One Body, One Spirit, One Hope — Part Two

Let’s turn to Ephesians and to chapter 4. Let me just read again our verses, although we won’t go beyond verse 4.

Ephesians 4:[4]:

“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.”

Father, we humbly pray that our meditation upon your Word will draw us afresh to the Lord Jesus and create within our life together the peaceable fruit of righteousness. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, we pick up from where we left off this morning. This morning was a kind of introduction to an introduction almost. “There is one body,” and we said there is only “one body” because there is only “one Spirit.” And as we come to the work of the Spirit of God, I want to pause for a moment and say something concerning the invisible and the visible church.

When I heard myself referring to the church as invisible and saying, “This is the invisible church, this is the essential church,” somehow, in the back of my mind, I said, “You know, I don’t even really like the idea of ‘invisible.’ It just seems, like, whatever.” Then I thought, “Well, that’s not right. I mean, whether you like it or not, it’s really—nobody really cares whether you like it or not. It is true.” But then I said, “Well, I’m going to look at the Westminster Confession,” which I hadn’t done, “and see just if anybody’s got anything to say concerning this.”

Now, this is the Westminster Confession, chapter 25, section 1:

“The catholic,” small c, “(that is, universal) [the universal] church, which is invisible, consists of all the elect who have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ its head. This church is his bride, his body, and the fullness of him who fills all in all.”[1]

And then I said, “Well, let’s just see what they have to say about it.” And this is what they say: “Since this universal aspect of the church cannot be witnessed at one time, some theologians have spoken about the invisible church. This label, employed by the Westminster Assembly, must always be deficient as a definition of the church.” See? So, I was on the right track. “Nonetheless”—oh, wait a minute—“it suffices as a phrase to capture one aspect of the existence of the church—namely, we cannot now see the whole church in its depth across the years or in its breadth across the continents. There is an aspect of the church that is not visible to us from any one vantage point in time or space.”

I found that quite helpful, and that’s why I’ve read it to you, in case you would find it helpful as well. But I think mainly our concern is not so much with defining and enjoying the definition of the church as invisible but in dealing with this matter of the visible church. Because we are in a visible assembly of people. We’re not invisible. I can see you, and you can see me, and we’re able to see one another, and we’ve been brought together in this visible community.

In point of fact, the very metaphors of the New Testament don’t really help us at all except as we exist in community with one another. The picture of being members of a family or in a household or citizens of a kingdom or members of a body—all of those pictures demand in some way membership, identification with, union with all those who are equally in Christ.

And so I want just to say a word, without any embarrassment to anyone—to say a word concerning the incongruity of being made, by God’s grace, a member of his church, included in his body, while at the same time not actually identifying oneself fully, organically, properly, visibly with a local community that is true to the gospel and true to God’s Word. If, however, you are a thief on the cross, or if you are a Muslim convert who has never found any community of believers at all, or if you happen to be a lady stranded on a desert island with only your Bible, then each of you in those categories has a plausible reason for not being a member of a church. But pretty well, outside those categories you have no reason.

People who claim to be believers and who refuse to join the church, in the face of clear biblical instruction and in light of providential opportunity to do so, are a cause for concern and should be a cause for concern to themselves. Because the metaphors presuppose that when Paul describes a community in this way, he is not talking about some invisible, amorphous conglomeration, but he is talking about those who by grace have been added to Christ’s body and who have then identified themselves with others in their community, under the leadership of the church, in order that they then, together, might be able to do what God says in his Word is to happen.

As I say, I say it without any sense of anything other than by way of exhortation and encouragement. All right? So, whether we like “invisible” or not, it is to the visible that we are to be committed and to go on from there.

Now, the way in which, of course, we’ve said this is taking place is on account of the work of the Holy Spirit. I pointed out, at least in one of the services this morning, the Trinitarian nature of these verses: the Spirit in verse 4, the Lord Jesus in verse 5, and God the Father in verse 6. There’s only “one Spirit.” (And there will be a minor sense of repetition from this morning.) The “one Spirit” indwells every believer and therefore unites us to one another.

And we quoted this morning from 1 Corinthians, purposefully, as I do again: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.”[2] That baptism there is not, I don’t think, in Paul’s mind, talking about the physical water baptism that is a symbol of our identification with Christ and with his people, but rather, he’s actually using baptism itself as a metaphor for what has happened. And the thing that we all share is the fact that we have, by the Holy Spirit, been baptized into Christ’s body. As a result of the Holy Spirit opening our eyes, transforming our lives, uniting us with Christ, so, in a sense, there has been that baptism which has put us into life with one another. And that body comprises, says Paul, “Jews or Greeks, [slave] or free—and all were made to drink of [the] one Spirit.”[3] Again, I don’t think that’s a reference there to Communion but simply, again, a picture of the fact that we drink from the same fountainhead, and the Spirit of God that has united us to Christ unites us to one another.

