La unidad del Espíritu

The Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. Therefore, go around the world teaching and preaching the gospel to all creatures, to the end of the earth. En Contacto, the biblical teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Today on En Contacto, the unity of the spirit. Sin divides, separates, and fragments. If you look at the beginning of the Bible, you will find that sin separated the first family of God. Then you find that it separated the first family of the Garden of Eden. And over the centuries, since the beginning of time, sin has been a separator, divider, and fragmenter. And that is exactly what salvation is about. Because the purpose of God in life is to bring humanity together with him. In fact, when it comes to reconciliation, for example, when the Bible speaks of reconciliation, Paul said that God was in Christ reconciling the world with him. Reconciliation is to restore in a correct relationship what was separated from God. And I would like you to accompany me now to Ephesians chapter 4. Look at what it says. I will read the first six verses. It says, I was imprisoned, chapter 4, I was imprisoned in the Lord, I beg you, that you walk as it is worthy of the vocation with which you were called. With all humility and meekness, bearing you with patience to one another in love, I ask you to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Then it says, A body and a spirit, as you were also called in the same hope of your vocation.

A Lord, a faith, a baptism, a God and Father of all, which is above all, and for all, and in all. There are other verses, like verse 16, where it deals with this issue of unity in the Spirit. Well, sometimes the word unity is negative, or it is used badly, or sometimes it can be positive. If unity means that everyone will agree with everything, it is not what we are talking about. From the beginning I would like to make it very clear what we are talking about. First, we know that we live in a fallen world, and that we have the incredible power of God on this side, and then the great power of Satan here. And God and Satan face and fight a battle for humanity. Satan, with all his power, does what he can to ruin this world, to ruin the kingdom of God, and to ruin the program of God. God will overcome thoroughly, but until the day when Jesus Christ comes and puts an end to all this, and cleanses the disorder that Satan has created, we will live in a fallen world. And not only do we live in a fallen world, but we live among evil, evil, and wickedness of all kinds. Not only that. All of us, the children of God, were saved by the grace of God, by the blood of Christ. We are also dwellers of the Holy Spirit, and we have a different nature. When we are born again, we are new creatures in Christ, but that does not mean, it does not mean that God took away our nature. That is, when the Bible speaks of flesh, if a person, perhaps a new believer,

asks, what do you mean by flesh? Is it flesh and blood? No. When the apostle Paul speaks of flesh, he refers to humanity, that is, to nature. We have five senses, we are still tempted, and therefore that is the part of us that sometimes feels the desire to do what we know is not right. The other part wants to do the right thing, and that part of us that does not want to do the right thing and obey God is our nature, which, in addition, we all have. In light of what Paul is going to say in this passage, let us remember two things. We live in a fallen world, number one. Satan always works, not only works among the lost, but also works among the saved, also in business, and works in politics, education, and science. He works in every aspect, he works in the church, he works in the lives of all those who can. And in light of all that, Paul says in this verse, Well, let's see, let's observe here the basis of everything that Paul says here about being solicitous in keeping the unity of the Spirit. He says, a body. What does he mean by that? When the Bible speaks of the body, except when it refers to a physical human body, it refers to the church. This is what it says. In the local body, that is, the Church, the Body of Christ,

the Body of Christ does not function correctly unless each part fulfills its duty. And that means there is no insignificant member in a Church. Each and every member in itself is important. And you will notice that there are three passages that speak of the gifts, and 1 Corinthians chapter 12 is one of them, speaking of the gifts that God has given us and that each member, person, must function according to their gift. And so, the body must function in unity, unity of mind and heart. It does not mean that we will always agree, but that in spirit, we march together, we walk together, the same sense of direction and the same purpose. That is what is referred to here when saying a body is what we are, a body. See how he says it in another way. Join me again on that list. He says that we are a body in Christ, and notice what he says, we are a spirit. What does he mean by a spirit? Just that. It does not mean that there are not many spirits out there. There are many evil spirits. And remember that in Ephesians chapter 2, in verse 2, Paul speaks of the spirit of this age. The age we live in is an evil spirit. And listen very well. People can have evil spirits, believe me.

