All One in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26-29)

Introduction: The Disunity of the Professing Church

0:00 The following sermon was delivered at the Southeastern Family Conference, which was held at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, in July 2001. The preacher is Pastor Edward Donnelly from the Trinity Reformed Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland. I was immensely encouraged this morning by listening to both times of ministry from my brothers. I believe that God had given me a message to preach to you yesterday evening, and I sought to preach it to the best of my ability.

0:42 I don't regret that message in any way, but as I expressed to you last night, there was a residual uneasiness in my mind that I simply had not time in one message to stress that I had not time in one message to stress as needed to be stressed the practical outworking of holiness in those sins which we should turn away from and those duties which we should endeavor to perform. And it was such a joy to hear both Pastor Heartland and Pastor Sebastio this morning going on, as it were, where we had stopped yesterday evening and building. Building on the foundation of our being in Christ and reckoning ourselves in Christ. And then without repeating that, stressing how that is worked out in turning from sin and in seeking daily practical obedience. Surely, friends, this is evidence that our conference program is being planned by a mind wiser and more gracious, than any of ours.

2:00 We thank God for the symmetry and the completeness of his truth. I'd like us this evening to read a few verses from Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 3, reading the closing verses of the chapter from verse 26 to verse 29. Galatians, chapter 3, verses 26 to 29.

2:31 Let us hear the word of God.

2:35 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

2:44 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female.

3:03 For you are all one. You are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. And we want to focus this evening on that phrase at the close of verse 28.

3:26 All one in Christ Jesus. All one in Christ Jesus. These were the words. These were the words inscribed on a cloth banner which was hung each year at the front of a large tent in a seaside town in Northern Ireland in my youth.

3:54 An interdenominational conference was held each year during the summer for a week. And to that great marquee, many hundreds of Christians from the north of Ireland, gathered from various denominations and churches and fellowships from all over. And they met together for a week of preaching and Christian fellowship. And over the platform from which the speakers addressed the assembled congregation was this verse or this text.

4:29 All one in Christ Jesus. And that conference was often a time of blessing. It was one. It was one of the old-fashioned higher life conferences, no doubt, a sort of a Northern Ireland keswick, no doubt, there was much inadequacy in the teaching, and also much good was done.

4:51 And it was inspiring to see so many Christians from so many different churches. And yet when the conference was over, those believers all went their separate ways. And quite often they wouldn't meet each other for another year. Even perhaps living close together, even if their church buildings were within a few hundred yards of each other, they wouldn't meet each other again until they gathered in the tent under the banner.

5:21 All one in Christ Jesus. So in a sense, it was slightly meaningless. It was a beautiful idea, probably theoretically true in a vague, mystical sort of way. And occasionally for a day or two, they experienced their unity.

5:42 But it wasn't really relevant to real life. It didn't make any practical difference to the way they live. And as we look around us today, we cannot help being impressed by the fragmented and disunited state of the professing Church of Christ. We have the three great segments of the professing church.

6:08 We have the three great segments of the professing church. We have the three great segments of the professing church. We have the three great segments of the professing church. Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

6:14 And that mighty segment that we so often overlook of Eastern Orthodoxy. Those millions of believers stretching from Greece through Eastern Europe right into the heartland of Russia. And those are the three great groupings, if you like, of Christendom. And then Protestants are splintered and divided into many different groups.

6:40 And denominations. And even those groups are divided. In my own little province, if we think of Presbyterians, we think of Reformed Presbyterians. They're the best, of course.

6:54 And then there are Evangelical Presbyterians, and Irish Presbyterians, and Free Presbyterians, and Non-Subscribing Presbyterians. And if we were to cross the Atlantic, there would be Bibles, and Orthodox Presbyterians, and all sorts of different brands of Presbyterians. No doubt the same is true for Baptists. My church history professor used to tell us, I don't know whether he was speaking with his tongue in his cheek or not, he told us that there used to be in America one small Baptist denomination who were known as the Lying Baptists. He told us that in the mid-1800s a theoretical question was arranged for debate among some Baptist Christians in the Far West. If your home was attacked by Indians, and they were looking for your children whom you had hidden, would it be ethically proper to say that you had no children, or as a Christian would you have to admit that you had children, and show the marauders where your children are? And our professor told us that this debate,

8:17 purely theoretical, reached such a pitch of intensity that these Christians separated from one another over this issue, and one group pejoratively then referred to the other as the Lying Baptists, and they of course were the Non-Lying Baptists. Now whether that story is apocryphal, or not, I don't know, but it is in Biblical terms a true myth. There are so many groups of Christians. When my wife and I in the early 1970s were missionaries in the island of Cyprus, one of our colleagues went over to the city of Beirut to preach once a month.

9:01 At that stage Beirut was the missionary and religious capital of the Middle East. And there were Christians there who appreciated his ministry, and they asked if he would come over to Beirut and to start in Beirut a Reformed Presbyterian church. And in considering that request, we made some inquiries. And we found out, and I think I've got the figure correct, that there were already 93 Protestant denominations in the city of Beirut worshipping and witnessing.

