Unity in a Fractured World   Ephesians 4:3,11-16

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason – January 25, 2004

“Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit, and bind yourselves together with peace…¹¹He is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. ¹²Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ, ¹³until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.

¹⁴Then we will no longer be like children, forever changing our minds about what we believe because someone has told us something different or because someone has cleverly lied to us and made the lie sound like the truth. ¹⁵Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. ¹⁶Under his direction, the whole body is fitted together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.”

Tradition claims that Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchure is built over the cave in which Christ is said to have been buried.  In July 2002, the church became the scene of ugly fighting between the monks who run it. The conflict began when a Coptic monk sitting on the rooftop decided to move his chair into the shade. This took him into the part of the rooftop courtyard looked after by the Ethiopian monks.

It turns out that the Ethiopian and Coptic monks have been arguing over the rooftop of the Church of the Holy Sepulchure for centuries. In 1752 the Ottoman Sultan issued an edict declaring which parts of the Church belong to each of six Christian groups: the Latins, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Copts, and Ethiopians. Despite the edict conflict over the church remains.

The rooftop had been controlled by the Ethiopians, but they lost control to the Copts when hit by a disease epidemic in the 19th century. Then in 1970 the Ethiopians regained control when the Coptic monks were absent for a short period. They have been squatting there ever since, with at least one Ethiopian monk always remaining on the roof to assert their rights. In response a Coptic monk has been living on the roof also, to maintain the claim of the Copts.

And so we get to a Monday in July 2002, when the Coptic monk moves his chair into the shade. Harsh words led to pushes, then shoves, until an all our brawl is going, including the throwing of chairs and iron bars. At the end of the fight 11 of the monks were injured, including one monk unconscious in hospital and another with a broken arm.

How tragic that a church which serves as a memorial to Christ is the scene for such bitter conflict among his followers. This is a far cry from Christ's call to love one another, turn the other cheek, and his prayer that his followers might "be one".

Can you imagine how our Lord must be grieved when the Church fractured by our insistence that ours is the only way to Jesus, the only way to understand God’s Word, the only way to rightly understand what Scripture has to say about the Holy Spirit, and we could go on and on listing those things which can divide us.

The Apostle Paul makes it clear that we are to work hard at preserving the unity of the Body of Christ. He makes this clear in verse three of this fourth chapter of Ephesians.

There is a unity that exists even though our experience of it is not complete.

We can either preserve it.  Or we can disrupt that unity or destroy it.

Christ has given gifts to the Church:

For the equipping of the saints – this is a special spiritual empowerment

For the work of ministry – Which is our calling

For the building up of the Body of Christ

Notice the time frame that Paul has in mind as he speaks to us about these three things: 

¹³until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.

Until…These gifts given by Christ to the Church are essential for this length of time:

Until…we all attain to the

Unity of the faith…There is just one faith…John 3:16 spells it out quite clearly.

Unity of the knowledge of Jesus Christ the Son of God

Unity in the measure of the stature which belongs to Christ

Then… we will no longer be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by trickery…by deceitfulness.

Then we will all believe the same. This makes it clear that while we don’t all believe the same…one day we can and will.

However, we believe enough of the same things that we are bound together as a church. There is enough to cause us to join together and to bind us together. And if we are diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace we will grow closer together.

We have all come about this thing we call our faith from a different perspective. We have been taught differing priorities within that belief structure. Some of us are quite free in the Spirit and others are a little more Evangelically conservative. However, we all want to be Biblical in our faith. And somehow we have to come into a balance that allows us the greatest freedom in the Spirit and at the same time that allows us in love the greatest protection to the Unity of the Spirit.

Paul speaks about such things when he speaks about the concern of some regarding the eating of meat sacrificed to idols. The principle he spells out is this:  my freedom to eat meat should not trample on your lack of freedom to eat that same meat.  And at the same time, your lack of freedom in the matter should not have any impact on me and my walk with the Lord.

What would happen is this:  Believers would share their food and fellowship with other believers. Meat would be served to their guests. The origin of that meat was often suspect, because meat that was offered to idols as part of pagan rituals would invariably end up in the meat market. There it would be available to anyone. It might really bother your guest to eat meat that was part of a pagan, idol worship. The lingering effects of that false demonic worship might cause you spiritual problems.

On the other hand, it may not bother me at all. Paul clearly spells out that idols are actually nothing. Therefore, it should have no spiritual impact on us to eat that meat. What Paul teaches us is this:  We must consider one another in the process of living in a pagan world. If I have freedom in the Spirit and you do not, you must lovingly afford me the right to that freedom. Those who have that freedom in the Spirit must not knowingly offend the brother who does not have that same kind of freedom. If I should happen to serve you meat and that would cause you spiritual difficulties you should eat the meat and refuse to be offended by my freedom in the matter. When we both earnestly seek to love and accept each other and make allowances for the differences in our differing methods of practicing our faith the unity of the body is protected.