They can have evil spirits, but no believer who lives in the Holy Spirit can be possessed by the devil. He cannot be possessed by the Holy Spirit and possessed by the devil. He can be harassed by the devil. He can be disturbed by the devil. He can have all kinds of problems in the spiritual war, but he can only be possessed by God, not by God and the devil. There are many evil spirits, but there is only one Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is a person of the Trinity. When I think of a sect that does not believe in the Trinity and does not believe in the Holy Spirit, how, then, is it going to live a devout life if it ignores, marginalizes, and has an absolute disbelief about the person of the Trinity who lives within it and allows it to live the Christian life because there is not a single person who has within himself the strength to live the Christian life without having the presence of the Holy Spirit who allows him to live the life he has to live and to do the work that God has called him to do.

It is completely impossible. When I met one of them, I told him, I assure you that he is condemned to failure. What does condemned to failure mean? That he will not be able to live the Christian life because no one can without the Spirit of God and you deny his presence. You deny that he is divine. You deny that he is part of the Trinity. How will he live the Christian life? He cannot do it. If he listens, it is already difficult with him. Amen? Imagine trying to live the Christian life without him. He lives in us. He has sealed us. He is our guide. He is the one who has sealed us for eternity. He is our teacher. He could not understand John 3, 16 apart from the Holy Spirit. He cannot understand anything without having the Spirit of God. That is why when he is saved he says, Ah, that means. Wow, wow. This book becomes a fascinating book. Why? Because what happens is that the Spirit of God opens his eyes and discerns

the spiritual things. He says that there is a body. We are part of it. We have the same Spirit. One Spirit. What does he mean when he speaks of the hope of our vocation? Our vocation is salvation. It is a life of obedience. The vocation is a life of holiness. But when he speaks of it here, speaking of our vocation, hope of his vocation, what is the hope of the Church? I will tell you what it is not. The hope of the Church is not that one day we will evangelize so well and work so hard that finally we will all end up saved. Do you know that there are some who believe that? They believe that Christ will not come until the world has been redeemed. Wow, wow. Thank God. I do not believe that. First, the Bible does not teach it. You have to force the interpretation of the Bible to believe that we are finally going to fix this world and that Christ will come later. No.

The hope of the Church is, look, the hope of his vocation is that the Lord Jesus Christ comes and will take away from this evil world his believers to take us to heaven. Then that is when the judgment will take place. When you read the book of Revelation, the end, the promise of God's judgment on this earth, that is not when we are here. It is after he has taken us. The hope of the vocation as believers is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the rapture. Okay? When we speak of the body of Christ, we say that we speak of all the believers in the world. If Jesus Christ came now, it would not matter much where someone was. We will be taken away instantly. You see, there will be no favoritism in heaven with God. He will see us all as his children. He will love us all as his children for being part of his world. He says, hope of your vocation. Then look at what it says, a Lord. If I ask you how many here have a Lord,

perhaps all the believers present would raise their hand. But the question is this, does the Lord Jesus Christ govern and control their lives? I do not mean that he does it every moment and that they never sin. That's not it, but if their life is given to Christ as Savior and Lord. See, the disciples never called him Jesus, they called him Lord. They recognized his lordship, recognized his place as sovereign, his right to exercise control. Join me in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 5. It says, for although there are some who call themselves gods, with lowercase, whether in heaven or on earth, they are called, as there are many gods with lowercase and many lords, that is, many people call themselves God and also Lord. Listen to what it says, for us, however, there is only one God, the Father, from whom all things come, and we are for him and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and we through him. There is only one Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the same Lord who will sit in the judgment before which we will all be, not to give account of our life and see if we are saved, he is the Lord before whom we will be to receive the rewards for eternity. There is a body, there is a spirit, there is a hope, and as it says here, there is a Lord, and that person is the same Lord Jesus Christ, right? Not just a Lord, but it says, a faith. So what does that mean? Don't we all have our faith, his faith, my faith, our faith, that faith? No. What it refers to here, it refers to, let's see, in Judas, the penultimate book of the Bible, let's go to Judas, please. And in Judas, he identifies what I think Paul is referring to here, because in the time of the New Testament, they had, when the apostle Paul arrived and began to write these letters and began to teach, they had a system of faith. Listen to how he says it in Judas.

He says, Loved by the great request I had to write you about our common salvation, it has been necessary for me to write you exhorting you to ardently contend for the faith that has once been given to the saints. What is he talking about here? This is what he is talking about. He talks about what we all believe, the time when the apostle Paul arrived, of what they believed about who Jesus Christ was, his death, burial, resurrection. Paul spoke of justification, reconciliation, redemption. He spoke of the expiatory death of Jesus Christ. He spoke of the church, of our relationship with the church, the relationship between us, our beliefs, our conduct. That is, in his time, there was a doctrinal system, there was a deposit of truth, and everyone governed by that truth. That is why he said to them, I beg you to contend, to defend, to be firm in what you believe. There is only one faith. And if someone asks what Christian life is about, Christian life is about Jesus Christ. It is about our faith in him, and our faith in him directs everything we do. So we all have a certain degree of faith. Someone has a certain degree of faith that God may use a little more than this other person, but we all have a degree of faith. We speak of that faith. We do not speak of personal faith.