9:37 And we felt that 93 was probably a wide enough range for any new Christian to consider, so we decided that we were not going to try to form a 94th. Division in the church. Division in the church. Even among those who are close together, even in the Reformed constituency, even in the Reformed Baptist constituency, there are groupings and rivalries and alliances and sets of meetings that one group of men go to but another group of men never go to, and vice versa. And people are labeled and categorized and pigeonholed. All one in Christ Jesus. At times it seems a mockery.

10:39 The prayer of our Lord seems further from fulfillment than when it was first offered. That they all may be one. That the world may believe that you sent me. And sometimes Christians, earnest Christians, look at this distressing state of affairs and they say, what we really need is to get back to the New Testament.

11:06 We need to lay aside all these wretched denominations and divisions and to go back to the early days of the church when there was a real profound unity. Where there were no Presbyterians or Baptists or Methodists. There were just Christians. And they were all brothers together.

11:24 And Paul could say truly, as he looked around, we are all one in Christ Jesus. Was that really the case in the days of the New Testament? Paul could write to the Corinthians, it has been declared to me that there are schisms among you. The Corinthian church, was divided by party spirit.

11:55 The churches in Galatia and Colossae had been infiltrated by heretics who were teaching false doctrine and damaging the churches. Paul could appeal to the Christians in Rome. Receive one who is weak in the faith but not to disputes over doubtful things. Romans 14.1 Verse 13 Let us not judge one another any more. Apparently there was a critical judgmental spirit in the Roman church and they were having bitter disputes over doubtful things. And each group was trying to collar a new convert to be part of their circle. He could say to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20.29

12:46 I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you. Also from among yourselves men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after themselves. Paul did not foresee a united future for his beloved Ephesian churches. What a happy letter the epistle to the Philippians is.

13:21 Yet in verses 15 and 16 of chapter 1, the apostle tells us that some preach Christ from envy and strife from selfish ambition not sincerely supposing to add affliction to my chains. Apparently there were Christians who were jealous of this great man. They envied his gifts. They resented his position of leadership.

13:54 And one of their motives in preaching the gospel was to damage him and to afflict him. That's not a very pleasant picture. The apostle was great enough to say insofar as they preach Christ may God bless them no matter what they say about me. And Paul throughout his ministry was sniped at by the Judaizers.

14:27 And as we try to read between the lines we see that the truth at which he arrived with the Jerusalem conservatives was an uneasy truth. It was a fragile one. And often came under threat. And in 1 Timothy 1.3 he said to the young pastor charge some that they teach no other doctrine. Apparently some were. And as the old man sat in the death cell awaiting the executioner's sword in words of an almost unbearable pathos he says in 2 Timothy 1.15 all those in Asia have turned away from me.

15:19 Turned away from their apostle and their pastor and their father in Christ. John could say of one group they went out from us but they were not of us. No, I don't think we see a rosy picture in the New Testament. I don't think we see a harmonious church.

15:42 I think we see a situation perhaps not so very different from our own. And yet Paul knowing this knowing this being very well aware painfully and personally aware of the divisions Paul could still say you are all one in Christ Jesus. What is he referring to? That's what we want to think about this evening.

The Doctrinal Ground of Unity: An Organism, Not a Mechanism

16:12 And it's essential that we begin from the correct starting point. Do we begin from sight or from faith? Do we begin from ecclesiastical politics or do we begin from the word of God? If we look around us we see discouraging disunity but the Lord gives a very different picture.

16:41 And that brings us to our theologian of the day. We're moving forward in time. We're moving on to the book of Mark in the book of Mark 1873 to 1957. And on page 449 of a systematic theology Berkhoff writes the church is not a mechanism in which the parts precede the whole but an organism in which the whole is prior to the parts.

17:19 The church is not a mechanism in which the parts precede the whole but an organism in which the whole precedes the parts. A mechanism you build it. You construct it. You take the different pieces and you bring them together.

17:42 You have an idea in your head you have a blueprint in your mind of where you want to go but the clock maker has all the pieces around him and he takes the pieces and we're not constructing a mechanism. We're not taking separate bits and building them together. The church is an organism. An organism like the embryo in the mother's womb.

18:08 Everything's there. It's all there. It's all united. It's all one.

18:16 It remains simply for it to develop and to grow and for the unity which is there at its inception at its conquest. The key to the unity of the church is union with Christ. All one. In Christ Jesus.

Dimensions of Our Oneness in Christ: Before Creation to Glory

18:39 There's the link. The key to the unity of the church is union with Christ. And I want simply to look with you firstly at the dimensions of our oneness in Christ and secondly at some of the implications of our oneness in Christ. Let us look briefly at seven aspects of the dimensions of our oneness in Christ.