Earlier in 1 Corinthians, he had asked them rhetorically, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit [lives] in you?”[4] And the “you” in there, which comes twice, is not in the singular but in the plural. So he is not asking them as individuals, “Do you yourselves, as individuals, know that the Holy Spirit lives in you?”—which is, of course, true. But his point is, in the context of their communion with one another, “You realize, of course, don’t you, that the Spirit of God lives in you together.”

And it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that then constitutes the church. It’s not an organization. It is a body, and its life is the Holy Spirit. As I said this morning, I repeat: when the Holy Spirit is absent, then that’s when we speak of a dead church, in the same way that when the spirit of a man or a woman is absent from our bodies, then what you have is a dead body. There is no life in it at all. And it is clearly possible to have a building that includes a congregation that engages in all kinds of activity, but all of that absent the presence of the Holy Spirit. And absent the presence of the Holy Spirit, then it is dead.

Now, this is, of course, a matter of great and compelling significance. Because the believers in Ephesus came from different backgrounds, both ethnically and socially. And the miracle of it was that God had saved them and made them one. And they were indwelt by one Spirit—the Spirit that is at work within their lives as individuals. Having quoted 1 Corinthians 3, in terms of the plural “you,” in 1 Corinthians 6, which some of you are immediately thinking of, there it is in the singular—yes, it is: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, … you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”[5] He’s addressing the individuals there, in terms of the call to holiness and to purity, and he uses the same picture: “The Holy Spirit lives in you. Therefore, it is incongruous that you would engage in these things, because you are holy temple to the Lord. In the same way, the Holy Spirit is what constitutes you a church together,” he says. “And it is incongruous, then, that there would be disunity when he is the one who unites us.”

And the work of the Holy Spirit actually produces the same fruit in everybody’s life. If you think about it, it’s quite remarkable. The gifts differ, but the fruit doesn’t. So if you meet Chinese Christians and they are growing in Christ, you will find that the fruit of the Spirit is in evidence—articulated in Chinese but lived out in the reality of everyday life. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness,[6] and so on—all of these things are expressed, no matter where you go in the world, in the body of Christ, whether the person is intelligent or not so smart, whether they are from Asia or from North America. It is the Spirit of God who does this. Because there is only “one body,” and there is only “one Spirit.”

It is the presence of the Holy Spirit that then constitutes the church.

Now, the unifying factor in that is absolutely crucial. You know, I tried to write down for myself, just trying to think of it, what would be true, then, no matter where you go amongst the people of God, and I just had five c’s. And I think I may have mentioned them this morning, but I wasn’t looking at them. In fact, I hadn’t reached this page in my notes. So that as a result of the Spirit’s work in the lives of individuals and his work within the context of the church, those who are in this body are those who have been convicted of the fact of their sinfulness—that they were “without [God] and without [hope] in the world,”[7] that they “were dead in [their] trespasses and [in their] sins.”[8] Nobody is a genuine Christian who believes that it makes perfect sense that God would have included them because they’ve never really done very much wrong at all and they’re eminently nice people. That individual has never understood the gospel, because the gospel brings us to our knees. The gospel brings us down before it lifts us up.

So, they have been convicted. They have at the same time been convinced of the work of Jesus and of the necessity of the work of Jesus in their lives. As a result of that, they have been in turn converted, so that there has been a transformation in their lives. As we said this morning, it may have been dramatic. It may have been slow. It may have been gradual. It may have been instantaneous, from a human perception. The work of God’s grace is mysterious in every dimension. Nevertheless, converted. And then being conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that no matter where you go in the world, when you meet the people of God, what’s happening to them? The same thing that’s happening to you! Whether you’re learning it in Arabic or in Chinese or in Hindustani, it doesn’t matter. What you’re learning as one who has been included in Christ’s body is that the work of the Spirit of God is to conform you to the image of his Son. So, convicted, convinced, converted, conformed, and all in communion—the communion that is brought about as a result of the Spirit’s work unifying those who are in Jesus.

It’s quite wonderful, isn’t it? The same fruit that is produced in Cairo is produced in Cleveland. The same fruit produced in Detroit is produced in Delhi. And whatever our personalities or whatever our nationalities, we are animated and united by the “one Spirit,” by the one Holy Spirit.

