Spirit of Unity

Happy Sabbath! And welcome to all those who are listening in on the webcast. We don't want to forget about you. We definitely think about you, and we're glad that you're here as well. Thank you to the beautiful ladies ensemble there, the beautiful music that you provided. Just lovely. I had to wake myself up. Okay, I'm going to go speak now.

Just beautiful. Just beautiful. I have a few questions to start out here. How many people here today have a passport? Passport? Oh, it's a fair number. You're a well-traveled group. How many people have a driver's license? Yeah, okay, a lot of you have that. I have my driver's license with me here.

Probably, unless you're sort of under five, most of us here have some form of picture ID, right? Student ID card, you go to college now, they give you a student ID card. Driver's license is kind of a rite of passage, you know, 15 and a half, got to go get it, right? I learned, by the way, in South Dakota, you can get a learner's permit at 12.

Yeah, there's a person from South Dakota, Ambassador of Iowa College, she's 18 and we were there with Sophie and she's like, oh yeah, I got my driver's license three years ago or something. I was late. But anyway, most of us have some form of picture ID. And when I travel to France, I carry my driver's license because a lot of times I'll rent a car in France and so I'll need that.

I carry my passport because obviously you can't leave the country without your passport. I actually have a French identity card, so I use that when I go to the bank if I need to withdraw money from the account there.

I have a French passport, so that helps me get around Europe a little bit more easily. So I have all these different forms of identification.

It feels like a little bit of a hassle, but you need all those forms of identification. Driver's license explains to people that you actually took a test. You know of what you're doing. And so it gives you the right and the privilege to drive a car. If you have a debit card, it gives you access to your bank account and they want to make sure that it's you. So they'll ask for a form of ID.

With credit cards not quite as much now, they might ask for your zip code or something to prove who you are so that you don't use somebody else's credit card. But if you have a credit card, it means that somebody thought you had enough discipline to pay your bills on time. And presumably you probably have a job and things like that. So our identification is important because it gives us certain rights and benefits that go with who we are and what we've done, whether it's taking money out of our account or it's traveling overseas or it's driving a car.

And of course we have a Christian identity as well. We see the broad outlines of this in Ephesians 4. I'd like to start by asking you to turn to Ephesians 4 and verse 4, where we see the broad outlines of this identity. And it's an identity that's a little bit different than what you might see on your driver's license. You know, when I look at my driver's license, it kind of gives me my height and my weight, which is of course wrong, right? Because that's the weight you were when you were in high school and you never change it. And, you know, my hair is a lot more gray now than it used to be and so forth, probably shrinking.

But anyway, you know, there's different forms of identification on this. And this is a form of identification in our Christian identity. Ephesians 4 verse 4, it says, Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. Now that's interesting, right? Where's my unique identity in that? Where's my, you know, six feet and gray hair in that? Well, we're in there. We're in that one body. We're in that one lore, that one faith, that one baptism.

We're in that unity of the Spirit. We're part of a single body and we have a common spirit here among us. And whatever our individual identity is, it has to be subsumed into that larger body of Christ. And we see that explicitly described just a few verses earlier. We could have started there, but I thought we'd just back up here. Go to verse 1, it says, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you, Ephesians 4 verse 1, to have a walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

So we have our distinctive identity, our distinctive sort of understanding of who we are. You know, this is me and this is you. And yet we have to put that aside and recognize that we are part of one body and one spirit. And we have to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And why is that? Why is that important? Well, Paul actually goes into a little bit more detail on that. When he talks about our identity in verse 22, he says that we have to put off, Ephesians 4, 22, we have to put off concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you put on a new man or a new person.

So our identity, as we were before, has to change. We have to take on a new identity, identity that is part of the body of Christ. And that old identity and all those types of things and characteristics that you might see on a passport or driver's license, right?

Well, spiritually, there's a new identity that comes, a new passport, as it were, a new driver's license. We have to be a new person. Today I want to talk about this concept of unity of spirit, or the spirit of unity, as described here in Ephesians.

From a perspective of our identity and becoming a new person and turning in our physical passport, as I said, as it were, and receiving a new spiritual passport. Who are we, really? I'm American, I'm Caucasian, I'm a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, right? I'm a naturalized French citizen, I'm six feet tall, I was born in California. We have all these kinds of things that we say, well, who are you? And yet what we're going to see in this message is that all those details become very, very unimportant as we become a new person.

And we have to put those things away, as much as we might like to connect with, well, I went to the school, or I was born in this state, or I'm part of this family, whatever it might be. We have to put those things to the side and focus on things that are more important. And I hope today that we'll have a chance to examine these things.