19:08 How is it that we are all one in Christ Jesus? And we begin by saying that we are all one in Christ before creation. We are all one in Christ before this world was. We are all one in Christ in eternity.

19:31 In the covenant of redemption. When the Father chose a people in love. And when God the Son undertook to represent that people in his life and in his death. And when the Holy Spirit God the Holy Spirit undertook to apply to that people the redemption purchased by Christ.

20:00 And then we were one in Christ Jesus. In the everlasting merciful redemptive purpose of God the Father. We were one before we were. We were one before we were made.

20:20 We were one when as yet we did not exist. There is the dimension of our unity. We have been one since before God created the sun and the moon and the stars. One in Christ Jesus.

20:43 He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. Ephesians 1.4 In John chapter 17 no fewer than six times our Lord speaks of those whom you have given to me. We were given to Christ.

21:07 And we were given to Christ not as a conglomeration of individuals. Not as potential believers. There was no indefiniteness or uncertainty about it. We were given to Christ as a body, as a unity, the elect, the chosen.

21:26 Before the beginning of time in the council of the triune God we were all one in Christ Jesus. And secondly we were all one in Christ in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament. In Genesis 3.15 God said to the devil I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed he shall bruise your head. That seed is obviously Christ the Savior. But in Christ are included all his people. Right throughout the Old Testament we have the story of the seed of the woman and every Jewish mother as she held her baby son at her breast cherished the hope is this the one?

22:19 Eve was convinced that she had born the Savior. And I am warning my own people to beware of the soul destroying error of presumptive regeneration. I point to the birth of the first child. There was a mother who was absolutely sure about the destiny of her son. And she cried out in triumph I have gotten a man from the Lord. She named him Cain but Cain was a murderer. The grace of God must work in our children. Then when Seth came was he the appointed one?

23:18 And on and on it went throughout the Old Testament. One people. God said to Abraham in you all families of the earth will be blessed. Paul in Romans 4 tells us that here is the father of all those who believe.

23:36 He is the father of us all. Throughout the Old Testament there is one people of God and they are waiting for the baby to be born. We haven't time to go into it but abortion. Abortion has very very deep satanic roots.

23:57 Abortion is the devil trying to kill the Messiah. Pharaoh of Egypt. Was it a coincidence that Pharaoh sought to exterminate the Israelites as he did? How?

24:13 Kill the boy child. When they got to Canaan was it a coincidence that those heathen people sacrificed their children in the fire? No it wasn't. Satan was behind it. And did King Herod just pick his policy out of the air? No. He was animated by the devil at the last moment trying to kill the seed. Oneness.

24:44 That's what the Bible says throughout the Old Testament. Then again we are one in Christ. All one in Christ at Calvary. Here is the pivotal event in the history of the world where the Son made atonement for sin. For whom did Christ die? He died for the elect of course. But how did he regard the elect? Well he regarded them individually. That is a most precious Biblical truth which we need to hold to and never lose. The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Dear friend see your Savior dying for you as if you were the only sinner he came to save. See the particularity of it. The personalness

25:49 of it. The individuality of it. He gave himself for you. But while that is true it is primarily true that Christ gave himself first and foremost for his people.

26:07 He shall save his people from their sins. I lay down my life for the sheep. Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. He died for his people.

26:24 And as you look at Calvary you see the people of God. Here is unity indeed. In his infinite self offering Christ held in his mind and in his heart the whole united body of all who should believe in him till the world lasts. And he died for them all.

26:50 And he died for every one of them. And he died for them together. One death one death for all. And we are all in that death. All is chosen or represented in that death. Christian unity formed in the purpose of God is now sealed in the blood of the Lamb. And when we look at Calvary we are seeing that we are all one in Christ Jesus. And then we are all one in Christ fourthly in our salvation.

27:28 I mean by that the experience of salvation. The process of salvation. There is something of course inescapably individual about the experience of salvation. We have to believe for ourselves.

27:46 No one else can do it for us. You and I have to lay hold of Christ. Any of you here who haven't yet believed you must do it. Your parents can't do it for you. Your grandparents your friends, your pastor, your elders no one else can do it for you. You must do it. If you don't believe in Jesus you'll be lost. You have to do it for yourself.

28:08 And we come to Christ in many ways. In some the Holy Spirit of God seems almost to be working from their mother's womb. And there are some of us here I'm not one of them but there are some here I know who cannot remember when they did not love and trust the Savior and know that he was theirs. What a beautiful thing it is when that happens.

28:43 How we long for it for our children. And then many of us perhaps had the experience in our teenage years after perhaps our growing pains and our rebellion we came to Christ. And then some came later on in the middle years. Some time ago I had the joy of baptizing a man of 80.

29:07 80 years of age. He came to Christ. And that day that I baptized him our church was a veil of weeping. Weeping with joy at the sinner who repented. And some come easily and some come after in agony. And some wrestle. And with some it's just like a flower unfolding. But friends underneath these external differences there is a profound underlying unity.

