The Unity of the Body, Part 4
Ephesians 3:1-4
Ephesians Chapter 3 is the area of our study this morning. We are considering this great Epistle, the first half of which deals with the theology of the church, the theology of the body of Christ, the church as one body in Christ. And we're learning and relearning and refreshing ourselves and remembering what we've learned in the past truths concerning the unity of the church.
All of this is under the figure of a mystery. A sacred secret and so we could entitle Chapter 3, verses 1-13 the revealing of the mystery. Everybody loves a secret. You're not any different than I am. We all love a secret, some real great juicy thing that nobody's ever known before, always temps us. And by the way, the whole New Testament is full of those things. In fact, the church age is called the mystery form of the kingdom. So that there are many mysteries in the church. Many things which God has revealed. Many sacred secrets never known in history until today and we know them. In fact, we are in part the mystery.
God has given us tremendous insight in the New Testament into divine truth that never was none even by the saintliest of the saints of the Old Testament age. Now remember what we told you in our first message as we began to study Ephesians. We told you at that time that the pattern of God's revelation is unique. In other words, God reveals thing very uniquely. For example, first of all, there are some things that God never reveals any time to anybody. These are the permanent sacred secrets. They fall into the classification of Deuteronomy 29:29 which says, "The secret things belong to the Lord."
In other words, there are some things that nobody has known, does know, or will know in this life. They are either too complex, too fearful, too private, or some other reason for which God has chosen to keep them secret. But secondly, there are some secrets which He has revealed only to special people in times past. The Old Testament says He reveals His secrets to the prophets and to His people Israel. There were those saints of the Old Testament age to whom God did reveal certain sacred secrets. Certain great divine realities, life changing, eternal things.
Thirdly, there are some sacred secrets which God never revealed to anybody in the past not even His very special people, not even the prophets, but has now revealed them to us in this church age. Those are the secrets the New Testament calls mysteries, mysteries. Mysteries are truths never before revealed, finally revealed in the New Testament. And literally, they fill the New Testament from one end of it to the other. There are just sacred secrets revealed that have never been known before about Christ, about the church, about the Spirit of God. Great divine truths that no one whoever lived has ever known. In fact, in 1 Peter 1 it says, "the prophets searched the things that they themselves wrote to try to uncover the secrets that were there." The things they couldn't understand and didn't know.
So a mystery is a secret of God hidden from the foundation of the world and finally revealed in the church age. Now one of those mysteries, and there are many of them, one of them is the mystery that the church would be made up of Jew and Gentile, bond and free, male and female, Greek and Barbarian, and that everybody all inclusive would be one in Jesus Christ. That was a mystery.
Now in the Old Testament the Jews understood that the Gentiles would be saved. They understood Gentile salvation. They understood that the Gentiles would participate in the kingdom. They understood that God had plans of grace toward them, but they never understood that Jew and Gentile would literally be one. That there would be no difference. That the middle wall of partition would be eliminated. That there would no distinction between the two. That they would be equal before God. They did not understand that. They understood that there was a Messiah coming, for example. They did not understand the mystery of their incarnation that God was in Christ. They didn't fully understand that. That's another mystery they didn't understand. They didn't understand that the Messiah would literally indwell the believer.
Christ in you the mystery. So there were many things. They knew the Messiah would come. They knew the Messiah would be specially anointed of God. They knew that God's salvation would incorporate Gentiles, but they didn't understand the fullness of that truth. And we are looking at Ephesians which deals primarily with the mystery of the body, Jew and Gentile, one in Christ. It's an important message. It's important for us to understand that Jews and Gentiles are one in Christ. It's important for us to understand that everybody who's a Christian is equal to everybody else who's a Christian.
The apostle Paul says in Galatians 3:28, "there is neither Jew nor Greek"... "there's neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek, Barbarian, bond, free, male, female, we're all one in Christ." The unity of the church, listen beloved, is one of the most cardinal messages of the entire New Testament. And how it must grieve the heart of God. How it must grieve the Son and grieve the Spirit that the church is fragmented and divisive and argumentative and fighting and warring and hassling. And how it must grieve him that we separate ourselves in our own minds into cliques and groups and segments that accept and reject certain others. How it must grieve the Spirit of God that we do not each man esteem others better than themselves. Each man looking on the things of others rather than the things of him self.
How it must grieve the Spirit of God that we do not have the mind of Christ who thought it not something to hold onto to be exalted, but gave it up to become a servant to those who were in need. You see it grieves God that we don't keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace as Paul says in the 4th Chapter of Ephesians and the 3rd verse. Because God has gone to a great, great endeavor to get the message of unity across and it's such a tough thing to make it a reality. Now the book of Ephesians is written to explain to us the body of Christ, how that we're all one in Jesus Christ and Paul belabors, belabors, belabors the point so that we might understand it.
