09 What is the Unity of the Holy Spirit?

Krisan Marotta: You're listening to Wednesday in the Word, and I'm glad you are. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Ahead on today's podcast, we'll be looking at Romans chapter 15, verses 1 through 13. This is the ninth and the penultimate talk in my series called Who is the Holy Spirit? Lecture notes for today's talk, as usual, are on the link below this podcast. And you can also find them on my website. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com slash Holy Spirit 9. Thanks so much for listening. Well, my goal in this series has been to understand what Scripture says about the Holy Spirit. And as such, I have come to the text seeking to find out what scripture teaches us about the Holy Spirit rather than coming to the text looking for answers to specific questions. And I've argued for the following framework for understanding who the Holy Spirit is and what he does. First, that when we see the Holy Spirit in Scripture, he is almost always intervening in creation to accomplish God's purposes. And what we need him to do most is to save us from ourselves. I've organized the work of the Holy Spirit into two general categories, the universal and the individual. The universal works of the Spirit are things that He does in the lives of every believer, and primarily He transforms our hearts such that we now embrace and believe the gospel, and we can say and profoundly mean that Jesus is Lord. The individual works of the Spirit are the things that He does in one believer's life, but not another. Primarily, these are the opportunities He gives different individuals to serve the kingdom of God. So for some people, these are miraculous works, what we would call signs and wonders, and we see these given to, say, the prophets and the apostles. But for most of us, these are what we think of as spiritual gifts, the various and different ways each of us is given to serve the body of Christ. We spent three weeks looking at the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and I argued that we see both the individual and the universal work of the Spirit in the Old Testament, although primarily we see the individual work of the Spirit empowering Israel's leaders and prophets to fulfill their roles. But we also see the universal work of the Spirit in the Old Testament in the teaching that God needs to change our hearts, circumcise our hearts, remove our heart of stone, and so forth. So both testaments teach that God needs to transform believers through his spirit to give us faith. Over the last two weeks we looked at the idea of the Holy Spirit as a down payment or a seal or pledge of our inheritance in the kingdom of God, and we saw that he is the mark that guarantees we belong to God. And as we begin to see changes in who we are, what we value, what we think, and how much we love God and our neighbors, we know that the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives and we are in fact his. So those kinds of changes are the result of the Holy Spirit transforming our hearts and they are a seal that we belong to God. And as we persevere through trials and sufferings, we have tangible evidence that our faith is genuine and we are in fact believers. Our perseverance in the faith is guaranteed because God loves us enough to give us his spirit to make us the kind of people who will persevere. Today I want to look at another aspect of how the Holy Spirit is God's agent of change, and that is his power and unity. The passage I want to look at comes from Romans 15, but like last week, we're going to have to spend some time understanding the argument that Paul is making before we can understand what he says about the Holy Spirit. We're not going to explore every issue in this passage for the sake of time and focus. We're going to go back into Romans chapter 14, and this is the passage that talks about dealing with your weaker brother, which is a very interesting discussion and one we could learn a lot from, but we're not going to go into that much today because I want to focus on something else Paul talks about in this passage, and that is the role of the Holy Spirit in promoting unity among believers. So we're going all the way back to Romans chapter fourteen verse one to get the context. Let me read fourteen one through four. As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. Paul is addressing a disagreement among Christian believers in the early church. Some of them thought that God put no restrictions on what believers may eat, and others think that there are restrictions and that we should eat only vegetables. It's likely that this conflict arises between Jewish believers and Gentile believers, and that the Jewish believers are limiting their food choices because part of them really doesn't want to violate the Mosaic law. And we'll see as we go along that Paul gives us explicit language about Jews and Gentiles accepting each other. I think we should understand this issue as more than a clash over what food is proper and realize that there is a cultural and religious layer to this dispute. This is the kind of clash that churches throughout history are familiar with, where one group of believers advocates for tighter restrictions than another group of believers. And the issue can be almost anything. And over the years we've seen controversy over whether or not you should drink wine, dance, what