Ephesians, Pt. 3 (The Power of One)
![The Power of One
Ephesians, Pt. 3
By Pastor Dan Kennedy
© June 14, 2015
www.pastorkennedy.com
There are few things in the world as powerful as a husband and wife united as ONE, or a family united as ONE, or a group of people united as ONE, or a nation united as ONE…or the Kingdom of Heaven united as ONE under Christ. In an age where individuality reigns supreme…and stability is in short supply, the critical necessity for unity – being ONE, often gets conveniently left behind as individuals claw their way to the top to assert themselves as king or queen of their “mountain”, no matter how small the bump of their mountain may be. There will never be unity if everybody wants to be king.
The Unity of Oneness is seen throughout Scripture
• Unity of Oneness in the Trinity (See verses in End Notes)
• The Power of the Unity of Oneness identified by God, in the building of the Tower of Babel
Genesis 11:6
6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
• Unity of Oneness in Effective Service
Luke 16:13
13 “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
• Unity of Oneness in Marriage
Genesis 2:22–24
22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
• Unity of Oneness in the New Covenant, with all Believers Jew and Gentile, in the Church
Ephesians 2:11–22
One in Christ
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
The Goal of the Mystery of Christ’s Kingdom is this:
That all things in heaven and earth be united as ONE under Christ.
To begin with, so we will understand more fully the cultural and spiritual relationship of these verses in Ephesians, let’s look at a very, very large picture.
A Simplified Summary of the History of the Earth – from a Biblical Perspective
• Creation: Genesis 1-2
o Adam and Eve in Perfection and fellowship with God in the Garden of Eden (time period unknown).
o Adam and Eve sin, and Adam is charged with throwing the human race into chaos and depravity.
From the beginning of creation God formed mankind to be ONE with Him. Adam and Eve were made in the Image of God, but something else looked sweeter, more desirable and suddenly the unity was shattered. Respect for God’s restriction from partaking of the fruit from a specific tree in Eden’s Garden was disregarded as not being important. Information, knowledge and power offered by the deceiver, in eating the delicious looking fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil became an overwhelming obsession.
“God won’t care.”
“He wants us to be like Him.”
And a thousand other excuses clouded the primary wavelengths of Eve’s mind. The deception was complete; the fruit was consumed – and it tasted wonderful…so wonderful that Eve shared it temptingly with Adam, who acted against all the warning signs in his own conscience. Adam, first created by God, from whom Eve was created, crossed the line with full knowledge without deception, and the human race was plunged into irreconcilable despair, confused under the toxic smog of acute sin, irreconcilable suffering and horrible death; a curse from which it would languish for millennia until the very end of the human ages.
The Mystery of Unity with God was Irreparably mangled because God is Perfect and Holy, and mankind had become consumed by sin. Fellowship with God was severed.
The Promised Messiah
God promised a Messiah, who would one day restore the tangled and broken relationship with God. These promises are sprinkled throughout Bible, beginning with Genesis 3:15, as God pronounced the ultimate “crushing” victory over sin and Satan (Col. 2:13-15), even though Christ’s death on the cross would be a serious “strike at His heel”.
Genesis 3:15
15And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
o Catastrophe: The “fall” of mankind, because of disobedience to God, began the ages of the curse of depravity (Gen. 3).
• The first 2,000 years (approx.) after the Fall: Genesis 4-8
o The Antediluvian (“before the flood”) Race
A Godly Line
God left a hope for reconciliation through generational relationships, one day to be consummated through the Incarnation of the God/Man Messiah, Jesus Christ.
o Abel, Seth, Enoch and Noah – known to seek, and along with others, to “call on the Name of the LORD” (Gen. 4:26).
This godly generation was first recognized through Abel, and, following his murder by Cain, through Seth and those following.
Generations of this line of Godly heritage would lead through Enoch, who walked with God, “and was not, for God took him”. Gen. 5:24; Heb. 11:5; [2 Kings 2:11 – example: Elijah]
Note: The following timeline reveals that Noah had an almost first hand account of God and Creation. Adam was alive when Methuselah lived, and Methuselah was alive for the first six hundred years of Noah’s life. Methuselah died just before the flood.
Adam lived 930 years. When Adam was 687 years old Methuselah was born to Enoch and lived 243 years while Methuselah was living. (See births, lifetimes and genealogies in Gen. 5)
Methuselah lived to be 969 years old. He was 369 years old when Noah was born, and died just before the Flood.
After Noah was 500 years old he fathered Shem, Ham and Japheth (Gen. 5:32). The Flood came after Noah was 600 years old.
o Sometime before the flood, at a point in the history of the Antediluvians, “when man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them,” that the population began to exponentially grow (Gen. 6:1-2). This was also when intermarriage of either the godly line of Seth…or the appearance of fallen angelic beings (2 Peter 2:4-5; Jude 6-7) took place spawning a giant race called “the Nephilim”, which flourished with heroes and men of renown, as well as further defiling the growing population (Gen. 6:4-5), with gross violence and sexual depravity.
