God Above All…
“And so, a prisoner in the Lord, I beg you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all humility and meekness, bearing with one another patiently in love, eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; one body, and one Spirit, as you were also called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all” (Ephesians 4:1-6).
If there is anything the Lord wants His people to understand today, it is the same thing He set out to teach Israel yesterday: “Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God, Jehovah is one. And you shall love Jehovah your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). The rabbis call this passage the shema (hear). But what is it that God wants all of us to hear, believe and understand? (Isaiah 43:10). What the Father longs to have penetrate deeply into our heart and understanding is that He is one, just as one is His name and one His kingdom.
We must believe the Lord, know Him and understand Him as He has revealed Himself, not as our senses perceive Him or our mind reasons Him out.
What implication does the oneness of God have for us? We must believe the Lord, know Him and understand Him as He has revealed Himself, not as our senses perceive Him or our mind reasons Him out. Only when we know who God is can we know how to worship Him, how to fear Him and how to serve Him. God wanted to say to Israel: “There are many who call themselves gods, in heaven and on earth, but only one created all things. Therefore, only the Creator must be acknowledged and worshiped as God.” The One who is the only God and who is above all, through all and in all, He alone is worthy of being loved with all the heart, with all the soul and with all the strength. Although the Godhead has revealed Itself in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is one. The Bible emphatically reveals the oneness of God. Jesus said: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Notice how Paul teaches us that, although the gifts are many and varied, the givers, though they are three, are one and the same. Let us see:
“Now there are diversities of gifts, but the Spirit is the same. And there are diversities of ministries, but the Lord is the same. And there are diversities of operations, but God, who works all things in all, is the same. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the profit of all” (1 Corinthians 12:4-7)
It is interesting that there are diversities of gifts, “but the Spirit is the same” (v. 4); that there are diversities of ministries, “but the Lord is the same” (v. 5); and that there are diversities of operations, “but God
, who works all things in all, is the same” (v. 6). Paul says: “For there is only one God, and only one mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ a man” (1 Timothy 2:5). In the passage of Ephesians 4:1-6 it is remarkable that the God who is above all, through all and in all has one body, one Spirit, one same hope, one calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and He is God, the Father of all. The oneness of the church is achieved when it is understood in the Spirit that God is one and that therefore the members of the body, although we are many, are one in Him. The One God must be all in all, and all must be one in the One God. “Above all” means that His authority and dominion are exercised in the lives of those who voluntarily submit to Him, in the day of His power (Psalm 110:3). “Through all” implies that He is on the side of and in defense of all those who have submitted to His lordship. “In all” emphasizes that He lives and rules in the hearts of all who believe in His name.
Called to Be a Part of the Whole
“I beg you to walk worthy of the calling with which
YOU WERE CALLED … eager to keep the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace; one body, and one Spirit, as you were also
CALLED IN ONE SAME hope of your calling” (Ephesians 4:1,3-4).
In the new creation that we have within us, God is all. The Word says that in that creation there is not “Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). That is, if you were to squeeze the new creature, everything it expels and gives off is Christ, because He is its all. The new creation has nothing of nothing, but everything of Christ. In the process of sanctification, where God is overcoming the power of sin in your life and in mine, what God wants to achieve is to be all in us. The goal of the work of the Holy Spirit is that God be all in all. Therefore, in the work of election, in justification, in sanctification, in preaching, in prayer, in praise, in worship, in service, in fellowship among the brethren, God wants to be the All, and so the Lord will not cease until He achieves that purpose in us.
Notice the emphasis in this verse: “He put all things under His feet” (1 Corinthians 15:27). What do you think when you hear the word “all”? In a garment, for example, all the cloth used in it makes “the whole” of a shirt. From the cloth, the thread, the buttons, the trimmings that may be on it, this makes the piece a finished whole. Now, if we say that God is the whole of that piece, except for the sleeves, then God is not the ALL in that shirt, because when we speak of all, nothing is excepted. So God wants to be all in all. God is not content with a little corner, or any other place, or with any other amount or position that is not the all. That is why it cannot be said that God has achieved His purpose in my life until He has put all my things under His feet, so that He may be the all in me. Thus, by that same rule, God ministers to us as individuals, but also as members of His body, which is the church, because also in every nation, tribe, tongue and people, God has to be the all and in all.
In the book of Ephesians it says: “I therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all humility and meekness, bearing with one another patiently in love, eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; one body, and one Spirit, as you were also called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ” (Ephesians 4:1-7). These verses illustrate very well this thought of the unity to which we refer when they say: “one body.” And I ask: What is the body? The church is the body, and as a body it is only one. They also say: “and one Spirit,” that is, there is a body and there is a Spirit, one thing does not subsist without the other. A body without spirit is dead, and that is why God gave the church His Spirit, so that it may live (James 2:26). Then they say: “one same hope”, and notice that it does not speak in the plural, but of a single hope, there are not two. And that hope is founded on a single “calling,” to which we have all been called, to be subject to: “one Lord,” not to many, but to one only; “one faith,” not many, only one; “one baptism,” not many, only one; “one God,” not many, only one; “and Father of all,” not many, there is only one Father for all; “who is above all, and through all, and in all”. It is perfectly clear! And all those “ones” form a whole, which is God.
