Love and Unity | Ephesians 4:1-16
Brian Hedges | September 7, 2025
Let me invite you to turn in Scripture this morning to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians 4. We are kicking off a new series this morning, just a short four-week series called “Love One Another: The Keys to Biblical Community.” Over the next several weeks, we’re going to be looking at some of the famous “one another” passages in the New Testament. It’s this series of commands that we have from both Jesus and the apostles to love one another and serve one another and forgive one another and pray for one another, and so on. I want to begin by grounding everything in this passage in Ephesians 4:1-16.
While you’re turning there, let me remind you of a story that many of us probably know pretty well; it’s the story of Peter Pan, the boy who didn’t want to grow up. We’re familiar with it, of course, from the Disney version, which was actually a film that was kind of based on the original novel by J.M. Barrie. It’s the story of this boy who never wanted to grow up, and he lives in Neverland, where he’s fighting pirates and he’s playing with the lost boys, and he’s avoiding the responsibilities of adulthood, of growing up. While it’s entertaining fantasy on one level, it’s also kind of a tragedy, because it’s about a boy who refuses the responsibilities of maturity.
In fact, something like fifty years ago now, or so, someone wrote a book called The Peter Pan Syndrome that was about adults who refuse to grow up and kind of stay in this perpetual childhood, perpetual adolescence.
I think the passage that we’re looking at today in Ephesians 4 is really taking that concept and applying it to the church. It is a call for the church and for the people of God to grow up. We might say that it’s really targeting the problem of arrested development in the body of Christ.
It may be this morning that some of us have something like Peter Pan syndrome when it comes to our spiritual lives and when it comes to our relationship to the church. We have not really entered into the maturity that God calls us to, and maybe we haven’t even understood that the church is a part of that process of maturity. You cannot mature in your Christian life apart from the church.
We’re going to see that very clearly this morning in Ephesians 4. Let’s begin by reading this passage, Ephesians 4:1-16. I’ll read it and then show you where we’re going to go in this message. Ephesians 4, beginning in verse 1. This is the apostle Paul writing. He says,
“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 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. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says,
“‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.’
“(In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
This is God’s word.
The main point of this passage is that Christ calls us to grow together in unity, maturity, and love. That’s the main point of this passage, that’s the main point of the sermon this morning; and we’re going to see three ways in which we answer this call, three things that we need in order to answer the call. We need:
1. Foundational Gospel Convictions: The Unity of the Church
2. Intentional, Spirit-Empowered Behaviors: The Way of the Church
3. Organic, Relational Connections: The Life of the Church
Let’s look at each one of these things as we work through this passage in Ephesians 4.
1. Foundational Gospel Convictions
Paul begins this passage with an exhortation in verse 1: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord [this is one of Paul’s prison epistles], urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”
Now, what’s really interesting about this passage is this is really the first really clear exhortation or command in the letter to the Ephesians. It’s the first one: three chapters of gospel doctrine, and now Paul is turning a corner and he says, “I therefore [in light of everything I’ve said before]...urge you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling.” The “you” in that passage—“I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling”—that “you” is not singular (you as an individual), the “you” is plural. “I’m urging you, as the church, to walk in a manner worthy of your calling.” He’s addressing not individuals in isolation, but he’s addressing the community.
For the very first exhortation, Paul has the church in view, and he’s telling us to walk in this way because of our calling. It’s referring back to everything that he’s already expounded and explained for us in the first three chapters of Ephesians. If you know Ephesians 1-3, you know it’s all about God’s grace that is given to us in Christ, the spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus, Ephesians 1; how we have been chosen and adopted and redeemed and sealed by the Spirit, all to the praise of the glory of God’s grace; how God’s power has been at work in us who believe. It’s the same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead, and it’s also raised us out of death and sin, it’s given us new life in Jesus Christ, so that we have been seated in the heavenly places; by grace you have been saved through faith, not of works (this is Ephesians 2).
Not only that, but we have been reconciled to God by the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ, so that now we are part of the household of faith. We are part of this new temple, the dwelling place of God for the Spirit. We are citizens of a new kingdom—that’s Ephesians 2. We are fellow heirs of the promises of God, promises that had been hidden, that had been a mystery, but now have been revealed by the apostles and prophets, been revealed through the Spirit; and Paul is preaching this gospel, the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ (that’s Ephesians 3). At the climax of that, there’s this prayer that we would be filled with all the fullness of God, that we would know the dimensions of God’s love—how high and how deep and how long and how wide this love is—and that we would be filled up with this fullness of God as the people of God, as the church.