29:41 We are all regenerated. We are all born again by the Spirit of God. We all repent. We all trust the same Savior.

29:54 We all receive the same forgiveness. We are all clothed in the same righteousness. We are all indwelt by the same Spirit. Isn't that what Paul is driving at in Ephesians 4? When he's urging the Ephesians to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit. You were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord.

30:23 One faith. One baptism. One God and Father of all. Who is above all and through all and in you all. We are all one.

30:33 We all come in the same way by the same means to the same Savior with the same result and the same everlasting life. We are all one in Christ Jesus. No matter how the differences may appear. And then again we are all one in Christ in our duties and in the promises of Scripture.

30:59 Scripture has many duties which it sets before the believers. Some of them are specific duties. Duties for husbands. Duties for children. Duties for preachers. Duties for elders. But most of the commands of Scripture are not so specific and they are addressed to us all. We have to mortify sin. We have to resist the lusts of the flesh. We have to seek after godliness. We have to obey the commandments. There are no exceptions.

31:33 There are no exclusions. There are no special cases. No matter who we are. No matter our circumstances. No matter our personalities. No matter our church background. No matter what century we live in. No matter what culture we come from.

31:49 All the commands of Scripture apply to all Christians. And the promises of Scripture apply to us all. The promise of forgiveness. The promise of guidance. The promise of deliverance. God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted beyond what you're able. That's given to all Christians. To every Christian who has ever lived or who ever will live without exception or exclusion.

32:18 Every single Christian shares that promise. The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. That is given to every single believer who has ever lived. We all have the same duties.

32:39 We are all promised the same blessing. The very inspiration of the Bible, the production of the Bible, bears witness to our unity. I suppose some religious businessmen today would say that God missed a remarkable publishing opportunity when he gave the church only one Bible. Think of how much more skillfully it could be marketed.

33:15 Think of the Bibles we have today. We've children's Bibles and teenagers' Bibles and singles' Bibles and married people's Bibles and old people's Bibles and bereaved people's Bibles. I understand they're going to produce a Bible for left-handed, red-headed men with a wooden leg. I've made that one up, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised.

33:43 All sorts of Bibles. And no, that Bible's no good. You need this Bible and you need this Bible. And God produces one book for all time, for every century, for every continent, for every culture, for every language, for every background, for every personality type.

34:05 One size fits all. The Bible. We're all one. We don't need special Bibles.

34:14 They may have some limited value, I'm doubtful of it, but we're given by God to all his people in every age one book. So if we read Augustine's Bible, Luther's Bible, if the world lasts another 10,000 years, whatever technological developments take place, however civilization is transformed, there'll still be this Bible. And that's all we need. We're all one.

34:46 We're all one in our duties and promises. And then again, we're all one in Christian living. We can only live the Christian life in community. We belong together. Wesley said there is no such thing as a solitary Christian. We're fellow workers. We're fellow partners. Fellow servants. Fellow soldiers.

35:08 Fellow prisoners. In Galatians 5, Paul identifies nine components of the fruit of the Spirit. Eight of the nine demand community. Eight of the nine, and possibly all of the nine, cannot be practiced in isolation.

35:32 The one possible exception is joy. Perhaps we can be joyful on our own. What are the others? Love. Peace. Long suffering. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness.

35:45 Gentleness. Self-control. You cannot be a Christian on your own, in the sense that you cannot live a full, rounded, maturing Christian life. There are the one-anothers of Scripture. We have to love one another, and pray for one another, and confess our faults to one another, and bear one another's burdens, and esteem one another in honor above ourselves, and so on and so forth. We're one. We heard today about the curse of individualism. We're called to worship together.

36:21 We're called to pray together. We're called to be edified together. And the assumption always is the people of God. In England in the 19th century, they had a way of describing non-evangelicals and evangelicals.

36:38 And the non-evangelicals were called high church. And the evangelicals, and even to today in the British Isles, are called low church. We're low church people. That is utterly, utterly wrong. We are high church. We have the highest possible view of the dignity, and authority of the church, and the officers of the church, and the sacraments of the church, and the discipline of the church, and the unity and the honor of the church. We're not these evangelicals who can switch churches as easy as they switch a jacket. When people join our church from another church, I say to them, if it's not an agony to you to come here, we don't want you. I don't want

37:27 people who can jump from one church to another. Because that tells me something about their view of the church. And if they jump out of that church into ours, they'll jump out of our church into another one in a couple of years. And they'll waste our time.

37:42 We belong together. Then lastly, and obviously, we are all one in Christ in glory. We've come full circle from eternity to eternity, from heaven to heaven, chosen in love before creation, gathered in love, at the consummation. How wonderfully that's expressed in Scripture.

38:12 We're told of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 11, that he shall see the travail of a soul, and he shall be satisfied. John 6 37, all that the Father gives me will come to me. This is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all he has given me, I should lose nothing. All one.

