The Circle of Oneness

The Seven Ones

On the back of the One Truth Ministries card are seven short phrases: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God. They come from one sentence the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus, and they sit at the center of everything this ministry stands for. In this teaching I want to walk through each of the seven, see why Paul put them side by side, and ask what changes in us when we take the little word "one" seriously.

Notice the number. Not two, not seven hundred. One, said seven times. We live in a world of a thousand voices and a thousand versions of the truth, and God's word keeps answering with the same small word.

Where Paul Is Standing

The first three chapters of Ephesians are rich doctrine. We were chosen before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:3-6). We were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit (1:13-14). We are saved by grace through faith, not by works (2:8-9). Jew and Gentile have been made one new man through the cross (2:14-16). Then chapter 4 begins with the word "therefore." Paul, writing as a prisoner for the Lord, urges the believers to live a life worthy of their calling: be humble, gentle, patient, bearing with one another in love, and make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:1-3).

Look at the verb: keep the unity. Not build it, invent it, or vote on it. The Spirit already made it. Our job is to guard what we were handed. Verses 4 through 6 give the reason. Look at what 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

A body is alive, connected, and has one head. Paul says that just as a body is one though it has many parts, so it is with Christ, and that we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, Jew or Gentile, slave or free (1 Corinthians 12:12-13). Christ is the head of the body, the church (Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 1:22-23). The church is not mainly a building or a denomination. It is a living body of people joined to Jesus and therefore to each other.

Oneness is not sameness. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you" (1 Corinthians 12:17-21). But we divide anyway. The Corinthians said, "I follow Paul," "I follow Apollos," and Paul asked, "Is Christ divided?" (1 Corinthians 1:10-13). We have new labels now, but the habit is the same. Christ reconciled us to God "in one body" through the cross (Ephesians 2:16). A body bought that dearly should not be treated lightly.

One Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the one who makes the body one. We were all given the one Spirit to drink (1 Corinthians 12:13). He is the seal and deposit guaranteeing our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14), and he testifies with our spirit that we are God's children (Romans 8:16). Through Jesus, by one Spirit, Jew and Gentile alike have access to the Father (Ephesians 2:18).

Jesus called him the Spirit of truth, who guides us into all truth (John 16:13), and John says 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) lives in us today, and he does not contradict himself. That is why we are told to test the spirits (1 John 4:1-3). If a voice, however sincere, says something that cuts against what the Spirit already said in the written word, it is not the voice of the one Spirit. This is the heart of "one voice, one truth." And the one Spirit grows one fruit in all of us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

One Hope

We were "called to one hope." Before Christ, Paul says, we were without hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12). Biblical hope is not wishful thinking. It is a confident expectation of what God has promised. Peter says we were born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus (1 Peter 1:3), and Hebrews calls it an anchor for the soul, firm and secure (Hebrews 6:19).

And the hope is a person first: "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27), and the blessed hope of the appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13). It is the promise that we will be with the Lord forever, so that we do not grieve like those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). We are tempted to hang our hope on an election, an economy, or a bank account. Some of those have their place, but none can carry the weight of a soul. When the anchor is not in the storm, a believer can walk through a hard season without being crushed (Jeremiah 29:11, Romans 5:1-5).

One Lord

Israel's great prayer began, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Paul holds Father and Son together in that confession: for us there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 8:6). God exalted him to the highest place, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:9-11). There is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12), and there is one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5).

To say "one Lord" is to say Jesus is not just a teacher or helper. He holds the authority. "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46). No one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). If Jesus is Lord, no pastor, tradition, culture, or political movement sits above him. And this is a freeing truth. With one Lord, I do not have to please a hundred masters. I serve the one who loved me and gave himself for me.

One Faith

Faith in the Bible means two things, and Paul has both in mind. It is trust: by grace we are saved through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), and without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). And it is the body of truth handed to us: "contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people" (Jude 3). Once for all. It was delivered one time, finished, complete.

That is why the gospel cannot be remixed. Paul was astonished that the Galatians were so quickly turning to a different gospel, and said that even an angel from heaven preaching another one should be under a curse (Galatians 1:6-9). The Bible closes with a warning against adding to or taking away from its words (Revelation 22:18-19), echoing Moses (Deuteronomy 4:2). Jesus rebuked those who set aside God's commands for the sake of their traditions (Mark 7:6-9). One faith means we receive God's word as he gave it. And it is the one faith that joins Jew and Gentile, since Abraham believed and was counted righteous, and became the father of all who believe (Romans 4:11-12).

One Baptism

Jesus told us to 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 Pentecost about three thousand were baptized and added to the church (Acts 2:38-41). In baptism we are buried with Christ and raised to walk in a new life (Romans 6:3-4), and all who were baptized into Christ have clothed themselves with Christ (Galatians 3:27).