And the title of today's message is the Spirit of Unity. And we're going to talk about three points. We're going to look at leaving our demographics behind, as I've just described. And we're going to talk about God's spirit as an identifier of us as God's children, that unique identifier, what gives us identity, and how being led by the Spirit makes us possible to follow some basic things that we need to change in our lives.

Let's go into some of this, and let's start in Galatians 3. Let's first talk about leaving our demographics behind. Galatians 3. Now this might sound maybe easy and hard at the same time. It's actually incredibly difficult, and it can be quite confusing, too. Galatians 3 verse 26. Paul describes something in Galatians 3, which is absolutely radical.

And I hope you can begin to grasp just how radical this is, because this is a total and complete transformation of self, is what he's describing in Galatians 3 verse 26, where we're leaving our demographics behind. Galatians 3.26, For you are all sons of God. That's the identity we're talking about. So he makes it very clear to the beginning. You are sons of God. We would say sons and daughters of God. Through faith in Christ Jesus. That is our Christian identity. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

If we've been baptized, if we've repented of our sins, if we've put our hand to the plow and said we're not going to look back, and this is the way of life that we're going to lead, this is how we're going to live our lives, then we are baptized and we're now part of this body of Christ and we are now sons and daughters of God. And now Paul is going to go on to say something just completely radical. He says, verse 28, There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

You are all one in Christ Jesus here. What Paul is describing here is that every bias that might come from where you come from, your ethnicity, your gender, your social status, every life experience, every sense of identity that you have, has to be examined and changed to conform with your new Christian identity.

You're getting a new passport, you're getting a new driver's license, you're getting a new identity card, and it's going to have different things on it than what was done before. Now, why would that be? Why do we have to examine every thought? Well, because, you know, you don't have to turn there, but Isaiah 55, it says that, you know, my thoughts are above your thoughts, and neither are my ways your ways. So we can't just walk into God's kingdom with bringing all the baggage from our prior lives with us, because we would not be in conformity to God's values.

We would not be in conformity to God's way of thinking. How many of you are easy to live with? Oh, you know the answer to that question, don't you? Nobody raised their hand. All right, most of us have probably woken up, or we were scared to raise our hand, to realize we're not easy to live with.

And God wants us to live with Him in His kingdom forever. And so if we're going to live with God forever, well, we're going to have to make some changes to our way of thinking. Otherwise, we're going to be very hard to live with, and He doesn't want that. He doesn't want somebody like that. We have to make some changes, which means that God is patient with us. He's kind with us. He is long suffering. He's willing to put up with a lot from us, because He wants us to change.

And that is an example for us, and we'll talk about that in a moment. And so if we look at verse 28, and we just unpack that a moment in verse 28 about Jew or Greek, just think about what that means for a moment.

So the Greeks – talk about the Greeks here – the Greeks were philosophers. They were the philosophers of the ancient world. They were the creators of the Olympics. They created the original democracy. Pretty much all the great ideas of the world came from the Greeks at that time.

Athens or Sparta, different schools of thinking, different ways of considering life. The Oracle of Delphi was sought out by people from all over the world. If you were a Greek, even though you were a vassal state of Rome, just like Judea was a vassal state of Rome, Romans respected you. There's a very famous saying that the Romans conquered Greece, but Greece conquered Rome. The Romans adored the Greeks. They took all of their philosophy and they incorporated it into their own. And if you wanted to learn great thinking, you sent your kids to Greece. Or you brought a Greek person in and you taught them.

And of course, everybody had to learn Greek. Greek was the language of the world. Yes, Latin was spoken in Rome and they controlled it, but they understood that Greek was really the language. Greek was the language. And so you, if you were Greek, you were the authors of Western civilization. A little bit of pride there, right? Kind of similar to the Americans today, actually, to us. Right? I mean, our language is the language to speak. We are the most powerful nation on Earth.

Our military is above any other military. In fact, by some estimates, more than all the others combined, and more than we spend more on military than many countries in the world have gross domestic profit. So, Paul says, forget about that. Yeah, forget about all that. Now, let's think about being a Jew. If you were a Jew, you were God's very chosen people. Oh yeah, forget the Greeks. I know they got a lot going. They aren't God's chosen people. God himself dwelt in the temple in Jerusalem. I mean, okay, now, you know, this is like one-upmanship, right? Oh yeah, you got that? Well, I got that. I mean, Paul was speaking to two people who had great pride in who they were ethnically, and who they were as a national culture.