And Paul says, “In light of all of this, therefore, I want you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called.” And it’s all grounded in the gospel.
Then he immediately begins to explain what this worthy walk is in terms of how we are to treat one another. It’s the very first thing. Before he even addresses things like moral holiness, which he will do in the second half of Ephesians 4, he addresses the relational realities of belonging to the church, the body of Christ. Then in verses 4-6 he just piles up seven gospel realities that bind us together when he says,
“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.”
These are foundational convictions. This is why the church exists. The church exists because of what God has done for us in Christ, and because of these gospel convictions, it is a call to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
What is this unity? What is this unity of the church that is grounded in the gospel?
I think unity is sometimes misunderstood. Some people think that unity means sameness. It’s uniformity. Everybody’s the same; everybody dresses the same, everybody talks the same, uses the same vocabulary; everybody acts alike, they have the same interests. It’s uniformity of culture. That’s not gospel unity; that’s cultish unity. When you find a church like that, where everybody dresses alike and there’s not any diversity of culture and style and ways of thinking about the world, that’s not really gospel reality; that’s more like a cultic reality, a cultic unity. That’s not what the gospel calls us to.
Other people think that unity is simply the absence of conflict. In their minds, a church that exists in unity would be a church where there’s never disagreement, nobody ever argues, people are always kind and nice to one another—and of course we are to be kind and nice to one another, but unity that means no conflict at all is usually a superficial kind of harmony. I think any psychologist or family therapist would know that if you have a family that comes in for counseling and they never argue, they never fight, it means that somebody is holding back. It means that somebody is suppressing a lot of emotion, because they’re not really getting their differences on the table. That’s actually not a very healthy thing. That can be pretty dysfunctional.
In the church as well, when you have different people coming together with different perspectives, sometimes there’s going to be tension, sometimes there’s going to be difficulty, sometimes there are even going to be arguments. There’s a way to handle that in a Christlike way, but don’t think that unity means the absence of all conflict. You even see conflict and tension within the churches of the New Testament, and then how the gospel is applied to bring a deeper kind of unity in that diversity.
Some people think that unity is just niceness. Everyone smiles and says hello and no one rocks the boat. Again, we’re all for being nice to one another, but that’s not the unity that Paul is calling us to. Unity in the church is not about uniformity, conflict avoidance, or surface-level niceness; unity in the church is about Christ. It’s about finding our oneness in Jesus Christ and in what he has done.
Verse 13 in this passages says that the goal for which Christ has given gifts to the church is for “the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” That’s gospel unity. We are bound together to the one Lord, who has reconciled us to God through his blood (Ephesians 2). We are one because of that reconciliation; we’re reconciled as one. We’re one because we are part of the same family, adopted into the family of God as sons and daughters (Ephesians 1:5). We are one because Christ is summing up all things in heaven and earth, uniting all things under his headship, under his lordship, and we are part of that great cosmic plan (Ephesians 1:10). We are one body because Christ is the head of the church and we are his body, members of the body, and as the body of Christ we are the fullness of him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22).
I love the words of that old hymn that expresses it well. The hymn is “The Church’s One Foundation,” and there’s a line that goes like this:
“Elect from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth.”
That’s what unites us together. It’s not because we’re alike. This is the glorious thing about the church! We’re not meant to be all alike. The differences are great; the differences are to be celebrated. The diversity is a good thing, but we are united in our diversity. It’s unity in diversity, because of the gospel of Jesus Christ and because Jesus is worthy of our praise and our worship and our obedience and allegiance, worthy of that from all of the diverse cultures and peoples of the world, not least those expressed in our church here today.
This means that our vision of the church must be rooted in our vision of ultimate reality. Our vision of ultimate reality is this vision of who God is, the triune God who has made this world because of his grace and because of his goodness, and in the church he invites us to be partakers of that grace.