Listen, we are all one and it doesn't just mean that we all belong to the same church. It doesn't mean that at all. You can't say well, I'm certainly not fighting anything in the church. I'm sitting around doing nothing to disturb things. I'm not hassling the unity. Well, as well as a negative, there's a positive element. You could not be destroying unity, but you could also not be contributing to it. And I would venture to say that most Christians are in that category. They're not really fighting the unity of the church, they're just not helping it. You say, well, what do I do? I'll carry a little poster. I'll wear a sandwich board that says I'm for unity. I'll sign the petition. What do you mean?
Well, here's the point. The way to stimulate unity in the church is by a faithful ministry of your gifts to the other members. The way to stimulate unity in the church is by getting involved so that what you are in the Spirit of God and what you are by the saving grace of Jesus Christ can make a contribution to what somebody else needs. You see the unity of the church is not kept by being silent about things you disagree with. The unity of the church is not kept by not making trouble, it's kept by making a concerted effort to build the body of Christ into oneness. And that's the thing that the apostle Paul is after.
So we must be committed to unity because Paul was so committed to it. The book of Ephesians is all about the body, Jew and Gentile, one in Jesus Christ. The first three chapters, the position of the believer in the body. Chapters 4-6, the practice of the believer in the body. Now as we've already begun to study the theology of it in the first three chapters, and by the way, this is theology. It really is, this is just good basic theology, study. I know it's not real entertaining. It's just diligent study that we're asking for, but you know, it's so necessary. I really believe that.
I heard a minister say the other day on the radio, he said there's a movement in Christianity that I'm really sick of. He said, it's this Bible study movement. This is right. Bible study, Bible study, Bible study, Bible study and they're never going to do anything. Now listen, I'd hate to see what you'd do if you did it without the scriptures. I'd hate to see what you'd do if you did it without the authority of the word of God. If you did it without the principles of the word of God. If you did it without the direction of the word of God and if you did it without a mind that was renewed because you had diligently studied the word of God.
The word of God is the basis. Now I really believe this. And you say well, you go to that MacArthur and he gives you all that theology stuff and it doesn't tell very interesting stories. Well, I've got some interesting stories, see me later, I'll tell them to you. Some of them are about you. But you know something, I believe that what'll happen now if you'll commit yourself to study the word of God with us, if you'll just absorb it from the pages of the word of God, if you'll commit yourself to that, do you know what will happen? The Spirit of God will use this information to renew your mind and all of a sudden you'll wake up one day and realize your life is different because you've been reprogrammed. You're like a computer, GIGO, garbage in, garbage out.
Whatever stuff is in the computer is what's coming out when you punch the buttons and it's true in your life. And you know what? As you just sit yourself down and you absorb the principles of theology, the great divine truths in the word of God, they begin to capture your thinking. And then when you start to sin, they act as a barrier. And then when you start to do something they act...that is right, they act as a motivator. See? It's these principles that God is putting into your thinking that are going to make a difference in your life. And if all we ever did was exhort you to do things in your life without giving you principles that reprogrammed your thinking, you'd be totally dependent on me to tell you what to do.
But if you learn the principles of the word of God, they program your mind so that you don't me, you can do it on your own. And that's the idea. The idea is to take Christians in the nest, feed them until they get big enough to fly all alone. So having justified the theology I'm going to give you this morning, I'm now going to proceed to do that. Now remember, we're studying the mystery of the body. In Chapter 1, we studied the origin of the body formed in eternity. In Chapter 1, also we studied the resources of the body all that we have in Christ.
In Chapter 2, we studied the entrance to the body, how that we are made alive in Jesus Christ and we enter His body. We studied also in Chapter 2 the unity of the body. How that we are one household and one family and one temple and one habitation of the Spirit and one new man, whether we're Jew or Gentile. We've been learning all about this incredible mystery that we're one in Jesus Christ. That all the barriers are down. All the things that separate us are down. Everything is down and we're all one.
Now Paul is about to pray in Chapter 3. And you know what his prayer's about? He's going to pray, oh God I pray that they'll understand this stuff. Such great truth, so life changing, so revolutionary in the world. If it could just have all these Christians in perfect harmony and they'd rub out all their old animosities and all their old hatreds and all their prejudices and all their separatistic feelings. Lord, it would be so great and so he wants to pray for them. He wants to bow his knee and really pray that they'll understand it. But before he gets into his prayer, he stops and says I don't think I better pray yet. I think maybe you don't quite understand it, so I'm going to give a few more verses so you'll understand it before I pray for you.
