“There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ‘s gift.”
According to the musical group, “Three Dog Night”, ‘one is the loneliest number’. Well, if numbers can be lonely then I guess that’s stating the obvious, huh? I suppose what they meant was if you have a lover you’re two, but if you don’t you’re one, and that’s lonely.
Which is also stating the obvious.
Quite contrary to the world’s thinking however, oneness in and of all things is God’s goal in the plan of salvation. At the end of Ephesians 1 and the last verse of Philippians 3 there are references to Him ultimately subjecting all things to Himself.
It is easy for us to slip into error when thinking about unity and think of it as uniformity. Some number of things that are grouped together and look exactly the same with no differences at all. Like a box of nails or a row of buttons on a shirt.
But that is not at all what unity is in Christ. In fact, while making us one, united, by the same process He also makes us more of an individual than we ever could be apart from His Spirit.
ONE
Throughout the New Testament we see a number of analogies to define the church. The Bride of Christ, the family of God, sheep, branches; but probably the most poignant and powerful is the reference to us as Christ’s body. Paul uses this analogy several times; Romans 12, I Corinthians 10 and 12, Colossians 1, and of course, here in our text.
This reference lends itself to some very clear and understandable pictures of our place in Him and our connection to one another, and our intended function as a whole.
We’ve all heard sermons, I’m sure, on the importance of every part. Some are hands and some are toes. But all are important. If you stub your toe or slam your thumb with a hammer, you don’t just shrug it off and go on ~ you whine and run for help and pamper that part until the pain subsides.
If a body part is severed it no longer serves the body. It rots. Etc, etc.
So I’ll try to steer clear of all those graphic mind-pictures today and not burden you with them again. Let’s just talk about the concept of oneness that the analogy provides.
Notice here in verses 4 - 6, Paul is laying out the basics of the Christian faith that unite us all, despite our denominational distinctives.
Fortunately, when Paul wrote, there was only The Way. The disciples of Jesus all over, who as yet had no major differences to cause contention. No one knew that they weren’t supposed to speak in tongues. No one had been told that there was any other way to baptize than immersion. There had been no carpet installations to split over, no one had drawn up any dress codes for morning worship, and there were no parsonages to put used furniture in. So he didn’t have to address himself to the issues that divide us today.
And what he did have to say, still applies. The true church, we have all agreed in the past, and I know we still do, does not exist within the boundaries of one denomination or one group of churches.
The church of Jesus Christ is comprised of all believers everywhere, from the very first convert to the last, whenever and wherever that may take place.
Notice I did not say ‘all churchgoers’. I said all believers, and by that I mean all who come under the designation of ‘called ones’, or ‘holy ones’, in New Testament teaching.
So there are Christians in every church denomination that sets forth the fundamentals of the Christian faith laid out for us in I Corinthians 15:1-4, that Jesus was crucified according to the scriptures, buried, and that He rose on the third day according to the scriptures; and the promise of Romans 10:9-11 concerning faith from the heart and confession from the mouth regarding those fundamental truths.
J. Vernon Magee once estimated that about 75% of church members are not saved. I don’t know how he came up with that number; but Billy Graham once said that about 80% of people who respond to his altar calls are already on local church membership lists. That is traceable, because at those crusades they have people who come down to the front fill out information cards that they then share with local pastors so follow-up can be done.
In every denomination there are the saved, and the unsaved. God will separate the wheat from the tares at the proper time. But for now we simply need to understand that this oneness Paul speaks of includes all those who are genuinely ‘wheat’, wherever they may be.
And he says this is one body. The body of Christ.
Next he says ‘one Spirit’. Now I just want us to pause here for a moment and consider the significance of this.
First of all I’ll state the obvious again; We see a capital ‘S’ here. It is a reference to the Holy Spirit of God and not any other spirit.
It is a very basic doctrinal truth, learned, I hope, by every believer very early in His life as a Christian. But I think we have to stop and make a deliberate effort to realize that this same Spirit literally dwells in every believer in Christ, all over the world, at once.
He is God. He possesses all the attributes of Divinity, because He is a Person of the Trinity, and as Jesus said, “If you have seen Me you have seen the Father”, we can just as rightly say, if you know Jesus, you know the Holy Spirit. If you understand what Jesus is like, then you know what the Holy Spirit is like. He is referred to as the Spirit of Christ, and if you have ‘seen’ Christ, then you have ‘seen’ the Holy Spirit.
So all Christians everywhere, have the same ‘best friend’. We have the same Comforter, the same Guide, the same source of Life.
