Community: What Is A Healthy Church Community Ephesians 4:1-16 • FCBC • 01/14/24 Good morning church, it is a privilege to be worshipping with you this morning. If you are visiting with us for the first time my name is Ryan and I am a pastor and one of the elders here at FCBC and I have the privilege of continuing in our series this morning entitled “Our church, it’s purpose: who is FCBC and where is she going?” We’ve been answering that question by going word by word through the name of our church, Faith. Community. Bible. Church. Last week Trent introduced this series to us by looking at that first word in our churches name “Faith.” And he anchored that word to the gospel of Jesus Christ in Romans 3:21-26. We looked at the good news that God in Christ saves sinners through His propitiatory death (that is a death or sacrifice that satisfied God’s righteous wrath against our sin rebellion and treason), his glorious resurrection, and his ascension to the right hand of the father where he is reigning and ruling as King of Kings and Lord of Lords until he comes back to earth visibly and personally to judge both the living and the dead and establishes his eternal reign on earth in fellowship with His people forever! We are saved by Faith in His name and by no other way! We are a Faith people or to say it another way, we are a gospel people, a redeemed people, a holy people, a people of the king. In other words, as Trent reminded us from our doctrinal statement, we are a people who hold to: • “The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ died a substitutionary and propitiatory death as the once for all sacrifice to God for our sins and overcame death by rising again to life. This sacrifice satisfies the demands of God’s holy justice, appeases His holy wrath, demonstrates His mysterious love, and reveals His amazing grace. This free gift of salvation is provided by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone, for the glory of God alone." But our doctrinal statement goes on to say that we are also: • We are a community of faith (that is to say, a Faith Community). That is, a group of believers that have been saved by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We are believers who gather. • And we gather to proclaim this glorious hope we call the gospel. So we see that this Faith in Jesus Christ, this belief, this giving ourselves to the gospel that has saved us leads us into community. And our goal this morning is to answer the question what is a healthy church community? If we are going to identify as a community of Faith or again, Faith Community, then what is a healthy church community? This morning we are going to look to the book of Ephesians and the apostle Paul to help us answer that question, so I’d invite you to turn to your bibles to Ephesians 4 and were going to read verses 1-16 together. Let’s read this and see what the apostle Paul has to say to and about a local church Faith Community. (Read passage) This is in part a bit of a distinctives series and part of the purpose of this series is to get you acquainted with who we are, what we believe, what our name actually means to us, what our doctrinal statement says about us. Our doctrinal statement says this about what a church is: • There is one universal Church, composed of all who in every time and place are chosen in Christ and united to Him through faith by the Spirit in one Body with Christ Himself as the all-sustaining and all-authoritative Head. We believe that the ultimate purpose of the Church is to glorify God forever. • It is God’s will that the universal Church find expression in local churches in which believers gather to hear the Word of God proclaimed, to engage in corporate worship, to baptize new believers, and partake in Lord’s Supper. Each member of the body is called to exercise his/her spiritual gifts in building one another's faith by encouraging, loving, exhorting, discipling one another, and engaging in evangelism of the lost. Key Texts: Acts 1:8; 2:42; 1 Cor 12:4-11; Eph 2:19-22; Col 1:18; 3:16-17; Heb 10:23-25. And these are the very things Paul helps lay out for us in our text this morning. He gives us the ways in which a healthy church community ought to be defined, established, and maintained. God’s blueprint for the church is beautiful. It reflects the very unity, diversity, and fellowship that happens within the Trinity. Recently we went through the book of Ephesians and saw God’s glorious plan of redemption on display! In Ephesians 1 we see God’s eternal plan is “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (1:10), so that “through this triumphant centerpiece called the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (3:10 word for word). The church is a heavenly hope played out in an earthly reality where congregations of God’s people continue gathering people from all nations under the rule of Christ to share in his holiness. So to summarize this thought, Ephesians 1–3 celebrates God’s eternal plan: to gather all things in heaven and on earth together under Christ (chapter 1), through the death and resurrection of Christ, which reconciles us to God and to each other (chapter 2), to manifest the triumphant wisdom of his gospel mystery to the spiritual realms through his church (chapter 3). So we come to chapter 4 and Paul explains how his readers and therefore how we must live as a church or a COMMUNITY committed to gathering people under Christ. He does this by outlining three basic principles for us in our text this morning and those are: 1. In Unity 2. Through Ministry 3. For Maturity You see a healthy church community is going to reflect these things. They’ll be unified in the gospel, promoting a using of gifts which we’re going to talk about here in a bit, for the maturing, holiness, and purity of a church that glorifies God and looks like it’s head, Jesus Christ. We’ll start with this first principle, UNITY, here in verses 1-6 where Paul encourages his readers to walk in manner worthy of the gospel. In other words, if you are a Faith Community then you’ll walk like this. And in verse 2 he gives 3 attitudes crucial for accomplishing this type of unity that supports a healthy church community, and 7 glorious motives for pursuing it. The three attitudes necessary to nourish this sort of community are: 1. Humility 2. Gentleness 3. Patience. If you’re truly eager to maintain a spirit of unity in the bond of peace as he says in verse 3, you’ll only accomplish that by bearing with one another in love with all humility, gentleness, and patience. And he’s saying that ought to be something that you are eager to do. That word eager in the Greek means your zealous for this kind of unity, you hasten to see it happen. It’s not passive, it’s active, it’s a verb it’s something you do. In other words, the eagerness leads to action. But if you’re like me, that feels like a tall order and can quickly become discouraging. You see humility, gentleness, and kindness don’t come easy to us in our sin nature. We by nature are the very opposite of these three attitudes. Instead of humble we are arrogant or self-interested and promoting. Instead of gentle we’re harsh, brash, unkind, brutal, and even violent. And instead of patient we are short fused, easily irritable, demanding, and rude. And there is not a single one of us in this room this morning that escapes that indictment because that’s the indictment levied against us from the Word of God. We just learned from 2 Timothy that people apart from Christ in their natural state are lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient, ungrateful, and unholy. You might think to yourself, “Well I’m not really like that. I don’t treat people like that on the outside or to their face at least. I actually tend to be softer, less combative, even conflict averse.” And I wouldn’t deny you that. Certainly, some are more predisposed to being softer than others by nature and therefore maybe more gentle or patient and come off more humble. But there is this tricky little thing called the heart. Remember, God told Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7, “I don’t see as man sees, for man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart.” I think we could prove that case if there was a running tape of our head and heart that was accessible at any given moment. Perhaps at rush hour on Eagle Rd, or Ustick rd, or Fairview, or in the In n out line, or in conflict with your spouse or children, or simply in the deep recesses of our hearts and what we actually think of people, and the list goes on and on. What’s on the inside of us IS what is true of us, in any given moment. But, I don’t want to leave you discouraged! You see a healthy church community is really a supernatural community because Paul says it ought to be driven by an eager desire to maintain unity through the very attitudes that we aren’t naturally geared or predisposed towards. Which is why it is a Faith Community. Because, through Faith or through the gospel of Jesus Christ we have obtained new natures. That is part of what takes place in the heart transplant of regeneration, we get new life and therefore completely new natures. And with those new natures comes new desires and therefore new ways of living! So it is possible to actually walk in a manner worthy of the gospel with all humility, gentleness, and patience bearing with one another and even eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace… BUT ONLY IN UNION WITH CHRIST AND THEREFORE THROUGH THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT THAT RESIDES IN YOU AS A RESULT OF RECEIVING THE GOSPEL, OR FAITH. We have 3 chapters of rich doctrine saying this is not of your own doing it is a gift of God not of works so that you cannot boast. That’s not only a power to save but a powe
