Oneness of believers; -Walk: in Ephesians

Let us turn together, beloved, please, to Ephesians, chapter 1. The Epistle to the Ephesians is a very, very precious treasure, as we realize, and it's wonderful, as you read through the Epistle, you can see the Apostle, his mind is going in three different avenues, and he's going to bring them all together. And it's very necessary teaching, because the Epistle has a theme from the very beginning, as we know, one of the themes, of course, of the Epistle is spoken of as the heavenly places, as we were hearing this morning, and the point being made is, of course, we must come to a realization in experience that we are people of the heavenlies. And that is going to be carried through the Epistle.

That's what he's going to lean into when you come to chapter 4. And another theme that the Apostle takes up is the oneness of believers, as we've been hearing. And it's a marvelous teaching, because that oneness can never be separated, but the expression of it can, and that's what the Apostle is going to take up. That's what he's going to try and teach us, and we need that teaching, because we're so selfish people, and self means so much to us.

If he's not in the first place, then somebody else get out of my way. It's sad. And you know, the happy, happy day is coming, beloved, when there's going to be no more self.

What a day that will be, when Christ will be all in all. But there's a little theme that I want to notice with you here today, and I hope it will be a help to us, how the Apostle is going to try and show that that which is invisible, the mysterious, the invisible, the body of Christ, every member, we do not know them all, only he knows them all. But they are one, whether they be Jew or Gentile in Christ, they are one.

But says God, I want something visible, that the world may see, something that men can realize. This is different. This is divine.

God's in this thing. That's what God wants to be seen. So I want to try and notice that with you very simply in the language that the Apostle uses on three different occasions, four different occasions in this epistle.

We'll start reading, if you will, please, in chapter 1 and verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every single spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. That's our standing in our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Look down, please, to verse 6. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

Let me just pause for a moment and notice two words in that verse. The word for accepted and in the beloved. The word for acceptance there is the fullness of what we have been reading and what he's going to explain in verse 7 in a particular way.

We have been actually like the prodigal. We've been clothed with the best robe in the house. That's what salvation is.

That's what it is to be accepted in the beloved. And the word for beloved is the same word that's used here when our Lord Jesus was baptized of John in the Jordan. And when he came up from the Jordan, God opened the heavens to him and said to him, Thou art my beloved, the one in whom is all my pleasure.

Now that's going to be one of the basis that the apostle is going to use here for this visible expression of fellowship for him. That we should be giving expression to the fact that we're clothed with the best robe of the house. We're in Christ.

We're in the one in whom is all God's pleasure. And that is what he is going to be looking for. Look down the chapter to verse 13.

In whom ye also trusted, you Gentiles, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after or upon believing ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of his glory. Now you can see that the apostle by using this statement under the praise of his glory three times, he's assuring the fact that's what it's going to be eternally. I want that to be manifest now.

That's what it's going to be forever and ever under the praise of the glory of his grace, under the praise of his glory at the end of verse 14. And that is the great theme that he's wanting to bring whether it's a saved Jew or a saved Gentile, made one. It is going to eternally be a masterpiece of glory to the God of heaven, to the person of the Lord Jesus.

And just for the sake of the younger believer here, the idea in verse 13 and 14 is very precious. It's not telling you that the Spirit of God will come upon you if you ask Him. You need not ask for Him.

It's not telling you that the Spirit of God is incremental in His manners of presence with us. It's amazing that every one of us here today are indwelt by a divine person. I'm not my own.

I am God's. And His presence dwells within me, the Spirit of God. That's the idea of the earnest.

Sometimes we use the little word guarantee as a guarantee of what is coming. That is true because we are possessed of the Holy Spirit unto the predetermined destiny that is given back there in verse 6. And it's the same with the word that's used in verse 14. Pardon me.

In verse 13, you're sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise. And the seal is not only the seal of assurance, but you recall the seal that was put upon the tomb of the Lord Jesus. It was intended to show authority that no one will touch that property.

And that's what's here. We are divine properties sealed by the Holy Spirit. You cannot be removed from that.

