Dennis Tuuri

I have a brother that most of you know at least of by name. Michael L. He wrote an article when we had a newsletter several years ago called “The Need for Reformation Before Revival.” I think that his emphasis that we do need reformation—we have revival in this country—is correct. At the time he was attending a Southern Baptist church which of course has a high emphasis upon what they would call revival and yet not founded upon a correct apprehension of the Word of God.

I say that somewhat reluctantly although it was the truth at the time that in that particular church, for instance, and it’s very common, certain doctrines of the faith such as election and God’s sovereignty were downplayed because it could affect the amount of people coming into the church. Part of the church growth movement says you want to get rid of those things that could be divisive and lead to a reduction in the supposed revival that you’re having in your part of the country.

We’ve seen the same thing in some churches in our area locally that have had good foundations and yet because of the influence of what’s called the church growth movement have sought to downplay distinctives of the faith for the purpose of unity and revival. But I’m convinced that we do need reformation in this country before we need revival. And I’m as equally convinced as I state that God is bringing that reformation to pass.

I’m convinced that in this country today, across this land, there’s a revival of the Holy Spirit that issues forth into a reformation—a reformation founded upon a correct apprehension of the Word of God and the applicability of that Word of God to every area of thought and life. The passage that we’re going to be spending the next three weeks in, at least, perhaps more, probably three weeks, is a central passage to the life that has been acknowledged as a central passage to the life of the church and indeed the Christian walk, yet obviously is rather central in terms of its emphasis upon unity and the life of the church and the organization of the church. And that’s probably what we’ve seen normally stressed in our church in our country rather in our lifetime—that emphasis of Ephesians 4.

However, I think that Ephesians 4, vital as it is to the importance of correct understanding of the church, is also vital to understanding the need for and the basis for the reformation and the correct teaching God is bringing forth again. So we’re going to spend the next three weeks as we segue from our confessional statement into a covenant statement—a discussion of that in our church documents.

This passage is central and I want us to pay very good attention these next three weeks as we talk about the applicability of this passage to three specific areas in relationship to unity. Unity is the theme for the next three weeks. Today, the theme will be unity, its foundations. Next week, I’ll talk on unity, its ethics. In the third week, I’ll talk about unity, its purpose. Joseph Caryl looked at these same passages of scripture and talked about the necessity for unity in the church in terms of judgments—how our judgments should relate to our idea that unity, its foundations.

In other words, the church of Jesus Christ has to have one mind in terms of judgments, understanding correctly doctrine. He talked about the need for unity in terms of our affections, our body life if you will amongst us. And then he talked about the need also of unity in terms of our duty as a church that we possess, and that’s also a suitable outline. I chose these other three words actually before I read his and I’ll stay with them.

This week foundations, next week ethics, third week purpose. It’s important in discussing any passage of scripture to look at the context of that passage of course, and that’s also true this morning of the verses that we have before us. It’s particularly true because in chapter 4 of Ephesians, the first words are “I therefore the prisoner of the Lord.” The therefore—I’m sure you’ve all heard various people say, you know, why is there a therefore? What is it therefore?

When you see therefore, it is a connective phrase and a connection back to what has been said previously. So the therefore there should cause you to wonder, if you’re going to correctly interpret this passage, what’s said in chapter 3. Chapter 3, on the other hand, begins with “For this cause.” So that also is a connective phrase back to chapter 2. Chapter 3 is basically a prayer for Paul.

He says, “For this cause I Paul the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles.” And then he goes into a long aside statement of his own some other teachings. Then he comes back to that statement “for this cause” I Paul later in the chapter and says that for this cause then he is going to issue forth a prayer for them. In verse 14, he returns to that “for this cause.” “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.”

So Ephesians 4 comes out of the prayer of Ephesians 3. And Ephesians 3 is a prayer for the Ephesians based upon what he’s taught them in Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 1 about what they might understand about their placement in Jesus Christ. So you’ve got to look at the context of Ephesians 4 being the prayer in Ephesians 3. The context of the prayer in Ephesians 3 is based upon the teaching in Ephesians 2.

Ephesians 2 stresses the importance of the doctrine that the church at Ephesus and indeed the New Testament covenant community, if you want to call it that, is one with the Old Testament covenant community. That’s what’s stressed throughout chapter 2 of Ephesians and that’s the context of it. As we move now into an application of the doctrine that’s taught in chapters 1 through 3, he says in Ephesians 2 that God reconciled into one body the Jews and the Gentiles, the old covenant community separate and now the new covenant community, and the Gentiles all been brought into one body in Jesus Christ.