The church staff right now is reading a book together, a very important book that came out a couple of years ago, by a guy named Christopher Watkin. It’s called Biblical Critical Theory, and it’s really all about the application of the gospel and of the whole storyline of Scripture to the cultural, philosophical issues of our day. We just read this last week, a wonderful chapter that had this quote. I thought it was helpful as Watkin contrasts two different paradigms, the paradigm of the marketplace with the paradigm of gift and grace.
In the marketplace, everything is transactional; trade for mutual benefits. We give in order to get; the goal is accumulation. And so many people approach the church with that marketplace mentality, but that’s not ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is all about God’s grace and God’s gift. Listen to what Watkins says. He says,
“The Bible’s picture of human beings is not as wheelers and dealers in the corporate boardrooms, signing contracts with the gods in order to get ahead. Instead, we are joyful children on Christmas morning receiving unexpectedly lavish gifts from loving parents. Free gift, not contractual obligation, is at the heart of the Bible’s picture of reality.”
That has to feed into your view of the church. The church is not a marketplace; the church is a family. It’s not about a contract, where you kind of give your dues and you get certain benefits from the church. The church is a covenantal family; it is a body with an organic unity that’s rooted and grounded in the gospel.
I think we have to apply this. Maybe ask yourself this question: Why should you commit to the church of Jesus Christ? Why should you be committed to the church of Jesus Christ? It’s not because of your preferences; it’s not because you like the music or because the programs fit your stage of life. It’s not because the people around you are just like you. The reason to commit to the church is because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s because God has made us one in Christ, and to treat the church lightly is to treat the gospel lightly.
We have to start with the gospel. The gospel and these core foundational gospel convictions are essential for a right understanding of the church.
2. Intentional, Spirit-Empowered Behaviors
Now, that leads right into a certain way of living. So point number two is intentional, Spirit-empowered behaviors, or we might say attitudes. But it’s more than just a heart disposition; this feeds into how we treat one another. It’s behaviors that are rooted in certain heart attitudes. You see this in Ephesians 4:2, where Paul tells us what it looks like to walk worthy of our calling. He says we are to do this
“...with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love [there’s one of those ‘one another’ commands], eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Do you see how relational that is? I mean, he’s just giving a list here of things that should describe our relationships to one another, and it’s not just about private holiness; this is about relational connection, love and unity—humility towards others rather than being proud, gentleness in how we treat one another, patience with people’s weaknesses, bearing with one another in love, and this eagerness to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
We’ve already talked about what that unity is; it is a gospel unity. But notice that Paul says we are to be eager to maintain this unity. One of the New Testament scholars, Andrew T. Lincoln, says that this word “eager,” the participle, he says it suggests that “the maintenance of the unity is to be a matter of the utmost importance and urgency.” He says, “Spare no effort. Make it a priority for your corporate life to maintain the unity of the Spirit.”
This is something we are to be passionate about. We are to be devoted to this. We are called to be eager to do this, enthusiastic about maintaining and living in this gospel unity. We do that as we live with these Spirit-empowered behaviors and attitudes. They’re Spirit-empowered because the only way you get it is through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Listen, friends. Unity in the church does not happen passively. It doesn’t happen passively. It requires Spirit-empowered effort. It means that we have to address all of the internal obstacles, hang-ups, roadblocks that keep us from really committing ourselves to one another in the church.
I want to invite us to take some personal inventory this morning. Why do you tend to resist deeper commitment to the church? One of the goals of this series is to help you take the next step, whatever that is, and we’re all at different parts of the journey. For some of you, it’s just committing to one church, so that you stop shopping around, you just commit to one church and really begin to invest yourself in the life of the church, the people of God.
For some of you it may mean committing yourself in church membership. Maybe you’ve been coming for three or four or five or six years and you’ve never committed yourself to church membership, or you come formally under the care and the oversight of the elders and shepherds of the church, and you formally commit yourself to the people of God. Maybe that’s the next step.
For some of you it’s getting involved; it’s joining a ministry team, it’s joining a small group. For some of you it’s kind of getting out of your comfort zone and being willing to serve or give more sacrificially.
I don’t know what the next step is for you, but all of us need to take a next step. But we have to identify the reasons that keep us from doing that. So we need to take some personal inventory.
Why do people—and why do you in particular—tend to resist deeper commitment to the church? Let me just go through some of the reasons why I think this is a problem for people.
