The Circle of Oneness

The Seven Ones

Look at the back of the One Truth Ministries card and you will find seven short phrases lined up one after another: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God. They come from a single sentence the apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesus, and they sit at the center of everything this ministry exists to say.

In this teaching I want to walk through all seven, slowly, one at a time. I want us to see what each one means, why Paul put them side by side, and what happens in a believer's heart when we finally take the little word "one" seriously. We live in a world with a thousand voices and a thousand versions of the truth. God's word keeps answering with the same small word, over and over: one.

Here is the passage. This is the one scripture I will quote in full, because it deserves to be read slowly, and out loud if you can.

Read it again and notice the number. Not two. Not seven hundred. One, said seven times. Then notice where the sentence ends. It starts with a body of people on the earth, and it does not stop climbing until our eyes are lifted all the way up to "one God and Father of all." Paul does not let us rest at the level of the church. He takes us to the throne.

Where Paul Is Standing

To understand a verse, you have to know where it sits. The first three chapters of Ephesians are some of the richest doctrine in the Bible. Paul tells us we were chosen before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:3-6), that we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit (1:13-14), that we are saved by grace through faith and not by works (2:8-9), and that Jew and Gentile have been brought together into one new man through the cross (2:14-16). He prays that we would grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is (3:14-19).

Then chapter 4 opens with a word that changes everything: "therefore." Paul, who writes as a prisoner for the Lord (Ephesians 3:1, 4:1, 6:20), urges the believers to live a life worthy of the calling they have received. In other words, now that you know who you are, walk like it.

What does a worthy walk look like? Paul gives it in the next two verses: be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bear with one another in love, and make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:2-3).

Look closely at the verb. We are told to keep the unity. We are not told to build it, invent it, or vote on it. The unity already exists, because the Spirit made it. Our job is to guard it, the way you would guard something precious that was handed to you. And verses 4 through 6 are the reason why. Paul is saying, in effect, guard this unity because look at what is already one. Seven things God has already made one. We are not trying to create a oneness. We are being asked to stop breaking the one that is already there.

One Body

The first "one" is the body. Paul uses this picture all through his letters. In 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 he says that a body is one even though it has many parts, and that every believer, Jew or Gentile, slave or free, was baptized by one Spirit into one body. In Romans 12:4-5 he says it again: many members, one body, each belonging to all the others. In Colossians 1:18 and Ephesians 1:22-23 he tells us who the head of the body is. It is Christ.

Think about what a body is. It is alive. It is connected. Every part needs the others. And it has one head giving direction. The church is not mainly a building, a denomination, a program, or a membership roll. It is a living body of people joined to Jesus and therefore joined to each other.

Notice also that oneness is not sameness. Paul spends a whole chapter making this point. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be (1 Corinthians 12:17)? The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you" (12:21). God arranged the parts just as he wanted them (12:18). Unity is not everyone looking alike, sounding alike, and worshiping alike. Unity is many different people, with many different gifts, all under one head and moving in one direction.

And we are quick to forget this. The Corinthians were saying, "I follow Paul," "I follow Apollos," "I follow Cephas" (1 Corinthians 1:10-13). Paul's answer was sharp: is Christ divided? We have new names for it now, but the habit is the same. We line up behind a preacher, a movement, a label, a style of music. Every time we do, we are tearing at a body that Jesus bled for. In Ephesians 2:16 Paul says Christ reconciled both groups to God "in one body" through the cross. A body that was purchased that dearly should not be treated lightly.

One Spirit

Next, one Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes the body one. Paul says we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, and all given the one Spirit to drink (1 Corinthians 12:13). When you believed the gospel, you were marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until we are fully redeemed (Ephesians 1:13-14). The Spirit confirms to our spirit that we are God's children (Romans 8:14-16). And it is through Jesus, by one Spirit, that we both, Jew and Gentile, have access to the Father (Ephesians 2:18).