No other laws, philosophy, or worldly wisdom could rise above what it meant to be a Jew. Now, I'm not talking, I'm talking here about Jewish culture. I'm not talking about God's law and so forth in that way. I mean, the Jews had their own culture, their own way. They had incorporated things when they were in Babylon, and they had come to a way of doing things and so forth. There was a certain pride in being a Jew, and there was pride in being Greek or having been trained classically.

And yet God inspired Paul to write that whatever self-image, identity, or worldview you had as a person, whether Jew or Greek, it must be examined and changed to conform to your Christian identity. Now, if that wasn't enough, Paul goes on one step further, and he's going to now talk about being a slave or being free. Now, a free man could own land. A free man could travel. A free man could take whatever job he wanted. He could even decide not to work.

I'm just not going to work. I'm going to figure things out. He was a master of his fate. Often a free man was literate, so he could read. And he often had a skill or a trade, what we might call a career. A free man could pursue those types of things. A slave was denied even the most basic right of liberty. His choices and his life experiences were narrowed by the crucible of the ancient world.

It was just a fact. Maybe it was his sin or the sin of his family, whatever it might be. Maybe he was born a slave. Maybe he was a free man who became a slave because of bad choices, but the fact was that he was a slave. And he was subject to the whim and fancy of his master. And a generous matron or master could give a slave opportunities to learn and to develop and so forth. Or a cruel master could leave a slave suffering some of the most horrendous things of the ancient world.

And yet God inspired Paul to write that whatever self-image we had, identity or worldview, whether we were slave or free, it had to be examined and conformed to being free.

Our social status today is defined often by where we are born. If we are born in West Africa, our life expectancy is dramatically less than if we are born in the United States, or France, or Canada. Our education levels, our ability to travel, our health outcomes, all of these things are defined by where we are born. They're not choices that we make. We're lucky. We're born here in the United States. And because we're born here, we get to have lower, we get to have more opportunities for employment. We get to live longer. We get to have opportunities that people in other parts of the world don't have. In Western countries, people often have more education. They have a certain social status that comes with that education. They have opportunities to travel, and that's education in itself. And some people think that they were smart, and that's how they got to be where they were. Other people were at the right place at the right time. Other people were at the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet God inspired Paul to write that whatever self-image, or identity, or worldview you had as a person, whatever your social status, it didn't matter. It had to be examined to see whether it conformed to your Christian identity.

And now, if that wasn't enough, Paul is going to totally go beyond really anybody's wild imagination in the first century. And he's going to say even your gender doesn't matter, whether you're male or female. If you were a woman in 50 AD, you were likely the property of your father, your brother, or your husband. That's what you were. You were property. That was your status. Your husband would be chosen based upon the needs of the family. What kind of family alliances do we need to make? How shall we marry her? How shall so-and-so be married to so-and-so? Well, we need an alliance here, or we need better relations there. This will be good for business. That's how your husband was chosen. And your educational opportunities were highly limited, unless you were in the aristocracy. Very likely you could not read. If you were a man, even a slave, or poor, your opportunities were greater, often, than what a woman would have. From a biblical standpoint, Paul outlines certain roles and expectations of men and women in daily life. And yet, have you ever heard how men and women see the world differently? We see the world very differently, don't we? Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus. We have all these books. And yet, Paul says, despite your gender, you have to change and examine the way you think to see whether it's in conformity with your Christian identity. I mean, this is remarkable. This is remarkable. Even our very gender.

Now, I don't know if you get this feeling, but when I listen to the Star Spangled Banner, something kind of wells up inside of me. We had a chance to go to our daughter's graduation at the University of California. We watched a thousand of these graduates come into the School of Computer Science, and one of the seniors sang the National Anthem.

There are thousands of people in the auditorium, and we're all singing the National Anthem. And I'm thinking, what an incredible place this is to provide opportunities for people like we have here to see all these young people graduating. But whatever feeling you might have when you hear the Star Spangled Banner song, you've got to examine that and ask, is that the same feeling I have when I think about being a Christian? When I think about my Christian identity? Do I have the same feeling about my country, my spiritual country, that I have about my physical country? That's what Paul's talking about. This is radical, and this is saying that, well, wait a minute, I'm an American. How can I not be an American? I'm a man. How can I not be a man? I'm Caucasian. How can I not be Caucasian? I went to school in California. How can I not have gone to school? That's what he's saying. Yes, that's right. I challenge you to put all of that away and to re-examine it in the light of being a Christian. It says, verse 29, And if you are Christ, then your Abraham seed and heirs according to the promise. Will Durant, the American historian and philosopher who over 40 years wrote 11 volumes chronicling the world's history from the beginning to the time of Napoleon. Probably one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century is quoted as saying, 60 years ago, I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. Let's see the Apostle Paul's similar sentiment in 1 Corinthians 2-2.