For some people it is distrust. There’s almost a hostility to the church. Now, you’re here this morning, so this is probably not you, but maybe there’s a little bit of this in you. There are people in the world that just believe that the church is basically corrupt, that religion is bad for us. Christopher Hitchens says, “Religion poisons everything.” They just think the church is a corrupt institution. If you believe that, and you believe that that’s the fundamental reality of the church, you’re never going to trust the church, you’re never going to want to commit yourself to it.
For others, it’s just that the church is irrelevant. The church feels outdated, it’s a relic of the past but it feels irrelevant to modern life. Again, this is probably not the case for most of us here, because you’re actually here this morning. There are a lot of people not here this morning, maybe for those reasons.
But maybe you are here and you’re still resistant to making the next step for some of these reasons. Maybe it’s individualism. “I don’t need the church to follow Jesus.” Christianity for you is private spirituality that is detached from the body of Christ.
I think we can see from this passage in Ephesians 4, and many, many others—not least of all Jesus’ teaching to his disciples—that “the way people will know that you are my disciples is if you love one another.” You cannot detach your discipleship and your Christianity from the church. You just can’t, because following Jesus means embracing the people of Jesus. Jesus himself says it, the apostles teach it; this is clear. But there’s something about our culture and the individualism of our culture that leads us down this path where we want to detach our spirituality from the body of Christ, from the institution.
For some people, the problem is pain. You may have been hurt by the church. You’ve been let down by leaders, you’ve been betrayed by friends, you’ve been forgotten in a time of need. Maybe your small group failed to really minister to you, you had a bad experience with that, or there are a hundred reasons why people get hurt in the church.
Listen, I get it. I’ve been hurt by the church. I’ve experienced those kinds of disappointments and frustrations. You’re never going to have relationships with people—in the church or outside of the church—without being hurt sometimes. That’s the risk of loving relationships; it’s going to hurt sometimes! But the alternative to taking that risk and being willing to be hurt is just to retreat into a life of isolation and selfishness, and of course that does not lead to joy. You have to work through pain. That’s why Paul calls us to forbear, to bear with one another, to be patient with one another. It takes those graces of forgiveness and forbearance.
Another obstacle for people is false expectations. There is this dream that some of us have of the ideal church, what the perfect church would be like, and you start looking around and there’s not a church within sixty miles that meets that ideal. If that’s where you are, your ideal is too high. It’s higher than God’s ideal, it’s higher than God’s standard. Here’s the deal: if you find that ideal church, don’t join it, because you’ll mess it up! There is no ideal church, and we have to get rid of those false expectations.
For many of us, it is a consumer mentality. We live in this market-driven world where we shop for everything. We shop for doctors, we shop for gyms, we shop for the best place to buy our groceries. We shop for everything, and we are ready to drop anything if we can find a better deal. If you come to the church like that, you are going to be on a constant merry-go-round of looking for the next best church—the next best program, the next best worship team, the next best preacher. You’re always going to find something, because you can find it online, and you’re always going to find some new place that’s doing things a little bit better. But that consumer mentality will really eat away, in time, at the long-term health and relationships that you can have with devotion to one group of people for a long period of time.
I think for some of us it’s just sloth. It’s laziness—laziness about relationships, reluctance to invest ourselves in others is impatience with the process of growth.
To all of these obstacles, all of these hindrances, all of these reasons we have for not taking the next step, Paul says you are to walk worthy of your calling in humility and gentleness, in patience, in love, bearing with one another, and make every effort—make it a top priority—to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. It’s a way that we are called to live.
Some of you will know that my favorite film of all time is this wonderful, beautiful, artistic film called The Tree of Life. I’ve mentioned it many times. It’s a wonderful film with Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. Right at the beginning of the film, there’s this voiceover from Jessica Chastain, who had grown up in a convent, so she’s Catholic, and she says this:
“The nuns taught us there are two ways through life, the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself, accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked; accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself, get others to please it too, likes to lord it over them, to have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it and love is smiling through all things. They taught us that no one who ever loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.”
What Paul is describing in this passage is the way of grace. It’s a way of living these intentional, Spirit-empowered attitudes and behaviors that we are called to. As followers of Jesus, we are called to embody the way of grace by loving one another. That’s the application for us. We are to embody this way, and that’s only going to happen as we develop relationships with one another.
