You're the Body of Christ [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

Take pains to keep the unity, because unity is so, so important. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series called Ephesians, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer.

Contact us at PastorAlan.org, that's PastorAlan.org, or call 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news? You are the body of Christ. Okay, I guess I need to preach about that then. We're in Ephesians chapter four. We have been in a summer-long series on Ephesians.

It could easily be a year-long. Today's text is one that deserves at least three sermons. And yet, we want to go ahead and read verses one through 16 to be covering this portion, this very important portion of the epistle to the Ephesians. Chapter four verse one.

I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. And Paul's there to say the most important numbers symbolically is seven, like seven days a week.

It's the number of perfection or completion or it means it's all there. All right, there's seven ones that are mentioned here. And the numeral four is symbolic, usually speaking of the totality of the all created things, like the four corners of the earth.

There are four alls that are here. Seven ones, the unity and four alls that are mentioned. Verse seven, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. That's a really important verse and I'm going to offer a different translation of that in just a few moments. Therefore it says, verse eight, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean? But that he also descended into the lower regions, the earth. This is not speaking here of Jesus descending to hell. This is just speaking of the glorious son of God who sheds the royal raiment of heaven in order to put on human flesh. So he descends, he empties himself and he comes to the earth. He who, verse 10, he who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ 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.

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 and deceitful schemes, rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 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 makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Earlier this year, I shared some from this study. I want to bring it back to your attention. A CBS article, a news article shared these words that the American Sociological Review may have just published the social health equivalent of the 1964 Surgeon General's report that declared smoking causes cancer. The unpleasant but long suspected discovery, the article says, in this case is that social isolation in America has grown dramatically in the past 20 years. And according to the article, the bottom line is that the number of people who have someone to talk to about matters that are important to them has declined so dramatically that we've gone from a quarter of the American population being isolated to almost half of the population falling into that category.

So almost half of the American population, according to this recent massive study, is saying that about half of Americans don't really have anybody that they can really talk to. It is equally startling. I know this is sobering news.

I just am bringing it just to lay out the absolute urgency of the expression of the body of Christ on the earth as the solution to this. But a New York Times article recently was pointing out the growth of the suicide rate for Americans aged 35 to 54. It increased nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2010. And what was especially startling for men in their 50s, the suicide rate rose nearly 50 percent during that 11-year period. More Americans now die of suicide than in car accidents, and gun suicides are almost twice as common as gun homicides. This is a striking trend that University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox has addressed, saying that there is a strong link between suicide and weakened social ties in America. And thus for men in their 50s, this is the explanation that's offered of this increased depression and suicide in men in their 50s, is that when the two most core places of deep connection, which is the church and marriage, when both of those are interrupted or in decline, that this is a significant impact, and this has been linked to the increased depression. There are many, many studies that are essentially just showing that loneliness, a lack of being connected, affects even the physical immune system in your body, their health risks, in other words, physical health risks that accompany loneliness.

And one big study followed 6,500 British people over age 52 during the years from 2004 to 2012, and the most socially isolated in the group were 26 percent more likely to die during that period. And so there is a lot that is at stake. And what this means, as simply I can put it, is that your health and happiness in this world is inextricably linked to you being profoundly connected in meaningful relationships and you discovering a purposeful use of your gifts that make a difference in the world. And what Paul is speaking of now in chapter four is about the expression of who we are as the body of Christ, and it's a phrase that we use almost casually as Christians, yeah, you're the body of Christ, we're the body of Christ, we're like his hands and feet. But what you've been learning in Ephesians is so majestic and soaring in its implications that I want you to think more deeply and profoundly about what this means, that you are the body of Christ, you are the physical expression of the image of Jesus Christ, who is your head, you are the expression of Jesus physically on the face of the earth. And what we have been learning in Ephesians is that even if you don't feel like it, there's been a transformation of your position in the cosmos so extraordinary that you have been seated and positioned with Christ, having been sealed in the Holy Spirit, guaranteed of your inheritance, there is a hope of a calling that is upon you that is so extraordinary that Paul spends three chapters just building up to a crescendo point in chapter three to say that it was in the church that God was unveiling his manifold wisdom, the church, the very thing that the culture has been duped into believing is a negative force in the world. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series.