Now, when—and I want to just make a slight pause here purposefully, again—when we talk here about the work of the Holy Spirit and when we recognize that the Spirit of God is at work, and the Lord Jesus is at work, and God the Father is at work, and so on, we recognize that the process here, as it is outlined, is not in the normal manner of our terminology. In other words, you will see that the work of the Holy Spirit comes first, and then the mention of Jesus comes next, and then the place of God the Father comes afterwards.

Whatever our personalities or whatever our nationalities, we are animated and united by the ‘one Spirit,’ by the one Holy Spirit.

I’m going to mention that in just a moment in relationship to what is our second word and our final point—namely, the “hope.” But when we think in terms of the Trinity, which is what we’re introduced to here, we have to recognize that we’re dealing with something that actually boggles the mind—that at best, what we have in the Bible is not an explanation of the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity but a formulation of its truth.

You have, for example, in the baptism of Jesus in Matthew, you have each member of the Godhead present and active simultaneously.[9] That’s very, very important. Because one of the heresies that developed in the church was called Sabellianism or Modalism, and what it taught was that God appeared in different modes at different times—so, sometimes he took on the form of the Father, sometimes he came as the Son, and another time he came as the Spirit. And the early fathers of the church said, “This cannot possibly be.” And one of the places that they looked for the simultaneous activity of each member of the Trinity was, of course, in the baptism of Jesus. The voice comes from heaven, of the Father, “This is my beloved Son,”[10] the Son is in the water, and the Holy Spirit alights upon him as a dove.

Now, when you go through your Bible, you will be struck by this. You’re not going to find a place in the Bible that says, “Here is the doctrine of the Trinity.” And when you read your Bible, you will gradually put the jigsaw together with the help of the Holy Spirit. For example, when Paul is writing in 1 Corinthians 8 concerning paganism and idols and idol worship, in that context—this is 1 Corinthians 8:6—he says, “There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.” All right? “There is one God, the Father.” When you read John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”— John says that “the Word” is God. When you come to the encounter with Ananias and Sapphira, where they are confronted by their lying and Peter tells them that they have lied to the Holy Spirit, and then he follows that up by saying, “You have not lied to [men] but to God.”[11]

So, what’s happening here? Are these individuals disagreeing with one another? No. They are simply putting the pieces of the puzzle together for us, so that the revelation is of one God who is three persons—a revelation which is in the Scriptures, which is hard to understand, which is even more difficult to explain, and yet which is a fundamental part of basic Christian doctrine.

Most of the negative mail that I received in the last little while—and I do get some, mercifully not from members of our own congregation here, unless you’re coming at me anonymously—but most in the last little while was on account of the teaching that was delivered over the radio in terms of the incarnation, and the reaction that I received was from members of the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter-Day Saints. And I just say that in passing. And that is directly related to the doctrine of the Trinity and what that actually means and why that actually matters. So when we tackle these things, as we see them here, I think it’s important for us to mention them as we go.

Before I leave the Spirit, let me say something else again, and that is that we began this service with essentially a prayer to the Holy Spirit: “Come, Holy Spirit, dwell here among us.” Is that legitimate to ask? Surely we gather in the presence of Jesus, the risen presence of Jesus. We know the risen presence of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. So then, is it legitimate for us to ask him to come?

Well, I think the answer to that is not only is it legitimate, but it’s absolutely necessary. And we will see before we finish Ephesians that Paul is going to urge the Ephesians to make sure that they go on being filled with the Holy Spirit—that their encounter with the Holy Spirit will be an ongoing one, a progressive one, and an obvious one. And when you read the Acts of the Apostles, you see that that is actually the case: that all that happened on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, actually, you discover happening all over again in Acts chapter 4. When you get to the eighth chapter of Acts, in Samaria and in Caesarea and in the household of Cornelius, you have this great move of the Holy Spirit. You have it again in Acts chapter 19.

If you trace church history, as I mentioned this morning, out of the Dark Ages—what was the great need out of the Dark Ages? As the light of the gospel was virtually extinct, what was the great need? It was for the Holy Spirit to come. It was for the Holy Spirit to come in revival. And there is no question but that the Reformation was as a result of God coming to “revive [his] work in the midst of the years,”[12] so that out of all of that deadness and darkness and emptiness, suddenly the light shines, suddenly the Bible comes to life, suddenly you have this amazing proclamation of the gospel. What has God done? He has come by the Holy Spirit.