Which is the more important thing…eating or not eating meat sacrificed to idols or the unity of the Spirit?  Obviously, it is the unity of the Spirit which we are to keep in the bond of peace.

Let’s think about one of the battlegrounds in the Church over the past 100 years. Since the early 1900’s the exercise of spiritual gifts, especially those gifts which relate to the exercise of the extraordinary power of the Holy Spirit, has created difficulty in the Body of Christ.

In the Church at large, we have not really understood spiritual gifts very well. We have seen a denial of their validity in the modern era simply because now we have the Word of God. They are no longer needed because of that fact, or so the thinking goes. Those who have been free in the exercise of spiritual gifts have been suspect, considered a little over the edge by those who have not had that freedom. At times those who are free in the exercise of spiritual gifts and of freedom in the Spirit have questioned the commitment to Christ of those who do not have that freedom.

The question we should ask is this:  If these gifts were so important in the foundation of the Church as we see it portrayed in the Book of Acts, why not today? God has not changed! Spiritual realities in a pagan world have not changed. Satan has not changed. The need to exercise power in our evangelism and other ministries has not changed.

Gifts have been given to the Church until we all attain unity in the faith we profess. We need to understand what we have received and how these gifts work in the Body of Christ. We need to be tolerant of one another in love as we live our lives together in Christ.  Unity is more important than exercising any of the gifts. Paul expresses this thought in another way in 1 Corinthians 13:  If we have all the gifts and do not have love we have nothing.

However, can you imagine what would happen in the Church, if we had love for each other in its fullness and the special abilities represented by the gifts given the church?  We would reach our world in our generation. Paul had to deal with the abuse of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14. But abuse is not an argument for cessation of the gifts. Paul says, “Don’t abuse them.” Paul simply teaches the believers in Corinth to get it right when spiritual gifts are taken into account.

That is how simple it is. Unity in love is more important that my freedom. Unity in the Spirit in the bond of peace is more important than the public exercise of any gift. Maturity in Christ is part of the goal.

The goal of that unity and the gifts given is that we might become mature in Christ…no longer tossed to and fro by every change of doctrine, by the trickery of men or the deceitfulness of the scheming that takes place around us.

Let’s go back to our text in verse 13:  “Until” means as far as unto, or until. The idea here is the time of the great provision Christ has made for the Church – that is, the point at which the end is realized. Paul does not tell us when this will take place; only that the goal will be reached. It is, therefore, a goal for us to strive toward. We can attain this unity or unanimity of the faith in Christ.

The knowledge of Christ that Paul is talking about here is “full knowledge, precise and correct knowledge of the Son of God. This unity of the faith and unity of the knowledge of the Son of God will produce maturity. We could say that the state in which unity is lacking is the state of immaturity.

When we are not truly united as Paul shares wit us here, we are immature believers. What is the goal that Paul has in mind?  It is the “measure of the fullness of Christ” The fullness of Christ here is the embodiment in us of all the graces and qualities which are in Jesus Christ. It becomes a matter of becoming more like Jesus.

Maturity then involves unity of the Spirit and unity of the faith. It involves correct knowledge about Jesus Christ and is measured by how much like Jesus we are.

While the gifts given to the Church are important…even essential to fulfilling the mission of the Church…protecting the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and the unity of the faith is more important. Allowing each other the greatest freedom in our walk in the Spirit is essential to maintaining that unity.

When we are united in this way we are stronger than we will ever be without that unity.

The Four Oxen and the Lion

A Lion used to prowl about a field in which Four Oxen used to dwell. Many a time he tried to attack them; but whenever he came near they turned their tails to one another, so that whichever way he approached them he was met by the horns of one of them. At last, however, they fell a-quarrelling among themselves, and each went off to pasture alone in a separate corner of the field. Then the Lion attacked them one by one and soon made an end of all four. United we stand, divided we fall.

Satan knows that this is true in the spiritual realm. His goal is to sow seeds of division and dissention. When they sprout and we are divided and alone, he will attack us and often prevail.

When Salt Creek Bible Church was founded, the church was established on the ground of this truth:

The Word of God. We believed that God was doing something new in bridging the gap between Evangelical believers who prized the Word of God above all else and Charismatic or Pentecostal believers, who while committed to the Word, prized freedom in life in the Holy Spirit very highly.

What both groups had missed was that the unity of the faith requires both a strong commitment to the Word of God as our guide and the authority for our life and a strong commitment to freedom in a life empowered and filled by the Holy Spirit. The purpose of it all is that we might be mature in Christ; That we might be stronger together than we would ever be apart; that we might be equipped to do the work of ministry God has called us to so that our world might know Jesus Christ.

In the strength of our unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and the unity of our faith, let’s give each other the greatest freedom of walking in the Spirit as God leads us. Some of us will have greater freedom in that walk than others do. Let’s give each other room to become the mature believer that God desires. If we love one another and are diligent in protecting the unity of the Spirit God will accomplish great things in us and through us for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

-- Dennis Gleason