There is something here I do not want us to miss. Jesus called him the Spirit of truth, and promised that he would guide us into all truth (John 16:13). John goes even further and writes that the Spirit is the truth (1 John 5:6). One Spirit means one truth. The Spirit who inspired the prophets (2 Peter 1:20-21) is the same Spirit who lives in us today, and he does not contradict himself. He does not say one thing in the scriptures and another thing in a feeling, a new revelation, or a modern trend.

That is why John tells us not to believe every spirit, but to test the spirits to see whether they are from God (1 John 4:1-3). If a voice, however sincere, however popular, however moving, says something that cuts against what the Spirit already said in the written word, it is not the voice of the one Spirit. There is one Spirit, and he speaks one truth. This is the heart of "one voice, one truth."

The one Spirit also grows one kind of fruit in the lives of everyone who belongs to him: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). When we see that fruit in a brother or sister, we are looking at the same Spirit that lives in us. That alone should make us slow to treat them as strangers.

One Hope

Paul says we were "called to one hope when you were called." The hope is attached to the calling. Before Christ, Paul tells these same believers, they were separate from Christ, without hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12). Now they have a hope, and it is one hope, not a collection of them.

In the Bible, hope is not wishful thinking. It is not "I hope it doesn't rain." It is a confident expectation of something God has promised, and the promise is as sure as the one who made it. Peter says we were given new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (1 Peter 1:3). The writer of Hebrews calls this hope an anchor for the soul, firm and secure (Hebrews 6:19). Paul says hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:1-5).

And what is the hope? It is a person before it is anything else. Paul calls it "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). It is the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13). It is the promise that those who have fallen asleep in Jesus will rise, and that we will be with the Lord forever, so that we do not grieve like people who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

This matters because we are constantly tempted to place our hope somewhere else: in an election, an economy, a doctor, a bank account, a government. Some of those things have their place, but none of them can carry the weight of a soul. There is one hope. When God told his people in exile that he had plans to give them a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11), he was pointing to something bigger than their circumstances. The same is true for us. A believer who has fastened onto the one hope can walk through a hard season without being crushed by it, because the anchor is not in the storm.

One Lord

Now Paul turns to the Lord. This is one of the great confessions of the whole Bible. Israel's central prayer began, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Paul takes that same confession and shows us how it holds the Father and the Son together: for us there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 8:6). In the Old Testament, "the Lord" is how God's own name was spoken. When the New Testament writers call Jesus Lord, they are saying something enormous.

Philippians 2:9-11 tells us that God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Peter preached on the day of Pentecost that God made this Jesus, whom they crucified, both Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36). He told the rulers that there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). Jesus said it himself: "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6). And Paul adds that there is one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5).

To say "one Lord" is to say that Jesus is not just a helper, a teacher, or a good example. He is the one with authority. Jesus himself asked, "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46). A person cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). If Jesus is Lord, then no pastor, no tradition, no culture, no political movement, and no feeling in my own heart sits above him. He is head of the church (Colossians 1:18), and his word is the final word.

This is a freeing truth, not a heavy one. When there is only one Lord, I do not have to please a hundred masters. I do not have to chase the approval of every voice. I get to serve one Lord who loved me and gave himself for me.

One Faith

The word "faith" in the Bible carries two meanings, and I believe Paul has both in mind. First, faith is trust: leaning the whole weight of your life on Jesus. By grace you have been saved, through faith, and not by your own works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and faith comes by hearing the message about Christ (Romans 10:17).

Second, faith is the body of truth that has been handed to us. Jude urges believers to contend for the faith that was entrusted to the saints once for all (Jude 3). Once for all. It was delivered one time, finished, complete. Paul tells Timothy to keep the pattern of sound teaching he had heard and to guard the good deposit entrusted to him (2 Timothy 1:13-14). The first believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching (Acts 2:42), not to something new every season.

This is why the gospel cannot be remixed. Paul was astonished that the Galatians were so quickly turning to a different gospel, and he said that even if an angel from heaven preached something other than what they had received, that messenger should be under a curse (Galatians 1:6-9). The same warning sits at the close of the Bible, against anyone who adds to the words of that book or takes away from them (Revelation 22:18-19), and it echoes Moses long before (Deuteronomy 4:2). Jesus rebuked teachers who set aside the commands of God for the sake of their own traditions (Mark 7:6-9). One faith means we receive God's word as he gave it, without improving it and without trimming it.

