ONE-ONE-ONE
"There is
one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your
calling." Eph. 4:5
<One> brings to mind the statement that "I" will build MY church in Matt. 16. The ONE LORD is the OBJECT of the sinner’s faith, the ONE
FAITH is centered upon the ONE LORD, and the ONE BAPTISM is of the Holy Spirit
when the sinner becomes the Lord's which gives a new relationship when baptized
in the Spirit. This verse with the next is a Trinitarian statement. Eph. 4:5 unveils the Church in the
process of its erection; "There is
one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your
calling." That is the whole fact of the Church. One Body, Christ the
Head and all believers the members; One Spirit, the common life of Christ
shared by the members. That is the universal Church.
From that the Apostle proceeded to show how men come into that
Body, and share that life, "One
Lord," the object of faith presented to the mind; "one faith," fastening upon the Lordship, and yielding
to it; "one baptism," that
of the Holy Spirit, whereby the believer is made a member of the Lord. Through
the illustration of Paul's phrasing we go back to Caesarea Philippi, and watch
the process. "One Lord," Jesus;
"one faith," the faith
which says, "Thou are the Messiah,
the Son of the living God ;" "one baptism " of the Spirit,
that whereby Peter was at Pentecost made a partaker
of the nature of his Lord, and a member of the body of Christ, a
living stone in the great building. Then the Apostle completed his statement, "One God and Father of us all, Who is
over all, and through all, and in all." Vs.6
This is the Master's method of building His Church, but it will
never be seen in all its perfect glory until the morning of the Second Advent,
when, gathered into perfect unity with Jesus, all the scaffolding removed, it
will be manifested in its splendid beauty and glory.
Because Jesus said, "I
will build," we are sure of the impregnability of the Church, that
nothing can destroy it, that all the forces of darkness can never finally
prevent the completion of His Church. No rite or ceremony of man can admit us
to that Church. Its strength lies in the fact that He builds it stone for
stone, fitting each into its proper place, taking only such as by living faith
participate in His own nature, and therefore are ready to be built into His
great Church.
We know from that declaration also that the Church will be
glorious in beauty. If we are inclined to say that we have not seen very much
of its beauty yet, we must remember that we have never seen its corporate
beauty. We have, all of us, thank God, had some glimpses of the glory of the
Church in its individual members. We have seen and known Christly souls who
have not only caught the Spirit of Christ, but who so share the life of Christ,
that His beauty, His compassion, and His tenderness are all manifested in
their lives. Think for one prophetic moment, in which we forecast the future,
of what it will be when that whole glorious company is gathered out and
completed, and He presents His Church to God, a glorious thing, not having
spot or wrinkle or any such thing (Jude
4). The beauty of His Church will consist, first of all, in the diversity
of individual lives, all types and temperaments gathered into one great
harmony; and the beauty will consist finally in the unity of the manifestation
of the glories of Christ. In the letter to the Ephesians the Apostle urges us "to keep the unity of the spirit in the
bond of peace," (Eph. 4:3) and,
as the argument proceeds, we see that we are to "grow up in all things into Him, Who is the Head, even
Christ." (Eph. 4:15) If we
take that passage as indicating the necessity and importance of individual
development, we must not imagine that to be its only meaning, or that it exhausts the passage; "Till we all attain
unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ." (Eph. 4:13) Individually
we can never come to that. It will take the whole Church to realize the measure
of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
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