We can look at it this way; each of us individually is a type of what the church as a whole is. We have a body, with all it’s parts {Lever soap says 2000, but personally I don’t see it} and we have a spirit in us that is the life of that body. This typifies the church which is the body, with Christ as the head {and by the way, it does have many more than 2000 parts} and the Spirit in the body is its source of Life.
If we understand this, then we should understand that the things that tend to divide must not be of that Spirit that indwells us all. If I am healthy and mentally stable, I don’t tend to tell my hand to do something that is going to be detrimental to the rest of my body, or that will bring reproach on the rest of my body.
We watched an episode of Law and Order recently, wherein a priest took it upon himself to shoot and kill a man who had molested the daughter of a man in his parish. His justification was that he knew the father was tempted to go and do violence to the suspect, so he felt God was telling him to do it to keep the father from sinning.
The entire 1 hour program circled around the issue of ‘does God tell someone to go and kill someone else’, and does this man’s religious conviction supercede the laws of the land.
I watched the program in frustration, because the matter is settled easily if the one contemplating the issue realizes that the scriptures are Holy Spirit inspired, and the One who inspired the scriptures, and now lives in the believer, will not contradict His own written Word.
If this priest was saved, or if he had even a basic knowledge of the Bible, what did he do with Matthew 5:43,44?
“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR, and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you…”
Interestingly, I don’t think this show would have worked if the religious zealot being portrayed was a Muslim or a Hindu. The argument would then have been, well, you can’t just kill someone because your religion says it’s ok.
But in the eyes of an unsaved American society, the fact that it was a priest that committed the act should cause us to agonize over the morality issue and say, “Well, gee, this is a man in religious authority. Could he be in the right in doing this?”
But the fact is, someone committing an evil act even in the name of Christianity, and claiming that God told him to do it, has no more valid argument for his defense than a terrorist! There is one Spirit, capital ‘S’, and He does not contradict Himself or go against His nature.
And it is He who is the Life of the body of Christ, the church universal.
Knowing this, believer, how careful should we be to be diligent amongst ourselves, to preserve the unity that He has assembled us to, in loving peaceful relationship to one another?
I submit to you that the very early church moved forward in power and manifestations of the Holy Spirit because they were aware of this oneness He had brought, and worked as one with His leading. He hasn’t changed. The body has.
Now what does he mean by ‘one hope of your calling’? Well, if you remember back to when we studied verse 18 of chapter 1 where he uses the same phrase, you may remember also that we concluded that by “the hope of His calling” Paul meant ‘assurance of our salvation’.
So here, in this context, he would be bringing to our attention that there is one hope. That is, our salvation and our confidence in His calling of us hinges only on one message of hope; that being the gospel itself.
It’s what we are saying when we sing “I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the Solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”
There is no other gospel; there is no other message that comes to us as ‘good news’ concerning our calling from God. There is the cross of Christ and His resurrection, and apart from that there is no hope.
Remember that I said earlier, Paul is laying out the basics of the faith. We are one body with Christ as our Head, we have one Spirit who is the source of the divine Life in us, and there is one message and only one that gives us assurance of our salvation; that is, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism.
Now let’s pause and consider that term for just a moment. “One baptism”. I’m sure that there are plenty of very good Baptists who hold that meaning to be ‘only one way to properly baptize’. But I have a feeling it means something more than that.
Let’s just lay aside all questions about what a legitimate baptism is or is not. It was only a couple of years ago that I had occasion to sit with some other ministers, some of them already retired, and became engaged in a discussion about baptism.
There was a comment made that if someone was not immersed, he simply wasn’t baptized. So being the uncontentious appeaser that I am, I raised a scenario. “What if someone is in their hospital bed, near death and unable to move from their position, and they get saved and want to be baptized? In a case like that wouldn’t you maybe explain the doctrine to them to be sure they understand it and then put water on their forehead to baptize them?”
I thought I was going to be tarred and feathered. But after their initial sputtering and glares of disdain they virtually ignored me and went into a tale-telling frenzy of occasions they had in the past to baptize invalids and shut-ins. The stories ranged from carrying them out to swimming pools, to having them taken to hospital physical therapy departments and lowered into tubs. But they all very piously and faithfully immersed, no matter what.
No, Paul wasn’t talking here about any issue that divides. And he isn’t talking about the physical rite of baptism. He is making a distinction between our entrance into faith and all the many baptisms that were done for various reasons. In one place Paul makes reference to those who practiced being baptized for the dead (a proxy thing). Then there was John’s baptism for repentance. And the Jews had many washing ceremonies, some of which were immersions.