Satan cannot remove us. We cannot remove ourselves. We do not need a new conversion.

We're sealed. And the idea of the seal is as well a determination of ownership and property. But let's go now, if you will, please, to chapter 2 and notice.

We've noticed here a perfect acceptance. We'll come back to that very briefly. And we have a person that's in dwelling, which is the assurance of that acceptance.

Now look, please, at verse 10 of chapter 2. This is one of the themes that the apostle now is going to deal with relative to our standing in Christ and the seal of it. And he says this is his workmanship. Created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

He wants the visible to be seen. Now the word for walk is an interesting word as well. It's not the idea of me walking down the street or you walking us together down the street.

The idea is a mindset. A mindset that's being expressed. And he's going to bring in the mind in every occasion that he deals with this subject today.

And dear saints of God, our minds can be so easily polluted. Our minds can be so filled as we've been hearing. We missed the point.

Our mindset. We've got to realize when you hear of ministry and exhortation that tells you and tells me that my mind should be saturated with the word. Brethren, that's reality.

That's not super. That's necessary. And the necessity of it is going to produce what God is looking for in this passage.

Walk in them. That mindset is what is going to determine what my hands do. And my spirit is going to be how my hands do it.

So there is the mind and there is the spirit that is dealt with in these passages in view of this fact. God has a masterpiece as he uses the word here in verse 10. Created a totally new creation.

The world has never been visited by a church before. Never. And that's what God wants the world to see.

And it is seen in this passage created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Now in your New Testament, there's two words for good. One is a word that means the quality or the essence of that article is good.

There's nothing in it that's bad. But the other word that's used is good is a communicable word. It's communicating.

And that's the word that's here. Communicable works. It's alive.

God wants the world to see it's alive. And it is giving. It's communicating.

What's it communicating? Our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh God, help us to communicate to the world. Not only that I know him, but what he looks like.

What he talks like. What he thinks like. That's reality.

That's what he's going to get at in relation to this walk. Notice one more verse there in being verse 11. Wherefore, remember, keep that mind occupied, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision, that's Israel, in the flesh made by hands, at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

You know, those verses are very interesting because they're telling us Gentiles, you didn't have the upbringing that the Jews had. They had a Bible. You didn't have one.

They had prophets. You had no prophets. They had revelation from God.

You had no revelation. They had the altar and sacrifices that you've been hearing. You didn't have that.

But you have more. You have more something that's to be seen visible than what they had. Theirs did not produce what God was looking for.

He was never completely satisfied with it because He's going to bring in a masterpiece of His creation, and we're a part of it. That's what He's bringing before us in verse 13. But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who at one time were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ, for He is our peace.

Now, if you will, please look in chapter 4 and verse 1. I must hasten just to notice the three expressions concerning the walk. And keep in mind, the first thing that He's dealing with is the mind. The mind is giving expression to its meditations, and the heart is giving expression to the feeling of those meditations.

And that's what we have in this passage. Verse 1, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness and longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Notice, first of all, in verse 1, this word, walk worthy.

The idea of being worthy here is the idea of putting things in the balance. Walk worthy of the Lord. You put the Lord in the balance, and then you put your thinking, which is going to affect this visible expression of this unity, of this oneness, that we're heavenly.

We're linked with the future, predestined, as we've noticed in that chapter. Put that in the balance. Now, my mind and my purposes, my goals, you dear younger brethren and younger sisters, your goals should be associated, first of all, with how will my goals affect the likeness to the goals of the Lord Jesus.

What were they? And I read through the four Gospels. Are we not seeing them? There was one thing that consumed the heart of the Lord Jesus. I delight to do thy will, O my God.

Dear younger brother, dear younger sister, dear older saint of God, let us never forget the absolute wonder of pleasure that God found in his beloved Son. Five times in John, he says, the Father loveth the Son. You know, in one of those occasions, he puts it this way.

The Lord Jesus said, my Father loveth me because... Now, I know that the Father loved the Lord Jesus eternally. That was never, ever disturbed. And his love for the Lord Jesus in his life was never disturbed.

But there's another love on top of that. He loved him for his person. But he loved him because... Oh, I'd like that to mark my life.

