“Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all. However, he has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ.”
Ephesians 4:1-7 NLT
http://bible.com/116/eph.4.1-7.nlt
God has really been drilling into me the unity of the faith. I’ve said it before that we need it now more than ever. All of the divisiveness going on the world it is the perfect time for us to unite as one in the church and to take that oneness to the world. They’ll know we are Christians by the love we have for one another. There is no way around it. God says how can you love Him whom you haven’t seen and not love your brother that you do see? You have an opportunity share the DNA God has placed in you right in front of you. 1 John 4:20-21 NLT http://bible.com/116/1jn.4.20-21.nlt
Jesus said that there are 2 commandments that really cover the whole law of God for us. The first is to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. The second is just as important. That we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Matthew 22:37-40 NLT http://bible.com/116/mat.22.37-40.nlt We have all been created in the image and likeness of God. He calls all of us to love each other. It doesn’t matter if they are pastor, bishop, pope, president, family, friend or foe. God wants us to love each other.
I talked last week about our hope in Christ. We all have the same hope and it is in Christ. The verse I want to key in on above is where Paul says, “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.” There is only ONE that we hope in. There is only ONE that we seek after. There is only ONE who can truly unify us and bring us peace. It is Christ Jesus the Lord.
For example, the strength of the civil rights movement was not Huey Newton, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr. While they are all key people in the movement and I thank God for all of their works that helped to give us the freedom we now have. The strength of the movement was the gospel of Jesus Christ. So no need to reinvent the wheel when we have a leader who seems to want to oppress us all over again. Moses dealt with the same thing. God sent him to deliver a whole nation of people because that was not God desire that we be oppressed.
Christ wants us to be free. Not just free in the natural sense of having rights, but to have the ultimate freedom in Him. Freedom from sin. The divisiveness and oppression is a result of sin, so our hope is in the one who can redeem us from sin. Before Jesus ascended Peter asked him would he be redeeming an earthly kingdom. Jesus’ ultimate plan was not about an earthly kingdom, but to bring us back to our heavenly kingdom.
God desires to bring us back to the beginning when we were all ONE in Him. We were separated by sin. It divided us from our Heavenly Father. It has caused division in our relationships with the people around us. Now by His Spirit, through the ministry of reconciliation we can come together and be ONE. One as a people, with Christ in God. So Paul encourages us to be patient with each other. We all have faults, but we need to love on each other and continue to be united in the Spirit bound together by peace.
That leads us to our Throwback Song of the Week. It is a 2000 release from one of the pioneers of CHH from the south. Hailing from Houston, Texas we have Lil Raskull. This song is from his album “The Day After.” The track is entitled “One Love.” Hear DJ Jeremaya spin this joint on this week’s Trackstarz replay or hit the link below. Check it out and let us know what you think. Until next time…
Peace and blessings.