Genesis 6:3–8
3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
5 The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Because of humanities’ plunging depravity, God grieved that He ever created mankind. Made in His Image and deceptively twisted by His enemy caused men and women’s hearts and minds to be continually filled with evil. Extensively long life perpetuated and exacerbated generational incest, molestation, and abuse, with associated disease. All of mankind had increasingly become disproportionately filled with violence and perversion after the alien introduction of the Nephilim’s power, violence and sexual perversion. God chose to limit the length of people’s lives on the earth, and with great sorrow and pain, God determined to destroy all life on earth, with the exception of Noah and his family, in the flood.
o Catastrophe: Through the Flood, God’s Judgment on sin destroyed everything on earth except Noah and his family, and that which was on Noah’s ark (Gen. 6-8).
This heritage of faith through Noah, was finalized with the flood, as concluded by some scholars, in approximately in 2,304 BC. 1 Many ancient cultures throughout the world identify the Epoch of the Flood in their historical traditions, reinforcing the historicity of this world-changing event to the chagrin of modern-day naysayers. Three to five hundred years after the Flood, as the earth’s populations were restored, scholars estimate Abraham to have been born around 2000 BC.
1 http://creation.com/the-date-of-noahs-flood
• The next 2,000 years (approx.) following the Flood: The Jewish Nation was conceived and flourished, bringing the pagan world, once again, a consistent view of the Creator God of heaven, His Law, and through Him, the Messiah and Redeemer: Genesis 9 - “the Gospels... Matthew, Mark, Luke and John”.
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
The godly line of faith was established through a covenant with Abraham, the friend of God, following the flood. It was now time for a generation of families to be established into a nation, through which the Creator God of Heaven would be consistently manifest to the world and through whom the Messiah would be born. But first, in Egypt, the fledgling nation would go through the birth pains of slavery, for much of 400 years and, following their miraculous deliverance from Egypt under Moses’ leadership, and the Law of God would be revealed from Mt. Sinai. This Law would be the basis from which civilized nation would flourish and individuals would know the righteous demands of their Holy God. It would also reveal mankind’s sin and inability to keep the Law (Rom. 7:7-12 and following through Rom. 8), leading us to the Messiah…the Savior who redeems us from the guilt and condemnation of sin.
The Promised Land
Israel would wander in the wilderness, because of her lack of faith in God, for forty years after being delivered from Egypt. Finally, she would conquer the blessings of her promised homeland.
All the dimensions beginning with the curse of sin from Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden, through the purging of mankind’s violence and depravity at the flood, and the 400 years in Egyptian slavery and then forty years wandering, reveal the huge swings between carnality and faith in God throughout the ages.
God’s goal was still unity with Himself, through the Coming Messiah.
The receiving of the Promised Land was not the answer. Unity and oneness before God could not be accomplished by merely having a geographical place identified as Israel. The kingdoms of Israel experienced huge patterns of the rise and fall of righteousness and gross depravity…blessing and judgment, until the stench of depravity was so gross before God that the nation of Israel was wiped off the face of the earth in Judgment, for two thousand years.
Seventy years before the land of Israel and the Jewish Temple would be destroyed, a Child was born of a virgin – the viable sign of the Messiah.
Isaiah 7:14
14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with Child and will give birth to a Son, and will call Him Immanuel.
He would be God Incarnate: the Suffering Savior, the Redeeming Savior, the Crucified and Risen Savior.
Isaiah 53:5–6
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
One Day, Jesus will become the King of kings
Isaiah 9:6–7
6 For unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty
will accomplish this.
Luke 1:31–33
31 You (Mary) will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”
God’s Mystery would be Revealed through Jesus, the Messiah.
Just as their nation would be set aside for some two thousand years, the Gospel of Jesus Christ would flourish during that time, and God would harvest to Himself a nation from the Gentiles, just as He had harvested a nation for Himself the two thousand years before Christ.
o Catastrophe: God allowed the Nation of Israel to be destroyed and disbursed to the ends of the world, in AD 70 by the Romans under Titus.
• The current 2,000 years (approx.) began at Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection and extends until this Present Day: This Age is Identified as “the Times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:25; Rom. 11:25), also known as “The Church Age” for those who are believers in Christ: Acts - Revelation.
“The Church Age” had already begun during the writing of the New Testament, but it had just begun. Now, 2,000 years later, we may be nearing the conclusion of “the Church Age”.
God has now given the Gentile nations (together with believing Jews) 2,000 years to hear, respond, and preach the Gospel to the world, just as God had given the family of Israel 2,000 years to become a Nation, proclaim the Creator God, receive the Law, and be given the Messiah.
Matthew 24:14
14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
The truth of worship only of the Creator God, and the righteousness and justice of God’s Law would be embedded into all civilizations through the 2,000 years given to the Jewish Nation (Is. 49:6). God’s Law is essential to reveal mankind their sin – and their need of a Savior. The Messiah would be given. Then the Gospel would be preached in all the world.