kind of dancing, whether you should play cards, what language is appropriate, what kind of dress code is appropriate, what movies to watch, what books to read, and so on. Throughout history the church has struggled with what are we free to do and not free to do in a wide variety of areas, and it's not always easy to draw a line. Well here in Paul's day, the issue is how and what to eat. On the one hand, there's a group of believers that says, no, we have the freedom to eat anything. It's okay to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols, it's okay to eat foods that used to be considered unclean, we have the freedom to eat what we want. And they look with contempt at the group that is arguing for restrictions. They see themselves as spiritually mature and enlightened, and they hold a certain amount of disdain for those who appear legalistic in their eyes. On the other hand, there is a group that is arguing for restrictions, and they have judged the freedom group as loose and immoral. They think God has commanded us not to eat certain foods at certain times in certain ways, and these other folks who are eating whatever they want, well, they just don't take God seriously, and they have a dangerous cavalier attitude toward obedience. As we go through this argument, we'll see that Paul agrees that we have the freedom to eat all things. He's going to make that clear. And we see a hint of this in 14.1, where Paul says, Welcome the one who is weak in faith. His understanding is weak. He is not yet mature and strong in what he believes. So the way he understands our freedoms in Christ is weak. It is not yet complete and accurate. And notice that Paul sees the people on both sides of the debate as believers. In fourteen three, he tells each side to recognize that God has accepted the people on the other side. You should see those who disagree with you on this issue as fellow servants of God, he says. The fact that they disagree with you on this issue is not enough for you to judge or reject them. So Paul is convinced that people on both sides of this debate can be genuine believers. Now that's not true in every disagreement, but it is in this case. One of the issues in this passage is how should the more mature believer treat the weaker believer? And that is a great topic to explore, but we're going to leave it for another day. That's not what I want to focus on in this study on the Holy Spirit. Rather, I want to look at this problem of unity among Christians and the Holy Spirit's role in unity. The problem of Jews and Gentiles in the early church was kind of a classic oil and water problem. They just don't mix well. But God has called them to be one body of believers. So how do they deal with that? Paul's going to speak to this mismatched group of believers and say you can find unity, and what I want to look at is what he says about the Holy Spirit in that discussion and how we find unity. We'll discuss the issue of the weaker brother enough to get the context, but we're not going to cover it thoroughly. Let's go on to Romans fourteen five and six. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. Paul's speaking to both sides here, and notice he's thrown in another issue that's going to help us see what's going on. It's not just a question of what to eat, it also includes the issue of whether we should observe certain days. And this issue is presumably whether or not we should observe the Sabbath or some of the Jewish feasts and festivals, and should the Sabbath be Saturday or should it be Sunday? And some say, yes, we should restrict ourselves out of religious obedience, and others say no, that's not required by religious obedience, and so on. And Paul is suggesting here that rather than judging or dismissing or rejecting each other, they should think about each other differently. When we look at people who argue for restrictions, we should see people who are concerned about God. Why are they concerned about these restrictions? Because they care about God and what he thinks. When we look at people who argue for freedom, we should see people who are grateful to God. Why do they feel free to ignore certain restrictions? They are grateful for the good gifts God has given them to enjoy. So both sides care about God. Both sides are grateful to God, and they both want to follow Him, but they have a different understanding of what obedience requires. And Paul says, focus on the fact that you are both grateful to God and let that be the basis for mutual respect and acceptance. Now, remember, Paul is not speaking about an issue where someone claims to follow God, but in reality is pursuing sin and immorality and is really a hypocrite and is seeking to entice others down his destructive path. That's not what's going on here. I don't think we should understand Paul's point to be that we should accept anyone who claims to act in the name of Jesus without a little discernment. We've all run into religious hypocrites. In this case, Paul does not intend to give us a litmus test to sort out true and false believers. Rather, Paul is acknowledging that genuine believers are going to have religious differences and he's giving us advice on how to approach those differences. And his first bit of advice is realize the people on the other side of the debate also care about who God is and what he thinks. Now I want to skip ahead to fourteen, thirteen through sixteen. He