So he stresses the continuity of the covenant community of God from the old covenant into the new covenant. And he stresses the expansion of that covenant community into the whole world now through the inclusion of those who are once called uncircumcision. And that’s the context by the way of the discussion of the tearing away of the wall of separation. It’s not the law in its total application that’s torn away.

It’s those portions of the law that taught separation of Israel from the world around it. Those portions are now in the history of God’s redemptive action done away with as he brings those two covenant communities together and he grafts us into the covenant community, the old covenant. So Paul in chapters 1-3 in Ephesians lays a groundwork of doctrine and that doctrine essential to understanding is the core of that doctrine in Ephesians 2—that everything is summed up in Jesus Christ and that includes the visible covenant community as well, the old covenant community, the new covenant community, the circumcision, the uncircumcision, one in Jesus Christ.

Now on the basis of that doctrine in Ephesians 1 through 3, he then goes into three chapters of application in Ephesians 4-6. The book divides itself very nicely that way. And the verses that we’re going to consider this morning serve as a segue, a transition from the teaching and doctrine into an exhortation to a life of godliness based upon that doctrine. I think it’s then very appropriate for us to look at these passages now as we move out of the confessional statement of Reformation Covenant Church.

We’ve spent the last few months in and begin to talk about the covenant statement which calls for certain application on the basis of our common belief. The covenant statement of Reformation Covenant Church following the confessional statement says “I agree with the confessional statement of Reformation Covenant Church and will endeavor to support it in this fellowship of believers” and then it talks about marriage to non-believers being excluded, the tithe, church attendance, leadership in the church, abortion, education of children, the Sabbath, and God’s rule of our time.

All these things are application based upon an understanding, a common belief system in the church that’s elucidated in our confessional statement. So it’s appropriate as we segue, as it were, transition from the confessional statement to the covenant statement to look at this portion of scripture that does the same thing. Well, these things, these next three weeks specifically then, will be a discussion of this first statement of the covenant statement: “I agree with the confessional statement of Reformation Covenant Church. We’ll endeavor to support it in this fellowship of believers.” What does that mean? And hopefully it’ll bring out more of what that means by studying the scriptures in Ephesians 4 over the next few weeks.

Now, Ephesians 4 begins with that therefore, which tells you the transitional nature of it. And then he urges them to walk worthy of the vocation where if you’re called with all lowliness and meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the union of the spirit in the bond of peace. This is application again and we’re going to talk more about that next week.

But he bases that call for their unity upon the doctrine of the first three chapters and also upon the next couple of verses in Ephesians 4:3-5: “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, one spirit even as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is above all and through all and in you all.”

And then he talks about more in application in the next few verses. So we’re going to this morning consider primarily verses 4-6. And out of that section, we’re going to consider primarily verse 4. Verses 1 and 2 are application based upon the truth before and also the truth in verses 3-6. Verse 3 is an admonition to keep the unity of the spirit. He’s already talked about that in Ephesians 2.

Remember he stressed the doctrinal section that I just mentioned a moment ago in Ephesians 2—the unity of the spirit that’s there through the bond of peace. He endeavors to keep the unity of the spirits. We won’t deal with that so much. That’s again transitional. In verse 4 it also says “There is one body and one spirit even as you are called in one hope of your calling.” That tells us that should lead us back to Ephesians 2 again. In verse 18 it says: “For through him, Jesus Christ, we both have access by one spirit into the Father.” And talks about how we’re one body now.

So verse 4 again repeats what he’s already taught doctrinally in chapter 2: one body, one spirit being the motive element that we’ve been put into one body through and one hope of our calling as well. We want to deal this morning with the foundations for that unity, which is what he talks about in verse 5: “One Lord, one faith, and one baptism.” That’s where we’re going to spend the bulk of our time this morning.

In the context of that, we’ll also talk along the way of various other attempts to provide other foundations for unity apart from the biblical foundation that Paul lays in Ephesians 4:5: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.”

First of all, one Lord. Several years ago, my wife and I had left a conservative Baptist church. We were attending a brethren church, a Grace Brethren church. And the idea of unity and having things in common and building a community, a united community together was real important to me at that particular period of my life.

I thought it was extremely important to try to affect that in the church we were in. And what we tried to do is we tried to establish a newsletter in that church and the name of the newsletter was “In Common,” stressing the things that we have in common and our body life together as it were. There were little segments about, you know, we try to get some sort of a sharing of resources, some central thing where we could have lawnmowers and tillers and that sort of stuff listed and anybody in the church needed something, they could go to the central resource.