And that's what we have in Chapter 3. Paul launches into a prayer and just gets started and stops and go back to cover more of the truth of the mystery of the body. And in this chapter he gives us real details so that we ought to have a great understanding of it by the time we get down to verse 13. Now for our study we're going to look at verses 1-14 as a unit. And we're not going to get all through them today. In fact, we'll probably just cover down through verse 4. And the next few weeks we'll get the rest of it all put together. But I want you to look at this passage as Paul talks about the mystery of the church. And I want you to see the prisoner of the mystery, the planning of the mystery, the preaching of the mystery, the purposes of the mystery and the privileges of the mystery.
And we're going to see those five points in time to come. For this morning we're going to look just at the first, the prisoner of the mystery, because it's such a tremendous point as we look at the first four verses. Let's read verse 1 as a start. "For this cause," what cause Paul? The fact that verse 15 says you are one new man. That verse 16 says of Chapter 2, you are one body. That verse 17 says you who are far off are now made near. That verse 18 says we both have access by one Spirit. That verse 19 says we are fellow citizens and of the household of God. That 20 says we are built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles. That 21 says we are a building that grows to a holy temple of the Lord. That 22 says we are built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.
In other words, he says the fact that we are one building, built on one foundation, one household, one kingdom, one Spirit in us, one body, one new man. In other words, because of our unity, that's what he's saying. For the reason of our unity I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles. You say now wait a minute. What? What, what, what? Well, there's no verb there. There's no verb in the first verse. What Paul? For this cause you what?
Well, the sentence is continued in verse 14. Huh? Yes, the verb of verse 1 is in verse 14. "For this cause I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles," then he goes to verse 14. "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Listen, the implied verb is I pray for you. You say well, what's going on here? What's all the verses in the middle? Oh, that's a parenthesis. You say a parenthesis? Yes, he starts out to pray and he says, for you Gentiles, oh wait a minute. I can't pray yet. I want to bow my knee, verse 14, talking about prayer. I want to bow my knee and he picks up the same phrase for this cause to let you know that's where he connects up again. I want to pray for you, but I'm not sure I can pray for you yet, because I'm not sure you understand this.
You see his prayer's going to be Oh, God I pray those people will work this truth out. I pray that this truth will change their life. But he stops and says I'm not sure you understand the truth yet. So verses 2-13 is a parenthesis. And in that parenthesis, he goes back over this whole mystery again. You say but he just did it Chapter 2. That's right, and now he's going to do it again in Chapter 3. You say well, why does he repeat himself? Because that's the way you learn. Isaiah said you learn line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, here a little there a little. That's the way...that's the way I learned. I learned great truths that way. I learned the truth I will not talk in class, because I repeated it over and over again, 500 times on a page of paper. You may have learned the same truth the same way.
We learn by repetition, repetition, repetition. Somebody said to me recently, people say funny things to me. You'd think they wouldn't say this, but he said...this fellow says to me, "I don't listen to your tapes because you repeat yourself too much." You know, and a few weeks ago, a lady came to me in the front of the congregation and she says, I'm just visiting from the east," and she said, "I just thought that the Lord wanted me to tell you something." And I said, "well, that's wonderful. What did the Lord want you to tell me." And she said, "The Lord just really spoke to my heart that I should tell you that there's a great truth about preaching, stand up, speak up, and shut up." I said, "well, thank you very much." She said, "You know," she said, "you just go on and on and on about the same stuff." I said, "well, I appreciate very much what you said." And she said, "and then I'd like to give you one of my poems." My first reaction was to say good, I'll make a glider out of it, you know, but I didn't say that. I felt...I felt maybe the Lord was giving me an opportunity to give her a little of her own medicine. Anyway, I resisted that and graciously took the poem and even read it. It wasn't a very good poem.
Anyway, the apostle Paul wanted to pray for this people, but he didn't want to pray for them yet, because he was going to pray for an application and he wasn't sure they had enough information to make an application. Do you understand that? You see, it's a basic point in spiritual life. You can't apply what you don't comprehend. That's why Romans 12:2 says, "That your mind has to be renewed." You've got to know it and then live it and so he's going to go over it again so that we'll understand it and that's why I'm saying to you people that if you'll come and be exposed to the principles, then the activities will take care of themselves.