says in starting in thirteen, therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. Here Paul is turning his attention to those who feel the freedom to eat all foods, and he's speaking just to them, and he tells them how they should deal with those who believe in restrictions. For the sake of our discussion on the Holy Spirit, let me summarize his argument. It's a great argument and there's a lot we could say about it, but just to cut to the chase, basically Paul says you who feel the freedom to eat anything should not pressure the others to join you. Neither should you flaunt your freedom before them and imply that they are uncool or deficient in some way because they don't join you in eating. It's wrong of you to pressure them to violate their conscience. You eat because you believe you are being obedient to God. But if you pressure them to eat and they do eat, they will think that they are being disobedient to God. Rather than convincing them to join you in obedient freedom, you are pressuring them to be disobedient and to disregard what they sincerely believe God requires. Now I think that is a very profound argument that unfortunately we are not going to explore today because this is a talk on the Holy Spirit. I just want to make sure we understand the problems Bahall is speaking to. What's interesting for our topic starts in 14, 17 through 19. So let me read that. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Paul directs their attention to what he considers the most important things. Becoming a citizen in the kingdom of God is not primarily about what you can and cannot eat. Rather, becoming a citizen in God's kingdom is a matter of loving and pursuing and promoting righteousness, peace, and joy through the work of the Holy Spirit. And this is going to set us up for what we see in chapter fifteen, but I think we'll see it a little more clearly there. Let me just comment as we're building up to fifteen on this word peace in fourteen nineteen, because that's going to be significant for the next step in his argument. This word peace can mean a variety of things depending on the context. Sometimes this word peace refers to peace with God, as in restoration and reconciliation of our relationship with God. Sometimes it refers to peace of mind, as in having our troubled minds settled and calmed by faith and hope. It can mean peace as opposed to war. And in various other contexts, it can have other nuances. Here I think Paul is referring to peace among believers as in the absence of strife or the absence of conflict among believers. We believers should be at peace with each other, acting out of concern for each other rather than quarreling and rejecting and striving with each other. That's the theme he's been talking about up to this point. And in 1419, Paul sums it up by saying, So then, let us pursue what makes for peace. Let us pursue what makes for unity among us and for the building up of each other. The issue on the table is believers being at peace among themselves as opposed to in conflict or strife. That's the issue I want to explore in this discussion of the Holy Spirit. How can believers who are very different from each other, in this case Jews and Gentiles with different theological perspectives, be at peace or not in strife with each other in Christian fellowship? That gives us the context we need to look at Romans 15, because Paul has not changed topics even though we cross a chapter break. His argument continues. Let's read fifteen verses one through three. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. So Paul is continuing his discussion of how to treat a weaker brother here. Those who are strong in the faith, who have a more accurate understanding of the faith, ought to be concerned with the immaturity or the weakness of faith and others. They shouldn't just go around doing whatever they want. They need to think about how their actions influence and affect their less mature brothers and sisters. So they need to consider the impact their actions have on others, and they might refrain from doing something that they are normally free to do in order to edify or build up their brother or sister. Paul gives Christ as an example of one who did not please himself. Interestingly, rather than appealing to an event in the life of Jesus, he appeals to something David wrote in Psalm 69. And David is writing about the sufferings he experienced at the hands of God's enemies. It is a suffering he experienced because he follows God. Those who don't like God don't like him and are persecuting him. This is Psalm sixty nine verses four through nine, and it is verse nine that Paul is quoting More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause. Mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies, what I did not steal must I now restore. O God, you know my folly, the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you. Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, O Lord God of hosts. Let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me, O God of Israel, for it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers and alien to my mother's sons, for zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. Notice David is saying, It is for your sake, God, that I have borne reproach and dishonor. It is because I follow you that I am facing all this shame and ridicule. My persecutors have a problem with you and they're taking it out on me, and he's asking that his actions and how he responds to this not cause those who are seeking the Lord to be dishonored or lose their hope or be put to shame. This is the theme in Psalm 69. Now, why does Paul use Psalm 69 to make a point about Jesus? And it's interesting that Paul is not the only one who does this. In John chapter 2, this Psalm, this very verse 69 9, is quoted again. It's the same verse, but the other half of it is quoted. So this is John chapter 2. I'm gonna start in verse 13 and go to 17. The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen. He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables, and he told those who sold the pigeons, Take these things away, do not make my father's house a house of trade. His disciples remembered that it was Written, zeal for your house will consume me. Okay, where is it written? Psalm sixty-nine nine says, For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproachers of those who reproach you have fallen on me. So here in John we see Jesus has thrown the money changers out of the temple, and the disciples are alarmed. Jesus is getting himself into serious trouble with the Jewish leadership. And the disciples think back to this Psalm and remember it says, Zeal for your house has consumed me. I think we should understand this as Zeal for your house is doing me in. It's consumed me in the sense of it's getting me in deep water and deep trouble. And we see it quoted in this context where the Jewish leadership is furious with Jesus. As the story continues, the Jews demand that Jesus show them a sign that he has the authority to do this audacious thing he just did. So going on in John chapter two, verses eighteen through twenty two. So the Jews said to him, What sign do you show us for doing these things? Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then the Jews said, It has taken forty six years to build this temple. Will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. So the Jews demand an explanation, and Jesus says, basically, You're going to kill me, but God's going to resurrect me after three days, and that's what happened. They killed him and God raised him from the dead. Okay, so where are we? In Psalm 69, we see David, the first in the line of God's anointed kings, suffering because of his obedience to God. Then we see Jesus, the final and perfect Davidic king, suffering for following God. Jesus followed God with such perfect obedience that he was killed for it. So Psalm 69 pictures the cost a believer might have to pay for following God. And Jesus is the exemplar, the perfect fulfillment of that picture in his faithfulness even unto death on the cross. So Psalm 69 and the life of Jesus together, then, give us an example to follow. We should follow God even if it causes us to suffer. We should follow God even if it causes others to reject or disdain us, and we should follow God even if it costs us our life. Therefore, going back to Romans, Paul's point is we should be willing to follow God to the point of eating less meat in order to edify a brother or a sister. That's his point. He goes on, and this is a section I really want to talk about for our purposes on the Holy Spirit. In Romans 15, four, for whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. Paul stops to comment that he used this Old Testament psalm to exhort and encourage them. I think that is what he means by the encouragement of the scriptures here. This word encouragement is sometimes translated exhortation. It's a message that we need to hear that comforts us and gives us the courage to continue on. And as we saw in the last podcast, we again see this connection between endurance and hope. Persevering through trials tests our faith and proves our faith to be the real deal. That gives us tangible physical evidence that we are in fact believers and the hope we have before us will not disappoint us. We see God at work in our lives and that gives us assurance. And the scriptures, like Psalm 69, give us a picture of what following God might look like. We see that it often involves being rejected by men and suffering for being faithful. Taking that picture to heart, we persevere in our faith even when we have to limit our freedoms, and that perseverance strengthens our hope. As we talked about in the last podcast, that has great personal assurance and comfort for us as individuals. But in this context, Paul wants to go beyond what it means to us as an individual. He wants to talk about what it means to us as a community of believers. Let's go on to five and six. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says we have hope through endurance and the encouragement provided by the Scriptures, and then he prays to God as the one who gives endurance and encouragement, that God would do something for them as a group. He would give them harmony. And we know, as we saw in the last podcast, that God has poured out the Spirit in our hearts to give us faith and the endurance we need to reach eternal life. Paul appeals to God as the one who gives perseverance and encouragement to each individual to work in each individual's life in such a way that they find harmony as a group. As each of them individually embraces this exhortation and encouragement of the scriptures, and as each individual perseveres in living out his or her faith, they will together grow and be one of the same mind. And so