38:43 In Christ Jesus. When we were children, we used to listen to Radio Luxembourg, which could get programs from the United States. This was the early 50's. And my father used to listen to a program, I've forgotten the precise title of it, I think it was something like Dr. Fuller's Old Fashioned Revival Hour. And to a group of sound singing covenanters, this was exotic material indeed. And they used to sing this chorus, I don't know what you would call it, to a guitar and a five string banjo, will the circle be unbroken? Many of you will know it, I'd never heard it before.

39:25 And in that sense, from the perspective of Christ, the circle will be unbroken. All of his people will be gathered in. Not one missing. He shall be satisfied. This is our unity in Christ. It is not vague. It is not ethereal. It is not otherworldly.

39:46 It is not some insubstantial dream. It is not a pious hope. It is not just a little cliche that we throw out but we know isn't true. It is a monumental solid rock like reality.

40:03 Built in eternity. Sustained through time and going into eternity. We are all one in Christ Jesus. That is a glorious fact.

40:19 We are all one. We are hanging from his belt. We are part of his body. These are the dimensions of our unity.

Implication 1: The Limitation of Oneness 'In Christ'

40:29 And that brings us secondly then to think of the implications of our oneness in Christ. If time permits, I would like to note six implications. Firstly, all one in Christ, the limitation. The limitation. And the limitation is found in the words in Christ. There is the boundary. There is the dividing line. There is the condition. We are all one. But we are only all one if we are in Christ and as we are in Christ. And if we are not in Christ we are not all one. And we are not all one with those who are not in Christ. There is the condition.

41:25 There is the narrowness of it all. He is the ground of our oneness. He is the atmosphere. He is the reality of our oneness.

41:37 He is the vine and we are the branches. He is the head and we are the members. His life runs in our veins. His will directs us. All one in Christ. The limitation. And those who are not in Christ are not part of this unity because as we have seen they are in Adam. They may claim to be part of the church.

42:05 But they don't meet the basic condition. You can't be part of the body if you are not joined to the head. And so at a stroke we can cancel out much of the 20th century ecumenical movement. The movement towards so called church unity.

42:30 For they never face the basic issue. What does it mean to be in Christ who are in Christ? They talked about Christian unity and pursuing Christian unity. And we have all to be one in Christ.

42:48 But they fudged the basic question. How are you in Christ? Who is in Christ and who is not in Christ? And they assumed that all who said they were in Christ were in Christ.

43:03 That all who bore some sort of Christian identity were in Christ. That all who had some religious profession of a connection with a Christian faith were in Christ. And they told us that the unity for which Christ prayed was the bringing of all these people together into one body. What John Murray calls a monstrous travesty.

43:32 All one in Christ. Those of us who remember the 1960s remember the World Council of Churches. That was the great issue of the day. Their doings were reported on press and television.

43:54 They had their secretariat and their bureaucracy and their great figures and denominations argued and divided. One great denomination in my own land almost split over whether they should join or not join the World Council of Churches. Who hears about the World Council of Churches now? It may exist but it has sunk into deserved oblivion.

44:17 There was a tower of Babel. There was no unity. There was no attempt at unity. The implications of our oneness in Christ.

44:31 This can be hard. This can be costly. Many of our fellow Christians belong to what we might call mixed denominations. In which there are a mixture of those who hold the gospel and those who do not believe the gospel.

44:54 And there are many great and good men in those denominations to whose writings many of us here are deeply indebted. But I can't see it. I can't see it. Galatians 1, 8 and 9 If any man preach any other gospel than that we have preached to you let him be anathema.

45:30 And it's not letting him be anathema to sit down with them in a presbytery or a synod or recognize them as a fellow minister. No matter how much you contend or protest it means hard choices at the local level. They're having some sort of religious event in your community. And your pastor is invited to sit on the platform and take part in the town.

46:00 That would be a good opportunity. Present your church in a good light to the community. And yet on that platform are going to be a couple of liberals who don't believe the word of God. And don't believe in the atoning death.

46:16 Is your pastor to sit beside them as a brother? And when he doesn't he'll be branded as a nasty minded little bigot. And your church will be pushed outside the pale of polite ecclesiastical society. But have we any choice?

46:37 All one in Christ Jesus. And if someone in the judgment of the widest charity is manifestly not in Christ we're not one with them. We can't tell lies. We cannot betray our savior. Here is the limitation. All one in Christ. The limitation. But then we have to balance that.

Implication 2: The Comprehensiveness of Oneness 'In Christ'

47:08 So secondly we have all one in Christ the comprehensiveness. We are all one only in Christ. But we are all one always in Christ. With everyone who is in Christ. With everyone who is in Christ. Not just with those who agree with us 98%. Not just those who are part of our circle. Not just with those who understand things as we understand them.

