ray choi

A follower of Jesus

universal church vs. local church

Eph 4: The Truthful Church (pt2 of 3)

By

To diligently keep the unity, the people of God have to live lives worthy of our salvation. In other words, they have to be true Christians who are humble and gentle and patient and accepting of one another in love. How is unity broken? By taking the completely opposite attitude and behavior that true believers possess. Unity is broken by a lack of humility, a lack of gentleness, impatience and an inability to accept and endure the sins and faults of others.

To hammer this point in, Paul goes on in v4–

Eph 4
4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope at your calling— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

Here, Paul is talking about the universal church, not the local church. The moment you are saved, you have spiritual brothers and sisters around the world who call upon the name of the same Lord and who have the same faith and who were all initiated into the community of faith by the same baptism. Before we talk about unity at the local church level, we have to let this sink in that God’s design is for the universal church to be one. When Jesus returns and establishes his new heaven and new earth, there won’t be Hill Community or Friendship Baptist, there will only be one church. In the end, the body of Christ will be one body and God will eventually assemble representatives from every tribe and language and people and nation and we will gather before one throne in unified worship.

There are churches in the world who live as if they are the only church. They live cut off from all other churches. They only care about what happens within the walls of their church. Other churches are treated like competitors. Why does this happen? They are not humble, nor gentle, nor patient, they lack acceptance. For Christians, we have our differences, but among people who have been called by God unto salvation, we have much more in common than not because we have the same Heavenly Father.

Even in my family, our children look different. Timothy is looks like me, Jeremiah looks like Jackie and Elijah is a genetic mutation. He’s a hybrid of both parents. Actually, I think he is also part beast, but that’s another matter. The point being our kids look different and they have different personalities and different interests. There is diversity in our family, yet there is still unity because we are one family.

The same goes for God’s family, the universal church. Various churches might be different in terms of style. Some are high church, very liturgical and the priests dress up in robes. Others are low church, casual, like us. Some churches serve the poor, some churches serve the community, some churches are very missional. There is great diversity, but at the same time, there is unity because we share the same Heavenly Father.

If you think about it, could it be any other way? God is infinite so can an infinite God be contained in a little box? Can one local church capture the fullness of who God is? Can one denomination represent fully who God is in all His wisdom, power and majesty? Of course not. One Christian that I know described God as a mountain and you have one Christian looking at him from the North and another from the South and another from the East and another from the West.

When someone gets a clear view of God and they forget that God is infinite, then they can become extremely confident that they have the full view of God. If such a person lacks humility, let’s say, the guy who saw God from the North side, then he will think the other 3 Christians are wrong. Humility is saying I only see God from one angle in 2D, but we need the panoramic view. God is 3D, he’s outside of space and time, so he’s probably fourth dimensional and so not even all 4 perspectives is sufficient to fully describe him. God is infinite. Even if we had an eternity to get to know him, still, we would never exhaust nor be able to fully describe an infinite being.

I am not a mathematician and I am a bit nervous using this example in front of Caltech students. But in mathematics, you can’t put a boundary around the number infinity and say, here is the number. No, whatever number you think of, infinity is greater. Even if you count forever and reach the number you think is infinity, there is still infinity + 1. Meaning, you can never reach the boundary and contain the number infinity.

God is the same way. This means we can learn from the Pentecostal brothers and sisters about the power of the Holy Spirit and prayer. We can learn from certain liturgical traditions about God’s holiness. We can learn from churches in the Reformed theological tradition about the high view of Scripture. People can learn from Baptists about missions and church planting. In God’s family, there is great unity in diversity and diversity in unity. We are one because we have one common source, but we are diverse because God is infinite in his character.

Through Daniel and Sora, whom we love and trust, we met Pastor Lee and his family. And within 5 minutes of getting to know them, I felt unity. Because we have the same Lord, the same faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. It’s the same way I feel toward pastors in our area like Pastor PJ of Crossview Church, a Filipino American, or Pastor Lucious, right here at FBC, an African American, and Pastor Jim who just got hired as the youth pastor of FBC and he’s Caucasian. We look different, we have vastly different backgrounds, yet we are one. We don’t have to spend a lot of time together and we didn’t have to know each other for many years to be one. As long as humility and gentleness and patience and acceptance are present and the Lord is at the center and the Lord is the common goal, unity can be instantaneous.

It starts with unity in the universal church. Now we can talk about unity at the local church level.