We had a place there for people to run ads for whatever needs they might have in the church. We had another section of that newsletter where various families were highlighted trying to build body life through a newspaper. So I figured that you list some of these movies about the Old West, the newspaper was essential to the community of the towns in the West when it was being settled in this country.

Well, that attempt didn’t really do very well. And I think the reason it didn’t is because what I was trying to do was I was trying to base the unity of that church, to found it upon something other than what these verses tell us it should be founded upon.

Several years later I began another newsletter having gone through a shift in my understanding of the essentials of the faith. Prior to starting this other newsletter I had gone through a study of a book called “The Dynamics of the Spiritual Life” by Lovelace.

And he stresses in that book the essential character of unity or communion or community rather as being what he calls a secondary aspect of renewal, that it follows primary aspects of renewal and a primary aspect of renewal is theology. Well that’s kind of a complicated way of saying what we said just a minute ago: we need reformation before we have revival. We need a correct understanding of the person of God himself as a basis of our unity together.

And that’s what this verse tells us when Paul tells us that our unity is founded upon one Lord. He begins here with the foundations stressing the importance of God himself and theology. And so when we began our second newsletter having gone through this shift in terms of perspective, we still had a newsletter. But now the newsletter stressed theological issues. The first issue dealt with the sovereignty of God.

The second issue I wrote an article on unity itself and stressed the importance of what is plainly taught in this chapter. I think that unity is a result of a common system of belief and doctrine: one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.

It’s important though to recognize that when you hear unity banded about in churches today and the great cries for unity, it’s that first sort of unity that people normally are speaking of. As I said with the Southern Baptist churches, they wanted to downplay doctrinal distinctives for the purpose of building up a unified church supposedly and encouraging revival.

William Kellogg in writing for the Chalcedon Report talks about a prayer meeting he had once attended when he was an undergraduate student in college. The student group there apparently had some divisions in it and strife. They wanted unity.

So they had this all-night prayer meeting praying that God would grant them unity and a one-minded spirit and everything. At the end of this great extended prayer meeting, he says there was a great outpouring of emotional gushing and things and a lot of hugging and crying and emotional catharsis, whatever you want to call it. And yet he said they walked out into the night that evening as divided as ever because they had attempted to build a foundation of unity the same way I had with my first newsletter—building the foundation of unity based upon what I might guess you might call warm fuzzies.

That it’s our need to rub up against one another and be happy and pray real hard for God to unify us somehow apart from a revelation of the person of God himself in his scriptures. So it’s an attempt to build unity upon warm fuzzies. Or at the time my wife accurately commented that attempt for unity is trying to found it on the least common denominator. So another way to think of that sort of unity is LCD unity—least common denominator—which is essentially the same as warm fuzzy. That’s not what the Word of God tells us.

The Word of God says that the foundation for our unity is first and foremost Jesus Christ. Now, this isn’t taught strictly in this passage. Of course, we wouldn’t expect that. In Ephesians 2:20, we’re told that we are the household of God, implying a unified edifice that God has brought together. That edifice, that household is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets—by implication their teaching—and Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.

The scriptures are quite clear that God has laid in Zion in the church, as it were in the world community, a cornerstone, a chief stone, a capstone—some people would interpret it as. I don’t want to get into a discussion whether it’s a cornerstone or a capstone, but the point is he’s the essential element of unification for the rest of the building. It’s Jesus Christ himself, one Lord. That’s the foundation for our unity that God has called us to walk in.

In Romans 15:5-6, God says: “Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He’s saying here that in order to do those things that are correct and proper and unifying to the church, you have to be likeminded in terms of your understanding of Jesus Christ.

We have to correctly understand, have a correct foundation in terms of doctrine and theology about who Jesus Christ is. What is Lord? This implies to build upon, to have a foundation of unity in our church. The scriptures are clear that Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. He is the foundation for our unity. Now, this shouldn’t surprise us. You’ve heard repeatedly in this church that man is analogical and can only be understood in relationship to his Creator.

And this is no different. Jesus Christ himself when he prayed for the unity of his people in John 17:21 prays that they might be one together and he puts in the context his oneness with the Father being the mode, being the example for our oneness with each other. And so we’re to understand our need for unity based upon originally the unity of the Trinity itself. That’s the model for us.

