Title: The Consummation of All Things and Jesus
The Consummation of All Things and Jesus
Ephesians 4:1-16,
10th week after Pentecost, August 5, 2012
spiritual unity
The diversity of gifts is not difficult to understand, but unity in the spirit is a little more difficult to understand. For the diversity of gifts is visible, but the unity in the spirit is invisible. That's why many believers don't give much thought to spiritual unity. If you think about it, you can't get your hands on it. Conversely, it is sometimes dismissed as a story that knows everything. Doesn't this mean that we are one in the Holy Spirit? But there is no spiritual resonance. Do we really know the world? Let's read text 4-6a. Think about how you feel. “There is one body and one Spirit, in the same way you were called in one hope of your calling. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God...” All things are one. When we say “there is one body,” the body refers to the historical Jesus. Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God, faith, baptism, and hope are all one. In it, I received a ‘call’. This calling is a calling. That calling is a gift. So even though our gifts are diverse, spiritually we are all one.
In particular, look at the phrase ‘one God is one’ in verse 6a. Everything else comes from this concept. The text then describes God as follows: “He is the Father of all, who is above all, he unites all, and he is in all.” All things refer to everything in the world. Not just the people living on Earth, but everything in it, the stars in the sky and everything in it. The phrase "father of all things" sounds like pantheism or polytheism, but the writer of Ephesians is not talking about that. It speaks of unity, the absolute attribute of God. That God is said to be “over all, unifying all, and in all.” Lutheran translation is