One

  • Jake Chambers
  • Jun 27, 2010
  • Series: Ephesians

Ephesians 4:3-6 “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.”

One. If there was a word to describe this sermon it would be "one." One is used seven times in these three verses. It is very apparent that this idea of one is being repetitively hammered into our heads. But why is this one such a big deal here?

Our God is one. The call to unity and oneness only makes sense if we understand that our God is one. That our God is trinity or tri-unity. We struggle with community and being one because we struggle with our comprehension of the trinity. In most churches today we dismiss the trinity as a complicated mysterious doctrine and so we set it aside and use cheap metaphor such as an egg, clover or three-headed monster. You see, in America we are so individualistic that the very idea of a communal God befuddles us to the point that we just choose to dismiss it. How can three be one? I don’t know, move on.

God is community. God is love. God is only love because he is in community with himself. He has been in community with perfect love and glory within himself for eternity. This type of unity is hard for us to understand. A unity that is so mutually loving, mutually glorifying and selflessly for one another that it is one, is mind- blowing for us. But we must understand that this is the very nature of our God. Our God is one. Our God is the meshing of perfect unity and perfect diversity.

You see the world has split into two teams. The western world cherishes the individual. Individualism is championed above all. We cherish the rugged individual that can get all he can, while he can. This is America’s story and so it is deeply embedded in you. To look out for number one. Do what’s best for you. The Eastern world cherishes unity.  But it cherishes this to the point that it loses distinctions and diversity. The eastern world looks at America and says "what a tragedy the unity has been lost." The western world looks at the eastern world and says "what a tragedy the diversity and individual has been lost."  But our God has transcended this and within himself are three distinct persons (individuals), with distinct roles, who are perfectly united with one another. Diversity and unity have come together perfectly in the trinity. God is radically, communally one, and still diverse.

“Let us make man in our image.” God did not create us out of a need for relationship because he was already in perfect relationship with himself. The only reason it makes sense for him to create us is that it was out of the overflow of his perfect relationship. It makes sense that a God whose very character gets joy from sharing love and sharing glory within him self would create more to share his love and glory with. We were created in community for community. Humans were created for relationship. “It is not good for man to be alone.”

We were created in the image of God. Nothing gives more value to the individual than that each one is a unique image bearer of God! Each individual is of utmost importance and deserves the utmost of love and respect because we are image bearers. Yet since the very image we were created in is an image of one in three persons we are radically created for relationship. We were created to be one with each other. In fact, we would loose the very thing that makes us individuals if we isolate from each other. The very thing that makes us image bearers is how we were uniquely created for oneness.

Relationship is what makes us human. The more we isolate ourselves, the less we are actually individuals and the more we become robots. We live in an age where our humanity is being taken from us as we fight for our individualism. We fight for my toys, my space, my job, my degree, my dreams and if anyone comes in between me and my island we cut them out. This is what has made divorce rates sky high, abortion rates sky high, this is why athletes hop from team to team and why we will up and move without thinking twice for a job. Nobody thinks twice in our society if we leave church, family and friends if it is for a job or school. This is why so many families have daycare raise their kids so they can be an individual in their job. They start to lose what made them individually unique - the amazing identity of a parent. They become a childless parent. They become less human. We become less human when we isolate ourselves. You see we do the same thing - we slowly isolate ourselves and become relationshipless humans. Grandchildren make grandparents grandparents, brothers/sisters make siblings and relationships makes us human.

In the garden back in Genesis, Adam and Eve were in perfect relationship with God and with each other. They lived in the world we all wanted with perfect individualism, roles and identity –they were Adam and Eve, man and woman, they had dominion over the plants and animals, they walked with God and loved him and loved being with him. But Adam and Eve pulled themselves out of relationship with their triune God. They chose to isolate themselves from God and God’s blessing, rule and protection. Immediately relationships were jacked up. Immediately Adam and Eve became less human and were blaming, accusing and filled with shame. Cain and Abel come on the scene, and Cain kills Abel. Murder has now entered the world. Jealousy, strife, and me first individualism has taken over. Were Cain and Abel part of one family? Were they brothers? Yes. But were they one in the sense of mutual love, submission, and glorying one another the way God had created them for? No. Jealousy, murder and blood enter the story. They are not one. They would struggle to understand what being one meant, what being human meant. And humans have struggled to understand this ever since and we struggle to understand it today and even struggle to understand a God who could be one.

But our God is one. We have one Spirit, one Lord (Jesus) and one God and Father. Let's look again at our Ephesians passage. Our God is perfectly in unity – one- but also has perfect diversity. We have one Spirit who perfectly empowers the one body. One Spirit who perfectly indwells and animates one body. We have one hope, one faith and one baptism because we have one Lord. Jesus is the object of our hope, he is the object of our faith and it is his death, burial and resurrection we are one with through baptism. We are one family because we have one God and Father.

One. There is one God the Holy Spirit that empowers and animates one body called the church, of which Jesus is the one head. There are not many powers, many engines and many ways. One. Our problem is we are like Cain and Abel, like Adam and Eve. We believe the lie and are products of this fall. We run from God and rely on our own power. We lose oneness with the body because we think we alone have the power to make the body run and that we alone are our own body so we don’t need the whole body. Peace out body. I am one wicked appendix and don’t need you.