Eph 4
7 Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of the Messiah’s gift. 8 For it says: When He ascended on high, He took prisoners into captivity; He gave gifts to people. 9 But what does “He ascended” mean except that He descended to the lower parts of the earth? 10 The One who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. 11 And He personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers…

God doesn’t just say, go, be diligent and keep the unity and then leave us on our own to figure it out. No, to help us, Jesus gives gifts to His church. To describe what is happening in the spiritual landscape, Paul uses the metaphor from the military. In the Old Testament as well as in Paul’s day, a military general would conquer another army and he would steal all of their possessions and essentially the losing side would become prisoners of war. And so this conquering general would return to his nation and distribute gifts to the king, to the soldiers and the people of the winning side while the losing nation would form a train of captives in chains. Paul makes the analogy that the very same thing happened in the spiritual world when Jesus died on the cross and descended into Hades and rose victorious over sin and death. He defeated Satan and his forces of darkness and they were chained up like prisoners of war. And as Christ ascended into heaven after the resurrection, he distributed the spoils of war by giving spiritual gifts to his people, the church.

We all have gifts. The biggest gift by far is the grace of God which saved us. Salvation is the greatest gift. v7 – the word for “grace” and the word for “gift” in the Greek share the same root. Grace is THE gift. The rest of the spiritual gifts are expressions of this primary gift of God’s grace. Some of the gifts are listed in v11 – apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers.

Is being a pastor or a teacher a calling? Or is it a gifting? I say it’s gifting, but you don’t have to take my word for it. That’s what Scripture says. Our calling is the calling unto salvation. Our gifting are things like the gift of pastoring or shepherding people, the teaching gift, the gift of prophecy, or the gift of evangelism. I left out apostles because I don’t believe there are any present day apostles, but we’ll leave that for another time.

Why does Jesus give gifts to His church? Reason #1 is to help keep the unity relationally that was ushered in when the walls that divided us were torn down by Christ’s death on the cross. A second reason Jesus gives gifts is so that we can reach unity in terms of our faith and in our knowledge of God’s Son, with the ultimate goal of maturity and fullness in Christ.

Eph 4
12 for the training of the saints in the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.

Eph 2-3: The Multi-faceted Mystery of the Messiah (pt3 of 3)

By

This mystery of the Messiah is revealed to Paul and for the first time to his generation. It doesn’t stop there, though. Interestingly, a second audience is mentioned. Eph 3:8-10–

Eph 3
8 This grace was given to me—the least of all the saints—to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of the Messiah, 9 and to shed light for all about the administration of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. 10 This is so God’s multi-faceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens.

Who’s the audience? The rulers and authorities in the heavens. This is not talking about the literal ruler and authority of Paul’s day like the emperor of Rome. He is talking about THE ruler of this world whose dwelling is not on this world but in the heavens. In other words, a ruler who lives in the spiritual world. If you were here last week, I think you know the answer. He is talking about none other than Satan and his forces of darkness.

So here is what Paul is getting at. It’s really fantastic stuff. The mystery of the Messiah was hidden throughout the ages. Ever since the Fall of Man where Satan scored one of his greatest victories, there has been a chess game going on between God and Satan. If Satan could figure out God’s next move, then he could thwart God’s plan and checkmate God and win. So God had to keep his strategy hidden from Satan for the ages. Satan had no clue that God would send His Son to be a man. And when God did, I’m sure Satan was scratching his head. Why would God allow His Son to come into this world as a man, why would Jesus humble himself and make himself so vulnerable?

Satan must have been confused. What on earth is God up to? Satan did all he could think to do. He worked in the hearts of the Pharisees and the religious leaders and Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas and he stirred hatred in their hearts and he mobilized them to achieve his purposes by killing the Son of God. And it was precisely in that moment when Satan thought he had scored his greatest victory that the cleverest, the most you-never-say-this-coming TWIST came into play.

In the Passion of the Christ, it’s that moment right after the death of Jesus when the camera focuses on Satan and he is screaming in agony, he is furious and the camera pans out and the audience is clued into the fact that Satan knows he’s been outsmarted. At that moment when Jesus died, Satan knew that what he thought was HIS greatest victory was actually his greatest defeat. Conversely, what appeared to be God’s greatest defeat was God’s greatest victory.

Eph 3:10 – God’s multi-faceted wisdom is in full display on the cross where Satan killed Jesus and sinful mankind participated in murdering our Messiah but God in his infinite wisdom flipped this situation upside down and he turned the table by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. And now that wisdom is continuously on display as the church denies itself and carries its cross.

Now for the application. How does this mystery of the gospel and the mystery of Christ and the church and the multi-faceted mystery of the Messiah affect the way we live in community.

Eph 2
13 But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of the Messiah. 14 For He is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility…

The fact that this mystery tears down the wall of hostility between sinful humanity and a Holy God is obvious. But I think it’s easy to gloss over the second wall of hostility that the Messiah has torn down–the wall of hostility between man and his fellow man.

Satan loves it when the church is divided. He loves it when the universal church is divided into many local churches that do not partner together in anything. Satan loves it when the universal church splinters into denominations due to theological differences. And I believe Satan is most thrilled when the local church is divided.

