Eager to Maintain the Unity of the Spirit

Bible Readings: Eph 4:1-7; 1Cor 12:22-27

Preacher: Revd Seth Kissi

Covenant Service / Teaching on our Theme for 2011

We thank our God for a New Year and are grateful for this first service of the first month of the New Year.

Our Theme for this year, 2011, is Eager to Maintain the Unity of the Spirit – Eph 4:3

Ephesians 4 is a letter Paul sent to a church in gentile land reminding them to walk and live a life worthy of their calling.

Paul identified their challenges in verse 2 as

Lowliness

Meekness

Patience to forbear one another in love and

Diligence

If there is anything that has fought the church from the beginning to this time, it is the threat of division – sometimes in subtle ways.

Therefore we must make the spirit of unity the common denominator of all members in the common bond of peace. It means if you have been restored to fellowship with Christ, then there is peace between you and God and therefore between you and me. That is the common bond of peace.

One of the threats against the unity of the early church was ethnicity - where you come from; and that gave Paul a lot of struggles in his missionary work.

Paul saw himself as the apostle to the gentiles and so he preached faith in Jesus Christ as the basis on which God accepts and saves us; but the Jewish Christians in Ephesus could not accept that teaching and so they tried to persuade the churches in the gentile lands to behave like Jews – circumcision, keeping of the Sabbath, abstaining from eating certain foods, purification rites etc - in order to be accepted by God; and Paul fought against these teachings; and that has made it possible for us to worship today as Christians without the Jewish rites being an obstacle.

In 1Cor 12: 22-27, the situation was different. The issue that divided the church in Corinth was a spiritual one i.e. the alignment of the people to the leaders who had ministered in the Corinthian church. Some said they belonged to Paul, others to Apollos, others to Cephas (Peter) and others said they did not belong to any human leader, they belonged to God. In all these associations they were trying to tell each other that I am more superior than you are because my leader is more spiritual.

The other issue was the importance they placed on the gifts in which members operated. They said the gifts were more inspired than the works and services. And so those who operated in works and services were ordinary people. This was a church that was endowed in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and demonstrated these gifts well and that made Paul angry with them and accused them of being carnal. Paul addressed this issue of the gifts and defeated their wrong notion in a very excellent manner: the gifts and works and services come from the same Lord. Paul employed the human body metaphor to bring home the fact that individually we are members of the same body; some we do not even see (the heart, liver, kidney, lungs etc) but which play very important roles.

In the body there is recognition, forbearance, harmony and unity. Our differences should not serve to divide but to unite us.

In the body, we treat the less honourable members with a lot of care and modesty and so Paul argued that granted that indeed some gifts were more inspired than others, then the less important members ought to be treated with a lot of love and care and attention.

This year we want to put in everything possible to live in unity (in the ‘united’ church) to maintain the unity of the Spirit.

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