There is nothing on earth that can instruct us better about what the church is than that set of organic systems that makes up a living being, which is the body.
If we pause at the first “one,” the body, we have to recognize that God could not have used a better illustration to describe what the church is. There is nothing on earth that can instruct us better about what the church is than that set of organic systems that makes up a living being, which is the body. That organism is a set of members, just as Paul says of the church: “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and all members one of another” (Romans 12:5). If the church were an organization, as some believe, it would not last, because in order to agree, unlike the body, they have to meet and argue for long hours, and after many quarrels and discussions, in the end they almost never agree, so some decide to resign and never meet again. And when the purpose for which they came together ends, the organization is divided and its whole ends. But that is not so with a body. You will never see the arm in Australia, or the feet walking through Brazil while the heart is in Bermuda and the hands strolling in Las Vegas. Nor will you see (as I sometimes say jokingly) the kidney making an appointment with the doctor while the rest of the body goes off to work. There is no such thing, because the body was made in unity. When one member of the body gets sick, the whole body experiences the same, even if it is the little toe of the left foot, for all suffer. The body is a whole.
That is why the body is so fitting as an illustration of what God wants to represent to the church in this teaching. We see, in this time, that medicine has tried to carry out organ transplants, and although there have been certain relative achievements, the failures outnumber the successes it has obtained. Sometimes it works out well to transplant a member from one person into the body of another, but it is as if it did not work, because the person who is given a kidney from someone else, for example, has to be constantly given so many medications, be so careful with so many precautions and be limited in so many things (to watch that a complication does not occur), that the quality of life is so poor in most cases that it is almost the same as being dead. Any doctor can corroborate what I say and say even more about how complicated all of that is, from the initial process, in the selection of the organ, to the final process, where the risk is taken that the patient’s body will reject the transplanted organ. Once those problems are overcome, it still cannot be guaranteed that it will work. We recognize that it is a blessing from God to allow a means to lengthen a person’s life, but sadly nothing in this world is perfect. The body was made so that the individual parts form a whole and function as a totality. That is why the best kidneys I can have are the two God put in my body, because He made them perfect and they are the only ones my organism needs, since no others can take their places or do their function as they do.
Notice that in the context of the verses of Ephesians 4, God was speaking of remaining and being eager, diligent, active, quick to keep the unity, and then began to detail one by one each of the things that make up the calling of the Christian vocation (v. 3). In 1 Corinthians 12:12, referring to the body, it says: “For as the body is one, and has many members, but all the members of the body, being many, are one body…” That is, even though the body has many members, it is only one. And although each member has different functions and some are even more than one in the body, like the arms, the eyes, the ears, etc., they are still one. For example, I have five fingers on each hand, but although they are many they do not cease to be one single thing: one hand. And that hand, in turn, is part of the body, but it is not the body, and separated from it it cannot live, it dries up.
The body functions as a unit, as what it is, an organism. God, in His mercy, has been telling us that in Christ He already succeeded in being the all, and therefore in the church, which is the body of Christ, God will be so too. He not only wants to be the all in me, individually, as a member of the body, but also in all believers as a complete unit. God speaks of many “ones” that become a whole: one body, one Lord, one calling, one faith, one baptism. All of that is a set of individual things that form a whole. That is why, at the end, we see that it says: “one God and Father of All, who is above all.” Above all means that He has dominion over everything and that He is above every position, authority and power, that there is nothing and no one above Him.
In the world God is not the all, but in those lives that He took from the world He is and will be their all.
We know that in the world God is not the all, but in those lives that He took from the world He is and will be their all. God is the all in the new creation, and so, when the new birth takes place in us, we surrender to Him without any kind of coercion, for His power and authority are suggested to us in a tender and loving way. God is over the church, which has been redeemed, and has submitted to Him and serves Him willingly. Therefore, God is over all who belong to the body, over all who have the same faith, over all who have the same hope, over all who have partaken of that one baptism, over all who have Jesus Christ. Over all of them, He is the all. He has dominion and authority over us, because He redeemed us and bought us with His blood.
If you are a believer, God is over you. Now, does God reign in your life? Does He have the dominion, the lordship, the authority, the power over you? Do you go to church and sit in a chair so that God may be the all? Do you sing, do you serve God so that He may be the all? Do you obey God, follow His instructions and join with your brother so that He may be the all? It is important to know this, because that sums up everything in our spiritual life. God told you in His Word that He wants you to know Him, believe Him and understand Him (Isaiah 43:10). And with that word He is summing up for you a book that has some three thousand five hundred years of history, and so many areas of teaching that its preaching would never be finished. If Christ did not come and we crossed the centuries, we would still be preaching new things, with books being written of everything God has said. Nevertheless, God says that all those things, the sixty-six books of the Bible, with all the rhemas and everything that has been drawn from the Holy Scriptures, in the end, boil down to one single thing: God is the all and must be the all.