Now let's see what he says here in verse 1. He introduces for us the prisoner of the mystery. Going to talk about the mystery and he introduces himself as the key to it, the prisoner. "For this cause, I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles." Now he introduces himself. Now watch this, this is so beautiful. "I, Paul," you know, you can't be a Christian very long without falling in love with Paul right? I mean, let's face it, we're indebted to at least 13 books of the New Testament ascribed to him. He wrote at least 13 of the New Testament books. There are 27, he wrote 13 of them. And some people think he wrote the book of Hebrews, that would be 14. But here is a man who has made an incredible contribution and he is the one that God has used more than anybody else to delineate the mysteries. To open up the mysteries. He is the apostle of the mystery. Here he calls himself the prisoner of Jesus Christ. This is a fantastic thing because when Paul wrote Ephesians he was in prison.
Now it was a modified prison in a sense, because it was a prison in his own house, but he had rented a house in Rome, he was a prisoner there and he was chained to a Roman soldier. No less a prisoner than if he'd been a jail, except he was able to be in a different location. He was still chained to a Roman soldier. He was a prisoner. And I want you to notice something very interesting. The man was a prisoner, now this fabulous, he was a prisoner because of this very truth. He was a prisoner because of the very mystery he was preaching. You know what got him into prison? The fact that he preached the Jews and Gentiles were one in Christ. That's what made him a prisoner. He was literally the prisoner of this mystery. By the time he wrote Ephesians, do you know how long he had been a prisoner? Five years. Five years, two of it in Caesarea, then a transportation part where he was going to Rome, the rest of it in Rome. He's been a prisoner for about five years.
And you know what got him into all this mess? Let me tell you the story? Paul used to be named Saul. Saul was born in Tarsus. Saul was a very educated man. He studied under the Rabbi Gamaliel who was maybe the most eminent teacher of his time and he knew Judaism upside down, inside out, backwards, and forwards. He was one committed, devout, pro Jewish, Zionistic, nationalistic, legalist. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees and he was a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Israel. This guy was a zealous Jew. And he saw Christianity coming along and he thought Christianity was a threat to truth. That Jesus Christ was a phony. And he decided that it was going to be his calling to make sure he put an end to Christianity. He started to breathe threatening and slaughter against Christianity. He was there when Stephen was stoned and they laid their coats when they threw the rocks and crushed Stephen's body. They put the coats at the feet of a man named Saul of Tarsus.
He persecuted Christians. He slaughtered Christians. This was his life. So he was really pro the party line. Then all of a sudden an amazing thing happened. He got converted on the Damascus Road and he was put into the ministry. He got right up out of that situation, began to preach Jesus Christ as the Messiah. He began to preach that everybody could get saved, Jew and Gentile, whoever wanted to. He began to preach that the law had been set aside in Jesus Christ in terms of it's ceremonial areas. He began to preach that it was a new day. That Jew and Gentile were one and that circumcision didn't matter any more. That the only thing that matter was that your heart was right. And he began to preach that you didn't have to keep all the ceremonies of Moses anymore, but that you were free in Christ and you'd been liberated from the yoke of bondage and you should never get tied up with all that stuff again. It was all over. The era of the Judaistic ceremonies was gone.
And he began to preach that. And you know what happened? Lots of Jewish people got really upset, really upset. And then he started out as a pastor. And you know where he pastured in the beginning of his ministry? He pastored in a city called Antioch. And he was one of five wonderful men who pastored there and it was church made up of Jew and Gentile. And the people down in Jerusalem who were Christians even always kind of wondered about the guy. That he would be a pastor of a church that had Gentiles in it. Kind of like being in the south and being pastor of a church that had black people in it. They just didn't see that as the way it ought to be. And it was even worse then than we would think of in that situation today, because they didn't even believe that a Gentile could get saved unless he became a proselyte to Judaism, got circumcised and kept all the ceremonial law of Moses.
And here was the apostle Paul who was up there and he'd become a pastor of a church that was mixed of Jew and Gentile. And then you know what happened? The Lord called him out of the thing. The Holy Spirit came and said you and Barnabas, you come out and leave the work to the rest of the guys that are here. I want you to go to the Gentile world and I want you to found churches everywhere you go. And he went and founded churches all over the Gentile world. And in every city where he founded a church, they were made up of Jew and Gentile, one in Christ. And he kept preaching it and then he wrote a book about it, Ephesians. And he wrote another book about, Colossians, and another book about it, Galatians. And then another book about it 1 Corinthians, and in all those books he kept saying they're one, they're one, they're one. Then he wrote a book called Romans in that he says it doesn't matter if you're a Jew and it doesn't matter if you're a Gentile. Christ is the only way of salvation.
And you know what? He got a reputation. He got a reputation about being somebody who was undermining and somebody who was letting Gentiles in scott free without having them circumcised first. And so boy he was really sitting on a powder keg. Well, he realized that if he was going to have anything to say to the people in Jerusalem, he was going to have to do something to make them like him, turn the tide