I thought that was quite a powerful quote. And yet Paul's quote is, I think, just as powerful. 1 Corinthians 2-2, probably heard this said before. 1 Corinthians 2-2, Paul says, I determine not to know anything but Jesus Christ and him crucified.

I don't think that the Apostle Paul forgot what he learned at the feet of Gamaliel. He was classically trained. He was a scholar of his day. I don't think he just said, I'm going to forget everything. No, he said, I'm going to re-examine it. I'm going to know nothing but Jesus Christ. That's going to be the lens from which I look at the world to identify who he was and what he was doing. I don't think Will Durant got dumber over 60 years. That's not what he's saying. He didn't say, I got dumber all those 60 years. I wrote and I wrote and I got dumber and dumber. No, that's not what he's saying. What Will Durant is saying is that he just became more self-aware. He just became more self-aware. He realized what he didn't know, and he became self-aware of just how hard he was to live with, maybe. How little he really knew about history. How little we really grasped the lessons of history. Just like Paul, he's not dumber about the law. He just realized, wow, to really understand who I am and to be with God, I'm going to have to make a bunch of changes. I'm going to have to really focus on my Christian identity. So all I'm going to know is Jesus Christ and him crucified.

God has called people from all walks of life. Look at this room. We're from all walks of life in this room.

All these experiences have to be focused through this lens of Jesus Christ and him crucified. Well, you know, back in the Philippines, we do it this way. Well, in France, we do it that way. Well, that's interesting because in Canada, we have this thing. We tend to kind of do that. Well, you know, when we get to a new place. In fact, you know, if you come to California, oh, this is interesting. In California, they do it like this. Oh, can you turn right on red? You know, we have all these things that we kind of compare. And yet, Paul says, all those things, they don't matter. What we need to do is compare it here, as it says, to Christ and him crucified.

So the next time we want to get opinionated about something, I have a simple question that I'd ask you to ask yourself. Why would we think that our viewpoints on anything align to God's viewpoints? Why would we think that? Why would we think that our viewpoint on any subject would align to God's viewpoint?

Unless, of course, it had been critically examined, prayed over, fasted over, and studied into His Word. Well, that should slow us down a little bit in our opinions, I think. And that is such a key to unity. That is such a key to unity. Because once we can get off our opinions, once we can start recognizing that, hmm, this is probably just coming from my life experience, I probably need to listen a little bit more. I probably need to be prepared to understand what somebody might be telling me. That's when we begin to understand a little bit more about unity.

Let me give you a personal example here. So when I turned eight years old, for my birthday, my dad bought me a BB gun.

And shortly after, he took me out and he taught me how to shoot his .22 caliber rifle.

I remember very well, being the eight and a half year old I was, that he said, now son, you can now kill a man with this gun.

I mean, that's what you're teaching eight and a half year old, nine year old, how to shoot. That's what you tell him. This is a dangerous weapon.

One of my earliest memories is captured in a photo. My three year old self was handing bullets to my dad to load his gun.

Now, some of you might be shocked by that. In fact, I told my colleagues when I was traveling in Ireland a little bit about that, and they thought that I was like being taught to be a terrorist at a very young age. Right? Like, wow, you're, you know, your dad's telling you like you can kill a man with this. And yet, it was just as normal as can be for me. I grew up with guns. My family was from Dodge City, Kansas, Boot Hill.

Right? I mean, Wyatt Earp. I went to the cemetery on the top of the hill. And that was just part of my life experience. Guns are a very polarizing issue in America today, even in the church. And as I said, you know, if I start saying, well, let me tell you about guns. I've been around guns a long time. What do I know? Have I examined my thinking in light of my Christian identity, or am I relying on Dodge City?

Am I relying on Dodge City, Kansas? Am I relying on that experience to inform me about how I should think about guns?

I have to critically examine my life experience against God's word. And then, even then, be fairly cautious.

Herbert Armstrong, founder of the World Wide Church of God, once wrote, It is perhaps ten times harder to unlearn error than to learn new truth.

And essentially, what we've done growing up is we've learned a bunch of error. Yeah! Teach your eight-year-old how to shoot! I don't know. Maybe that's good. Maybe that's not. I have to really think about that. I have to really examine that.