The Puritan Richard Sibbs one time said, “There is a sweet sight of God in the face of a friend.” That’s something we should experience at church and as a part of the body of Christ. But listen, it only happens when you have real relationships with real people.
3. Organic, Relational Connections
That leads to point number three: organic, relational connection. This is the life of the church. This is Ephesians 4:7-16; I’m not going to read all of this again, but let me summarize it for you. What I want you to see is that there’s a pattern here. There’s a pattern as it moves from grace to gifts to growth. Grace, gifts, growth.
The growth happens—using the metaphor of the body of Christ—the growth happens when all of the parts are connected to one another and are deriving strength and nourishment from the head, from Christ, so that the body is growing and building itself up in love.
It starts with grace. Verse 7 says, “But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” Then Paul goes into this little meditation on Psalm 68 where he talks about Christ being ascended and giving gifts to men. I don’t really have time to get into that, but just note the point here that he is grounding our understanding of spiritual gifts in the church in the ascension of Jesus Christ, the one who is the Lord over the church, who gives gifts to the body. He gave these gifts to apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers—he did this, verses 11-12 tell us, in order to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
Just get this: the gifts that are given, these five gifts that are mentioned, are given in order to equip the saints for the work of ministry. But it’s not the gifts—it’s not the pastors, the shepherds, the teachers, the evangelists—those aren’t the ones doing the work of ministry. It’s the saints that are doing the work of ministry. The shepherds, teachers, evangelists, and so on are equipping the saints for the work of ministry. So the function of these foundational gifts is to equip the saints, but the saints are the ones who are doing the work of ministry.
The goal, verse 13 says, is that we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. So there it is. There’s spiritual maturity. But we get it as we grow together, as saints are doing the work of ministry so that the body is being built up.
When that happens, verse 14 says, we’re no longer children. This takes care of that problem of arrested development, of the Peter Pan syndrome, where we’re stuck in immaturity. We’re stuck in immaturity until the saints are doing the work of ministry and the body is maturing.
The ideal that we’re called to in verses 15-16 is
“speaking the truth in love, [so that we] grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
Every part connected to the whole, every member connected to the body, deriving strength from the head, Christ, so that the body grows. That’s what it takes. That’s why I’m calling this “organic, relational connection.” This is the life of the church.
This is what I think—I believe other leaders would agree in this—this is what I think is needed at Redeemer Church. We have it in some measure. Many of you are connected, serving faithfully, some of you serving to the point of exhausting. Sometimes it feels like twenty percent of the people doing eighty percent of the work. That’s pretty typical in church life today. I think Redeemer does pretty good, okay? But I think there are still many who need to take that next step in connection, in service, in relationship, in membership, in personal sacrifice, so that every member is doing its part.
Let me illustrate this. In the nineteenth century there was a famous conductor whose name was Sir Michael Costa, French-born but British. He was involved in conducting orchestras and symphonies and so on in Great Britain, especially in London. One day he was conducting a rehearsal with a full orchestra and a great choir, so lots of instruments. Just imagine the sound of all these instruments and the choir, all these people. He stopped them right in the middle, because he noticed that the piccolo was not playing. Do you even know what a piccolo is? It’s a small, flute-like wind instrument, right? The piccolo wasn’t playing, so he stops and says, “Where’s the piccolo? What happened to the piccolo?” It was just one instrument, but it wasn’t doing its part, so he recognized that they were not getting the full beauty of the music because of the one instrument that wasn’t doing its part.
You may feel like the piccolo in the symphony or the orchestra of the body of Christ. “What do I have to contribute?” You might think, “I don’t have a great voice; I can’t sing on the worship team. I’m not gifted in public speaking, I’m not a teacher, I don’t want to be a leader. What part do I really have to play? I’ll sit back and let other people do that.”
No, you have a crucial role to play in the body of Christ, and the great conductor notices when any instrument is not being used, when any part is not doing its part, when any member is disconnected.
Just think about this metaphor of the body for a minute. The church is called the body of Christ. Paul is the one who uses this language, and you find it here in Ephesians, you find it in 1 Corinthians 12, and other places. It’s a pretty obvious metaphor of the human body. But just think about this negatively for a minute. Think about a human body, a physical body, and think about reasons why a human body may begin to fail. Think about this in analogy to how this would apply to the body of Christ.