That my Heavenly Father could say, I appreciate him. Look what he's up to. His heart, his mind is occupied with that which is his in Christ, in the heavenlies.

And that will adjust your life. It won't take you away from the goal of your profession. But it will put Christ first.

And your profession will take on a meaning for that. Let me just give you one little expression. A dear brother came to me one time.

And I said to him, how are you doing, brother? You're working these days. Yes, he said, I've changed my work, Mr. Smith. He said, as you know, I was an engineer.

But he said, I didn't seem to have any testimony. So he said, I got down before the Lord. And I asked the Lord, Lord, isn't there something can change about this? So he decided I'd become a teacher.

I want to become a high school teacher. Because those teenagers, they need guidance. They're coming into home.

They're coming from homes that have no guidance. And he said, I changed. I studied to become a teacher.

And now I'm a high school teacher. And I know that I can affect lives for Christ. Now, I know, brethren, there's an awful lot of what the laws might do or say today that might be different from that.

That was about maybe 15 years ago he told me that. But the point that I want to make is, that man made a decision for Christ as to his life's occupation for the Lord Jesus. Now, that's the word that's here, walking worthy.

Walking worthy of the Lord unto wherewith ye are called in all lowliness and meekness. One could spend time on each of those words. But notice the character of them, lowliness, meekness, and long-suffering, and forbearing one another, and endeavoring to keep.

And you can see there's three different areas there. The first two are before the Lord. As you'll notice, lowliness and meekness.

Long-suffering and forbearing is towards others. Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit and that's submission. Now, the unity of the Spirit cannot be broken.

That is, every member of the church of our blessed Lord is together. In one, can never be separated. But he says, I want that to be visible.

I want that to be seen and I don't want you to allow anything to fracture the evidence that you are one in Christ Jesus, in testimony. Therefore, let's notice what he mentions a little further down the chapter in verse 17. This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.

Now, you can see that the point the Apostle is wanting to underline here is, don't bring baggage with you from who you were. Don't bring that. And whatever you do, dear brothers and sisters, you who are saved, don't bring baggage from your past religious life.

It's only baggage. It will harm your testimony. And that's what he's wanting to say here, first of all, in verse 17.

Testify in the Lord, ye henceforth. Don't think, as he's going to bring in before in the next verse, having your understanding darkened. Don't have your mind occupied with the principles of the present culture.

That's the idea of the word Gentiles here. That's who you were. That's the way you were raised.

That's all you knew. And now he said, whatever you do, in verse 17, that ye henceforth, don't walk, don't think and allow your mind and spirit and therefore your life to give evidence to the fact that you are a Gentile. Because this is why they do it.

The vanity of their mind. Now, we all know what the word vanity means. It has actually, in Scripture, it's used three ways.

The one word means pride. The other word means emptiness, just an empty old thing. And the other vanity means it's the idea of being less than normal.

It's just they're not thinking like a normal person. So those three ideas you can look at yourself and just bring them into the picture. But the point being made here is, in this passage is, they're doing it independent of God.

Totally independent. That's why it's vanity. It's absolutely useless for God.

May I say that for you, dear younger folk, as to how you adorn yourself? We have a culture that has no use for God. You can't be that way. And I expect to be spiritual.

Your mind must not be governed by the culture. And the same with you, my dear brethren. All you say, it doesn't make any difference, you know, you're just an old fogey.

I'm old, but I'm not a fogey. And let me tell you, the Spirit of God would never, never teach you to look like those boys on the front of magazines. That's not your culture.

Your culture is heavenly. What am I supposed to do, look like an Amish? No, they don't know any better either. No, brethren, you look like a Christian.

And what do they look like? They look like the absolute features, the virtuous features of the Lord Jesus. That's how they look. To look sober, that doesn't mean sullen.

It means balanced, that you've got a balance to you. You know how you should be looking as a Christian, boys and girls. Older sisters and older brethren, we are to be their examples.

I don't mean to say you're going to wear a ponytail or some dumb thing like that and tattoos and all that junk. It doesn't belong on the body. God has given to you a vessel and it's not yours.