How you see yourself determines how you live. In an 11-message series, Pastor Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling journey through the letter to the Ephesians. It'll flood your soul with good news and empower you to discover who you are in Christ. When you make your donation to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll not only send you the digital downloads of the entire transformational Ephesian series, but we'll also send you a printable copy of Pastor Alan's booklet, highlighting the most important scriptures about your identity in Christ. Make your gift today and discover a whole new way of seeing your life.

Isn't it time to finally find out who you really are? The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Now, these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. How extraordinary of a deception could come about in a culture where the view of the church is that it's a bunch of negative bigots and you should avoid be the institution of the church. When in actuality, the epidemic of loneliness and suicide is growing as the church declines. And here comes Paul with this vision of what it means for you to be in the body of Christ. In verses one through 16, here are so laden with essential meaning for us as to what it means to be the body of Christ that I really do it a disservice by trying to cover all of this today, but I want to lump it into kind of three sections. The opening section that leads up through verse six, one through six, is really about the essential unity of the church. And then in verses seven down through about 14, he's speaking of the essential diversity within the church. He's speaking of the essential diversity within the church. And then from verse 14 on, he's speaking about the essential maturity of the body of Christ. So unity, diversity, and maturity.

And I just want to make some comments about each of these. Okay, let's just look at this text. The first verse, I therefore prisoner of for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. The word for worthy here has a sense of weight, almost like balance. Okay, and so the best way to understand this is certainly not Paul saying that you should live a life so that you will be worthy or deserve God's blessing. He's already made this point profoundly that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, nothing changes that.

And so there's no deserving or earning this. So to live a life that's worthy of the calling doesn't mean that you get up in the morning and go, okay, I want to be a worthy servant so that I'll be blessed. Instead, what it means is that you have been so blessed, you have been so positioned with Christ that therefore let your life be fitting, let it match who you really are. That's the way Paul speaks about all of our ethical behaviors and the demonstration of Christ in us to the world. In other words, if you're royalty, you live like that, don't live like a pauper.

That's what he's saying here. So live this life that's going to match that and then immediately he begins talking about humility and gentleness. You need to know that in the Greek world, the idea and in the Roman empire, the idea of the gentle, humble person, that was not applauded.

Instead, the idea of the perfect man was of someone who didn't have humility but had almost a prideful confidence in all things. And so this is a virtue that is unusual in the midst of a Greco-Roman world for Paul to even lift up, but it becomes essential for what Paul is getting ready to say about unity. Because what he says here, he says, he says, be eager to be eager, verse three, to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. I like what the translation of one commentator, Marcus Barthes, he says, take pains to keep the unity. Because unity is so, so important. Let me just reflect with you a little bit about the idea here of maintaining unity. Unity is something that is so sweet that there is a commanded blessing upon unity. The psalmist says how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. It is like the dews of Mount Hermon come to the arid places of Mount Zion.

It's refreshing. But more than that, there is as if an oil, the psalmist says, is poured out upon the head and runs down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, and upon the robe. What is a picture of is when there is unity, that there is an anointing, there is a blessedness, there is a joy, and there is a power of the Holy Spirit that accompanies that unity. Oh, God is an absolute genius.

He has made us so that when we are at our most united in the spirit, we are at our most joyful and most powerful. Unity comes about when in the first place you share something in common with someone, right? Isn't that the way you do? As soon as you meet somebody that you're meeting for the first time, what do you do to be able to have a conversation?

You try to find some point of commonality, something that you have in common. We took Bennett back to Baylor and we decided to make a vacation out of it. We took a southern route. We went through New Orleans.

We went through San Antonio and just had a fine time driving across the country. And when we were in New Orleans, we took a carriage ride tour of the French Quarter. And the fellow that was driving our carriage and giving us our tour, I got to talking to him afterwards. And he said, where are you from? I said, North Carolina. He said, oh, I got a sister who lives in Salisbury. And he said, in Winston-Salem? I said, yeah. He said, I've brought my car up there into Winston.

We get it serviced by a mechanic there. And Winston, I said, oh, so you know Winston then a little bit. Yeah, I know Salisbury. And all of a sudden, we feel like we're friends just because he comes to Salisbury every now and then. You see, I don't know anything else about him, but you got something in common. It goes to a whole other level if you actually are aligned with someone like you're part of their team, right?

