Page 124 - Ephesians

maturity? Have you arrived? See, we haven’t arrived yet. Every
one of us has some very odd ideas and some idiosyncrasies
about us. Not one of us can stand up and say that we are perfect
examples of Christian maturity. We’re all on the way. We’re
going to arrive and make it safe and sound.

Sometimes I get embarrassed when I read my old notes. I
wonder if I actually said those things. We’ve pulled a lot of our
tape series and threw a lot of my notes away. Five or ten years
down the road, if God allows us to have grace, we’re going to look
back and say the same thing. We’ll say, “Yuck. We thought we
knew something then”. We don’t know anything. And we are
going to blush because we’ll see how weak we were, and how
little we have known. We hold truth like a little baby holds a rattle.
You have to pry our fingers from it. We are on the way to the
unity of the faith. That’s why there are so many denominations.
They don’t agree. And God said they wouldn’t.

Now watch. Until we all get to the unity of the faith, keep the unity
of the Spirit. What is unity? We defined it a chapters ago. It’s
mutual headship. I live for the pleasure of the head and you live
for the pleasure of the head. If you and I are living for the
pleasure of the head, we have perfect unity. We’re one. That’s
what unity is; mutual headship. In chapter 4:3, you have the
expression, “Unity of the Spirit” and in 4:13 you have the
expression, “Unity of the faith.” When the average Christian
thinks about unity, they almost always think about verse 13, “The
unity of the faith.”

Well, God said that we aren’t going to believe the same thing.
We’re moving that way, but we’re not there. He said to keep the
unity of the Spirit, until we arrive. But everybody is asking “What
do you believe? Are you dispensational? Oh, you are not? I’m
sorry, I can’t fellowship with you. Are you covenant? Are you
Calvinist? Are your Armenian? Are you pre-trib, mid-trib, post-
trib? Do you believe in tongues, in water baptism? And when you
baptize, is it sprinkling or immersion? What do you believe?”
They begin to draw their circles around the unity of the faith, and