47:49 Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1-2 To all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. With all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. And here is the breadth of Christian unity. The generosity of Christ. It's width and it's extensiveness. Christian unity transcends all man made boundaries of race and nationality and culture. And Christian unity overleaps our divisions. Our deep painful divisions.

48:35 Simon the zealot and Matthew the tax collector. Consider that we sit down together as disciples of Christ. As politically opposed to each other as it was possible for two human beings to be. One worked for the Romans. The other killed them. And they were all one in Christ Jesus. Paul could say to the Colossians in chapter 3 verse 10 You have put on the new man where there is neither Greek nor Jew uncircumcised or uncircumcised barbarian Scythian slave nor free but Christ is all and in all old and young educated and uneducated black and white rich and poor knowledgeable and ignorant all

49:37 one in Christ Jesus from widely varying backgrounds all one in Christ Jesus. People whose personalities are radically different. People whose temperaments are different. It can't be contained within denominational boundaries.

49:57 We have differences with our brother Christians they're often strong differences significant differences but if that person if that man or woman is in Christ they're a brother they're a sister. Don't write off the existence of true believers in unlikely settings. Don't develop an Elijah mentality. We even we only are left God says I have seven thousand people you never even heard of and they haven't bowed the knee to be and there are far more Christians in your community and in mine than we know. Far more Christians. Christians all over the place and we've never met them and there are Christians in churches which aren't churches. My wife and I know many Roman Catholics.

51:09 We abominate that apostate system. An engine of Satan. And yet there are men and women and their thinking is confused. Their theology is all over the place but when you talk to them it would be a bold person indeed who would say that that person doesn't have a saving faith in Christ. The limitation and the comprehensiveness. Now which one of these do you need to apply to yourself? All of us temperamentally lean to one extreme or the other. Probably most of us are pretty strong on the limitation and sadly weak on the comprehensiveness.

51:59 Perhaps you're the sort of person you're a little bit narrow, a little bit rigid, a little bit judgmental. A little bit timid about being criticized. You keep yourself very much to yourself religiously. You suspect people who are a bit flaky.

52:17 And you need to realize the breadth and the width of God's mercy and God's work in the world that he has his people all over the place. All over the place. Your brothers and sisters. And some of us on the other hand are maybe a bit fuzzy about our theology.

52:36 And we want to be nice guys. And we're too ready to admit as Christians people who really aren't Christians. And we need to take the opposite approach and we need to firm up and we need to take our courage in our hands and ask some penetrating questions. But there's such a good balance here.

52:56 And I can't apply the medicine to you. You must know what medicine you need for your own soul. Do you need a more generous view? Or do you need a more honest and more realistic view?

Implication 3: The Diversity Within Oneness

53:10 And that brings us thirdly to all one in Christ. The diversity. The diversity. There is unity.

53:21 But unity is not uniformity. Unity is not sameness. Unity is not monotony. In the true church of Christ there is a rich radical variety.

53:36 In the church of Christ you will expect to find variety. Don't let the word homogeneous pass your lips or enter your minds. We do not want homogeneous churches. They are an abomination. They are social clubs. They are not churches of Christ. They are not evidencing the work of the Holy Spirit. We do not want groups of people who are all the same.

54:10 That's a cult. That's not a church. We want God's variety in the church. All sorts of people. All sorts of temperaments. All sorts of ages and background and gifts and character and likes and dislikes. So that the world can look at our church and say what is keeping those people together? Christ's keeping them together. And only Christ's keeping them together. That's the beauty of the church. Paul says, you see, that far from threatening unity our diversity enhances it and strengthens it. You remember his imagery of the body in 1 Corinthians 12. The body is

54:59 not one member, but many if the body were all an eye if the body were all an ear where would the body be? We need the foot and the hand and the ear and the eye. And he says if they were all one member where would the body be? How often we hear pastors long for a homogeneous church. One hundred and fifty Ted Donnellys. What a congregation that would be. Never a cross word. Never a disagreement.

55:45 All thinking exactly the same way. All agreeing perfectly all the time. No pastoral problems. You're not sure are you?

55:58 Sometimes we resent the awkward person. The person who makes waves. The person who asks questions. The person who stirs things up. The person who's so slow theologically. The person who keeps falling. Or else the person who strips outstrips everyone else. Pastor Hughes was telling me that he recommended to a young man in his congregation that Robert Raymond's systematic theology was worth reading one Lord's day.

56:44 The young fellow came back the next Lord's day with the whole thing read. We've all sorts of but isn't that the beauty of it? If you look at your own congregation and there are all sorts of people there. And can't we learn from each other?

57:01 Can't we listen to each other? That is the beauty. Of the variety. I say that's the difference between a church and a cult.

57:13 The cultists come to the door. They all know the same bible verses. They all have the same argument. They all have the same apologetics.

57:21 They've all been trained the same way. Or you see people who are dominated by some powerful leader. And they all sound like the leader. And they all pray like the leader.

