A netfriend wrote (sermon by a conservative evangelical whom I regard highly):

Surfing the web and ran across this excerpt of a sermon by Ray Stedman:

…..You don’t produce a body by combining bits and pieces of anatomy together. A body is formed by the growth and multiplication of many cells from one original cell. The body grows cell by cell until a mature body grows–but every one of those cells shares the life of that one original cell, and the life of every other cell in the body. That is the secret of the body: all parts of the body share life together.

It is the sharing of life that makes a body different from an organization. An organization derives power from the association of individuals, but a body derives its power from the sharing of life. As Dr. Bernard Ramm observes,

When modernists deny… a supernatural connectedness of all believers by the mystical union of the Holy Spirit, they destroy the historic, orthodox Christian understanding of the Church. …The Church becomes a society, a natural, human, non-supernatural religious community. It is bound together by purely natural ties, such as a common heritage in the Bible, a common belief in some sort of uniqueness in Jesus, a common belief in the historical continuity of Christians, and a common ethic of love. Now the church is a society. But this is secondary to its being the supernatural body of Christ. (2)

Anyone who has had the privilege of contacting Christians in widespread places around the earth soon learns to recognize the fundamental unity of the Spirit which already exists among all true Christians. Whatever the denominational, theological, political, geographical, or cultural differences between ourselves and another believer, the mutual life in Christ is immediately evident. There is a sense of belonging to each other. This unity is often discernible even when there is an official denial of it.

I once met with a Roman Catholic bishop in Mexico and spent an hour or two with him, talking about Christ. I was a Protestant and he a Catholic, and if we had gone into doctrinal areas we would have found many differences of outlook. But with this particular bishop I immediately sensed a oneness which we shared together in Christ. He knew the reality of the living Lord, just as I did. Our organizations and affiliations were not the same, yet we were one together because we had entered into that beautiful experience of the unity of the Spirit.

The power of the church

This brings us to the next element in Paul’s description of the unity of the church: one Spirit. This is the great, eternal, invisible Person who is the true power of the church. The strength of the church never derives from its numbers. The ecumenicists seek to create a unity of the flesh, an organizational unity which draws its power from the number of bodies which can be joined together, quite apart from conviction and spiritual agreement.

Someone has well described such a union as an attempt to put all corpses into one cemetery to prepare for a resurrection! But it will not work. The church is intended to be an instrument of life, and putting dead bodies together does not produce life. The power of the church to influence society does not derive from gathering together enough Christians to swing enough votes to sway a legislature. God’s plan cannot be achieved by worldly power.

The prophet Zechariah was once confronted with a great mountain which God said would become a plain. When Zechariah began to look around to see how this would happen and where the power would come from to level that mountain to a plain, the word of the Lord came to him: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).

Impossible tasks require superhuman power. Since the role of the church in the world is far beyond the powers of mere men and women to fulfill, it is essential that the church rely on the only adequate power available. The Spirit is the true power of the church. There is only one Spirit. He is the same everywhere, no matter where the church exists, in every place and in every age. The Spirit does not change and that is why truth remains unchangeable. The passing of time does not affect it.

This is also why the church is not dependent on many or on few, or on the wisdom of its membership. The church is to trust and depend on one thing only: the Spirit of God. As we move deeper into the apostle’s message to the Ephesian church, we shall learn more about how this amazing power works.

“There is one body, and one Spirit,” says Paul in Eph. 4:4–and then he goes on to link the Spirit to the hope we have in Christ: “just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.” Do you see how these three factors of unity are all linked together? One body. One Spirit. One hope. What is that hope? It is expressed dozens of times throughout the Scriptures: the hope of the return of Jesus Christ to earth! The Spirit forms the body in order that the body may achieve its final and ultimate goal–its redemption, and the sharing of Christ’s glory when He returns.

Perhaps the most succinct expression of this hope is found in Colossians, where Paul writes, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1.27). Glory is the hope of the church. As John puts it, “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2,3).

Everywhere I’ve traveled around the world, I’ve found this to be the hope of Christians. No matter what their denomination, their background, their race or their color this is always the one hope: that they will someday be like Christ. There are many differences in understanding how this will work out. Some are pre-millenialists (believing that Christ will come before the millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth). Others are postmillenialists (believing that Christ will return after the millennium). Still others do not believe in a millennium at all. But there is only one final expectation of Christians everywhere and that is they will share the glory of Christ……