with one voice they would glorify God. Now look at where we've come. Earlier in chapter fourteen, Paul insisted that they should put up with each other's differences of opinion. He told them to accept each other and stop judging each other and rejecting each other because of their opinions. Here he's praying that God would make them of the same mind. But notice he's not saying I'm praying that God would convince each and every one of you that it's okay to eat meat. He's praying that they would be of one mind in their shared hope. Their focus on the encouragement of the scriptures and the perseverance of the faith is what draws them together. The value and the importance of the gospel is their common ground, such that Jew and Gentile together could be thankful to God with one voice for this great faith that He is working among them. It doesn't really matter if they have different perspectives on what meat to eat and how you handle the Sabbath. They have the same hope, they have the same encouragement, they have the same perseverance, and they can glorify the same God and Savior. This is not unity at all costs and let's ignore theology, nor is this beat each other into conformity. He's talking about a unity that is based on a deep personal commitment to the fundamental truths of the gospel. Now he's going to go on and make the Jew Gentile split explicit. As I read this, remember circumcised is a way of referring to the Jews, and the word Gentiles means nations. It's a way of referring to non Jews. If you look up these passages he quotes in the Old Testament, you'll see the word nations rather than the word Gentiles, but it's essentially the same thing. So here's Romans fifteen verses seven through twelve. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God, for I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. And again it is said, Rejoice, O Gentiles with His people, and again praise the Lord all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him. And again Isaiah says, The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles, in him will the Gentiles hope. Essentially Paul's saying here, you Jews and Gentiles should accept each other because Christ has saved both of you. Christ accepts you, so you should accept each other. Christ serves the Jews for the sake of the promises made to Abraham and his people in the past. Christ serves the Gentiles by mercifully including them in the blessings promised to the Jews. If you remember how much God is doing among you in both groups, in both ethnic groups, you will see how much you have in common. You can both look at the mercy of God and be grateful, and you can see that you are in this together as God's people. In 1512, the root of Jesse refers to the line of Davidic kings. Jesse was David's father, and essentially the root of Jesse here is the Messiah. In him in this coming Messiah, the nation's hope. And this brings us back to the concept of hope, which he's going to speak about in the very next verse. And five thirteen is the verse we've been leading up to throughout this podcast. This is the one I get want to get to to talk about the Holy Spirit, and we're now ready to understand what he's saying. So Romans fifteen, twelve and thirteen, and again Isaiah says the root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles, in him will the Gentiles hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Now Paul just quoted this verse that says The Gentiles shall hope in the Messiah, and then he prays to the God who gives hope, just as above he prayed to the God who gives endurance and encouragement. There's a progression here that starts with belief. Joy and peace, as opposed to strife, are grounded in belief. God must first strengthen our faith, give us encouragement and exhortation through the scriptures so that we can understand it and embrace it from the heart. Then we believe it. And when we understand and believe the gospel, the result is joy and peace. The hope of the gospel gives us something to rejoice in, and we will be at peace with each other as opposed to strife. And the result of all of that is that we abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. So we have a hope that we abound in that arises from rejoicing in peace with one another, that arises from our common belief in the gospel. See the progression? We believe. That gives us something to rejoice in. Our shared belief gives us peace or unity with one another, and we abound in hope, and all of this comes about through the power of the Holy Spirit changing our hearts to start that process and giving us belief. That's the picture he's painting. Now remember why he's saying all this. He's not saying this merely that each individual believer would have hope. He's saying this so that as a community of believers we might have hope together and therefore have unity. By arriving individually at this hope, we are drawn together as believers. We see in each other a shared hope in spite of whatever things might divide us. And that's the basis for Christian unity. We don't have unity because we're trying to beat each other all into conformity. We don't try to force all the round pegs into the square holes. We don't expect that every believer is going to look like every other believer. Unity does not come from the top down, so from like church leadership forced down through the bottom. If anything, unity comes from the bottom up as