We speak of a faith, and it is in what we believe. And what we believe is found in this book. The truth is that we will have differences of opinion. It is good to have differences of opinion and differences of interpretation until those differences of interpretation begin to alter some very, very basic doctrinal truths, like this one. If someone says, I think you can go to heaven if you are good, I assure you that he is giving a deadly blow to the cross. Because the only way to heaven is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, based on his death in Calvary, and in which his death paid his debt of total sin. When he alters that doctrine, he alters a basic foundation of the word of God. When he alters the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that it was only a certain kind of spiritual resurrection, not a bodily resurrection, he will begin to alter the way of being saved by faith in Jesus Christ. And there is a Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Not three gods, but a God in the people of the Trinity. A God made up of three people. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Each one with a different role in his life, in my life,

and in the life of the church. And we all believe, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but in the resurrection of the physical body, our human body. not only in Jesus Christ, but also in God the Father, There is a doctrinal system, and so, God says, you must contend for him, defend him, proclaim him, and God the Holy Spirit. but do not be discouraged, nor allow anyone to steal the faith that you have. So when he talks about a faith, that's what he's referring to here, talking about a Lord, a faith, a baptism, and so on. Then if you notice what he says, he says not only that, but a baptism. Aha, aha, I'm getting to that, because there's more than one baptism, right? Come with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 for a moment, and look at this, because in this chapter 12, in verse 13, it says this, Because by one Spirit, the Holy Spirit, we were all baptized into one body, whether they be Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, we were all given to drink from the same Spirit, right? He says a baptism. What does that mean? It means this. When we were all saved, the Spirit of God put us, let's say, in relation to Jesus Christ, and we came to identify with him. We are his followers. We believe in him. We are part of him and of us, and he said, I remain in you and you in me. And that is our spiritual baptism, and that is baptism. Well, what we do when we take someone and submerge them here, in this pile, is to baptize them physically. That is simply a physical, that is a physical expression of what has happened before, which is to die our old life. We were buried, baptized by the Spirit in Christ Jesus, and now we are in new life. This is just a physical expression. The Spirit of God, by putting us in Christ, is what saves us. To enter a baptismal pile and have a pastor submerge you in water and take you out again, that is something visible, literal. A physical expression of his confession of faith in Christ, that he was baptized by the Spirit of God in Christ Jesus, and that he is part of his body. So we are not talking about two baptisms. We are talking about, we are talking about just one expression

of the true baptism, which is the baptism of the Spirit of God who has put us in Christ. Neither you nor I were saved by something we did. We were saved by responding to what God did on the cross, and it was the Spirit of God who sealed us and put us in Christ Jesus. When we talk about a single baptism, that is what it refers to. Then, of course, it says, a God. See how he says it. Let's see what he says. He says, a God and Father. Listen, if he belonged to any other religion in the world, he would not say that. He would speak of his God and, above all, often of fear and uncertainty. But we can say, my God and my Father. And notice what he says about him. He is a God, Father of all, above all, Master Chief and Sovereign Controller of the Universe. And it is for all, all. Look at what he does in this life through his children. And he says, and in all, he lives within each one of us. Look, look at the tremendous emphasis that God puts on the unity, the unity of the Spirit. And just listen, there is only one body, the body of Christ. Just one hope, one Spirit. And he says that there is only one hope in this life, and it is the hope that God has given us, one Spirit. And he says that all, all this unity, what is this? It is a God, a Lord. What does it mean to help us know that all of us here are a personal, vital, individual part of the body of Christ? There is not a single person here who is not important, and no one here is more important than another. Understand this. Let's go back to a couple of verses that perhaps he thought he had forgotten. Look at this. Look at verse 2. Because of what I will speak now, I will speak now of the idea of what is expected of me. If I am going, look, if I am going to walk, and if I am going to help to keep the unity of the Spirit. Well, the unity of the Spirit is what God creates, but I have a responsibility, or I would not say a request, to keep it. Well, listen well. Look at this. Every Christian, no matter who he is or where he is, every believer has the personal obligation to contribute to help, to keep the unity of the Spirit. The unity of the Spirit in the body of Christ, of all, is that responsibility. Well, this is what Paul does. It is to enumerate, listen, it enumerates four characteristics. Look at verse 2. With all humility and meekness,