Believers have debated for centuries how and when to baptize, and some read Ephesians 4:5 as the baptism by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:13) and others as water baptism. I am not going to settle that here. I want to point at what Paul points at: there is one baptism, and every believer in every century has come through the same door to the same Lord. If we can differ on details and still stand together 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

Here is the summit. "I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God" (Isaiah 45:5). "Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us?" (Malachi 2:10). Paul gives three small words for how this one God relates to everything. Over all: he is sovereign (Romans 11:36). Through all: in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). In all: he dwells in his people by his Spirit, and we are being built into a dwelling for God (Ephesians 2:22).

And he is Father. By the Spirit we cry, "Abba, Father" (Romans 8:15). 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 in one household, and the family resemblance is supposed to show.

The Pattern Hidden in the Passage

Look again at how Paul arranged these. Verse 4: one Spirit. Verse 5: one Lord. Verse 6: one God and Father. Spirit, Lord, Father. Paul has set the whole Godhead across three verses, with the believer's life gathered around them. He does it again in Ephesians 2:18, and Jesus told us to baptize into one name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). One God, and in him the fullness of who he is.

This explains why unity matters so much. 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. A divided, quarreling church paints a false portrait of God before a watching world. A church one in love and truth gives the world a glimpse of who he is. And notice the circle: the passage begins with a body on the earth and ends with the God who is over all. From him and through him and to him are all things (Romans 11:36).

The Circle of Oneness

Count the ones again: body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism, God and Father. Seven, the number the Bible keeps reaching for when it wants to show us something whole. God completed the heavens and the earth and rested on the seventh day (Genesis 2:1-3), and Revelation is full of sevens (Revelation 1:4, 4:5). I will not build doctrine on a number, but the pattern is hard to miss.

I want to be careful: 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 (Revelation 22:13), and he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything (Acts 17:25). The seven ones show us the completeness of who he already is: seven windows into one room, all opening on one God.

And it is a circle. Start with the body, which is Christ's. The one Spirit joined us to it, gave us the one hope, which is in the one Lord, reached by the one faith and marked by the one baptism, and that Lord belongs to the one God and Father of all. Then Paul says grace has been given to each of us (Ephesians 4:7), and it all comes back down again. From him and through him and to him are all things (Romans 11:36). The Bible itself begins with "In the beginning God" (Genesis 1:1) and ends with the Alpha and the Omega (Revelation 21:6).

But this is not a closed loop. Every time you come back around, there is more. Paul prays that we would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, and then praises the God who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:19-21). The older wording is "exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think." Out of his fullness we have received grace in place of grace already given (John 1:16). His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). My cup overflows (Psalm 23:5). Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end (Isaiah 9:7).

Lay the circle over truth and love. Jesus is the truth (John 14:6), God is love (1 John 4:8), and Paul says to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Truth leads to love, love leads back to truth, same circle, same God. The seven ones are an invitation to walk a circle with no bottom. God is more than enough, and he never ends.

One New Man, Not a New Israel

When Paul says there is one body of Jew and Gentile, he is not saying the Gentiles replaced Israel. In Ephesians 2:11-22 Christ makes the two one by breaking down the dividing wall, creating in himself one new man out of the two, not one swallowing the other. In Ephesians 3:6 the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel. In Romans 11 the Gentile believer is a wild branch grafted into a cultivated tree, and the branch does not carry the root; the root carries the branch (Romans 11:17-24). God's gifts and his call are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). One new man: two peoples, one family, one Lord.

Keeping the Unity

Christ gave the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, to equip us until we all reach unity in the faith and become mature (Ephesians 4:11-13). Unity and maturity go together. So we guard the center with courage, and hold the edges with grace. The seven ones are the center. Around that center are disputable matters (Romans 14:1-8), and our counsel there is to pursue what leads to peace and mutual edification (Romans 14:19). Paul gives the way: "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:14-15). Truth without love is a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1), and love without truth has nothing to stand on.

Here is how I see it lived out:

• Start at home. Unity in the church begins at the kitchen table (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

• Put on humility. Value others above yourselves (Philippians 2:1-4), and over all, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect unity (Colossians 3:12-15).

• Speak the truth, kindly. Put off falsehood, forgive as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:25-32).

• Refuse gossip. A gossip separates close friends (Proverbs 16:28).

• Accept one another. As Christ accepted you (Romans 15:5-7).

• Stay together. Do not give up meeting together (Hebrews 10:24-25).

• Pray for it. Jesus did (John 17:20-23).

One Voice, One Truth

We are One Truth Ministries because we believe the Bible is one voice: one God, through one Spirit, speaking one truth about one Lord and his one body. 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.

Father, you are over all and through all and in all. Thank you for making us one in Jesus. Forgive us for tearing at your body. Teach us to guard the unity your Spirit made. In Jesus' name. Amen.