You have the same thing in the eighteenth century. And what is quite remarkable about it is that this comes as a result of the sovereign purpose of God. It’s not engineered. It can’t be engineered! When I came to America, and I went places, and they said, “Would you speak at our revival?” I said, “Absolutely not! How can you have a revival?” Well, you can’t have a revival. You can have a teaching session. You can have an evangelistic endeavor. But you can’t “have a revival.” By definition, a revival is something that God does spontaneously, and it comes virtually out of nowhere.

That’s why in the eighteenth century, 1734, North Hampton, Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards—whoa! The very next year, Daniel Rowland and Howell Harris, an ocean away, in Wales, and the Holy Spirit comes; 1736 and ’37, George Whitefield; 1738, John and Charles Wesley. Suddenly, into the nineteenth century, the same thing. And the unifying factor in it is that it exalts Christ, it is vital, it is energetic, it is organic, and it is only produced by God the Holy Spirit.

In eternity, what we’ve got an inkling of in reading church history will become apparent. And the stories seem almost too quaint to be realistic. But history records that, for example, in the revivals in the Outer Hebrides of Britain, when the historians tried to trace it back (“Who started this? Where did this come from?”), it came finally to the home of two elderly sisters who, unbeknown to anyone, had covenanted before God to pray that the Spirit of God would come and revive the work of God in their generation. And he did!

What does our nation need more than any other thing? It needs revival! It needs a revival that comes in the people of God—in the people of God—taking that which is becoming routine, familiar, dull, absorbable, moribund, and transforming it. When Gipsy Smith was asked about revival, as I’ve told you before, they said, “Well, how do you pray for revival?” He said, “I take a piece of chalk, I draw a circle on the ground, I stand inside the circle, and I ask God to revive everything inside the circle.” Now, you take it, if everybody at Parkside Church gets your own metaphorical piece of chalk, draws a circle, steps in, and covenants from this day forward, “Revive me. Revive me. Revive my heart. Increase my interest in the things of God. Make me diligent for your truth. Help me not to be this and that and the next thing.” Can you imagine what may happen? What God may choose to do? For there’s only “one body,” because there is only “one Spirit.”

And it is in that sense that there is this “one hope.” And it is the hope “to which you have been called,”[13] with your calling. He’s mentioned this all the way from the beginning, hasn’t he? That he has called us. I love the Christian song that we sing to the tune of “Oh, Danny Boy.” How does it begin again? “What grace is mine, that he who dwelt in highest bliss called through the night to” something “my” something “soul.”[14] I can’t remember. But he “called through the night,” and in that calling, called as a result of the work of the Spirit of God into a “hope,” to a “faith,” to a “baptism” that is, again, on account of the fact that there is “one Lord.”

Now, we’ll come to that later. But let me remind you again that the order is worthy of note. The work of the Holy Spirit, which is where it begins, is on account of the sending of the Lord Jesus. Remember, Jesus says to his disciples in the Upper Room Discourse, “When the Counsellor comes…”[15] “When the Counsellor comes…” And he, the Father, sends the Spirit, the Son sends the Spirit, and the Spirit comes. The promise of Jesus: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”[16] And the person and work of Jesus is ours on account of the sending of the Father. You will notice, actually, that nobody sends the Father. The Father sends the Son. The Father sends the Spirit. Jesus says… Later on, we’ll see that “he ascended on high” and “he gave gifts”[17] to those who were his own, in the sending of the Holy Spirit—so that what God has accomplished in the work of the Son he has applied in the life of the believer, by the Holy Spirit, and he hasn’t finished yet.

“You were,” Paul says to the Ephesians, “previously without God and without hope in the world. But now you have been born anew to a hope that is a living hope.”[18] And as Dan pointed out for us last Sunday morning, the word hope here, as used in Romans 5 as well as in this context, is the anticipation of an unrealized yet nevertheless certain promise. It is not a hope that it may or may not; it is the certainty that it will. And in Romans 5, the “hope does not put us to shame.”[19] In Romans 8, a hope that is seen cannot be a hope.[20] In Romans 12, we “rejoice in hope.”[21] In Romans 15, in his benediction: “May the God of hope do all these things for you.”[22] And when he writes to the Thessalonians concerning the inquiries that had come his way about those who had died, who had fallen asleep in Jesus, he said, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who [sleep]”—which is a metaphor for death (which is one of the reasons why I don’t like cremation, ’cause there’s not a lot of sleeping going on there)—“those who [sleep], that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”[23] “Who have no hope.” It’s an amazing thing. I mean, you can’t live without hope. People cannot live without hope. And the ultimate hope is the hope that is found in the gospel.

