Ephesians 4:3-6
In his high priestly prayer in John 17 Jesus prayed: (John 17:20–23)
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
How has that worked out over the two thousand years since then?
American author, Mark Twain (1835-1910), in a book published fifty years after his death, Letters from the Earth, writes about how Jesus’ prayer has worked out over the ages.
Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.
So, Twain writes, he conducted an experiment.
Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. The lived together in peace; even affectionately.
Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh – not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.
What a disastrous record the church has!
The unity of the church was at the heart of Jesus’ prayer for us but we see this desire of God in the Old Testament as well. Psalm 133, one of the psalms of ascent, begins: (Psalm 133:1)
How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!
The three hundred year civil war between the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel that broke out after Solomon died received the strongest condemnations from the prophets, stronger than the condemnations of the Assyrians or Babylonians. God chose Abraham to be the father of his chosen people and now they were at war with each other.
The unity of God’s people is a major theme of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Paul picks up on the theme of God’s desire for unity in his letters:
Philippians 2:1–2
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.
1 Corinthians 1:10
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.
Philippians 1:27
27 Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel
Romans 15:5–6
5 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, 6 so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is Paul’s exhortation in the text from Ephesians that we are focusing on this morning.
(Ephesians 4:1–6 )
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. 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.
Unity is God’s desire for us. We were created to be unified as the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are unified. That is our model. God is blessed when we make steps toward unity and grieved when we fight, quarrel, and pull apart from each other.
How do we move toward the unity God desires for us? Paul tells us to:
3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
Make every effort. Paul wrote in Colossians 3:12–14
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
When someone says or does something that hurts you, you have a choice. Will you hold on to the hurt and allow it to put distance between you and that person? Or will you forgive and move on? When you do something that hurts someone else and that person pulls away from you, what will you do? Will you apologize and ask for forgiveness? Or will your pride prevent you from reconciling? Will you have compassion for those who offend you? Will you be gentle and kind to those who irritate you? Will you let love be the ruling quality of your life?
Make every effort. Every effort, not a little effort, not some effort, every effort.
When Paul and Barnabas set out on their first missionary journey, they took with them John Mark, the author of the gospel of Mark. But then Mark, for a reason no specified in Acts, left them and returned to Jerusalem. When Paul and Barnabas prepared to set out on their second missionary journey, Barnabas wanted to give Mark a second chance but Paul adamantly refused. A bitter argument developed and Paul left with Silas, heading north through Syria into present day Turkey, while Barnabas set out with Mark into the Mediterranean to the island of Cyprus.
The Biblical account does not tell us what happened between Paul and Barnabas, but we know there was a reconciliation between Paul and Mark. Toward the end of his life, he wrote to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:11)
Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry.
We don’t know the details, but I imagine Paul and Mark made every effort to be reconciled. However it happened, Paul and Mark forgave each other and moved on in their relationship. I hope this was the case for Paul and Barnabas as well.
We are to make every effort to create and maintain unity in the body of Christ, but the problem is that there are incredibly irritating people in the body of Christ. There are people in the body of Christ that we simply do not want to spend any time with. If we are having some friends over for a relaxing evening, there are people who, if they came, would ruin the evening.
In an exercise of unity, we could stand in a large circle, hold hands, look at each other, and sing, “We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord.” The problem with that is that most of us would feel uncomfortable. We would focus on our differences. We would look and make judgments about the others in the circle. We would see people we like and people we don’t like so much. We push away brothers and sisters in Christ because of personality clashes.
We also have national prejudices that cause us to push away brothers and sisters in Christ. The bloody history of the Hutu and Tutsi conflict in the 20th century began with the slaughter of 80,000 to 200,000 Hutus by the Tutsi army in Burundi in 1972. In 1994, the Hutu militias targeted Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide, resulting in a one hundred day death toll of between 800,000 and 1,000,000. If you were to invite a Hutu and a Tutsi from Rwanda to come over for a meal, there might be problems.
Turks and Arminians do not get along very well. Arminians remember very well the genocide carried out on them by the Ottoman government of Turkey during and after WWI. Between 800,000 and 1,500,000 Armenians were killed in an attempt to cleanse Turkey from Armenians, Christians, and other indigenous groups.
Korea still has bitter memories of the Japanese occupation of Korea with the mistreatment of civilians. We grow up with national prejudices that prevent us from living in the unity God desires.
We are divided because of personality and nationality. We are divided by class. We are divided by wealth. We are also divided racially. We are people filled with prejudices that have come from the culture we grew up with. We are the product of our cultures.