And we’re then to on the basis of that understand that God himself is the foundation for our unity in our church. So the scriptures tell us here that we have one Lord and one Lord is the foundation of our unity.

Now, it could be said that here in America, we’re somewhat united because we have one president. We have one titular head, as it were, in charge of our civil government and we as a country have one president. You can say one lord or one ruler, one authority in our country. And yet, we know that there are other countries with other rulers or other authorities. And so, the unity we have in America then would be somehow limited or restricted, wouldn’t it? Because we don’t, you know, no other country—certainly Moscow or Mexico or whoever—a lot of people in this country don’t acknowledge our one president Ronald Reagan.

So there’d be a limited unity and there’d be problems with it. But when the scriptures say that the basis for our unity is one Lord, it knows no such limitations as we place upon Ronald Reagan because the scriptures in other places clearly tell us that Jesus Christ, our Lord, our chief cornerstone is Lord of all lords. He is the Creator of all things. Through him all things came into being, and he has been placed over the head of all things through his death and his victorious resurrection.

God has now placed everything in subjection to his feet. So the unity that the scriptures talk about in Jesus Christ is not restricted by geography nor any other means. There is no sphere sovereignty, as it were, in terms of this foundation of our unity. It is Jesus Christ and his reign and his lordship is complete over the entire created order.

Now this seems quite simple, and not too many people would disagree with what we’ve said so far. It’s real clear from the scriptures and yet it has some implications that people don’t necessarily acknowledge. Even the fact that Jesus Christ is God, there is one God uniting the Godhead, and as a result of that we have a unified world that would be fallen upon in some quarters as well.

In 1 Kings 20:23, the servants of the king of Syria said unto him doing battle with God’s people here: “Their gods are gods of the hills. Therefore, if we fight with them in the hills we shall be weaker than they, but let us fight against them in the plains, and surely we shall be stronger than they are.” So we know that there are people who posit many gods, many sources of authorities, and they tend to localize those authorities in one particular place, the way that, for instance, in our country we have a president over our geographic unit.

And yet some people believe, in spite of all the obvious facts and teaching of scripture, that there are many gods—gods of hills, gods of plains and other sort of aspects. Now we don’t have any of this type of polytheists in our church today nor churches really that would call themselves Christian I don’t think. But what is implied in the statement “one Lord, one faith, one baptism”? I think if we look at some of the implications of that we’ll see that we do have problems and perhaps even in this church.

One implication of the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord and that his lordship is the foundation for our unity is that we have implicit in the lordship of Jesus Christ a single command system from him, a single law, one word as it were. Ronald Reagan can give orders to the country in the United States and whoever’s in charge of the Soviet Union at this point in time can give orders for that particular country and so you have a plethora of various orders going down in various geographic units. Even within our country with the many rulers we have there’s a very various sets of laws that can come down, but we know that if Jesus Christ is lord of lords and king of kings, that implicit in that there’s one law word that covers every area of life.

To believe that there is a law for the church somehow separate and founded on a different authority than the law for the household, or for the law that we have in economics or from the laws that we experience in politics, has implicit in it polytheistic trends. What I’m trying to say is that if you don’t acknowledge the fact that God’s law is all pervasive and controls and commands us in every area of life, there is implicit in your denial of that law polytheism. You deposit another law, you deposit another lord apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, who the scriptures make clear is king of kings and lord of lords.

Also implicit in the statement of Jesus Christ’s lordship—which by the way the early church knew so well and as a result they refused to acknowledge the lordship of Caesar—they said that the central confession of the early church was that Jesus is Lord. They acknowledged one Lord over all lords and his one law as being the one that’s binding upon them.

Also implicit in this of course is the exercise of authority or power. A lord has a law of course but he also has a means of exercising authority to bring that law to pass. And so implicit in the statement that we have one Lord as the foundation for our unity in the church is his exercise of authority, his power over all he is Lord of. Is God just the Lord of the hills? Is Jesus Christ just the Lord of the plains? Obviously not.

And so the people of Israel conquered both in plains and in hills and wherever the geographic location was. It didn’t bother them because they had a God who was God of all, god of all gods, lord of all lords as it were, and ruled over the entire created order.

Well, do we have as it were—is Jesus Christ’s lordship diminished to the church? Does his sway just control affairs in the church? Well, certainly not. Does it just control affairs in the visible covenant community of his? Well, then we couldn’t say he was Lord of lords, could we?

Implicit in the statement that Jesus Christ is Lord of lords, that’s the foundation of our unity, is that his power and authority permeates the entire created order. One system of law, one system of authority through which that law is enacted and fulfilled.