bearing with patience one another in love. Let's think about this for a moment. Look at this. How do I live in this body of such, that is, in the body of Christ, in such a way that it promotes the unity of the Spirit? There are four characteristics that we need. Look at this. First it says humility. It is the characteristic that if you boast saying, I have it, you have already lost it, because you cannot have it and boast of it. What is humility? This is the simplest way to describe humility so that you remember it. Let's do an acrostic with C or Y. Let's do the acrostic. Christ, first, C. Others, second. And I, last, C or Y. Do you know what humility is? Humility is the way I see my life. Christ is the first thing in my life. Others, second. And then, I am the last. I put the first as the priority of my life. Others, second. And I, at the end, right? A humble spirit says, God, here is my life for what you want to do with me.

Thank you for all the direction you have given me. I will do my best and with the greatest diligence possible. What you want to do with my life depends on you. If you want to exalt me, that's fine. If not, too. And you see, someone with the right attitude will never be overshadowed by anyone. Listen carefully. Look, if he does that, he should be ashamed of himself. Every time he does that to someone, who makes him feel inferior, if he thinks that is good in some way, he does not understand anything. God hates pride. He hates arrogance. He detests that kind of thing. We are all saved by the same grace of God and we have the same spirit. And the spirit that abhors pride in one person abhors pride in the whole person. God says, you know, yes, if the body works together and the church shows progress, there is a spirit of humility. Then it says mansedum. What can mansedum mean? In some translations it says submission and we think that submission is what? Weak. Where do we get that from?

Because it sounds the same? Do you know what mansedum is? This means, it is force under control. And one of the forms, of three forms, this word was used in the Greek koiné, which is a common Greek of the time when the Bible was written. In Greek there are prayers with things similar to this. The use of the same word, mansedum, like a potter who was tamed. You know, if you take a cemental with all that power, that cemental until it is tamed is not useful to anyone. When I think of mansedum, I think of being tamed, that is, power and force that have been put under control. The Greeks also used that term to express, to describe a soft wind. Well, the wind can destroy everything in its path, but it can also be soft and delicate, a soft wind. It was also used to speak of a medicine that calmed. Who is someone tame?

Someone tame is not someone weak. Who is tame is that who is strong and firm and who does not get irritated easily, does not deviate from the course, faces difficulties, adversity, tests, reproaches, criticisms, false accusations and everything else. And you know what? He does not change his mind, he does not shudder, but he remains upright and firm and thanks God. Then he says, not only mansedum, pay attention to the following word, patience. But what is he really talking about here? We talk about the body of Christ working together, moving forward together. What does it mean to speak here of patience? Here it refers to someone who has the ability not to run towards the time of God, nor to go ahead of God. He speaks of being able to bear criticism, adversity and everything that is present

and does not shudder nor take revenge. He has the power to take revenge, but although he can do it, he does not. Why? Because his faith and confidence are in God. And then when he talks about bearing here, what does he want to tell us when he speaks of tolerating or what he is talking about here? It means this. Let's say it the way it would be said in Atlanta, Georgia. Do you want to hear it? This means in the jargon that is used in Atlanta, Georgia. It means to bear someone who is hateful. That's exactly what it means. To bear it. And we have all seen people and known someone, not recently, of course, but we have all known someone who is somewhat hateful to us. A person who bears it is someone who knows how to handle it.

I remember I had two little dogs. And there was a big dog coming to my yard. And my dogs, look, they were like hot dogs. They were like this size. Today, this huge dog, with its big mouth, this great Danishman could have swallowed any one of them. My dogs barked and, how to say, looked angry. He walked and looked at them like that, and went ahead and did not pay any attention to them. That is to be tolerant. Do not try to eat them, although we could do it. We all know people like that. Just like the body of Christ, how to function and how to protect the unity of the spirit. Let our own spirit be such that we do not think we are superior to anyone. Let us be meek when we respond to others. Let us be patient in what God does in the life of the church. Let us bear others with whom it is difficult to live and get along. You cannot, listen carefully, you cannot be in the will of God without having communion with a local body. You cannot. Because here we function together. Here we encourage each other. Here we become one. The Christian life is not lived alone. I do not know about you, but I need you, and you need me. That is how we are all. And we unite our heart, hands, soul, being and money and time and efforts and gifts and talents together. And we see God do his great work.