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance produces character; and character produces hope.
5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Paul reminds us that in spite of the sufferings, God will pour His love into our hearts, how? By the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us. Because remember the day you accepted Jesus Christ in your life, the Holy Spirit supernaturally became alive within you, and will stay with you for the rest of this life. That’s great news, and we know we can face anything in life, because God pours His love into us.
Paul finishes this passage with 4 ONES — as he refers to ~ 5 ONE Lord, ONE faith, ONE baptism; 6 ONE God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Notice that the 4th, or at the center of this list is ONE LORD. In Paul’s day, Caesar and other political authorities had taken the title, Lord. But Paul wanted to emphasize that if there was to be unity in the body, there can only be one lord, and that Lord is Jesus Christ. And He must be at the center of our lives.
Again, unfortunately in our culture, Jesus has even become the source of division among His followers. John McNeill, a Scottish pastor from the late 1800's, created an imaginary conversation between the man who had been born blind and was healed by Jesus, as recorded in John 9, and another blind man that was healed by Jesus as recorded in Mark 8.
The difference between the two is that in John 9, Jesus spit on the ground and made mud which He used to heal the man’s eyes and in Mark 8 Jesus used spit, but no mud to bring healing.
Imagine the two men meet each other and begin to share their stories. After hearing the man’s story who didn’t have the mud used to bring healing, the man healed with the mud said, “That’s great, but you forgot the part where Jesus spit on the ground and made mud to put on your eyes.”
“I don’t know anything about mud. He only used spit, then touched my eyes.”
The mud man replies, “But that’s not the way Jesus gives sight. If he didn’t spit on the ground and make mud to restore your sight, then it wasn’t really Jesus who healed you.”
So the first denominations were created: the Mudites and the Spitites. That’s what happens when we get our focus on Jesus’ methods rather than making Him Lord.
There is only one Lord, there is only one faith as well. When we refer to one Lord, we’re only talking about Jesus, no other substitutes will do; and when we talk about one faith, we’re only talking about the one faith we have in Jesus who is the Son of God. We can’t have faith in something or someone else and say we’re good with God. It doesn’t work that way. That’s why at every funeral for Christ followers, I talk about the person being in their new heavenly home, because they believed in the words of Jesus from John 14 ~ “I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me.” That’s the only way!
We also affirm that when Paul talks about one baptism, he’s referring to our baptism in Christ. John the Baptist said, I baptize you with water, but He [Jesus] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Mark 1:8
John makes it very clear that Jesus is the one doing the baptizing and that He baptizes us with the Holy Spirit.
While I believe baptism by immersion as a believer in Jesus is the way to be baptized, I’m not going to dissociate from my brothers and sisters in Christ who hold to infant baptism. I seek unity in Christ, not division because we don’t agree on something which does not lead to salvation.
So there’s unity in the body because each and every one of us has been baptized by Jesus with the Holy Spirit who comes to reside permanently in our lives. Water baptism is an outward symbol of what has already taken place within us, it is still an important part of every believer’s life.
Finally, Paul leads us to the final section ~ 6 ONE God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
There is actually a very logical flow to Paul’s writing in this passage. He begins by describing the unity within the body that is brought about through the work of the Holy Spirit. But how did that body come into existence? Through the work of the Son. And why did the Son do all that? Because it all flows from the Father who is over all and through all and in all.
