Sermon Tone Analysis

Prayer

Introduction

This morning we are on week 2 of a 5-week series unpacking our new mission statement.

If you weren’t here, or need a reminder, our mission statement can be found in the bulletin insert, it reads, “A church united in Christ to share God’s grace and show God’s glory.”

Last week, as we celebrated the Lord’s Supper, we talked about what it means to be united to Christ on a more individual basis.

This morning, we will consider how our personal union with Christ is connected to our interpersonal relationships with other believers.

Or to put it another way, last week we talked about being united in Christ, this morning, we will talk about being a church united in Christ.

Scripture

Our passage this morning is found in .

If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word.

We do this in recognition that God’s Word is the most important thing we can hear today and to show appreciation to God for His Word.

says,

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.

And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing?

If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?

But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.

If all were a single member, where would the body be?

As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.”

Thank you, you may be seated.

As I already alluded to, our union with Christ is more than just an individual, personal thing.

When we are united to Christ, we are united to what He is united to.

For example, our union with Christ, as believers, is the basis of us being adopted into God’s family.

We are now members of the household of faith in which we have many brothers and sisters.

In the passage we just read and in other passages, Paul uses the analogy of a body.

Because of our union with Christ, through His Spirit, we are intimately connected with other believers.

It is absolutely true that because of our union with Christ, we are more connected to the genuinely Christian illegal alien than we are to our genuinely atheistic neighbor.

In Christ, we are part of the universal Church.

We are united to all other believers around the world, but when Paul uses the analogy of the body, his concerns are more local.

Paul is talking about the local church.

His letter was to the church at Corinth, and so it applies more directly to us as a local body of believers.

Imagine, with me for a second, a church where almost everyone is alike.

Same ethnicity.

Same stage of life.

Same age.

Same background and culture.

Same likes and dislikes.

Same musical preferences.

Same politics.

Now, there may be a few outliers here or there.

A few people who don’t quite fit all of those marks, but for the most part I described group of people who are very homogenous – there isn’t much variety.

That church which I described is very comfortable.

It is easy to go to and relaxing – as long as you are like that church.

As long as you look, act, think, live etc. like the other people in that church.

And to be clear, I’m speaking of any church, whether it be a cowboy church, a hipster church or our church.

What often happens is that we forget where our union comes from and start find connections elsewhere.

Look again at verse 13 in our passage.

It says, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”

You cannot get more culturally different in the ancient world than a Jew and a Greek.

They had totally different cultures and worldviews and ideas about worship and government and everything else, yet there they are part of one body.

Likewise, you cannot get a broader view of social status than that of slave and free.

Again, we see they are part of one body.

The same body.

We cannot be a church of only hands.

Well, we will allow an elbow or two or maybe a shoulder, because they are close enough, but none of those ears or feet.

They just don’t fit in.

So often I fear that we have given up the precious jewel of our unity with each other through Christ.

I fear we’ve traded our unity through Christ for uniformity in preference and practice.

I fear we’ve become a social club instead of a church.

On occasion, I read books on church growth strategies and whatnot, and some of them have some helpful insights, but many of them are simply not worth the paper they are printed on.

I say that because so often they are built on this pragmatic, preference-based model.

Let’s give people what they want, what they prefer, and they will come to church.

Let’s make church comfortable for ourselves, or for this group of people, or for that group of people.

How about instead, we simply obey the Word of God!? Let us be a church that is united in Christ.

One of the things we must understand is that our vertical and our horizontal relationships affect each other.

If my relationship with God is not right, that usually overflows into the way I treat other people.

And likewise, if my relationship with my brothers and sisters in Christ is fractured, then my relationship with God cannot be whole.

tells us exactly that.

It says, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

Those are serious words.

He is a liar.

Cannot love God.

You can try to hide behind the whole, “I love them, I just don’t like them”, but God is not fooled by your semantics and word play.

We cannot take disunity within the body of Christ lightly.

Scripture warns against it over and over again.

Look at with me.

It says, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

We might be tempted to think of corrupting talk to be using foul language, but that is not what that passage is talking about.

It is talking about any type of speech that does not build up and edify.

Scripture is explicit in how believers are to interact with one another within the church.

Listen to What Paul says in .

“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Paul issues a serious warning there.

He is talking to people who claim to be part of the church.

People who claim to be united to Christ.

And Paul tells us what the works of the flesh are.

Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, and envy.