The School of One-ness – Prerequisites

Ephesians 1:15-16

Swimming

Swimming absolutely requires two things. You need to be in water. You need to keep breathing.

There are all kinds of fancy things you can do after that. You can move forward in the water. You can move forward in different ways, different strokes. And for each of those strokes, you can refine the stroke to perfection, getting faster and smoother. You can increase your endurance, how long you can swim for, all of those things.

But you never lose the first two. You have to be in water. You have to keep breathing.

I went swimming on Thursday, trying to get into swim shape for an upcoming triathlon. They wanted me to do the backstroke at speed.

My backstroke is a disaster. It’s… not good. And I am sharing a lane with a stranger. There is a decent chance that I am going to punch this guy in the face on my backstroke. But I have to go fast (because the workout page says FAST, all in caps).

So I am swimming “fast” on my backstroke, concentrating really hard on hugging my side of the lane, trying to apply the tips the coach is giving me. Also, you should know, I don’t float, I sink in the water, all things being equal. So I am backstroking thinking of all this other stuff and my face is basically under the water all the time. About half my breaths are pulling in water and I’m spitting it out, coughing and spluttering.

I get back to the edge, coughing and half drowned, and the coach goes, “ummm… you can modify the workout if you need. If you want to do another stroke maybe…”

We Love Advanced Stuff

I want to be there with the Advanced peoples. With the Masters. I want to be fast and strong.

And in our passage today, Paul writes with excitement about all the places we could go and grow and learn as disciples of Jesus. To be mature, to be fast and strong Christians.

And yet… he understands that some basics come first… and that without those, none of that advanced stuff can come.

In our passage today, it is just a phrase that I got stuck on, but we will see it actually forms a huge chunk of the whole letter of Ephesians and is defining to “Christian life.”

Before we get “advanced” we have to check our “basics.”

Paul’s Daily Prayer

Ephesians 1:15-23

15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit[f] of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Every day he prayed for their developing maturity.

But I got stuck on a phrase early in this passage. There was something that seemed to motivate Paul to desire and pray for this kind of maturity. He heard something that told him the people were ready for more… because they already had the basics down.

15-16

15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

Graduate School

Paul writes of his desire for the Ephesians to pursue graduate school in Christ: wisdom and revelation of God, open hearts to know His hope, His inheritance and His power.

The enrollment in graduate school is founded on having the prerequisites: faith in Christ and love for the saints.

Wisdom, knowledge and power are wonderful and optional extras. Faith in Christ and love for one another are fundamental and required. Taking “Next Steps” without them is dangerous and damaging. Check your prerequisites.

Faith in Christ

Not a surprise. Another en Christos. There is a wonderful openness to the grammar here, perfectly captured by the translation here “in Christ”. You can have faith in something as in, I have faith that my pants will stay up: I have faith in my pants. But “in” also captures your current location or sphere. I have faith and I am in my pants as I have faith. I have faith in my pants.

So Paul has heard of the growing reputation of the churches in and around Ephesus and that reputation speaks first of their faith in Christ: Jesus is both the target of their faith and the sphere in which their faith lives and moves and breathes.

Love for All the Saints

Another surprising phrase. We expect that “faith in Christ Jesus” is going to be central and foundational. That only makes sense. But there is another part of Paul’s cause. Another part of his reason. Another part of the Ephesians reputation.

I heard of your love for all the saints. For all of God’s people. This is a straight echo of the very same phrase to the Colossians, which as you may recall, Paul was probably writing at much the same time.

Colossians 1:3-5

3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel.

Faith and Love

These two things. The churches in the area had this growing reputation. And Paul, getting letters and visitors in Rome, far to the West, is hearing stories about churches back in what is now Turkey. Ephesus and the surrounding area. Colossi. And he hears that they are just rocking the fundamentals. They are living out and living in faith in Jesus. And they are loving one another, all the “saints of God” in such a way that people are talking.

And he is so excited because he knows that means they are ready for more.

AT THE SAME TIME, he is going to spend most of this letter talking about these two things. Unity in Christ through faith in Christ. And unity in the church through love for one another. How to do it, how to be One. It is the School of One-ness. Even though these guys are apparently famous for it, it is so important that he is going to teach them anyway.

Swimming

So I said it was like Paul wanted them to go to graduate school, hearing how they were famously good in undergraduate.

But that doesn’t really capture just how fundamental these the Christian life. It is more like swimming. I heard about how much time you spend in the water, and how you never stop breathing while you’re in there. I pray every day for you to get faster, for you to learn the backstroke and the breaststroke, for you to be able to swim farther and have ever more fun doing it.

But if, by chance, the other two ever came into question, you would have to return to working on those. When I am working on breaststroke, trying to thrash around a little less, and my head goes under the water and I start choking. What is my priority?

I forget all the details and mechanics and advanced stuff… I breathe and I focus on breathing. When I have my breath back, then I start working on backstroke again.

We live and move in faith in Jesus Christ. If we aren’t in the water, we aren’t swimming. If we aren’t in Christ, we aren’t doing life much less “Christian” life. No surprise there.

We love one another. As easily and as often as we breathe: this is our defining and distinguishing characteristic. This is surprisingly important.

Ephesians – forgetting to breathe

Less than 10 years later (I think)…

In Revelation, Jesus speaks in a vision to the apostle John, warning the Ephesians of their error. They forget love at their peril. They aren’t breathing… so they are dying. They will not be a church anymore.

Revelation 2:4-5

4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

You know the truth, he says earlier. You have the theology down and you argue well against false teachers. You know the free-style and the backstroke and the breaststroke BUT YOU AREN’T BREATHING!!!

Breathe or you are going to die! As a church, as disciples

The Modern Christian – Forgetting to Breathe

What is our reputation as Christians? Are we famous for our faith? Are we famous for the way we love one another?

The Jesus Disciple – known by love

They will know we are his disciples by our love.

John 13:34-35

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Check Your Prerequisites

Are you in the water? Are you swimming, living, in faith in Jesus Christ?

Are you loving all the people of God? Starting with, beginning with, the people in this church? Are you loving one another? Are you loving one another in a way that is radical?

I have often been loved by people in this church. I have occasionally had opportunity to show and practice love to people in this church. This is not unknown to us. I have heard people remark and be surprised by how we love one another, how we enjoy hanging out together.

How sad that that could be a surprise! And let us never stop breathing. Let us be so intentional about it, so purposeful, that not loving one another becomes impossibly unthinkable.

How?

How can we love one another so well that we could become famous for it?

I have to know you well enough to see and hear a need.

I have to sacrifice my “want” to meet your need.

Through now to next week at Kingdom Victory Day, you have a task. Hear a need, meet a need, love one another. That means you are going to have to search out a need, I am going to have to search out a need… then sacrifice my want to meet your need. At the very least, on Kingdom Victory Day, we are going to have an extended lunch together and you can discuss it then.

Disciple Re-Branding

Could we build a new reputation? What kind of love for one another would we have to have? That people would start talking about it. That people would change their opinion of what “Christian” is. Or that they would start to hear about and wonder about what it means to be a “disciple of Jesus.”

Am I capable of that kind of love? Are you?

Am I capable of that kind of faith in Jesus? Are you?

I have good news. We walk in that faith, we practice it, but we aren’t the source of it.

We walk in that love, we practice it, we even discipline ourselves to it… but we aren’t the source of it.

Colossians 1:3-5

3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel.