Christlikeness: a Group goal

Ephesians 4:11-16

 

Introductory comments

Good morning everyone, you can open your bibles to Ephesians 4 as we continue to examine what the bible teaches us about fellowship.  If you remember from the message two weeks ago, fellowship is our partnership, our community, our participation together in the life of God centered on the good news of Jesus Christ – it is living in Christian community according to the will of God as revealed in the bible.  Well, this morning I want to look at the purpose and practice of biblical fellowship and I can think of no better passage than Ephesians 4, so let’s pray as we prepare to hear God’s word.

Text

 

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Ephesians 4:11-16 (ESV)

Sermon Introduction 

Have you guys ever heard of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works?  It is the pet name for their Advanced Development Programs Unit. This specialized group within Lockheed is a team of highly gifted, highly motivated engineers who work as an innovative team unhampered by bureaucracy and tasked with the rapid and advanced development of inspiring and world changing aircraft.  They are responsible for P-38, the most successful fighter in the Pacific in WWII, the U-2 spyplane, the titanium skinned supersonic SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Stealth Fighter, the F-22 Raptor and currently the F-35 JSF (Joint Strike Fighter). This group has always inspired me as a former engineer.  There is something appealing and exciting about a group of diverse folks focusing their varied gifts to quickly and effectively producing something that makes a huge impact on the world.

Well, folks, whether you know it or not, you are part of the greatest of all Skunk Works and Ephesians 4 describes it.  Ephesians 4 gives us a picture of the greatest team ever assembled to build the greatest thing ever to be assembled.  So what I want to talk about today is this cosmic skunk works – what it makes and what it takes. You see, we are all called as Christians to biblical fellowship and biblical fellowship is the greatest team effort in all of history producing the greatest result in all of history.  So let’s look at the results and then we will look at the team.

1.      A Group Result

This passage is a hinge in the great book of Ephesians between the wondrous truth and amazing implications of the good news of Jesus Christ as Savior and King of all and the specific and glorious applications of this good news.  The first part is full of amazing statements like, " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places," (Ephesians 1:3, ESV)

"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace," (Ephesians 1:7, ESV)

" And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, …. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…… For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:1-10, ESV)

"So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God," (Ephesians 2:19, ESV)

"In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." (Ephesians 2:22, ESV)

And the second half of Ephesians contains such specific and good commands as

"Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil….. 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. ……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." (Ephesians 4:26-32, ESV)

" Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." (Ephesians 6:1-4, ESV)

And todays text as a hinge passage connects the two.  Biblical fellowship connects the gospel to everyday life and when it is operating correctly it does this very effectively and powerfully.  So in this section Paul explains the workings of biblical fellowship in the context of the church and he explains the goal of biblical fellowship.  We are going to look at things backwards from how they are presented in the passage.  So let’s first address the goal and then next time we will get into the mechanisms or teamwork more in detail. 

Verse 11 talks about the team captains and their roles in serving the overall team and then verse 12 talks about the team members, the saints, that is believers as a part of a local church.  Again, we will talk about that in a bit.  But in verse 13 we encounter the amazing goal of all this teamwork.  Do you see it there?  It reads, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”   Let’s spend some time considering this amazing verse.

The teamwork of biblical fellowship is for a purpose, it is for a goal.  That goal is gospel centered mature manhood.  Now, this isn’t speaking about achieving some form of masculinity, it isn’t talking growing to the point where you start losing your hair and turning gray.  The mature manhood in this verse is a very unique type of manhood – it is a manhood that is equal in measure to the fullness of Christ.  In other words, the goal of biblical fellowship is that we would be like Christ himself.  That is mature manhood.

Folks, God is calling us to be part of a team to produce something more fantastic than anything else in the whole universe.  He wants to produce a people who are mature in the gospel to the measure of the fullness of Christ.

Now notice that I said a people.  While I think the word of God does teach that we as individuals are to be conformed to Christlikeness, the thrust of the New Testament call is that we as a body of believers would be conformed to the image of Christ.  Our individual calls to Christlikeness are subservient to our corporate call to Christlikeness.  The bible knows no solitary spirituality, no individualistic holiness.  Christlikeness is first and foremost a group goal.  Regarding this passage, Peter O’Brien confirms this by saying, “This destination to which all believers are headed is understood as a corporate entity: it is not described in individual terms, but refers to the totality of believers as the body of Christ.”[1]  Do you guys see that in the verse here?  Notice that the goal is not mature men, that is a bunch of Christlike men and women, but a mature man, one Christlike being, that is one group acting as one entity.  Now, in order to have a group that is Christlike we need individuals who are Christlike, but the goal is not a mere assembly of Christlike persons.  The goal in Ephesians 4 is a group that as one is mature to the measure of the fullness of Christ.  Christlikeness is a group experience and a group effort.  There is no fully realized Christlikeness in any mere individual, save Christ himself. Christlikeness is a gospel centered group experience and a gospel empowered group effort.   Take away the group aspect and you don’t really have full Christlikeness.

Do you hear that?  Do you see that?  Do you feel the impact of that truth?  Does that shake your picture of the Christian life a bit?  I want to tease out some very practical implications from this, but first, let’s take a brief look at the alternative.  Look with me at verse 14.  This is the alternative..”so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”

The alternative to one mature, gospel centered Christlike man that is the church is many immature and underdeveloped children or even babies who are not one but many, not united but disunited, detached, and disenfranchised, pursuing their own agendas without much regard for the body of Christ, not stable but blown about, not centered on the gospel but tossed by all the latest Christian fads and ideas or even worse, heresies.  A heresy is not that far from the truth.  Pastor A.W. Tozer has said, “Heresy is not so much rejecting as selecting. The heretic simply selects the parts of the Scripture he wants to emphasize and lets the rest go. This is shown by the etymology of the word heresy and by the practice of the heretic. "Beware," an editorial scribe of the fourteenth century warned his readers in the preface to a book. "Beware thou take not one thing after thy affection and liking, and leave another: for that is the condition of an heretique. But take everything with other." The old scribe knew well how prone we are to take to ourselves those parts of the truth that please us and ignore the other parts. And that is heresy.”[2]

And that is so true for so many Christians.  Sadly, so many of us have been or are little children subject to the winds of the latest Christian or worldly influence, disunited and living independently and never able to make much progress in our Christian lives. And certainly not able to attain to maturity in Christlikeness and therefore weakened in our victory over sin, hampered in our outreach to the lost and contrary to the express will of God. 

American Christianity and especially New England Christianity is too full of illustrations of babes tossed by the wind versus one mature man in the centrality of the gospel.  Snake handlers, millions of dilapidated store-front churches, bitter and pervasive church splits, charismania, revivalism, worship services with barking, crowing and hysteric laughter, televangelists selling healing oil, church life full of a thousand competing agendas and many other sad experiences are all signs of our failure to understand this important point.

I asked a pastor who had been in New England for a number of years if he saw any difference between where he came from and New England in terms of the church.  He told me that there was huge difference, back home, when the church did something everyone was there and everyone wanted to be there.  Here, when the church does something it must compete with all the other choices that are out there.  The church is put alongside the YMCA, the Soccer League and their favorite TV series.  It is merely one option among many for the individual or family to choose from.  As a result, when there is a church event it is very sparsely attended.  Now, I don’t share that to make you feel guilty, neither to make you feel like you need to be at every church event.  That is not at all the goal.  The goal is your heart.  Even when you can’t be there for a church event, does it break your heart?  This past Sunday we had to miss Youth Fellowship because of an important family event.  It was hard to choose and we really missed being at Youth Fellowship.  When we understand that we are called to live as a body of believers for corporate Christlikeness it will change our hearts.

Sadly, much of the American church has lost this perspective.  I have been there too.  I remember our first church we joined required members to be at 2/3rd s of Sunday Worship gatherings.  I remember feeling very indignant.  That was because I saw Christianity primarily from an individualistic viewpoint.

At the same time, the very sweetest moments of my Christian life were not the high points of individual experience but the high points of group experience.  There is something utterly captivating about a fellowship of believers who understand the Christian life is corporate and who pursue gospel empowered Christ-likeness.  It is sweet to the participants, it is sweet to much of the world that sees it and it is very sweet to God.  Survey all the high points in Christian history and you will see churches, not just individuals, who displayed stunning Christlikeness.  The early church, the Celtic church, the Waldensians, the Puritans, the Moravians, the Methodists, modern movements of note all have corporate Christlikeness as their shining attraction.

And I believe this church is a high point.  Your devotion to one another, your joy at being together, your corporate passion for Christ is a very compelling witness to his life.  I don’t believe there is a visitor who has come to us who has not experienced love and seen something very special here.  Just last week a visitor and friend said that the grace of God is all over this church.  I believe that experience is like many and is a result of God grace working in  you guys a heart for corporate pursuit of gospel empowered Christlikeness.