My wife grew up in France with socialized healthcare. And so when the healthcare debate flared up about ten years ago, it was quite normal for her to look at the U.S. healthcare system and thought it was very odd that people were so open arms. Why wouldn't people want to have universal healthcare? Works very good in France. Worked for her growing up. Worked just fine. It's kind of a basic human right.

And, you know, money shouldn't be sort of their criteria for access to, you know, go to the hospital.

Well, you know, that's a big debate.

People have pretty strong opinions on that subject. I recall at the Feast of Tabernacles that year, or, you know, it was ten years ago right when this was a big thing. Still is, but that was obviously the kind of the Obamacare thing was going through. And I was, I had this lovely French-speaking lady on one side, and I had this lovely English-speaking lady on the other side. And I was translating for them. And here these were the two most wonderful ladies in the church you would ever meet. Just wonderful people who were on completely different sides of this issue.

The, you know, the French-speaking lady was saying, well, you know, I mean, isn't it a shame that, you know, in the United States you don't have access to, you know, these kinds of things that we just take for granted here. And, you know, why would people in the church be all up in arms, or for that matter, people who read the Bible, be up in arms about providing poor people health care?

You know, the person on my other side was like, you know, this is the government just getting in and trying to control us all, you know. And, you know, this is going to get messed up real bad. You know, I mean, they were on different sides of this thing, and I felt like I was somewhat mediating. Now, I was trying to keep peace, but it wasn't that bad, okay. Very converted ladies, okay. But, in hindsight, I think that would have been a great opportunity to have an exchange of views among two very converted people about a topic that they would disagree on.

How often do we seek out a contrary viewpoint from our own?

You know, if you think about it, it's like, oh yeah, I can't wait. I'm having coffee with so-and-so. He disagrees with me on everything. Nobody wants to do that. You want to go have coffee with your friends and hang out and talk and relax. You're not looking for a debate. You're not looking to like, okay, I've got to be very careful about what I say, because, man, it's just going to get better. Because, man, it's just going to get picked on and picked on. You know, this approach doesn't sell. It doesn't sell. It doesn't sell cars and ads. It doesn't sell, you know, things at Walmart. If you want to sell something to somebody, you figure out what they want and you give it to them. Right? Here it is. You want this? Oh, I got one of those. And so that's how our world is structured. Our world is structured such that whatever opinion you have, people are going to find a way to find other people who have that same opinion so you just feel real good about yourself. That's how our society is structured. And we, as human beings, we kind of like that. So we don't want to just hang out with people who disagree with us. But yet, if we hung out with somebody who disagreed with us, we actually went and, you know, had coffee and sat down and had an exchange of views. What do you think about teaching eight-year-olds how to shoot a gun? I think that's a terrible idea. I mean, could you imagine? I mean, that person's not responsible for what they do. They could hurt somebody. Well, I don't know. It seems like you're teaching them responsibility at a very young age. And, you know, you're supervising them. And so by the time they get to be older, they're, you know, they're going to be miles ahead of other people because they've got a sense of personal responsibility. You have an exchange of ideas on things like socialized medicine. What is that like? Can we be unified? Well, yes, we can because we're coming from all sorts of backgrounds and we have to examine our thoughts on whether they fit within that Christian identity or not. I think one of the greatest errors that must be unlearned is our intrinsic pride in our rightness.

Our intrinsic pride in our rightness. A rightness that springs from what? Our life experiences, our national identity, whether we're black or Caucasian or Asian or, you know, man or woman or tall or short, right? Whatever it is. Well, you know, he's short, so that kind of affected his worldview. I mean, that's a real thing. Oh, well, you know, he was very tall, so he felt very uncomfortable with himself because, you know, he was always feeling like he was standing out. All these things that define our physical identities, they define our worldview. And sometimes we just sort of end up being very opinionated because of that experience. If we're going to be prepared for trials ahead, we must be unified around our Christian identity. And that means being willing to hear a contrary opinion without getting defensive and to give a contrary opinion without getting preachy. I mean, I'm being a little preachy, but I'm telling you about it, right? We have to be able to receive the contrary opinion without being defensive, and we have to be able to give the contrary opinion without being preachy.

So people can actually listen to it. And that means that sometimes we need to hang out with people who disagree with us. In fact, we need to seek out those people because, you know, we might learn something because if we're critically examining our thoughts, it doesn't help to hang out with all the people who have the same thoughts as we have. What helps is to hang out with people who have different thoughts, and then we learn something, hopefully, from that.