And faith is also what joins Jew and Gentile into one family. Abraham was counted righteous because he believed, before he was circumcised, so that he would be the father of all who believe (Romans 4:11-12, Galatians 3:6-9). The family of faith has always been built the same way, by one faith in one God who keeps his word.

One Baptism

Baptism is the next one. Jesus told his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19-20). On the day of Pentecost, those who received the message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to the church that day (Acts 2:38-41). The Ethiopian official asked, "Why shouldn't I be baptized?" and went down into the water the moment he understood (Acts 8:36-38).

What does it mean? Paul explains that in baptism we are buried with Christ and raised to walk in a new life (Romans 6:3-4, Colossians 2:11-12). Everyone who was baptized into Christ has been clothed with Christ (Galatians 3:27). Peter calls it the pledge of a clear conscience toward God, made possible through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:21). It is the public line in the sand: I belong to him now.

I will be honest with you. Believers have argued for centuries about how and when to baptize, and some read Ephesians 4:5 as pointing to the baptism by the Spirit that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12:13, while others read it as water baptism, or as the two held together. I am not going to use this teaching to settle that argument. I want to point at what Paul is pointing at. Whatever our differences on the details, there is one baptism, and every believer in every century has entered through the same door into the same Lord. In Galatians 3:26-28 Paul says that all who were baptized into Christ are one, with no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female division left standing. If we can argue about baptism and still be one in Christ, we have understood Paul. If we use it to treat each other as enemies, we have missed him.

One God and Father of All

Now we reach the summit. "One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." The Bible never wavers on this. "I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God" (Isaiah 45:5, see also Isaiah 44:6). Malachi asked, "Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us?" (Malachi 2:10). And Jesus, speaking of his oneness with the Father, said, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30).

Paul gives us three little words to describe how this one God relates to everything. Over all: he is sovereign. Nothing is bigger than him, and nothing happens outside his reach (Psalm 139:7-10, Romans 11:36). Through all: he works in and through everything, and in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:24-28). In all: he dwells in his people by his Spirit, so that together we are being built into a dwelling place for God (Ephesians 2:22). He is above us, beside us, and within us.

And he is Father. Paul says that every family in heaven and on earth takes its name from the Father (Ephesians 3:14-15). Because of Jesus, we are not slaves cowering before a distant king. By the Spirit we cry, "Abba, Father" (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). That one word explains why the church can be one. We are not a club that happened to agree. We are children of one Father, brothers and sisters in one household, and the family resemblance is supposed to show.

The Pattern Hidden in the Passage

Take another look at how Paul arranged these seven. In verse 4 he speaks of one Spirit. In verse 5 he speaks of one Lord. In verse 6 he speaks of one God and Father. Spirit, Lord, Father. Without making a speech about it, Paul has set the whole Godhead across three verses, with the believer's life gathered around them: body and hope in the first, faith and baptism in the second, and all things in the third.

This is not a stretch. Paul does the same thing in Ephesians 2:18, when he says that through Jesus we have access to the Father by one Spirit. Jesus told his disciples to baptize into one name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). Paul closes his second letter to the Corinthians with a blessing that names all three (2 Corinthians 13:14). One God, and in that one God, the fullness of who he is.

And it explains why the unity of believers is such a big deal. Jesus prayed for it the night before the cross: "that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you" (John 17:21). Our oneness is meant to be a picture of God's own oneness. When the church is divided and quarreling, we are painting a false portrait of God before a watching world. When we are one in love and truth, the world gets a glimpse of who he really is.

I keep noticing a circle in the scriptures. They begin with God and they bring us back to God. Romans 11:36 says it: from him and through him and to him are all things. Ephesians 4:4-6 follows the same circle. It starts with a body on the earth, and it ends with the God who is over all. That is where everything lands, and that is where it began.