Antinomianism—a rejection of God’s law in certain areas of life—has implicit in it polytheistic roots. Defeatist eschatology has implicit within it polytheism again. Why? Because God said that Jesus Christ is Lord of lords. And if he’s Lord of lords, he’s Lord of the entire created order. He is the Lord of history. History is a revelation of God’s creatorial work through Jesus Christ, the covenant keeper. The old covenant pointing to that coming covenant keeper. The new covenant being based upon his coming in time in history to affect his redemptive work.

If we say, and I’ve used this example before and I use it as an extreme example purposefully, if we say that the new age is something that God can’t deal with, then we restrict Christ’s lordship to certain areas of our life, into certain areas of time. But Christ’s lordship is not bound in that way.

The implication of saying that we have one Lord is that we have one command and one authority system.

Third, the implication of one Lord is a pre-existing unity. Therefore, we don’t meet today to try to bring about the unity that the scriptures speak of as being our foundation. If we did, then it wouldn’t be the foundation, would it?

No. We’d have to be trying something else, trying to bring about the unity that God has called us to. We don’t in the Reconstruction movement attempt to make Jesus Christ king. We acknowledge that Jesus Christ is king of kings and lord of lords. And we attempt to so order our world, in our churches, in our families, and our communities to bring them in line with what he has explicitly commanded us to do and so turn those areas of life from blessing to cursing or from cursing to blessing rather in Jesus Christ.

In the same way, we don’t attempt to found that unity. That unity, if the scriptures are clear here and what they tell us—that Jesus Christ is the foundation, the cornerstone of that unity—the scriptures are clear that unity pre-exists us and our efforts and our response.

Now, this is real clear throughout the scriptures. Chapter 2 that we talked about earlier where Paul gives the doctrine of the inclusion of the new covenant community into the old covenant community brings together into one group, stresses that unity has been accomplished in Jesus Christ. He says because you have this unity of the spirit therefore do this in Ephesians 4. Building upon that he says endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit. He doesn’t say to endeavor to accomplish the unity of the spirit. He says to keep it. It exists. It’s there.

The unity of the spirit in the church is there. There are just a whole ring of verses that talk about the oneness of the body of Christ. Now certainly some of those verses talk about the need to work through that oneness, to demonstrate that oneness, that is already there in doctrine in our actions. But all of that is founded upon the fact that we are one.

Now Psalm 133 that we read responsively earlier stresses the same thing. The last couple of verses of Psalm 133—the last verse rather, well last two verses, I’ll just read it here. Obviously talking about the unity that we hope to see in our church and acknowledge to be there in Jesus Christ he says: “That this unity—the dwelling of the brothers together in unity—is like the precious oil upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, that went down to the skirts of his garments, as the dew of Hermon and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion.”

In the Hebrew there’s a construction, there’s a use of the word rod there for descend three times in verses 2 and 3. It says that the precious ointment descended upon the beard, okay, even Aaron’s beard. The dew, the precious ointment descended down the skirts of his garments. The dew of Hermon descends down, okay, and waters the mountains of Zion. The fact that this dew, representing the blessing of God, is descending down, this unity—it’s a poetic device—to indicate that its source is from God, that it’s coming down upon us, and that’s why he calls it a blessing in verse 3.

“For there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore.”

We know that the unity that we experience in Jesus Christ pre-exists anything that we are called to do. Now we know also however of course that there is the other side of that. As surely as verse 3 in this passage tells us to endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit—that is a pre-existent unity that is powered by Jesus Christ’s lordship and his creation—yet it tells us also in verses 12 and 13 about the work of the ministry, “till we all come in the unity of the faith.”

So there is a present aspect to it and there’s a future realization of that aspect. It’s very akin to the kingship of Jesus Christ. We acknowledge Christ as king and we move to make that real in all the created order—not to make it real but to manifest it in all the created order.

Calvin in writing upon this said the following: “The kingdom of Christ is on such a footing that it is every day growing and making improvement, while at the same time perfection is not yet attained, nor will be until the final day of reckoning. Thus, both things hold true that all things are now subject to Christ, and that this subjection will nevertheless not be complete until the day of resurrection, because that which is now only begun will then be completed.

Hence, it is not without reason that this prophecy is applied in different ways at different times as also all the other prophecies which speak of the reign of Christ. Do not restrict it to one particular time but describe it in its entire course.”

It’s important to understand