the Holy Spirit works in each individual, giving us the same hope and the same faith. Let me see if I can pull all this together from everything we've talked about from chapter 14 till now. Paul believes that God through His Spirit empowers believers to believe. He empowers believers to persevere and to grow in hope through the universal work of the Spirit in our lives. And Paul has said this in various ways. God gives perseverance and encouragement. God is the God of hope. God is the one who sends the Holy Spirit so that we might abound in hope. These are all ways of saying the same idea. And because Paul sees God in this way, he prays that God would send his Spirit to do that work among them as the basis for their corporate unity. In this context, he's concerned with a particular result that comes through the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. He wants their individual faith and hope to draw them together as a community. Some are Jews, some are Gentiles. They have a difference in culture, they have a different religious worldview, and all those things could be fatal to their unity. It's a roadblock in their path. But Paul is praying to the God who gives endurance, encouragement, and hope. He wants both the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers to be matured, to persevere in faith, to find encouragement in the scriptures, and to grow in hope. And when that happens, they will become of the same mind as they focus on that shared hope. So he prays that God would grant them to be of the same mind with one another so that they might glorify God with one voice. As each believer grows in personal commitment to the gospel, it draws them together as a community who share the same hope and the same commitment to the gospel. And how does all of that come about? By the power of the Holy Spirit. Let's talk about this idea of the power of the Holy Spirit. All of us are naturally interested in power. Power is all about the ability to accomplish what I want to accomplish. If I have power, it means I can get things done and I can get the things done that I think ought to be done. Or if I can associate myself with someone who has power, then they can make it happen for me. And we humans recognize that God has power. I want the rain to come, I want the harvest to be plentiful, I want my family to be prosperous, and God has the power to make that so. We would like God to use his power on our behalf to make our lives easy, to make our lives smooth, and remove all those pesky trials and tribulations. But I'm struck that when Scripture talks about the power of God working on our behalf, it's usually talking about the power of the Holy Spirit to give us faith and transform our hearts. For example, Paul prays in Ephesians three, this is verses fourteen through seventeen, for this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. What is Paul asking God to do for them? Strengthen them with power through his spirit to give them faith. Similarly, in Colossians one nine through eleven, Paul prays, and so from the day we heard we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy. Paul is praying that the power that created the universe would be used to make you and me steadfast in faith and patient in the gospel, and we take that for granted. But this suggests to me that the most miraculous thing we will ever see is faith and perseverance in the lives of believers, in our own lives and in the lives of others. Perhaps the most important miracle we experience is God exercising his power to give his people enduring saving faith so that we might become his people and stay his people and not destroy our lives by turning away from him. As we've been seen through this series, this entire process is spoken of in Scripture as the work and power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit makes it possible for us to believe it all. The Spirit makes it possible for us to rightly understand the gospel and recognize that it is true. The natural man, the one in whom the Spirit has not worked, cannot do that. But the one in whom the Spirit is working can. The Spirit is at work now so that we might persevere in faith. The Spirit is at work now to strengthen and mature our faith and deepen our understanding, and the result of that is that now we abound in hope. That's the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. He does that in each individual believer to bring about and fulfill the promises of God to us that we might escape death and find eternal life. And that's the greatest miracle and the most essential one each of us needs personally. But as we've seen in Romans then, it goes beyond each of us as individuals. It produces unity among the community of believers. Understanding the concept of Christian unity is really challenging. We can see that we've been called to unity as Christians, and yet we can also see that we are splintered into many, many denominations and factions. What's the nature of Christian unity? How is it to be achieved? Where should we draw lines? Which lines dare we not cross? These are difficult questions, but I think understanding this work of the Holy Spirit gives us an important piece of the puzzle. Paul is speaking to one of the first great challenges to Christian unity that the early church faced, and that was the difference between Jews and Gentiles. In their situation, that was a very real and formidable obstacle