It's not mine, it's his. Let us never desecrate it. Let us treat it with dignity.

And that's what he's dealing with here, not as the Gentiles. Notice as he mentions in that verse, having the understanding darkened. Now, the word for darkened there, of course, as our brethren have been bringing out, Satan is behind the whole picture.

He's the one who has the power of darkness. But as well, it states the fact that the human heart is dark. Don't trust your own heart.

You know, that verse in Jeremiah applies to every living believer, saved or not. The heart of man is deceitful above all things and incurably wicked. I cannot trust my heart.

I ever have to learn that and seek the prayer of the beloved David when he cried in the Psalms, you remember, Deliver me from secret faults. Deliver me from my heart. Give me a clean heart, O God.

That's because we can't do a thing with a thing. We need that recognition of understanding and my mind affecting my heart. And therefore, he brings before us in that same verse, being alienated from the life of God.

So there's really no life in the old man, the old nature. No, he's not worth anything but the cross. That's what God has determined for him.

And likewise, he desires that we should put his deeds to the cross as we have in the Galatian epistle. And then he uses another word and that's the word ignorance. So these three words that he's using here is helping us to see that the mind needs to be refocused.

The first thing he mentions again, you notice in verse 17, is vanity. Then there's darkness, then there's alienation, having no life in them and the blindness of their heart. And so the walk, that is the expression in my life of what I have in my mind in relation to my being accepted in the beloved.

Oh, God wants to be able to say, well done, well done. He wants to be able to look at you and look at me and be able to say, like Paul says, they pleased God. You know, that moves my heart so many, many times when I read that.

It's awesome that I who deserve his everlasting wrath, I can give him some pleasure. I want to do it, so do you. That's what's here.

The walk of the mind and the heart is affecting the expression of the masterpiece of God's grace and what he has brought me into in Christ. Now notice the last one in chapter 5 and verse 1. Walk in love. You know, the wonderful thing about it is that the love that's used here is the love that was expressed by the Lord Jesus.

That's the very same word. So there's something from Romans chapter 5 that reminds me that the love of God has been poured into my heart. I have the capacity to love like God.

Not to the same extent I understand it. I don't have that capacity because of this human body and human mind. But I can think like that.

I can give the minuscule character of my expression of that love. He says, walk in love. Think.

Think with a mind that learns to love. Think with a heart that's affected to give expression to that love. Walk in love as Christ.

Notice the words that he used as I sit down in verse 2. He hath loved us. Now that word hath loved doesn't say look at the past and see he loved you once. He hath loved us and he still loves us.

Brethren and sisters, young or old here today, there's never a moment that you and I are not embraced with his divine love. You know, that doesn't make you a hard man. That's not going to make you a jellyfish.

That's going to make you a man of conviction and a sister of courage and a man who knows how to stand and yet knows how to speak the truth with love. That's what he's saying. That's what he's giving to us as Christ hath loved us.

He dealt with us righteously and he dealt with us graciously. He has come near to us in the fullness of his love and he never lets go of me, blessed be his name. And then he says in that same verse, he hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.

Now here, this is where the sacrifices are complete in our life. He hath given himself. And the word forgiven, you can look it up again for yourself.

But the word forgiven is the idea of I gave and he's not an Indian giver. He's not taken back. He's giving and giving.

Romans chapter 12 can be a moment in your experience, 12 and 1. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. It won't be just once in your lifetime. Never, brethren.

That's an honor and a joy to come back to that altar and offer oneself a sweet-smelling savor unto God. How can that be? Because the Lord Jesus did it. That's what he did for his father.

He offered himself unto God for us, a sweet-smelling savor. He says, do the same. You're people of a heavenly calling.

You're people who have been redeemed and forgiven, we read. You're people who have been sealed unto the eternal expression of his glory. Walk like it.

Give manifestation to it. Let your mind know the reality of governing your heart and therefore your expression. May God help us, brethren.

The world needs to see the Lord Jesus. The world needs to see the power of the gospel. The world needs to see that a human being can please God.

May it be our portion for his name's sake.