We don’t all follow Jesus as our one Lord. Some of us have our children as Lord or our job as Lord, or TV as Lord or significant other as Lord. Something or someone other than Jesus is the King we follow. The King who rules and reigns our lives. And so we can’t be one. We can’t. We can’t because we don’t have one Lord we are not in the same kingdom but often in competing kingdoms. I want you to follow my king which is usually me and you want me to follow you. We will never be one because our interest is as opposed as the Lakers and Celtics.  Divided interest and kings.

We have competing hope and faiths, faith in ourselves, faith in money and faith in jobs. People who mutually put their hope in money often get along. But they hate those who don’t put their hope in money. When your faith is in money you will do anything and everything based on what will give you the most money. You will never leave a job even if its torture, you will move for money, lose kids, friends, everything for money. And people who put their faith in money think those who don’t put their faith in money are idiots. And those who put faith in spouse, flexibility or something else besides money look at those who put faith in money as miserable. But the Christians have ONE faith, ONE hope. ONE. Jesus. Not anything else so we are radically united in that all of our decisions are made together under the rule of one Lord with the faith in one Lord with all our future hope being in ONE Lord. Jesus. Jesus unifies the church. He so radically unifies us that we are baptized outwardly to demonstrate what Jesus has done inwardly. Jesus has given us ONE identity under ONE rule, empowered by the ONE Holy Spirit. Jesus took our separation and isolation on the cross. Jesus was buried and raised again. Jesus is our one hope and we demonstrate that through ONE baptism.

We are part of ONE family. You see, there is something different about me than you. I have a different dad than almost all of you. Because of this I have different family ties, family interests, family traditions etc. We are not one family because I am a Chambers and you are a Peterson, Hancock or Sison. And even in most families today there is not real oneness. Many families have “sides.” Fighting between brothers and sisters, cousins, parents, lawsuits over wills etc. They are not one family looking out for the best interest of others but are individuals that happen to have the same last name. But this is not what the family of God is like. The family of God has given us all one perfect Father. A Father who loves us perfectly, sees us as his beloved children with whom he is well pleased. We are ONE family and we are now ONE with God. This is the miracle of what Jesus has accomplished for us. This family is more unified than the biological family because this family also has the same Spirit animating the ONE body and has the same hope, faith and baptism in the one Lord. No other family is this unified! This family is unified by the very unity of a triune God. We are now participants into the perfect overflow of love, selflessness and shared glory of one God. We have the same Father as Jesus, we are empowered by the same Spirit, and we are identified with the same Christ. UNBELIEVABLE.  

And this is what we have in church. See the church, in reality, is one. We cannot break apart the oneness of the church anymore than we can break apart the oneness of God. What? Yes this is who we are in Christ. We are one. The church is both invisible and visible. The invisible church is all that are part of this body worldwide. Only God knows who is part of this body. But the visible church is to demonstrate the oneness we already have. This is why in verse 3 Paul is encouraging them to “maintain the unity of peace.” We know that this is difficult for us to live out. We still fall back into disunity. But we have a unity, we are one and we are to strive with all we have to maintain this unity in the local visible church.

Maintaining: the Greek word here describes a “continuous diligent activity”. A “sparing no effort.” It describes a passionate pursuit of the “full effort of the whole man.” This is not a lazy maintaining of unity, but a full effort.

Where does this start? It must start in our missional communities and spread to Kaleo College Area. We must pursue unity with one another. We must reconcile, forgive and pursue peace with one another at all cost. We must fight to remind each other of our one Lord, one Faith and one baptism. We must pray to our one Father together. We must remind one another that it is one Spirit that empowers us. We must constantly remember to make decisions as one, love as one and work towards being one. It must start in the local church.

Prayerfully, this demonstration of oneness in our MCs will spread to an unbelieving world but will also spread throughout Kaleo College Area and throughout Kaleo. For Kaleo to be one family with many local churches. And that this demonstration of oneness would spread through Acts 29 and other churches in San Diego and even churches that we may look much different than, could hopefully learn from our unity.

The beauty of this unity is that it is radically individualistic in that it started with one human. This must start with one. Jesus is the one who passionately devoted the full effort of his whole being to this unity. Jesus lived a perfect life of selflessness and unity with the Father, Spirit and humanity on earth, he died the death of disunity, selfishness and he rose to call the whole world to be once again reconciled to the Father, Son and Spirit and live as ONE people under his ONE gracious reign for all of eternity. One started with one. Follow the one it started with and live as the one you already are. This is worth our full effort because our one Lord has given it to us through his full effort. This is a lifestyle and mission that will bring out the value of every individual because every diverse individual is uniquely empowered to image the very oneness of this community.

If you are here and you don’t know Jesus, you are not part of this one community. I promise you your search for an identity, uniqueness and individualism will never fully be realized outside of Jesus. You will never fully know who you are and who you image. I promise you that your search for community will never fully be realized outside of the ONE community we all were created for. I invite you be one with Jesus and one with his people. It is what you were created for, and Jesus did all the work to bring you into this community.

Kaleo I want to talk to you as individuals. Kaleo I encourage you to be eager to maintain and demonstrate who you already are - one. Amen.

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