Although the word “church” is not used in these verses, it is used throughout Ephesians. The Greek word for church is “ekklesia” and means, “assembly,” “gathering,” “community,” “congregation,” or as you know it… “church.” That is its meaning on the surface but dive a little deeper into the meaning of ekklesia and you will discover that the word is made up of a prefix and a root. The prefix is “ek” and means “out of”, and the root is kaleō, which means, “call” or “summon.” All I want you to know and appreciate is that the word for church (ekklesia) literally means, “the community of called out ones.”
If you are a Christian, then you belong to the ekklesia of Jesus Christ; you have been called out of the world: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a Holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light…” (1 Pet. 2:9). If you are a Christian, your identity is now in Jesus and is the reason why He prayed this for you: “I am not asking on behalf of these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they 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 sent Me” (John 17:20-21). If you are a Christian, you belong to Him as His Church.
Nine times the word ekklesia is used in Ephesians, but the Church is also referred to as the “body” (sōma) in Ephesians 4:4 and six more times throughout the epistle (see 1:23; 2:16; 4:12, 16; 5:23, 30). To be the body of Christ is to belong to Christ and to be in Christ. In and through Jesus we now belong as the ekklesia and our identity will forever be linked to Him as His Bride. So, dear Christian, is it any wonder that it is Jesus who assures His Church… who is His Bride, who is His body: “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades” (Rev. 1:17b-18).
We do not have the time to get into the significance of numbers this morning, but I do want to point out three significant numbers in these verses that are easy to miss if someone doesn’t point them out to you. First, the number “one” signifies unity in the Bible. The number “seven” signifies perfection or completion in the Bible. Finally, the number “three,” for reasons that will soon become clear.
Paul is emphasizing the need for unity in the opening verses of Ephesians 4, and urges the Church to be zealous, “…to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This is why he emphasized that there is one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God that we, as the Church of Jesus Christ, share. Now, notice how many “one’s” the apostle lists in these verses; he lists seven “one’s” symbolizing that what binds us together as the Bride of Christ is complete and perfectly as God intended it. Finally, and the neatest part of these verses in my opinion is the number three, and you can see it with each of these verses:
- We are, “one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling…” this is due to the work of the Holy Spirit, as God the Spirit.
- We have “one Lord, one faith, and one baptism” because of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, as God the Son.
- We worship, “one Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” who is God the Father.
The significance of the number three is that it is symbolic of the God who we worship who is Three-in-One as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
There are two ways I can break down these verses in this sermon. I was tempted to create seven points for each of the reasons why we must, “…urgently keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (v. 3). I have chosen the second way I can break down these verses and it the outline Paul intentionally provided for us based on God as a Trinity. Notice that in Ephesians 1:3-14, Paul begins with the Father who has chosen us, then the Son who has Redeemed us, and then the Holy Spirit who has sealed us. Here in Ephesians 4:4-6, Paul begins from the ground up with the Holy Spirit who keeps us in power, the Son of God who walks with us in love, and the Father who is sovereignly for us. In light of all of the craziness in our nation and world, I cannot think of a more appropriate or more comforting passage in the Bible for this Sunday.
The Holy Spirit Keeps His Church Powerfully (v. 4)
There is only one body that is the Church, and that one body is defined by the Spirit of God: keeps all who have been redeemed through the blood of the Jesus (1:7) by sealing them as God’s inheritance that He promises to never lose (1:13-14). Listen, just as your physical body cannot live apart from your soul, it is equally true the Church is not really the Church apart from the Spirit of God in Her.
If you are a Christian, it is because you heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and believed it. In the moment you believed the gospel, you were baptized by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16; Rom. 6:1-7). When you were baptized by the Holy, you experienced what was promised in Ezekiel 36:26-27, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and bring it about that you walk in My statutes, and are careful and follow My ordinances.” This is the promise Jesus said all who belong to Him would receive: “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever; the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you” (John 14:15-17).
If you are a Christian, then you who were once dead in your sins are now alive in Jesus and the evidence that you are alive in Jesus is the inward and outward work of the Holy Spirit who you were baptized in, sealed by, and are now experiencing His regenerative power in your life. What you experienced is the same thing that every other true born-again Christian has experienced; that miracle is described for us in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
The true body of Christ is sealed by the lifegiving Spirit of God, and the one hope that is shared by every true Christian who makes up the Church of Christ is a single and unified hope that is rooted in a Jesus who not only died for sinners and rose from the grave, but is coming again to make all things new and to reverse the curse of sin! The hope of the true Christian is the hope of the true Church: We long for the return of Jesus who is, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph. 1:20-21), and as the body of Christ, we echo the same desire the apostle John shared in his concluding prayer in the book of Revelation: “Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20). If you are a Christian, you belong to one body because of one Spirit, evidenced by one hope of your calling.