57:34 And they all think like the leader. And they all try to follow the leader to some degree. That's not biblical. All one in Christ.

57:47 The diversity. Look at the disciples. Look at the churches. And it's the diversity that highlights the unity and brings glory to God.

Implication 4: The God-Centeredness of Oneness

58:02 Fourthly. All one in Christ. The God centeredness. The God centeredness.

58:10 I simply cannot get excited about ecclesiastical diplomacy. I cannot enthuse about schemes and plans and discussions and councils and conferences and organizations and structures which are going to be set up to create and promote deeper unity. It may be a weakness in me. I don't believe in them.

58:46 I don't believe in them. I think they're unnatural. All my life I have steered clear of inter-church councils and initiatives and discussions and negotiations. And one of the things that I object to about them is that they're too self-important.

59:04 And they're too serious. And they give us the impression that most of the work towards Christian unity still remains to be done. And it has to be done by us. That God has given us a pile of fragments and God has said put them together.

59:26 And we have already seen that God has created a new race in Jesus Christ and has done everything necessary to take them out of Adam and to put them into Christ. And we need to get our own efforts in perspective. I'll come back to this later. There's too much power-broking in the church.

59:57 There's too much politics in the wrong sense. We need to put our hands on the levers. We want to build things that God isn't building. We want to bring in and control some and exclude others.

60:16 We want to be managers and administrators. We want to tidy up God's work. God's work isn't tidy. To our side it's not predictable.

60:30 This unity is what God is doing. It's what God is doing. It is God who has brought us together. God's purpose, Paul says, is to gather together in one all things in Christ which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him.

60:51 That's what God is going to do. So when somebody comes up to me with their eyes shining and says, do you hear the new association that we're starting to get together? It seems a piffling thing to me. This section of the address is prejudice.

Implication 5: The Challenge of Visible Oneness

61:21 Please disagree. I think we've got to see unity. That's what God is doing in Christ. But then, fifthly, I have to balance that and to speak not only of the God-centeredness of our unity, but the challenge of being all one in Christ. Let me quote Professor John Murray. While spurious unity is to be condemned, the lack of unity among churches which profess the faith in its purity is a patent violation of the unity of the body of Christ. We cannot escape from the implications of our Lord's prayer by resorting to the notion of the invisible church. The body of Christ is not an invisible entity.

62:14 And the prayer of Jesus was directed to the end that the world might believe. What needs to be indicted with vehemence is the complacency so widespread and the failure to be aware that this is an evil, dishonoring to Christ and prejudicial to our evangelistic outreach to the world. I'm not contradicting myself. But Murray is saying here that our patent external disunity is a scandal and a reproach.

62:51 And we need to feel the burden of that. We need to grieve over our divisions. We need to heal the breaches as far as possible. We need first and foremost to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

63:12 And we need to start with our own local churches. And everyone here in this building needs to promise before you leave this room this evening I will be a peacemaker in my church. I will be a peacemaker in my church. I'll take the blows.

63:40 I'll put up with the injustices. I'll swallow the disappointments. But I'll keep the peace. And for me to cause a split in the church would have to be a matter of such momentous significance that the very truth of the gospel is at stake.

64:02 We've got to learn to be compromisers where compromise is required of us. We were trained to say no compromise. And there are many things in which there can be no compromise but a church can't keep together if there's no compromise. If there's no give and take.

64:24 If there's no forbearing one another in the spirit of unity. When there's division among Christians the devils are cheering. You can hear them cheering. We've got to be giving to the devils in hell to rejoice by our petty jealousies by our heaping grudges by our malicious gossip by the way in which we try to do our brethren down and get advantage over them.

65:01 It's the work of hell. The work of hell. And it's being carried on by Christian ministers and Christian elders and Christian people. By this shall all men know that you're my disciples if you love one another.

65:21 That's the challenge. That's the challenge of oneness in Christ. We need to pray. We need to long.

Implication 6: The Means to Manifest Oneness – Closeness to Christ

65:37 We need to work for greater visible oneness. And that brings me lastly and most importantly to our sixth implication all one in Christ the means. How are we to manifest this unity? Simply.

66:01 Not easily but simply. Who makes us one? Why are we one? Because we're in Christ.

66:17 How can we come closer together? Because we come closer to Christ. The old illustration heard it a dozen times but it's a good illustration. We are the spokes.

66:34 He is the hub of the wheel. How do the spokes get closer together? By getting closer to the hub. It gets closer to the other spokes.

66:43 And they all meet in the hub. You'll never get unity by seeking it. You'll not get unity by working for it. You'll get unity by seeking.

67:03 That isn't pious verbiage. That isn't airy fairy talk. That isn't just running away from our responsibilities. Unity comes through Christ-likeness and through a greater measure of the Spirit.

67:22 We read in Acts 4.31 They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God with boldness. Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul. Allow me to illustrate personally.