Sometimes it’s because of disease, diseased cells. You might think of cancer. And in the body of Christ, there’s cancer sometimes. Sin, bitterness, things that grow secretly but that consume the life and vitality of the church if not put to death.
Sometimes the body suffers from what we might just call a dysfunctional member. This is when a part is not doing its part. You might think of diabetes. Diabetes is a condition when the pancreas is not producing enough insulin for the body. The part is there, but it’s just not doing its part. That can also be true in the body of Christ, when there are members who do not function well as members. They are dysfunctional, their gifts are unused, untapped. People are sitting back, watching others serve. They’re not really engaged, they’re not really sacrificing, they’re not really giving, they’re not really involved. They’re just kind of dysfunctional members, and it hurts the whole body. That’s Paul’s whole point in 1 Corinthians 12. Go read that this afternoon.
There are also what we might think of as disconnected parts. We all know that a severed limb, if it’s not quickly reattached, the severed limb is going to wither and die. It has to be reattached to the body if it’s going to grow. In the same way, a Christian who tries to live the Christian life apart from the fellowship of the church cannot thrive. You cannot be a disconnected, severed limb. You have to be connected if you are to grow.
Then sometimes the body suffers from what we might call disingenuous addons. Maybe the body doesn’t suffer, but there are things that just don’t contribute. Think about things like fake eyelashes, or a toupee. It’s not connected! It’s not organic, and it’s not really contributing to the vitality and the health of the body. Some of you just discovered, “I’m the toupee in the body of Christ.” But listen, there is such a thing as a person who pretends to belong, but they’re not really connected in any way. There’s no vital life. This is the person who’s coming, and maybe they’re religious, but they’re not really Christians. They haven’t embraced the gospel. There’s not really a deep, life-giving faith that then flows into service of others.
Here’s the application—I’m almost done. Don’t be a disconnected part in the church. Don’t be a consumer in the church. Don’t pretend to belong while remaining fake. Instead, commit and connect.
Commit and connect, first of all, to Christ. You have to be connected to him with a vital faith. But then, commit and connect to the church. Be equipped and serve and build up the body in love.
Alright, here’s the summary. Main point: Christ calls us to grow up together in unity, maturity, and love. And we answer that call when we have these three things: foundational gospel convictions; intentional, Spirit-empowered behaviors; and organic, relational connections.
Where are you this morning? In relationship to Jesus, in relationship to the church. Is it possible that you’re stuck in Neverland, Peter Pan Syndrome? You’re not wanting to grow up into the body of Christ, not wanting to really get connected, maybe for any of these reasons we’ve talked about this morning, and there’s something that needs to be addressed. The call this morning is to walk worthy of the calling which we have received, by which we’ve been called. It’s the call of the gospel, and to embrace this vision, the vision of the church that is not a marketplace, but a family; a vision that understand the church as not something that’s just an obligation, where we pay our dues and receive certain benefits, it’s something so much more than that. It’s being part of a family, where everything is gift. It’s gift, it’s grace that has been given to us, and we are invited to participate in this, something bigger than ourselves, larger than ourselves. When we bring ourselves to it and we give ourselves to it, we are contributing to something that matters for the world here and now, and it matters for eternity.
Friends, let’s not be content to stay in Neverland. Let’s not remain spiritual children. Let’s grow up together in Christ as we commit ourselves to his church. Let’s pray together.
Gracious, merciful God, we thank you this morning for the call of the gospel, a call that gives us hope because it is the promise of life and forgiveness and grace and power and belonging, but it’s also a call that challenges us, calls us out of our comfort zones, invites us into something more. Lord, I pray this morning that as we reflect on that and as we reflect on our own personal inventory of where we are in relationship to the church, that you would make clear to us what the next step is. May we each hear and respond to the call this morning to walk worthy of this calling and to eagerly prioritize maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace. Would you help each one of us, Lord, to find and then devote ourselves to real relationships with others in Redeemer Church? May we experience the gift of knowing your sweet smile on us, coming through the eyes and the face of our fellow believers.
Lord, I pray that as we come to the table this morning that we would not forget the great reality behind the Lord’s table, that this is a picture of the unity we share, as we partake together of the body of Christ, broken for us on the cross. This is right at the heart of redemption, reconciliation, what you’ve called us to. So help us come this morning with repentance and with faith and with a renewed hope in Jesus. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