So let's transition to talk now about God's Spirit and how God's Spirit identifies us as children of God. Let's turn over to Ephesians 1, verse 3. Ephesians 1, verse 3.

We're talking about unity because unity doesn't mean we all think the same things. It just means that we've examined our thoughts in light of our Christian identity, and we're not letting our demographics define our opinions.

But now let's look at Ephesians 1, verse 3. Because now we're going to talk about how God's Spirit identifies us as children of God, how we and what kind of rights and benefits we get from that, just like that passport or that driver's license.

Ephesians 1, verse 3. It says, Now the Phillips translation here in verse 3 translates this as, God gave us every spiritual benefit as citizens of heaven.

And what's being described is that in heavenly places, there are benefits that have been ascribed to us. It's kind of a strange thought, isn't it? Because we often think about benefits like, well, here, I mean, you know, you applied for this credit card because you have very good credit.

You're going to get this credit card for free, and you're going to get all these miles, right? That's kind of a benefit that comes from good credit. And you go, oh, good, I got this benefit here. Or, you know, because of your loyalty as a customer, we're going to give you, you know, something. That's something. Well, think about that as happening in heaven. We have accrued benefits that are awaiting us. In verse 4, just, they're not awaiting for us to go to heaven, just to be clear. They're awaiting us there. We're going to be down here on earth, just to be clear.

But that's what's being described. Just as he chose verse 4, us and him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. Now, this is interesting. We have these benefits. And because we have these benefits, it should change our behavior. It should inform our behavior. We have a driver's license. And because we have the driver's license and we took the test, we know that if we were to go have three beers, or four beers, or whatever it is, maybe two beers, depending on who you are, and you get on the road and you get pulled over, you could get a driving under the influence citation, which could be really bad.

So you are informed of that. And so therefore you need to be blameless when it comes to drinking alcohol and driving. We take this seriously, right? We should. Hopefully, people don't...they aren't cavalier about doing that because it's your life, and it's the life of somebody on the road if you do that. Well, it's the same thing here. It's your life, and it's somebody else's spiritual life if you contradict these things. So we have to be holy and without blame before him in love.

Now, let's look at an example in Galatians 2. We're going to come back to Ephesians 1, which is just a couple pages in my Bible, so I think we can get back there quickly. Galatians 2, verse 11, let's see an example of a man of God who was not blameless, who actually let his ethnicity, who let his cultural characteristics get in the way of his Christian identity.

Paul, describing the situation, says in Galatians 2, verse 11, He was to be blamed. He was to be blamed. He was not blameless in this case. His conduct was not blameless. What did he do? For before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles. But when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. That's what he did. He let his cultural biases get in the way of his Christian identity. And he was blamed for it. He was not blameless. This was wrong.

And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him so that even Barnabas was carried away. His conduct influenced other people. We're talking about Peter here. This isn't some little guy on the side. This is Peter, the Apostle Peter. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter before them all, if you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?

You're you're you're you got it all wrong. You have not examined your thinking in light of your Christian identity. And it's led you astray. Now, a lot of times we focus on, you know, Peter was wrong and Paul was calling him out. But I think what's interesting here is I think that it is fair to assume, and there are people who will, scholars who will certainly take me to task over this, but I think it's fair to assume that Peter and Paul figured out how to get along.

And I think it's fair to assume that Peter and Paul were in the body of Christ, the same body. I think it's fair to assume that they are going to be in the kingdom. I think it's fair to assume that they had a spirit of unity.

And yet they had a disagreement. In this case, Peter was wrong and Paul was right. But you know, maybe another time in Scripture we don't get it. Paul was wrong and Peter was right. It doesn't mean Peter is a bad person. It just means he was wrong. He got his ethnicity in the way of his Christian identity. He had the wrong passport. So this is a case where Peter's conduct was not blameless. We are to be blameless and holy. That doesn't mean we're not going to make mistakes. We're going to make mistakes. And when we make mistakes and people call it out, the people who call it out need not to be preachy.

And when we receive it, we don't need to be defensive. We need to listen and we need to make the change. Okay, let's go back to Ephesians. You know, I think we should make it a goal to have a kind and loving conversation with a brother and sister in the church who disagrees with us. I think that should be a goal. We should have the—and by the way, if you're married, you get to do this often. You can practice tonight. We have those opportunities because that's what it means to live with somebody.