Yet, I know I have to grow in this.  If Christlikeness is as a body and not just as an individual than it changes everything. Does that hit you like it hits me?  It challenges me at the most fundamental level.  I am a New Englander and an American, trained in rugged individualism, looking out for number one.  When I wake up in the morning my first thoughts are about how I feel and whether I had a good sleep.  My next thoughts are about what I am going to do today.  It isn’t until about 20 minutes into my day that I start thinking about much beyond myself.  Now I know that it is human nature to be this way.  But I believe it is more than just that.  We are brought up to think in a self-referencing way.  You can blame the Greeks if you want, for their worldview was thoroughly individualistic and humanistic and they have profoundly influenced our culture.  Everything we encounter is primarily evaluated in terms of its worth to me and impact on the individual, that is, me.  This impacts my Christianity by skewing it away from its corporate nature towards an individualistic experience.  I tend to think more about my own walk with Christ versus how the whole church is doing.  I tend to put more effort into nurturing my relationship with God than everyone else’s, I tend to consider my day successful if I as an individual have abided with Christ and obeyed.

Now all those individual aspects of my Christian life are important but do you see how we distort the picture away from the corporate to the individual?  Ephesians 4 intrudes on my self-focused meditations and actions and calls me to think corporately, that is as a team.  Success for me is if the team succeeds.  Obedience for me is if the church obeys.  Fellowship for me is not just me and Jesus but we and Jesus.

Is your view of the Christian life aligned with this truth?  Would others say you are very oriented to your church?  Do you feel funny if they do say that about you?  Certainly if they said that about our devotion to our family we would see it as a virtue – than why not about our devotion to God’s family, the ulimate family?  In what ways are you failing to think in terms of God’s family?  What steps can you take, be they even baby steps, to start to live not just for your own spirituality or even just your family’s spirituality but for God’s family’s spiritual maturity?  Do you need to quit that baseball league that requires 5 nights a week practices for your young Manny Ramirez?  Do you need to withdraw from the bowling league?  Or maybe you need to start bowling with some of your Christian family.  Or maybe you need to bring them along to what you are already doing.

We as a church will not create an intensive schedule that crowds out everything else – that is not our goal.  But on the other hand, have you created a schedule that crowds out the church?  Are there things you do that keep you from regularly fellowshipping with the church on Sundays and in caregroup – our two non-negotiable gatherings as a church?  Folks, there are 168 hours in a week.  We ask that we meet as a church for only about 3 of them, 1 ½ on Sunday, 1 ½ during the week. I think we can do it.  I know that most of you want to do it.  Again, it is not about rules it is about the heart.  Is your heart for God’s family?  Are you convinced of the truth and worth of this call? Is it more than just something those folks at King of Grace are into?  Is it indeed something God is into?  I hope so, for that is the only reason we want to be into it.  And I believe you all are into it, for you wouldn’t be here otherwise, but we need to continue to grow in this area.  I know I do at least.

Now I know most of us have the ability to think corporately.  We do it almost automatically in families – right?  At least in healthy families.  We tend to think in terms of how our decisions and plans affect our familiy members not just us.  I know I do this.  As a Dad so much of what I do is aimed at my family. I have been wanting for a while to get a trampouline.  Now you may think that is not a very loving thing to desire for your family, given the dangers.  And, yes, they can be.  But we used to have one and the hours of fun and friendship my kids enjoyed on their trampouline outweighs any injuries we had.  And so, as I though about blessing my family I thought about getting another trampouline.  And until recently we were unable to afford a new one. That is until the price was right – in this case, free from my brother-in-law.  So now, once again, the kids are enjoying a trampouline.  I’m sure you have your examples like this – maybe a vacation to take, maybe a dinner to share, maybe just some time together.  We think corporately when it comes to our families.

But, why don’t we do this with our church?  The church of Jesus is the ultimate family.  Yes, our own families are to be our first priority, but a priority in context of the church family.  Long after all our children are grown and starting their own families, long after the surname Buckley is forgotten, there will a family above all families, the family of God with Jesus Christ as the great big brother.  The family of God is the ultimate family.  So shouldn’t we think of the church like we think of our family.  Shouldn’t the joy of the church be our joy?  Shouldn’t the prosperity of the body be the focus of our efforts?  Shouldn’t the success of this local church be our prayer and heartbeat?  Now, I know these things are true for so many of you, but I believe we have a lot of room to grow in this.  And maybe a way to start is to spend some time meditating on this profound truth – that the goal of our fellowship and our christian life is the maturity of the entire church, not just our individual maturity or happiness in Christ.  As I said earlier, Christlikeness is a gospel centered group experience and a gospel empowered group effort. 

God has given his only Son for us, that we might enjoy complete forgiveness and new life of love, joy, peace and goodness in him.  He has called us to this as a church, not merely as individuals or individualized families.  His call is good.  May we run to follow him as we pursue this gospel centered group experience of Christlikeness because of the power and blessing of his glorious good news in Jesus.  Let’s pray.


[1] P.T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, PNTC, Apollos, 1999, p. 307

[2] AW Tozer, “Selected Scripture Screening”, via http://articles.christiansunite.com/article4653.shtml .