The Circle of Oneness

I want to step back now and look at the whole passage the way I believe God wants us to see it: as a circle. Count the ones again: body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism, God and Father. Seven. And seven is the number the Bible keeps reaching for when it wants to show us something whole. The heavens and the earth were completed, and on the seventh day God finished the work he had been doing and rested (Genesis 2:1-3). Revelation is full of sevens, the seven lampstands, the seven lamps blazing before the throne, which John calls the seven spirits of God (Revelation 1:4, 1:20, 4:5). I will not build doctrine on a number, but the pattern is hard to miss. When God wants us to see that something is full and nothing is lacking, he reaches for seven.

I want to be careful how I say this. The seven ones do not complete God. He was never incomplete. He is the first and the last (Isaiah 44:6), the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End (Revelation 22:13), and he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything (Acts 17:25). What the seven ones do is show us the completeness of who he already is. They are seven windows into one room. Look through the first and you see the body. Look through the second and you see the Spirit. Every window opens on the same fullness, because behind all seven is one God.

And here is what I keep noticing: it is a circle. You can start anywhere. Start with the body. Whose body? Christ's. Who joined us to it? The one Spirit. What did the Spirit give us? The one hope. Hope in whom? The one Lord. How do we come to that Lord? By the one faith, marked by the one baptism. And whose Lord is he? The one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Then Paul turns right around and says, "But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it" (Ephesians 4:7). From the Father it comes back down to us again. From him and through him and to him are all things (Romans 11:36). You end where you began, with God, and you begin again.

That is how the whole Bible is built. It opens with "In the beginning God" (Genesis 1:1) and closes with the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End (Revelation 21:6). It is the same God at both ends. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8), and from everlasting to everlasting, you are God (Psalm 90:2).

Always More Than Enough

A circle can sound like a closed loop, something that goes around and gets nowhere. That is not what I see here. God's circle never runs out. Every time you come around to the beginning, you find there is more. Paul prays that we would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19), and in the very next breath he worships the God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21). The older translations say "exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think," and I love that phrase. It sits in the same letter as the seven ones, and it says the same thing: there is always more.

All the fullness of the Deity lives in Christ in bodily form, and in Christ we have been brought to fullness (Colossians 2:9-10). John says that out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given (John 1:16). Grace on top of grace, again and again and again. His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). Not new once. Every morning. You go around the circle, the morning comes, the mercy is there, and you did not use it up. My cup overflows (Psalm 23:5). God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8). Jesus said he came that we might have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10). Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end (Isaiah 9:7). His greatness no one can fathom (Psalm 145:3), and Paul, reaching the end of his own words, can only cry out, "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" (Romans 11:33).

So here is the point. God is more than enough, and he never ends. You can go around this circle again and again and again, and there will always be more.

One Truth, One Love, and Back Again

You can lay this circle over almost anything God says about himself. Take truth. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6), and in prayer, "your word is truth" (John 17:17). One truth. Take love. "God is love" (1 John 4:8). One love. And Paul brings the two together in this very chapter: "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). Truth leads to love, love leads back to truth, and you are walking the same circle with the same God. There is no truth of his that is not loving, and no love of his that is not true. The longer you walk it, the more you find.

That is why I believe the seven ones are more than a doctrinal checklist. They are an invitation to walk a circle with no bottom. Every time you read Ephesians 4:4-6 again you find another door. One day it is the body. Another day it is the Spirit. Another day you see "over all and through all and in all" as if for the first time. God has been there all along, bringing you back around to himself, never finished giving, never finished loving, never finished with you.

One God, always more than enough. And the circle never ends.

One New Man, Not a New Israel

I want to say something about the "one body" that I think the church needs to hear. When Paul says there is one body made of Jew and Gentile, he is not saying the Gentiles replaced Israel or that the church became a new Israel. Read Ephesians 2:11-22 carefully. Gentiles who were once far away and called "uncircumcised" have been brought near. Christ made the two groups one, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility, to create in himself one new man out of the two. Out of the two, not out of one swallowing the other. And in Ephesians 3:6 Paul says the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, sharers together in the promise.