The Son of God Walks with His Church Lovingly (v. 5)
Another reason why we ought to be zealous, “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” is because, as the body of Christ, we share one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. The one Lord is Jesus, the one faith is His gospel, and the one baptism is the public confession that He is both savior and Lord over our lives through the waters of baptism. So, let’s briefly look at each of these three statements individually.
Jesus is Lord. There can be no other lord or lords if you are a Christian! What this means is that the body of Christ and those who truly belong to His body accept, embrace, and follow the Jesus revealed in the Bible. Who is the Jesus revealed in the Bible? He is the One who claimed: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). He is the One who asserts Himself with the proclamation: “I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades” (Rev. 1:17b-18). It is this Christ that every true believer celebrates as the One “who is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He who is the head of the body, the church; and He who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything” (Col. 1:17-18). It is to Him all authority belongs and it is before Him that “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:11). Jesus is Lord, and because He is Lord, those who truly belong to Him follow where He goes (Luke 14:26-27), and go where He sends (Matthew 28:19-20). Jesus is Lord because He is, “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13). Jesus is He, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8). Jesus is Lord and it is the recognition of and submission to His lordship that marks every true Christian who makes up His Church.
The one faith we share as His Church is a confidence in Jesus as Lord. The Greek word for faith is pistis which is confidence in the thing that you believe is indeed true! The faith Paul is speaking of is so much more than the acknowledgment of certain facts about Jesus such as His life, death for sin, and resurrection. No, the faith that marks the true body of Christ is a confidence that He is all that He claimed to be and all that He did and all that He is… is enough for our life, salvation, and our complete redemption. It is our one faith in Him that compels us to follow Him! Oh, dear friends, in light of His Lordship and the faith you claim to have in Him, consider the words of our dear Savior: “Now why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say” (Luke 6:46)?
It is because of Christ’s Lordship and our confidence in all that He did and all that He is that we share in one baptism. Now the baptism Paul is referring is in reference to water baptism, but it is so much more than water baptism, for it is the underlining reason why water baptism is not a way to complete your salvation but the next step of obedience to Jesus as a result of your salvation. One of the passages in the Bible I like to use during our baptism services is Romans 6:3-4, “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, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.”
Water Baptism is the outward sign of a new identity that is rooted in Jesus’ death and resurrection which is the reason for the new life as His redeemed people. This is also the reason Jesus commanded His Church: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20). If you are a Christian, it is because of One Lord, one faith, and one baptism!
God the Father is Sovereignly for His Church Eternally (v. 6)
If you are a Christian, God is your Father! This ought to compel in us an urgency and zeal to, “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (v. 3). Surely it is because we share, one hope, one Holy Spirit, one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. However all of this is because of the sovereign will of God the Father who, according to Ephesians 5-6, “In love… predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will…”.
What unifies us across denominational lines as brothers and sisters who make up the body of Christ is the Holy Spirit who seals us as His own, the hope of the saving work of Jesus, the allegiance to the Lordship of Christ, a confidence that He is enough, and the evidence that we have gone from darkness to light and death to life. Because of this, we who were once sons of disobedience and children of wrath, now have been reconciled to God as his children; what unifies us now is that God is our Father! What unifies us is that we can celebrate with confidence the assurance of 1 John 3:1, “See how great a love the Father has given us, that we would be called children of God; and in fact we are. For this reason the world does not know us: because it did not know Him.” But dear brothers and sisters, we now know the God who we used to run from, and now we can call him “Father”!
This is why the “all” Paul is referring to in verse 6 are all true Christians regardless of the secondary issues we disagree on. This final and important point serves as the climax of Ephesians 4:1-6, Our God and Father is, “over all and through all and in all.” Don’t miss this! The three “all’s” here are referring to the one body of Christ who is sealed by one Spirit, because we share one hope, have one Lord, share one faith, who are identified by one baptism, and belong to one God is now our Father. Because of this… our Father is over all believers, through all believers, and in all believers. Let me say it another way: Our God and Father is lovingly and sovereignly over all His redeemed children. Our God and Father is lovingly working through all His redeemed children. Our God and Father is lovingly residing in all His redeemed children.
So what are the hills we ought to be dying on? There are seven of them listed for us in these verses: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you also 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” (vv. 4-6). The question I leave you with is this: “In light of what unifies us, how are you doing with Ephesians 4:1-3? How are you, walking in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being zealous to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?”
Amen.