And God wants us to live with him, so we've got to get along in his kingdom. Let's go back to Ephesians 6. Let's continue. Having predestined us, verse 5, to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he has made us accepted in the beloved. Now, this is a very interesting phrase if you have a King James or a new King James because this term beloved, it's capitalized in my Bible.

There's some debates about sort of capitalization or not. But this term beloved is a term in Greek that was used in the Septuagint. The Septuagint was a translation of the Old Testament into Greek done before Jesus Christ was born. And this was the term that was used for the nation of Israel, the beloved. And so when Paul uses this term, he knows exactly what he's writing. He's describing a sense that we are accepted into the nation, but not into the physical nation of Israel as the Septuagint used it to describe the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, but into the spiritual nation, into this body of Christ accepted in the beloved.

Now, the beloved is referring to Jesus Christ. And that's why it's such a powerful play on words because it's referring to Jesus Christ, who is our identity in a spiritual sense, but it's that same word that's used to describe the nation of Israel in the Septuagint in the Old Testament.

And there's a sense of firstfruits in here that we who first trusted, we who first trusted, the firstfruits, not everybody, we who first trusted, we who understood this sense of citizenship, we will receive this in the dispensation and fullness of time. But you know, I don't think this is going to be a light switch. I don't think it's like, oh, I'm moving along, I got my opinions, I know who I am, I'm from California, and I'm this and I'm that. And then, oh, Christ is here, I better get my act together.

Okay, let's see, thought number one, let's see, is that according to... I don't think it's a switch. I don't think it's a digital zero and one. I think it's a progression. It's like Paul described, or Will Durant described earlier, what I mentioned earlier. It's learning how we can be wrong about a lot of things that we thought we were right about. Because how could we be wrong?

I mean, we have this life experience that tells us, this is how we should look at things. How can that be wrong? Well, except if we compare that against God's law, we compare that against what Jesus Christ describes in person, both in the New Testament and through the prophets and the old. In verse 13, In him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.

And so Paul is going to end this discussion of identity, this identity, these privileges we have in heaven, this identity we have with Jesus Christ, with a discussion of the Spirit. Who is the guarantee of our inheritance, or we would say, which is the guarantee, actually in my margin it says which as well, of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory?

We will have this redemption. Jesus Christ will return, but in the meantime we have God's Holy Spirit, which is the identifying mark of a Christian. That is the identifying mark of a Christian. That is what we, that's our new passport. And we see that described in Romans 8 verse 14. Turn over there. Romans 8, 14. We see this very specifically described. And so we have this identity and it is sealed and it is guaranteed with God's Spirit, which then identifies us as a Christian.

It's the passport, it's a spiritual passport, it's the driver's license, it's the rights and privileges, and they're in heaven. And it informs our conduct here on earth and in the fullness and dispensation of time we will receive our reward. But until then, Romans 8 verse 14 says, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. That's our Christian identity. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. This is how we know we are holding the right passport if we are being led by the Spirit.

The Spirit, God's Spirit, in us, working in us is going to lead us to examine those thoughts. Now, it might be God's Spirit working through maybe one of our brothers and sisters in the church saying, that doesn't seem quite right to me because you actually sought out and had a conversation with somebody who disagreed with you. I mean, oh, that's interesting. Well, let me go look at that. We understand that.

This is iron sharpening iron. This is how we help one another. And so if we haven't been praying regularly, if we haven't been studying regularly, if we haven't been fasting regularly, and we start getting opinionated on something, chances are we're holding the wrong identity card. Chances are that opinion is coming from a place of our ethnicity, or our gender, or our social status, all of which Paul said are nothing in Galatians. That's a radical thought. But if we have been praying, if we have been studying, if we have been fasting, and we have been meditating on this subject, and we're thinking about it, and we've actually talked to people who have a contrary opinion from ours, and we've got an input, maybe we're getting closer.

Maybe we're getting closer to something that maybe is a better opinion, or an opinion that might be closer to what God is teaching and what God is telling us we need to do. If we're not studying and fasting and praying, then we're going to be like Peter in Galatians, and we're going to make these mistakes, and these mistakes are going to cause other people to stumble.