So how on earth are we supposed to get along with each other when there are so many things that divide us?
In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings there are nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring who set out to destroy the ring that would destroy their world. Frodo, a hobbit, sets out with two men, Aragorn and Boromir; an elf, Legolas; a dwarf, Gimli; Gandalf the wizard; and three other hobbits, Sam, Merry, and Pippen. The hobbits were a largely unknown race, but men did not mingle with elves or dwarves and elves and dwarfs had deep distrust and dislike for each other. Yet, this unlikely group of nine found unity. How did they do that?
Did they sit around in a circle and look at each other and try to practice kindness, gentleness, and patience? That is not the book I read. They found unity by being drawn into a common goal, a common calling.
I like the Fellowship of the Ring and have a picture of this in my study. I like it because it speaks to me of the diversity of the body of Christ and how we can find unity by having a common goal, a common calling.
This is where Paul takes us in Ephesians 4. He tells us to “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Where does he go after this? Does he tell us how to forgive? How to be gentle? He doesn’t tell us anything about these qualities. 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.
There is the joke about a man receiving a tour of heaven with its great expanses of beauty and wonder. Then in the midst of all the glorious wonders of heaven he sees a walled enclosure and asks what that is. His heavenly guide explains, “That’s for the [insert the denomination of your choice here]. They think they’re the only ones here and we don’t want to disillusion them.”
In the body of Christ there are Methodists and Catholics, Orthodox and Anglicans, Pentecostals and Brethren – but there is one body. The Holy Spirit who was sent to unify us has been used to divide the body of Christ and this is the work of the devil. But there is one body and one Spirit.
You may have seen this before, but let me show you an Adidas commercial with American basketball player, Kevin Garnett. He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.
Imagine what might have happened after this event. The unity and wonder of that experience would be analyzed and sects would develop. There would be the Climbers who say that the only way to go is to climb up. There would be the Leavers who say that in order to climb you have to first leave your car and possessions behind. There would be the Leapers who say that the true way is to jump from a building. (This would be my favorite sect.) And there would be the Askers who say you have to wait until you are given permission. What began as a unifying experience would divide into sects. This is the sad truth about human nature that we work against the unity God tries to create.
I do not believe it is wrong to have denominations. We are different people and some people prefer one style of worship and preaching over another. That is natural. But when denominations declare they are the one true church and do not have full communion with others in the body of Christ, I believe this angers God and he will hold them to account on the Judgment Day.
Paul wrote to the church in Corinth and was upset at the divisions that had been created. He received reports that the communion meal instituted by Jesus on the night of his arrest had degenerated into a feast for the wealthy with nothing for the poor to eat. (I Corinthians 11:20-22)
20 So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, 21 for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. 22 Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? Certainly not in this matter!
And then he reminds them what Jesus intended the meal to be.
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Communion is meant to be a reminder of our one Lord who died for us and yet the Corinthians were allowing the unity of the church community to be abused by drinking and feasting while others were sitting and watching. What was meant to unite was being used to divide.
I do not believe God is pleased when one part of the church determines they are the only true church and do not allow those who are not part of their church to take communion. Once again, what Jesus intended to be unifying is being used to divide and this too is the work of the devil. There is one body, one Spirit, one Jesus who was broken for us, one Jesus whose blood was shed for us.
In making every effort to seek unity, we need to choose what identity we will carry. When I say that I am a Presbyterian, that automatically creates a second category. I am Presbyterian and others are not Presbyterian. When our identity is that we are one denomination or another, we create a small circle into which we can fit but others cannot come.
But if my identity is that I am a follower of Jesus, then the circle expands to include all who follow Jesus, regardless of their denominational background. This is one of the great advantages of an international church. We are surrounded by people who come from different theological backgrounds and yet we find common ground in our relationship with Jesus.
In our international church we represent many nations, 35 to 40 on an average Sunday. We represent 35-40 denominations. When our identity is that we are followers of Jesus, then we are all included. The benefit of interaction with multinational and multidenominational followers of Jesus is that we are exposed to different political views. When we talk together we begin to see that people from other nations see world events from a different perspective. As a consequence, we begin to be less national and more international. (Except when the World Cup is being played. Then the nationalities rise to the surface.) We discover that the denominational distinctives that separate us are not as important as we once thought they were. Our following of Jesus becomes more important than where we came from.
We need to make every effort to break down the barriers that separate us and move toward the unity God desires for us. This is good. We have to make every effort, but the best way to do this is to move closer to Jesus.
