Sermon for August 3, 2024

11th Sunday after Pentecost            

“United in Christ, Speaking the Truth in Love”

Ephesians 4:1-16

Let us pray: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer." Amen (Psalm 19:140).

A few weeks ago, in Ephesians, Chapter 2:13-22, we heard the apostle Paul promising that the Good News of salvation through faith in Jesus was for all people, non-Jews as well as Jews. Paul wrote, “Now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For Christ is our Peace, who has made us both one (both Jews and non-Jews - all who have been brought to faith in Christ) and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility… He has reconciled us both (Jews and non-Jews) to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility… For through Christ, we both (Jews and non-Jews) have access in one Spirit to (God) the Father.”

Note that this unity is the plan and the work of the One True Triune God, not of us, as we are built, Paul says, “on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets,” those who taught and wrote down the Holy Scriptures, the Word of God, with Christ Jesus Himself being the Cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord… by the Spirit.” This is what we now call the Holy Christian Church.

In our text for today, Ephesians 4, Paul speaks again of “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” that is in the Church. Seven times in verses 4 through 6, Paul uses the word “one,” emphasizing the one plan and work of the Triune God for all of us and our salvation. Our primary strength in the Church is not in our diversity but in our unity in our Triune God and His Word and His one way to new and eternal life, centered in Christ as the cornerstone, and His sacrifice on the cross for us all.

Listen again to Paul’s words. There is only one Holy Spirit, who gathers people together in one body, the church, by one faith, in the one Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit does this through the speaking of the one truth, the Word of God, and through the Word and promises of God connected with the water in one baptism, by which people are “born again” and brought to that one true faith (John 3:3,5-7) and then strengthened in that faith. That calling to faith also brings one great hope for this life and for eternal life to come for us and all believers through our one God and Father, who is with us always, over and through and in us.

Let me stop for a moment and ask: does the Christian church today really seem to be this united? We have so many groups and divisions and denominations; and we know that we are still sinful, struggling individuals, too. Yet the miracle of salvation by God’s grace through Christ is that God now looks at us through Jesus and sees Jesus in us so that we look and are counted as forgiven and acceptable to God through Jesus. Sometimes pastors wear two robes. The black robe underneath represents our sins. The white robe over that represents Jesus covering over all our sins.

Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake, God made Him (Jesus)to be sin who knew no sin.”  All our sins were dumped on Jesus, and He carried them to the cross and paid the penalty for all of them and forgave them all. He did that, Paul says, “so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” We and all believers are counted righteous by being brought to faith and trust in Jesus. This is sometimes called the “invisible church” that only God can see. God looks at us, and He sees only Christ in us. That is the one true church, the one holy, Christian, and apostolic Church that God has made and sees, as described in the creeds.

How much we need all this that our one true triune God has done for us and continues to provide for us, in watching over us. For we live in challenging times, with all sorts of competing ideas and voices all around us, including on moral and spiritual teachings.

It has always been this way, though. A little later on in our text, Paul writes of children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. We do have concerns, don’t we, about our literal children and grandchildren, for fear that they might be led astray by false doctrines and wrong moral and religious ideas. But Paul is really talking about all of us, no matter what our age, as he wishes that we, too, may no longer be children or childish, tossed to and fro by false doctrines, by human cunning that leads to evil, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

You have probably read that senior citizens are estimated to have lost over 3 billion dollars to scammers in just 2022 alone. And my local bank had warnings out this week that people claiming to be bank fraud investigators were actually trying to steal from people. There are spiritual deceivers, too - people focused, Paul says, on human cunning - people talking about things that appeal to our human thoughts and the desires of our sinful human nature - and what we would like to hear about, and not on the things of God. How can we tell what is correct?

Paul tells us again, in our text, that God gives us the gifts that we need. He mentions again that God gave us the gift of the prophets and apostles and evangelists, who long ago taught and wrote down the Holy Scriptures, as Paul says on another occasion, “for our instruction, that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have Hope… in accord with Christ Jesus” (Romans 15:4-5). That means that if anyone ever comes with new “Scriptures” and new teachings, we should have nothing to do with them.

Paul also says, in our text, that God gave us, in addition, “shepherds” (that’s what pastors are, literally) and “teachers” to help us use and understand the Scriptures, “the foundation” for all our beliefs, “in the unity of the faith” (there are not many faiths, but only one true faith), centered in greater “knowledge of the Son of God,” our Lord Jesus Christ, and confidence in Him, and to what Paul calls being more “mature” believers.

How eager we are, then, to have the gift of our own new shepherd, Pastor Bombaro, with us in just a few weeks to lead and guide us. And how exciting that a new school year at St. James starts even sooner, with the gift of our teachers and principal, working with our children and helping us together focus on God’s Word, too. May we pray for and support and encourage them all as they lead and serve us.

Paul also speaks of one more gift we have, too. He writes, “But grace was given to each one of us according to Christ’s gift.” It is, of course, only by the grace of God that we have been brought to faith and received our baptism and been saved to begin with. But God can provide us also additional strength, by His grace, to be a blessing to fellow believers within the body of Christ, the church. That is what He wants us all to be, though we have different gifts and abilities, by the grace God has given us.

At the end of our text, Paul writes, “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.”

“When each part is working properly,” the body grows, Paul says. Every one of us is important, as God gifts and graces us, even if only in the smallest ways. And if we are to speak the truth in love with one another, that starts with hearing the one truth, in God’s Word, in regular worship and remembering our own baptism and its blessings and receiving Christ, the Bread of Life, in the Lord’s Supper. It also means reading the Word on our own and/or studying it with our pastor and teachers and others when and if we can. When we see and hear of God’s great truth and love for us in Christ, we can then better speak and show that truth and love to others, too, in encouraging and helping each other, as we are able, or just in our prayers or in any other way we can.

And as Paul said, at the beginning of our text, we are to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called by Christ,” by His great love and mercy and forgiveness for us, and thus that we can act with “humility and gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love,” in what we say and do.

We also remember that the most important things have already been done for us for our salvation by the grace of God in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection and His Word of Truth, brought to us.

Anything we can accomplish, then, is by the grace of God and His working in and through us. As Paul wrote in the same Epistle, that we heard last week, just before this week’s text, “Now to God, who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power (His power) at work in us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Let us rise for prayer: “Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep our hearts and minds safe, in Christ Jesus. Amen.” (Philippians 4:7)