God gave the Apostle Paul an understanding of “the Mystery” (that we now know) would unfold in the following 2,000 years: That God was calling those from the Gentile nations to also be in His Kingdom, just as He had called those in the Jewish Nation…and that they would be ONE, so that the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ would be preached through believers in Christ, Jew and Gentile, to the whole world. “Then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).
At the close of the Jewish Nation’s 2,000 years, those carrying the Gospel were a small band of Christ’s disciples, as was paralleled at the beginning of the human race with Adam and Eve, and at the beginning of the Jewish Nation with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Calamity Follows Each 2,000 year Epoch
At the close of each Epoch there was Calamity.
• The fall of man
• The Flood
• The destruction of Jerusalem and Jewish Temple, and the disbursement of the Jews to the ends of the earth for 2,000 years.
Will there be a momentous calamity as the age of the Gentiles comes to an end?
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Matthew 24:14
The Jewish people and the Gentile world are brought together as One under the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and the Kingdom of God is being Established!
Paul wrote these passages on unity near the conclusion of the 2,000 years allocated for the Jewish Nation. Our reading of these passages today, after 2,000 years of Gentile “dominance,” may lessen the impact of the Jewish/Gentile division that was felt so acutely in Israel as Paul preached fearlessly the Gospel to the gentiles who, on one hand, had scarcely heard of Christ’s redemption and resurrection, and to the Jews who ferociously protected the turf of the Mosaic Law, the Covenant of Circumcision and their Jewish heritage.
What are the divisions that should cause us today to call for unity?
The Power of ONE is profound!
God’s goal is still the same, throughout the human generations, and in the fullness of His time:
“To bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”
Ephesians 1:9-10
Galatians 3:26–29
26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
~~~
End Notes
Jesus Christ came as the Incarnate Son of God, first to provide salvation and then to establish His Kingdom, which has been – from the beginning, a unity of those Born into His Spiritual Family from both the Jewish and Gentile races of people.
Titus 3:4–7
4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
Romans 5:9
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
Daniel 7:13–14
13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
Unity of Oneness in the Trinity
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit…the Godhead Trinity:
“…Three Persons in existence, loving each other, and in communication with each other, before all else was. If this were not so, we would have had a God who needed to create in order to love and communicate. In such a case, God would have needed the universe as much as the universe needed God. But God did not need to create…because we have a full and true Trinity.
Let us notice again that this is not the best answer; it is the only answer. Nobody else, no philosophy, has ever given us an answer for unity and diversity. So when people ask whether we are embarrassed intellectually by the Trinity, I always switch it over into their own terminology – unity and diversity. Every philosophy has this problem and no philosophy has an answer. Christianity does have an answer in the existence of the Trinity. The only answer to what exists is that He, the Triune God, is there.” – Dr. Francis Schaeffer He is There and He is not Silent, by Francis A. Schaeffer. 1972. Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Ill. Selections from pages 14-17.
A Few Passages of Scripture Reflecting the Trinity
Deuteronomy 6:4
Hear, O Israel: The LORD (Yeh-ho-vaw' – singular) our God ('Elohiym - plural), is one LORD (Yeh-ho-vaw' – singular).
Gen 1:26
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
Matt 28:19
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit….
Luke 1:35
The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
John 3:34-35
34 For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. 35 The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.
The Power of the Unity of Oneness identified by God, in the building of the Tower of Babel
Genesis 11:6
6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
Unity of Oneness in Effective Service
Luke 16:13
13 “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
Unity of Oneness in Marriage
Genesis 2:22–24
22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
Matthew 19:4–6
4 “Haven’t you read,” he (Jesus) replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
Ephesians 5:28–33
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Unity of Oneness in the New Covenant, with all Believers Jew and Gentile, in the Church
Ephesians 2:11–22
The Dire Spiritual Condition of the Gentiles
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men)— 12 remember that at that time you were
• Separate from Christ,
• Excluded from citizenship in Israel and
• Foreigners to the covenants of the promise,
• Without hope and
• Without God in the world.
The Redemptive Power of Christ’s Blood, for Everyone, Jew or Gentile
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
Christ is Our Peace Uniting Jewish and Gentile Believers as One
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and
• has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,
• 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.
His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.
18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
The Completion of God’s Temple – Individually and Universally
21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Jesus Christ provided the required sacrifice of Himself for all the world.
He then, has included the entire world in His provision for Salvation – not just the Jewish race.
The Salvation of the Gentiles is the Mystery spoken of by Paul throughout the New Testament Epistles:
The Mystery of the Gentile People being the Engrafted Branches
(See all of Romans 11)
Romans 11:25
25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.
Romans 16:25–27
25 Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him— 27 to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.
Ephesians 1:9–10
9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
Ephesians 3:1–12
3 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—
2 Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. 4 In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. 6 This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
7 I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. 8 Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. 10 His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. 12 In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Colossians 1:25–27
25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Colossians 2:2–3
2 My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.](Ephesians,_Pt._3_%28The_Power_of_ONE%29_files/shapeimage_2.png)
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