Now we're not going to have time to look at that today, but we will come back to it - perhaps, God willing, next week. Live out what God has already done.’ That gospel logic is absolutely essential to understanding the Apostle Paul.īy the way, that gospel logic also proves the doctrine of the invisible church. He's saying ‘God has already given you unity. He's not even saying that one day in the future, in heaven, we’ll have unity, so you strive to have that kind of unity that we're going to have in heaven one day here. Now live that out.’ He's not saying that if you’ll do as good as you can, God will give you unity. Now live that way.’ He's saying, ‘God has already granted you, as you have rested and trusted in Jesus Christ, an indissoluble unity with Him and with one another as we rest and trust in Jesus Christ. He's not saying, ‘You, church, need to realize this latent potential for unity within you.’ He is saying, ‘God has already made you one. That is not what Paul is saying here when he says that he wants you to diligently pursue the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
That's part of the fallacy of this kind of New Age “think and visualize and realize the latent potential in you.” I could visualize all day long and I'd never be able to do that. He's 7 feet tall, about 320 pounds, and he plays for the Miami Heat. But, no! I can visualize all day long and I could not dunk…by the way, for those of you who don't know, Shaquille O’Neal is a very large person. Now, you could put me out on a National Basketball Association court, and I could visualize all day long that I was going to dunk on Shaquille O'Neal, and I would not be able to do it! There may have been a time long, long ago, when I was much, much lighter and my legs were much, much stronger, when I could have barely gotten over the rim. He was an extraordinarily gifted athlete. Well, my friends, the reason he was able to do that is because he already had the capacity to do extraordinary things. And he would, he said, visualize ahead of time what he was going to accomplish and then he would accomplish it on the field. Have you ever heard a sports guru explaining to athletes how they need to ‘visualize what they’re going to do ahead of time’? Many of you may remember the famous punt returner and running back and wide receiver from the University of Notre Dame named Raghib Ismail - “The Rocket” they called him. He tells us a truth about God, a truth about God's grace, a truth about God's people, and then he moves to the practical implications of that truth in our lives.īut another way perhaps to understand the radical nature of Paul's gospel logic is to contrast it to the kinds of New Age-y spirituality that one encounters in both work motivational teaching and in sports motivational teaching. We've said that Paul starts with doctrine and he moves to practice, or to living. So we do not make ourselves something through our actions, but our actions flow out of what God has done in us and for us by grace. He tells us in the indicative what we are, what God has done and then he gives us the imperative, he gives us the command, the directions, for what we're to do, so that what God has done and what God has made us to be precedes our response to God in obedience and in action. We've said that Paul speaks of the indicative first, and then the imperative. We've said this several different ways already. It's very important that we understand this. You must be what God has made you to be in Jesus Christ. In other words, Paul's gospel logic is that to live the Christian life, you must be who you already are. And this is important for the Apostle Paul, because in the three chapters that we're now studying, beginning in the first verse of chapter four, he is calling on us to live out in our lives the reality that God has given to us in Jesus Christ, which he's already described in chapters one to three. Let me remind you again that in this book the Apostle Paul has spent three chapters telling us what we are in Jesus Christ. I'm going to read verses 4-6 today, but we're only going to get through verse 4. If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Ephesians, chapter four. “One Body, Spirit, Hope, Lord, Faith, Baptism, God and Father”Īmen.
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