Consider a triangle. You and any other follower of Jesus in the world form the base of the triangle. You may be close to that person and the distance between you may not be much at all. Or there may be a huge distance between you and a follower of Jesus you do not like and whose theology and practice offends you. The distance between you and any other follower of Jesus in the world varies depending on mutual compatibility.
But there is a third point of the triangle that stands above you that represents God and when you and that other follower of Jesus draw closer to Jesus, you will be brought closer together. The more you draw near to Jesus, the more you are drawn closer to others who are also drawing near to Jesus. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, this brought Legolas the Elf into a friendship with Gimli the Dwarf. In the real world this brought Tommy Tarrants, a white racist, and Eldridge Cleaver, a black militant into fellowship.
Chuck Colson told this story about Jimmy Gibson, an Ulster defense terrorist held in Northern Ireland’s McGilligan Prison who used to kill Catholics for fun. But in a Bible study one night, Jimmy gave his life to Christ.
That prison had an invisible dividing line between Catholics and Protestants. One night at dinner, Gibson got up, walked across the mess hall and found a seat at random among the Catholic prisoners. He leaned over and said to a guy named Liam McCloskey, “Brother, I want to tell you about Jesus.”
That whole mess hall went silent. People expected a riot. The guards went after their guns. But the two sat and talked. Over those next weeks, Jimmy ate every night with the Catholic prisoners. In time, he led McCloskey to Christ.
In 1983 Colson was at Queens College in Belfast, with eleven hundred Protestants and Catholics, the first time they’d come together. Jimmy Gibson walked up to the platform on one side, Liam McCloskey came up the other, and they threw their arms around one another. Liam told the crowd, “Two years ago on the street I’d have killed this man. Today he’s my brother in Christ. I’ll lay down my life for him.” That’s what happens when two men who stood as far apart from each other as they possible could, moved to Jesus. They ended up in each other’s arms as brothers.
Some of us have a difficult time forgiving someone who offended us in some small way. But sometimes the offense is much greater. When your family, who claim to be followers of Jesus, work to cut you out of your inheritance or take away your home, what do you do then?
What do you do when the man who led you to Christ hires you to work for him but then because of some questionable business decisions, you end up leaving and he refuses to pay you what you are owed?
What do you do when the offense that separates you from a brother or sister in Christ is much more than just an insult or a slight?
The writer of Hebrews, in chapter 11, wrote of men and women, heroes of the faith, who suffered for the faith and then he begins in Hebrews 12:1–4
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
How far did Jesus go to reconcile the world and God? How far will we go to reconcile and forgive?
Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother, even as many as seven times? (Matthew 18:22)
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
There is not a limit to how often or how much we are called to forgive. So what do you do when the offense is too much to bear? What do you do when the distance between you and another brother or sister in Christ is too great?
It is clear that we are to forgive, but that is too easy for me to say and too difficult for me or for you to do. Some times the offense is so great that we are unable to forgive. It is not within our power to forgive. It hurts too much.
But I stand back in awe when I see people forgive huge offenses. These are heroes of the faith. I think of the English teacher both of my daughters had when they were 12 years old. Her son, who would have been in my youngest daughter’s class, had been killed by a drunk driver who came off the street, onto the sidewalk, and struck her son. This was the bottom of the pit for this man and he did not drink again. She forgave him, befriended him, and each year he visited her classroom and talked about how dangerous it is to drink and drive.
I found a picture of Turkish and Arminian Christians holding hands and praying around a memorial to the victims of the Arminian genocide. Koreans have come to Japan to plant churches, forgiving those who hurt them.
There has been reconciliation between Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda. There is a picture of a Hutu man who cut off the hand of a Tutsi woman with his machete and stabbed her in the side with a spear. He killed her baby. She prayed that God would show her the man who had cut her and one day Emmanuel came to ask her for forgiveness. She said at first that it was difficult to forgive Emmanuel. She cried until she had no more tears. But she forgave Emmanuel and today the two are very close. “I have learnt to forgive, even the one who tried to kill me.”
When I see one person forgive another and draw near to each other in friendship after such a huge distance caused by deep hurt, prejudice, and pain, I am in awe. This is a holy moment. This is the power of Jesus to forgive. When it seems impossible for you to forgive, impossible to reconcile, fix your eyes on Jesus, receive his love. He can do in you what you cannot do yourself.
I call you, and I call me, to reach out and forgive those who have offended you or hurt you. I call you to reach out and reconcile broken relationships. Make every effort to seek the unity of the church. Lift your hands in praise of Jesus, draw near to him, and as you do, you will be drawn near to those close and those far off who are also drawing near to Jesus.
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.