to fellowship. Each group thought about religion very differently. Today, our obstacles are more likely to be racial or socioeconomic issues. But every place where Christians gather in large or small numbers, we find obstacles to unity. We find things that divide us. We differ in our personalities, we differ in our life interests and our goals, in how and where and on what the church should spend its money, in what programs the church ought to focus on, in how we ought to do outreach and evangelism. I mean we can divide over many, many issues, large and small, because we're humans and we're sinners. Every church in history is going to face this problem of unity at some point over some issue. And here I think Paul has told us something very important about how to handle those disagreements when they come up. Unity is a work of the Holy Spirit brought about in individual human hearts through strengthening our faith and our personal commitment to the gospel. Picture it kind of like this. Imagine you are looking down at a city from a great height and from your vantage point you can see lots of people scurrying around the city. Somewhere in the middle of the city is a large tower with a very bright light shining from it. And as you watch, you start to notice that in the midst of all this chaos and disorganized activity, certain people are heading toward the light. And as they get closer to the light, they get closer to each other. That wasn't really their primary goal. Each person set out to reach the light, but as they travel, they begin to notice that guy's traveling with me. They discover these other people are walking in the same direction. They too are focused on that tower that I'm trying to get to. And it dawns on them as they travel, these are my people. They're like me. We're headed toward the same light. We share this common goal, and we don't share this goal with the rest of the world that's scurrying all around us. And so they begin to help each other, support each other, take turns carrying each other's burdens, and so forth. I think this is the kind of thing Paul is praying for for the Romans, for the Ephesians, and the Colossians. He wants them to become closer to each other as they become closer to God. I don't believe that Christian unity can be brought about by the decisions of big denominations or programs imposed from the top down. Unity is not something that can be imposed from the outside. Side or the top down, and I've been in churches that tried it, it really didn't work. Unity is the work of the Holy Spirit bringing individuals together because of their shared faith. Our unity comes about as the Holy Spirit works in each of our lives, and we ultimately come to recognize the importance of that work in each other. Each individual faces this issue of unity as one of those trials of faith. At some point in your Christian journey, you're going to have to deal with genuine believers who are not like you. Maybe they like different music. Maybe they're too expressive with their hands. Maybe they're not expressive enough. Maybe you think they put too much emphasis on evangelism or not enough. Or they don't want to give money to the things that you really think they ought to give their money to. Maybe they have a different view of the role of women or the role of laity. Every time you run into an issue like that, it forces you to ask, how much does the gospel mean to me? Am I in it to persevere, to endure, to inherit eternal life? Or do I just want things the way I want things in my little church? And I want to be the ruler of my little fiefdom. Is my hope set on the kingdom of God? Am I grateful for the mercy God has shown me? Or do I just want my own way? And that process brings me to realize that these other people who are different than me are growing in this same way and share this same hope. And hopefully I can be grateful for that same work of God in their lives, just as I'm grateful that He has worked in my own life. And as the Holy Spirit works in each of us, these attitudes slowly become part of our characters, and we realize these other differences just aren't that big an obstacle after all. More and more we come to recognize that whatever our differences are, we have this common hope. The Holy Spirit is working in our lives to produce the same hope, the same faith, and the same perseverance. So is Christian unity a reality in the world? Well, if we look at denominations and doctrinal divides, we might be tempted to think it isn't. But if we think about it the way Paul does, if we look for individuals and communities who accept each other as family, despite what other things might divide them or make them different, then yes, there's a lot of unity. When we see individuals coming together because they share the same hope, it is real unity. It may not be perfect, but it's real. Please subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, or just about any place you get your podcast. You can also find hundreds of episodes on my website. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com. I don't ask for donations, I do not have ads on my website. If you'd like to thank me, please leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast. And more importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates of Heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I hope I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.