But through faith, we were baptized into Christ. Sin baptized us into Adam’s death. Faith baptized us into Christ’s death, and therefore into His resurrection
When we came and believed in Christ as our Savior, we trusted Him as our Redeemer and our new Leader. By faith we followed Him into the waters of death, and were brought up safely in newness of life by His resurrection. This is typified in the children of Israel following Moses through the Red Sea. Listen to I Corinthians 10:2
“…and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea”
They were baptized into Moses. Meaning they died to the old life, and instead of staying in Egypt, trusted Moses to take them through the sea and safely to the other side.
We were baptized into Christ.
Romans 6:3,4 “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
There is another reference to being baptized into Christ in Galatians 3:27
So we can see by this that those who argue that water baptism is necessary for salvation have entirely missed the point. We are baptized in the Spirit at salvation, and the physical rite we submit ourselves to is only a testimony of what has already transpired. The thief on the cross next to Jesus went to Paradise baptized, and it had nothing to do with water.
I must move on. “…one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” Paul finishes his statement here that defines the unity the Spirit brings. Notice if you will, that he has used the word ‘one’, seven times in verses 4 through 6. As though to emphasize the completeness and perfection of the unity of the body.
Now I want to spend the rest of our time focusing on verse 7 and the interesting turn Paul takes in emphasis.
“But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”
MANY
In using the conjunctive ‘but’, it might seem like Paul is destroying his own argument for unity. In fact, he is illuminating the fact that while we are one in Christ, and all belonging to His body and have a duty to preserve this unity diligently, yet we have not lost our individuality. We are each unique, we are each our own individual.
“But to each one…”
We are one, and we are many. We are united in Him, but we can still be addressed as ’each one’
I remember a movie from some years back called “Highlander”. If I understood it correctly, these ancient Scottish warriors, all of whom had lived very long lives, were required to fight each other when they crossed paths. The essence and power of the one who died would be absorbed by the victor, who would then go on, stronger than before, to find the next Highlander to fight. Their battle cry was “There can be only one”, and the goal was that in the end there would only be one Highlander and he would have all the power and be immortal.
That is the sort of thing we have to avoid thinking about what lies in our future. We are not going to be simply absorbed into God and become some single cosmic awareness, floating around space or hovering around the Throne.
We are ’each one’, and we each have received grace, a calling, a name written down in Heaven; (Rev. 2:17) and as we will see in coming weeks, gifts and individual responsibilities.
This sermon is not really complete until we go and look at those gifts listed for us in the coming verses, so I suppose I really should have either made this a two part sermon, or planned to keep you here for another hour.
But I will draw this to a close for today with an observation, a reminder, and a challenge to you.
First, observe once more that God the Holy Spirit lives in His body, the church, and individually in each one. Think, if you can imagine it, of the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, being in you. In you. Because that is a fact supported by scripture.
All that God is, is in you and works in you to conform you to Christ’s image, and to empower you for service, and to assist you in being diligent to walk in a manner worthy of your calling.
So let me remind you of those things we studied in the first three chapters that God has wrought in order to bring all of this about, and to assemble His church in one. And let me recap what has been said today; that the basics of our faith are these:
One body, one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all. Perfect unity. Yet, individuals, gifted according to grace, and the gift of Christ who has been given all authority in heaven and on the earth, and is the head over all things to the church.
So, my challenge.
What is your role in furthering the Kingdom of God? What part do you play in getting the gospel out to the world around you? You are one with the body of Christ, united by the Spirit and graced according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
Do you know what your gift is (or gifts are)? Do you know what part you have been called to be in this body? Because you have, you know.
And being one with the body, being brought into this unity, you have a responsibility to be diligent to preserve it peacefully with your brethren; but being an individual you have a responsibility to walk… to use your gift… to be used in the unique way that He has designated for you by His grace.
You have been given grace to use your gift, which is in keeping with Christ’s authority, given Him by the Father. And the Holy Spirit in you is the power to use that gift through you members.
What is your role? How are you seeking God to use you in that role?
Be spending some time to think about these things, and please do not neglect to pray over the coming weeks. Even if you are presently filling some role in service, be open to where the Lord might be wanting to lead you. It may be in a direction you’ve never taken or even been aware before that it exists.
Please pray boldly and ask the Lord to stretch your boundaries. To enlarge your heart for Him and for kingdom work, and pray with confidence that He will answer.
Because He has already done all that needs to be done to prepare you for service to Him, if you are a believer. You are baptized into Christ, filled with the Spirit of God, united with His body and gifted by His grace.
All that is needed now is your awareness of your calling, willingness to walk worthy of it, and surrender to His use, not looking at the weakness of the flesh, but trusting in the power of His Spirit.
Are you ready to go higher and farther? He’s calling you, and He’s moving. Will you go?