67:47 What am I doing here? Many of you may have asked that question. A Reformed Presbyterian addressing a gathering of Reformed Baptists. What am I doing here?

68:03 How did this process come to pass? Did Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Mebane enter into ecclesiastical negotiations with the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland? Did we exchange our confessions of faith? Did we sit down and engage in lengthy, complex negotiations about what we all believed?

68:27 Oh dear me. I suddenly feel I need to go and lie down. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine the embarrassing formal minuet that we'd have had to dance around each other so that you wouldn't stand on my paedo-baptist toes and I wouldn't stick a Presbyterian elbow into your ribs and it would be so forced and so embarrassing and so unnatural and so awkward.

69:10 Fact. We don't agree on some matters which are not without significance. I haven't changed my mind. Fact. You haven't changed your mind.

69:25 Fact. My wife and I love you with all our hearts. I believe that you love us. Those are all facts.

69:50 God is doing. And it's the most solid, wonderful, loyal, enriching, fulfilling experience for which Lorna and I constantly thank God on our knees. And it wasn't organized and it wasn't planned and it wasn't negotiated and it wasn't worked for. And if you love us, it's because we have brought something of Christ to you.

70:30 And we love you because we have seen and heard Christ in you. You see, the ecclesiastical diplomats laugh at that. That sounds just like as I say, pious verbiage. Let's get down to the real business of unity.

70:45 This is the real business of unity. This is the real business of unity. Beautiful, close, intimate, prayerful, constructive, courageous, loving unity. And God brings it about. God brings it about. We don't have to work at it. We just have to love Christ and seek Christ. I hope none of you think this is escapism.

71:19 I am convinced this is the way to church unity. This is the way to manifest our oneness in Christ is to seek Him with all our hearts and to help each other to seek Him. And go out into your community, to your fellow Christians, whoever they are, and show Christ to them. And act towards them as Christ would act.

71:44 And see Christ in them. Time is gone, but let me give one true illustration. A friend of mine some years ago was engaged in a very acrimonious debate in a church synod. And he was up against one particularly unpleasant brother.

72:05 And they were arguing fiercely over a matter of church policy. And my friend told me that at that moment he hated that man. He hated his smug, self-righteous face. He hated the way he was distorting his arguments.

72:21 He hated his unfair approach. He hated the underhand way he was trying to get allies against him. He hated him. And in the middle of the debate, news came that that man's son had been killed in a car accident.

72:39 And my friend said that in a millisecond, all the hatred had gone. And all he wanted was to run over and throw his arms around that man and say, my dear brother, I'll do anything for you I can. And he said, why could I not see him like that before? That's the reality. We're going to be in heaven together. We're going to be perfect together. With all our fellow Christians. We've got to start seeing them now the way we'll see them then.

73:16 We've got to leave aside all this nonsense. The suspicion and the pride and all that garbage. We've got to come to Christ and love Christ and see Christ in them. All one in Christ Jesus.

73:39 My dear friends, let us begin by thanking God for these days together. Aren't we all one in Christ Jesus? Isn't it refreshing to be here? You're surrounded by people who would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. You could turn to the person beside you tonight and say, brother, sister, I have a need. They'd put their arm around your shoulder and they'd pray for you. No backstabbing. No suspicion. No gossip. No going away afterwards and saying, oh dear dear. No. You can sense the Spirit, can't you?

74:20 You can sense the Spirit among us. We who preach, when we stand up, we're not looking at critics. We're looking at friends who are saying, come on. Come on, Ted. Come on, Steve. Come on, Jim. May God help them. Loving one another.

74:44 I heard this afternoon that the staff on this campus have commented on our young people. The way they hold doors open for them. The way they say thank you. How different they are.

75:01 From many groups who come. This is unity in Christ. This is heaven on earth. This is what we have to preserve.

75:10 Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. For there the Lord commands the blessing. Even life forevermore. Amen.

75:34 Let us pray. Lord God, all over the world are lonely people tonight. They haven't a friend on earth. At work there's jealousy and backstabbing and competition.

75:53 They go into their homes and close the door. And no one cares whether they live or die. And we are here. And we are surrounded by our brothers and sisters.

76:11 Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. All one in Christ Jesus. O Lord our God, fill our minds and hearts with Christ. That he may drown all our differences. That he may bind us ever closer together. Lord give us a breadth of love and of vision. Father, we do not need to be frightened. We do not need to be timid. We do not need to be suspicious. Help us to go out into the world not naively or foolishly, but with open generous hearts. And to love all who love our Savior. And to seek their well-being and their good. To be willing to

77:06 learn from them. Father, we pray that you will preserve our unity. Our visible unity. We pray that you will remove all that would divide and estrange brother from brother. Lord, if any need to have dealings with someone else before this day ends, help them by your grace to do so. O Father in heaven, we thank you for our oneness in Christ. Help us then to live in that oneness and to manifest it in him. For we pray in his name and by his will and for his glory.

77:49 Amen.