It becomes like, oh, we're really united now around this because we're on the same team. It's like I've often said, I was at Carolina in 1982 and won the national championship. And you notice I just said, I said, we won the national championship. Michael Jordan was in school with me and he never did get the opportunity to meet me. But he and I were in school together and we won the national championship. You say, well, did you play on the team? No, I went to some of the games. Were you at the national championship game? No, I didn't get a ticket for that, but I was watching on TV and I ran to Franklin street when we won. No, we won, right? And here's how the thing is so strange is that you don't have to have gone to school to Carolina to be able to say, if you're a Carolina fan, you say we won, right? And the thing that's amazing about this is that just by aligning yourself with a certain team, all of a sudden you're united. See, there's still hope for some of you.

You could convert this day and then you could say we won an actual championship in 1982. But point being is that once you're on a team together, there's something that deepens about your unity, right? You know? But there's something more than that that goes on in the process of unity. And that is that there is a common goal in mind, a vision that you share, a mission, something that you're to do and a battle that you're to fight that is going on. And it becomes clear, right? And so there's something that's extremely unifying when you start recognizing that we are coming against the same enemy, right? Soldiers and foxholes are united. Years ago when our church was sued, and it's spiritually, and I'm not saying this of the people that we're suing.

I'm saying this, but I really mean this. The devil's intent was to destroy our church, to destroy us financially. And instead what happened was we didn't get destroyed financially, but you know what happened during that several years of intense lawsuit when we were being persecuted? Our church, whatever little pieces where we weren't unified, all of that dissolved and we just became completely unified.

You know what happened? I mean, people that might've had little differences with one another, they started locking their arms. They say, listen, we might disagree about that, but man, you sue our church. We're going to turn our faces together and face it like flint because we want to be more unified than we've ever been before. What Paul says elsewhere is that we do not fight against flesh and blood. We're not fighting against people. We're not fighting against institutions.

We're not fighting against governments. We are fighting in the name of Jesus against unseen dark powers and principalities over whom we have been given authority in Jesus' name. So what begins to happen when there is unity is that the thing that you have in common and the battle that you have to fight, it is so essential that you be united, that the things that are smaller differences pale in comparison to where you are united in Christ. But there is something more about unity. And that is that this unity runs so deep that Paul describes it mystically. He describes it as you are his body because the way that you are united is not just because you hold something in common or because you face a common enemy. It is because you have body of Christ, a shared life.

That's the image. Why is my hand and my foot? Why is the hand united with the foot? Because of a common heart and the same breath that fills every cell with oxygen and every cell carrying the same DNA. That's how each cell, how in the world does a cell know to be a liver cell or a kidney cell? How does it know?

Because there's a DNA that is the same in every cell, but imparting specific instructions to each cell. And you've got my attention now. This is interesting.

It's today's teaching. You're the body of Christ. It's in the series Ephesians, and Allen is in the studio. Stay with us for today's final word and additional insight on what we've just heard. How you see yourself determines how you live. In an 11-message series, Pastor Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling journey through the letter to the Ephesians that'll flood your soul with good news and empower you to discover who you are in Christ. When you make your donation to Allen Wright Ministries today, we'll not only send you the digital downloads of the entire transformational Ephesians series, but we'll also send you a printable copy of Pastor Alan's booklet, highlighting the most important scriptures about your identity in Christ. Make your gift today and discover a whole new way of seeing your life.

Isn't it time to finally find out who you really are? Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Allen, you're the body of Christ is our teaching. And I love where you're going here with the DNA, because I assume you were talking about the church.

Yes, we are. I've read different parts of the body of Christ. And this is language that sometimes can feel a little strange to the person who's not used to church or Bible speak.

You know, I'm no scientist, that's for sure. But I wonder if Paul were living today under the unction of the Holy Spirit, were writing this same text and especially elsewhere, when he teaches about being part of one body. I wonder if instead of saying, well, you're like the hand or you're like, I wonder if you'd have called us like the cells. If they'd understood cellular biology and if they knew what DNA was, because it's really the marvelous thing.

It's not just, oh, my hand takes instructions from the brain and it works together with the arm and the foot. But what's amazing is that every cell knows what kind of cell it's supposed to be by this mysterious DNA. Well, in the same way, the Holy Spirit is inside each and every one of us. And together we make up the body of Christ. This is the design of God, is that there would be an astounding unity in the body and as we'll learn more about tomorrow, there is also an astounding diversity. It's not just the unity and it's not just the diversity. It is the unity and the diversity that comes together in a mystical way that proves out the power of the Holy Spirit inside of every believer and inside the church. It's amazing. But we are Christ's body here on the earth now. Wow. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.