Romans 11 gives the picture. The Gentile believer is a wild olive branch grafted into a cultivated tree. The branch does not carry the root. The root carries the branch (Romans 11:17-24). Paul warns Gentile believers not to boast over the natural branches. God's gifts and his call are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). So the one body does not erase Israel. It welcomes the nations into the promises God made to Abraham, and it does so through the faith that Abraham himself had (Galatians 3:28-29). One new man. Two peoples, one family, one Lord.

When the Ones Get Broken

If there are seven ones, then there are seven places where the enemy likes to attack. Paul warned the Romans to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned (Romans 16:17-18). He told Timothy that a time was coming when people would not put up with sound doctrine, but would gather teachers to suit their own desires and wander off into myths (2 Timothy 4:3-4). He warned the Corinthians not to go beyond what is written (1 Corinthians 4:6).

But I have to be balanced here, because Paul is. There is a way of defending the truth that destroys the body, and there is a way of preserving the body that gives up the truth. Neither one is what Ephesians 4 describes. In the same chapter, just ten verses later, Paul says we are to be no longer infants tossed back and forth by every wave of teaching, and then he gives us the way: "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:14-15). Truth without love is a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1). Love without truth has nothing to stand on. John said he had no greater joy than to hear that his children walk in the truth (3 John 4), and he also told us that love means walking according to God's commands (2 John 6).

It helps to separate the center from the edges. The seven ones are the center. They are the things on which the Bible leaves no room. Around that center are matters Paul calls disputable (Romans 14:1-8), questions on which sincere believers can land in different places without breaking fellowship. Paul's counsel there is to make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification (Romans 14:19). We guard the center with courage, and we hold the edges with grace. The trouble starts when we confuse the two, treating a disputable matter like it is the gospel, or treating the gospel like it is disputable.

How We Keep the Unity

Paul did not leave us with a beautiful statement and no way to live it. Having given us the seven ones, he says what Christ gave the church so that we can grow into them: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, to equip God's people for works of service, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature (Ephesians 4:11-13). The goal is maturity. Unity and maturity go together. And as each part does its work, the whole body grows and builds itself up in love (4:16).

So how do we keep it? Here is what I see in Paul's words, and I will keep it simple:

• Start at home. Moses told Israel to talk about God's commands when you sit at home and when you walk along the road (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). Unity in the church begins with unity at the kitchen table.

• Put on humility. Do nothing out of selfish ambition, but in humility value others above yourselves (Philippians 2:1-4). Colossians 3:12-15 gives the whole wardrobe: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and over all of these, love, which binds everything together in perfect unity.

• Speak the truth, and speak it kindly. Put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor (Ephesians 4:25). Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth (4:29). Be kind and compassionate, forgiving each other as God in Christ forgave you (4:32).

• Refuse gossip. A perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends (Proverbs 16:28).

• Accept one another. Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God (Romans 15:5-7).

• Stay together. Do not give up meeting together, but encourage one another (Hebrews 10:24-25). A hand cut off from the body does not stay alive.

• Pray for it. Jesus did, and the Father always hears the Son (John 17:20-23). When we pray for the unity of the body, we are praying in agreement with the prayer of Jesus.

Psalm 133 sums it up in a sentence: how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. There the Lord bestows his blessing. Blessing flows where the ones are honored.

One Voice, One Truth

Let me bring this home to where this ministry stands. We are One Truth Ministries because we believe the Bible is one voice. Not many voices that happen to be in the same book, but one voice, from one God, through one Spirit, speaking one truth about one Lord and his one body. The seven ones are not a slogan. They are the structure of reality as God has revealed it.

Jesus prayed for everyone who would believe in him through the message of his first followers. That includes you and me. He asked that we would be one, so that the world would believe the Father sent him (John 17:20-23). Think about that. The Son of God, on his way to the cross, spent some of his last words praying for our unity. If it mattered that much to him, it ought to matter that much to us.