What did Paul specifically say to do when we were transitioning with this new identity? Because, again, we've been talking about identity, and he talks about it in Ephesians, and he talks about it in Galatians. Let's go back to Ephesians and finish up there and conclude in Ephesians 4. Because this is really a theme all the way through the book of Ephesians. We read a little bit in the introduction of Ephesians 4. We went to Ephesians 1, which describes these heavenly privileges that are awaiting us. Jesus Christ's return. But in Ephesians 4, Paul gets a little bit more specific. In verse 25, how do we actually do this? He says, well, we put away lying. We put away, it says, verse 26, being angry, letting the sun go down on our wrath, being in a state of anger. Verse 27, now giving place to the devil. Verse 28, we don't steal. We labor in such a way that we give a proper day's labor for our bosses and our companies. We give to people who are in need. We don't use foul language. We don't slander people. Verse 29, verse 30, we don't grieve the Holy Spirit. We don't grieve the Holy Spirit because it's the Spirit that's leading us. And if we're not being led by the Spirit, if we're letting our own sort of life experiences and opinions get in the way, then we're going to grieve the Spirit. In verse 31, let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking be put away. And in verse 32, he concludes this discussion with something that we would do well to remember. And be kind to one another. Tender hearted, forgiving one another, just as God and Christ also forgave you. Isn't that such a theme? As we're going through this process, everybody around us is going through this process. Hopefully. And in this process, we're going to fall down. We're going to make mistakes. Maybe we're going to get a little too heated in that conversation over coffee with somebody who disagrees with us. And we're going to forget to be kind or tender hearted. And we're going to have to come back later and say, I'm sorry. You know what? I got opinionated. I haven't been in my right mind. I've made some mistakes. I'm sorry. Because God does that with us. He wants to live with us. And He wants us to be able to live with one another. That's what the spirit of unity is about. It's not that we've checked our minds at the door, not that we're avoiding one another, not that we're just like, sure, whatever opinion you have, I have the same opinion. This would be great. I don't need to have an opinion on that. Your opinion is good for me. God doesn't want that. He wants us to examine our thoughts individually. And after He goes through that discussion at the end of chapter four, He gives three things in chapter five that I'll leave you with. Three things which I think are really interesting. Ephesians 5 verse 1, I'll tell you what they are if you want to write them down. The three things that He says, walk in love, walk in light, and walk in wisdom. Those are the three things that He leaves them with in chapter five, building on what He just described about not grieving the spirit and about making those changes and critically examining who we are and living the life worthy of the calling that we've been given.

Look at Ephesians 5 verse 1, Therefore, be followers of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. Walk in love. Love is not defensive when receiving input. Love does not lord it over people when giving input.

Love gives the benefit of the doubt, and love doesn't keep a list of wrongs. I remember when you did that. I remember when you did it. It doesn't do that. Walk in love. Verse 8, For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. Walk as children of light. The sunlight, it is said, is the best disinfectant. You've probably heard that expression, right? You shine light on something, and it's amazing, right? It's not in sort of the dark and, you know, wet and cold. No, you get that light on it, get some heat, and wow, that thing just clears right up. Well, that's what Paul was talking about. He's saying, walk in light. Light shows what's really there. There's no hiding, no running, no being unwilling to acknowledge the truth. The gospel message is truth, and it is light. And we have to be willing to let go of our personal viewpoints in the full light of day, when it's fully exposed, not hidden. Verse 15, See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. Walk in wisdom. Walk in wisdom. Wisdom says that some issues don't get better when they're ignored. Wisdom says, what's that old expression? Company and fish smelling three days or something, you know? Things just, after a while, if you just let them go, they just get worse and worse and festers and festers and festers. Wisdom says, hey, maybe I need to confront that. Maybe I need to confront that. Wisdom says, choose the right time, go confront it and don't wait. What does verse 16 say? Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Don't put this off. Walk in wisdom. Don't put these things off. Redeem the time. Make good use of the time that we have right now. As has been said, if not us, who? If not now, when? For the sake of unity, we must learn from each other and learn to love those with whom we disagree. Because if we're in God's church and we've got our right identity cards, we're both critically examining our thoughts in light of God's word and not in light of where we were born, what gender we are, what school we went to, or any other criteria that we would like to go to. Well, I studied Greek over here, and you know, it says, yeah, I don't want to hear about how you studied Greek. That's great. But let's look at what's, you know, yeah, well, but the Greek is good. Let's just look holistically at what God's word is saying here. Well, you know, I actually, it's interesting, I've grown up in this and I've been studying this for 30 years. Oh, okay, that's great. Tell me about it. Okay, that's good. I haven't studied that as much as you. Or maybe the person who studied for 30 years hasn't really studied it because all they've done is just sort of been with themselves for 30 years looking at this topic. I think God's church is being prepared. And we need to endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. And that peace and that unity is going to come when we understand our Christian identity. And we put our own social status, our own ideas in front for all to see and understand it. Let's walk in love, let's walk in light, and let's walk in wisdom as we do this.