Pastor Jerry emphasizes the importance of the church in achieving maturity and unity among its members. He highlights the dangers of immaturity and the need to move past previous ways of living. The church is presented as God’s answer to the challenges of the world, with a focus on growing in love and serving as a beacon of light in society.
—
Pastor Jerry Costolo
Excerpt from “Walking in Unity: Part 2”
Video Transcript:
This is God’s design for his church. And why? Why all this work?
It’s because it’s time to grow up. We work because it’s time to grow up. Paul says in verse 14, so that you may no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning. by craftiness and deceitful schemes. That is what immaturity looks like tossed to and fro, chasing every bad teaching, falling prey to cunning, crafty, deceitful schemes.
The reason we work so hard for unity among us. The reason we work so hard for maturity within us. Striving to attain to the love, the stature of the fullness of Christ is because the possibility of our immaturity still exists. Remember where we came from. That was a beautiful song that we sang. Remember where we came from.
Remember what life was like before God rescued us. Paul says in chapter two, we were dead. We were, past tense, dead in our sins. We used to follow the ways of this world. We used to follow the prince who has the power over the air. We We used to be at home living with the passions of our flesh controlled by our own desires.
So of course is to be expected. If that’s what we’ve come from, the possibility exists that we would slip into default mode when the pressure comes. If you’ve learned a new way, when all of a sudden the pressure comes. You slip back in the old way quickly. Why? Because that’s what’s comfortable. It’s what we know.
We call it the flesh. We just slip back into because that’s what we know. We spent our entire lifetime before we came to Christ, learning sometimes after we come to Christ, learning how to survive, how to make it in this world, how to survive in a sea of cunning and craftiness and deceitful scheming. And we’ve been we’ve had a degree of success and we know how to make it work one way or the other And so we slip we have the the potential to slip back into that way But not anymore because god being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us Even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.
And by his grace, he saved us and raised us up with him and seated us with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We are not who we once were. We are not who we once were and we can never be that person again. And the beautiful thing is if we’re going to escape the past We’re going to do it together.
We don’t have to do this alone. We’re going to do it arm in arm. Sometimes pushing and sometimes being pushed. Sometimes pulling and sometimes being pulled. And by God’s design, we are dependent. Hear this. We are dependent on one another. not just him, but each other. And I don’t need to say much about this maturing because really, this is what the rest of this book is going to be all about.
And so for the rest of this of picking up in chapter in verse 14 on through the end, this is what we’re going to talk about. This orthopraxy, Mike called it this, this working out of this, our practice. How do we live this life now? Being who we are, not being who we were, how do we live this life? And so we’re going to let Mark pick that up next week.
But I want you, if you, if you have your little, Ephesians book with you, do this, if you have it, this word, that word that says every wind of doctrine, I will say this one thing, when you see that word doctrine, that is to us a theological word or a religious word, and you need to remove that understanding from that word, because that’s not what he’s talking about.
He’s talking about cunning, crafty teaching. It may include pulpits. It may include what happens from behind this, this desk, but it is much more than that. It is, it includes all teaching that is cunning and crafting, cunning and crafty and devised to deceive. It happens in pulpits and podcasts and broadcasts.
It happens in tweets and YouTube channel, YouTube videos. It happens everywhere that words are written or spoken. The wind is literally filled with crafty, cunning, deceitful scheming. And the world is drowning in the churning waves. And what’s Paul’s answer? What’s Paul’s answer to this tempest, these churning waves?
His answer to this Ephesian church, who lived in days, it was a long time ago, but it was not so unlike the day that we live in today. And his answer to them was the church. His answer is the body of Christ. And you might ask, really? The world has such big, complex problems. Don’t we need big, complex solutions to meet these problems?
Doesn’t Shouldn’t we mount a counter offensive to meet the challenges of the world? To that I would say this, that God already mounted His counter offensive. And it looks like this. I’m gonna cry, you’ll forgive me. Isn’t how simple this is. For God loved the world in this way. He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
It doesn’t get more counter than this. No one saw this coming. We were perishing. You and I were perishing just like the rest of them. But he saved us. He rescued us. So I ask again, God’s answer is the church. This sweet little thing that we do this wonderful gathering of people, this singing of praise, this holding each other up this living life together through tragedy so that friends and raising their Children can raise them up to know Christ.
This is his answer. And Paul’s resounding answer to your question is yes. The church is the answer. It’s, it’s God’s answer. In chapter three, he said, Through the, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God is made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places. Listen, the prince of the power of the air has been put on notice.
The church was God’s plan all along. The creating in Christ of one new humanity of redeemed. rescued people. The body of Christ growing itself up in love is terrifying to the powers that be. The body of Christ growing itself up in love is exactly what the world needs. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it many times again, the church is not counter cultural.
It isn’t, there’s the world there and here’s us and we’re holding them back or we’re fighting or we’re attacking them. Matter of fact, here, right in the middle of our culture, we’re called to be light and life. We are, if you will, an island in the middle of a storm. The church is alter cultural. The church is something different altogether.