So here is the invitation. If you are in Christ, you are already in the one body, sealed by the one Spirit, holding the one hope, under the one Lord, standing on the one faith, marked by the one baptism, and loved by the one God and Father of all. Live like it. Guard it. Do not add to it and do not take away from it.

And if you have never put your trust in Jesus, the door is open. If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:9-13). There is one way in, and it is open to all.

Let us pray. Father, you are over all and through all and in all, and we thank you that you have made us one in Jesus. Forgive us for the times we have torn at your body. Teach us to guard the unity your Spirit made. Give us humility, truth, and love. Keep our eyes fixed on the one hope, our knees bowed to the one Lord, and our hearts at rest in you. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

For Further Study

The setting of Ephesians 4:4-6

Ephesians 1:3-14 • Ephesians 2:8-22 • Ephesians 3:1-21 • Ephesians 4:1-16

One body

1 Corinthians 12:12-27 • Romans 12:4-5 • Colossians 1:18 • Ephesians 1:22-23 • Ephesians 2:16 • 1 Corinthians 1:10-13

One Spirit

Ephesians 1:13-14 • Romans 8:9-16 • John 16:13 • 1 John 4:1-3 • 1 John 5:6 • 2 Peter 1:20-21 • Galatians 5:22-23 • Ephesians 2:18

One hope

Colossians 1:27 • Titus 2:13 • 1 Peter 1:3 • Hebrews 6:19 • Romans 5:1-5 • Romans 8:24-25 • 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 • Jeremiah 29:11

One Lord

Deuteronomy 6:4 • 1 Corinthians 8:6 • Philippians 2:9-11 • Acts 2:36 • Acts 4:12 • John 14:6 • 1 Timothy 2:5 • Matthew 6:24 • Luke 6:46

One faith

Ephesians 2:8-9 • Hebrews 11:1, 6 • Romans 10:17 • Jude 3 • 2 Timothy 1:13-14 • Galatians 1:6-9 • Revelation 22:18-19 • Deuteronomy 4:2 • Mark 7:6-9 • Romans 4:11-12

One baptism

Matthew 28:19-20 • Acts 2:38-41 • Acts 8:36-38 • Romans 6:3-4 • Colossians 2:11-12 • Galatians 3:26-29 • 1 Corinthians 12:13 • 1 Peter 3:21

One God and Father of all

Isaiah 44:6 • Isaiah 45:5 • Malachi 2:10 • John 10:30 • Psalm 139:7-10 • Acts 17:24-28 • Romans 11:36 • Ephesians 2:22 • Ephesians 3:14-15 • Romans 8:15 • Galatians 4:6

The Trinity pattern and the prayer for unity

Matthew 28:19 • 2 Corinthians 13:14 • John 17:20-23

The circle of oneness: completion and fullness

Genesis 1:1 • Genesis 2:1-3 • Revelation 1:4 • Revelation 1:20 • Revelation 4:5 • Revelation 21:6 • Revelation 22:13 • Isaiah 44:6 • Acts 17:25 • Psalm 90:2 • Hebrews 13:8 • Ephesians 4:7 • Romans 11:36

Always more than enough

Ephesians 3:19-21 • Colossians 2:9-10 • John 1:16 • Lamentations 3:22-23 • Psalm 23:5 • 2 Corinthians 9:8 • John 10:10 • Isaiah 9:7 • Psalm 145:3 • Romans 11:33

One truth, one love

John 14:6 • John 17:17 • 1 John 4:8 • Ephesians 4:15

One new man, not a new Israel

Ephesians 2:11-22 • Ephesians 3:6 • Romans 11:17-29 • Galatians 3:28-29

Guarding the truth in love

Romans 16:17-18 • 2 Timothy 4:3-4 • 1 Corinthians 4:6 • Ephesians 4:14-15 • 1 Corinthians 13:1 • 3 John 4 • 2 John 6 • Romans 14:1-8 • Romans 14:19

Keeping the unity

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 • Philippians 2:1-4 • Colossians 3:12-15 • Ephesians 4:25-32 • Proverbs 16:28 • Romans 15:5-7 • Hebrews 10:24-25 • Psalm 133 • Romans 10:9-13