I wrote this week to a gentleman that I don’t know personally, although I know he knows us, and he knows the ministry here. I think I may have met him at CAMP-of-the-WOODS on one occasion. But someone let me know that his wife had died quite suddenly. She had contracted cancer, and it had taken her very quickly. And I had known that she and he had previously lost a fourteen-year-old son in a skiing accident. And so, realizing where he is in his pilgrimage at the moment, I, along with many others, I’m sure, decided to drop him a note.

And in the course of the note… And it was a brief note. It was a kind of William Cowper-ish note, in the sense that “God moves in a mysterious way,” that “he plants his footsteps in the sea,” that we ought not to try “the Lord by feeble sense,” that it is “deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill,”[24] all of that. But ultimately, I wanted to remind him that we are assured of the reality of the resurrection, that Christ has triumphed over death and triumphed over the grave. And the distinguishing features of Christian experience take us to the very depths of our predicament and show us that Christ is triumphant.

People cannot live without hope. And the ultimate hope is the hope that is found in the gospel.

You see, as we think about life and as it goes by, I said to my wife as I crawled into bed last night, I said, “This getting old stuff is starting to really bug me.” I think she said, “You know, you referring to me?” I said, “No! No, no! No, no, no, no, no! I’m referring to me.” Because now I am the age of my grandfather. I mean, I just came from Glasgow. (I was going to tell you about that, but it doesn’t matter.) But I came from Glasgow. I’m, like three months away from being able to ride the buses for free. I’m actually going to fly to Glasgow just to ride the bus for nothing—just so I can get on. But it comes at a price. It comes at the price of the fading of your earthly grasp of things, the diminution of your everythings. Right?

And when you think about it, to live without God as revealed in Jesus—who dealt with our sin, who triumphed over the grave—is to live in absolute hopelessness. Hence the kind of cynical bumper sticker: “Life is tough and then you die.” That’s it. And the people look on, and they say, “You Christians, with your ‘pie in the sky when you die’ stuff.” They’re not talking about pie in the sky when we die. We’re talking about having been brought in to the reality of this in the present tense: that because of the work of God, we have understood what it means to be united to Jesus; to be included in his body; to be instructed, filled, guided, enabled, kept by the work of the Holy Spirit; and to be able to say, “This hope stands the test of time.”

When we do funeral services and we say the words of committal, I know that it sounds incongruous:

Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to receive unto himself the soul of this dear one here departed: we therefore commit their body to the ground, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our earthly body that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he has been able to subdue all things, even death, unto himself.[25]

This is the Christian’s hope. And he or she who has this hope reveals it not by being able to articulate the details of eschatology but by two things: by a zealous, energetic desire to see other people coming to know the Lord Jesus and by a commitment to moral purity. First John 3: “He who has this hope within him purifies himself, even as he is pure.”[26] It’s wonderful. It is truly wonderful.

Father, thank you. How wonderful it is! Our minds cannot comprehend the vastness of your dealings with us, that from all of eternity you purposed this: that chosen “before the foundation of the world”…[27] Who can understand this? Thank you that you bring us into a realm that is filled with hope, and not on account of our ability to engineer it but rather to enjoy it. And we pray, Lord, that you will so quicken us in this respect. So come and answer our opening prayer, Holy Spirit, so that Jesus may be all the more precious to us, individually and as a church, so that you will revive us. How will that look? Whatever way you want it to look. But we earnestly pray to that end. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

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[1] The Westminster Confession of Faith, Modern English Study Version, 25.1.

[2] 1 Corinthians 12:13 (ESV).

[3] 1 Corinthians 12:13 (ESV).

[4] 1 Corinthians 3:16 (ESV).

[5] 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (ESV).

[6] See Galatians 5:22–23.

[7] Ephesians 2:12 (NIV).

[8] Ephesians 2:1 (ESV).

[9] See Matthew 3:13–17.

[10] Matthew 3:17 (ESV).

[11]Acts 5:4 (ESV).

[12] Habakkuk 3:2 (KJV).

[13] Ephesians 4:1 (ESV).

[14] Keith Getty and Kristyn Getty, “What Grace Is Mine” (2009). Lyrics lightly altered.

[15] John 15:26 (paraphrased).

[16] Acts 1:8 (ESV).

[17] Ephesians 4:8 (ESV).

[18] 1 Peter 1:3 (paraphrased).

[19] Romans 5:5 (ESV).

[20] See Romans 8:24.

[21] Romans 12:12 (ESV).

[22] Romans 15:13 (paraphrased).

[23] 1 Thessalonians 4:13 (ESV).

[24] William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” (1774).

[25] The Book of Common Prayer. Paraphrased.

[26] 1 John 3:3 (paraphrased).

[27][27] Ephesians 1:4 (ESV).