What was the cause of division in salvation history? The answer gives us clues as to what can cause division for us here at the Hill?

Eph 2
11 So then, remember that at one time you were Gentiles in the flesh—called “the uncircumcised” by those called “the circumcised,” which is done in the flesh by human hands. 12 At that time you were without the Messiah, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.

Circumcision was a Jewish practice, which was something all Jewish boys did as a kind of rite of passage into the Jewish community. It was a visible tradition that reminded the nation of Israel that they were the chosen people of God. Spiritually, it was a pointer to Jesus who came to provide a way for the Spirit to circumcise, not the flesh, but our hearts. The fleshly circumcision was a foreshadowing of a future spiritual circumcision.

Circumcision was helpful in that it served as a tangible reminder for the Israelites of them being set apart from the other nations by God and for God’s purposes. Aside from the spiritual aspect, physical circumcision in the Old Testament was a good thing. But what started out as a good thing became a curse. The whole point of being set apart for God was so that God could use the nation of Israel to be a light to the Gentiles. To be a blessing to all nations.

But Israel lost sight of that. Instead, they took pride in the fact that God chose them. They became nationalistic. They became racist. They looked down on others. Those Gentiles are uncircumcised heathens. We don’t want to associate with them and risk becoming defiled. The “circumcised” vs. the “uncircumcised.” These were labels used to divide people into categories–the people of God vs. everyone else, who by the way are not worthy saving.

I think what I said earlier about God’s sovereignty and human choice applies to Christ and the church. When the church, or the people of God become the focus, like the Israelites turning their eyes inward to the group and away from the world, we become a headless body and we risk losing everything. This means that while both the universal church and the local church are important, we cannot put the church on equal footing with Christ. If we put Christ and the church in a 50/50 partnership, we will devolve just like the Israelites did and without knowing it, Jesus will no longer have the preeminence as he ought. He’d be second, third tier in importance. In every church, Jesus has to be the focus. The accent has to be on Christ and not the church in order for the church to grow spiritually.

The early church struggled mighitly with this issue of circumcision and spiritual elitism. The circumcised group thought they were the spiritual elites and as we’ve covered in recent sermons, false teachers started to impose this tradition of circumcision on new Gentile converts.

Eph 2
14 …In His flesh, 15 He made of no effect the law consisting of commands and expressed in regulations, so that He might create in Himself one new man from the two, resulting in peace.

Things like the circumcision were nothing more than laws and commands and human regulations that were completely done away with by the flesh of Jesus. His flesh, his body was torn to pieces so that the body of Christ could be reconciled, mended together as one.

For us, I have one simple application. Examine your relationships with other Christians from any church, meaning the universal church, and examine your relationships within this particular local church. If Christ died to make us one, what are some ways that Satan is still succeeding in keeping us divided? What are some ways that you put up walls to your fellow brothers and sisters? Oh, that brother is weird. That sister is too different from me. I’m Korean, he’s Chinese. Or I’m white, you’re black. We are different ethnicities. I grew up eating kimchi with chopsticks but you grew up eating brussel sprouts with a fork. We grew up with a different family upbringing and different cultures. I can only associate with people with similar ethnic, social, educational backgrounds.

Rather than seeing others as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t we label people all the time? Take for example, the college student label. Why are there so many college students here? I don’t have a heart for college students. That’s not my ministry. They are not my responsibility. Someone else will take care of them. I only like hanging out with people who are in a similar stage of life. You can understand that, right? I’m married and I have kids so I only enjoy hanging out with other families.

If you are a single who is still in school, sorry, buddy, I’m not going to sit next to you. Or, it can go the other way. College students who only want to talk to other college students. If this is you, then you’ve put a wall between college and non-college. Can’t you see one another at the very least as fellow members of this church, whom you should struggle to love? Or, will you be content with the walls between us?

Without even knowing it, we all put up walls, don’t we? That person just annoys me to no end. Since when does it matter whether or not you like someone. God calls us to love. We are to love enemies, which means we can love people whom we do not like. There are so many walls that Satan puts up between brothers and sisters within the body of Christ.

In closing, this is a spiritual battle. If we are one, we’ve won. Not one in the sense of loving each other and leaving Christ off to the side. That’s a headless body. But one, unified, loving and serving one another because we never lose sight of Jesus and His death and His resurrection. If we are not one in Christ, then Satan has won. A church that is one has won. Pray for yourself. Pray for us corporately as a church. It is my prayer that this church would more accurately represent the one final church in the new heaven and the new earth where there is only one God and one universal body of Christ from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before one throne and before one Lamb. The mystery has been fully revealed to us in Christ. Now, let’s ask for God’s help in living it out.