Christ came so that the Father may be the all, and in the end He is going to remove everything that hinders the achieving of that purpose. I feel super honored that God has made me a part of that all, even if a very tiny part of it. God speaks to us of “one”: one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism and many other things, individual and no less important, but which are only effective when they form the all of God. Let us think about the parts the body has; about the millions of cells, molecules, atoms, protons and neutrons that form it. Now apply that to what we are studying. We see, then, that we come to be a little thing in that body, a tiny part among all those ones and all those units. God is the all and I am a very small unit in one of those parts called the body. But now I can say that I am happy, because before I was less than nothing, I did not even exist, and now I have been added, and by His grace I am a little part of that all that is God. A part perhaps tiny, but very important when it contributes to the all of God. I ask the Father to internalize in us this rhema, the spiritual part of His Word, so that we may understand what it means to be part of the body, as well as the importance of occupying the place that corresponds to us and of carrying out the function for which we were created and called to be part of the all.
What happens in the body when one of its members refuses to function? Suppose the brain sends a message to the feet to walk and they refuse to carry out the order, answering: “No, we have decided not to walk anymore.” Where will the body go? Let us go even further, to something worse, let us imagine what would happen in the body if its members opposed one another. Let us picture what would happen if a rebellion broke out in the human body, something like what we will relate below:
“It happened that the tongue —an extremely dangerous member of the body (James 3:5-12)— rebelled against the stomach. The reason? She alleged that the stomach is very lazy and a pest, since it is only there to receive the food, which she, with great effort, swallows, even —she complained— going through ‘bitter pills,’ so that afterward it, which considers itself ‘very delicate and sensitive,’ sends it all back out, in a repugnant and violent way.” The fleshy organ also added that she could no longer bear that the stomach complained so much when it did not receive food on time, so she would do the impossible to put an end to its protests and complaints. So, not content with having all those arguments against the digestive bag, the tongue also spoke with the teeth and with the saliva about the matter, and won them over to her side; after all, they lived together, didn’t they? The three agreed and passed the voice of protest on to the nose and the eyes, who came to the conclusion that they also had causes, perhaps much more valid, to be against it. The eyes said they were tired of seeing and the nose of smelling and getting nothing, so what the tongue said seemed true, that the stomach wanted everything for itself. So they agreed to join the strike and not work anymore.
“The morning passed and the digestive tract received nothing to eat during the day, so it began to complain; then the tongue, as spokesperson, considered it was the moment to communicate to the stomach the decision that she, the teeth, the saliva, the eyes and the nose had made. So she said to it: ‘Oh! You’ve just woken up and right away you start complaining! Well, look, as you must have noticed, we have decided not to work for you anymore. We are tired of satisfying your appetites and all your desires, glutton! We will no longer contribute to broadening your comfort zone, for you are a gorger, a lazybones and selfish, so as far as we are concerned, you can writhe in hunger. Ha!’ The stomach, although it knew the tongue’s reputation —how quarrelsome she was— was taken by surprise by the plot, and a chill ran through its walls, but it was not intimidated; instead it said to them: ‘Ahhh! Now I understand. You have all conspired against me, but what I don’t understand is how you could have been seduced that way, knowing how things work. I will only tell you one thing: do what you want, but I will continue fulfilling my function, even though you do not understand it and blame me for so many things. Therefore, I will do what I always do; you are not going to pressure me. For this I was created and I exist,’ and then it began to cry out for food.” So the whole thing broke loose: The nose said: “This one here won’t sniff anymore”; the eyes said: “We won’t even look toward the kitchen”; the teeth said: “No more chewing around here!”; the saliva said: “I am not going to soften the food for that slacker”; and the mouth said: “I am not even going to open, zzziip!” Therefore, since the sensory organs showed no sign, that prevented the brain from becoming aware of the matter and giving the order to the hands and feet to look for something to eat. So involuntarily, without knowing it, the whole body united and was against the stomach.
“However, after seven weeks, the matter got serious. The eyes complained that not only could they not see the food, but nothing, since they perceived that everything was spinning around them and they were too. The nose then confessed that for several days it had not been able to stand any smell, since it found them too strong for its sense of smell. The arms complained that they could not rise. The knees said they felt weak, and the feet howled with pain, because the legs would not move and they could no longer bear the volume of flesh and bones, so they feared the body would collapse at any moment.
“But the matter inside did not seem so simple; it was worse. It happens that the liver had not noticed the matter, and since it was constantly producing bile, it had been filling the gallbladder to the brim, so the gallbladder began to send the bitter liquid to the duodenum. The duodenum, since it had not received anything for a long time from its other companions, members of the digestive system, kept retaining that bitter and viscous liquid, in such a way that it overflowed and rose until it reached the digestive tube. The stomach, on feeling that something was falling on it, no matter where it came from, began to dilate and immediately set to work. However, that liquid was so bitter and so strong that its juice rose to the palate, and the teeth began to corrode, and the saliva to dry up, and the tongue could not make any movement, not even of expulsion, as it seemed to be stuck to the floor of the mouth.
“The matter reached its peak when the stomach contracted, because the digestive fluid and the gases collided. The pain was so sharp that —at last!— it awoke the brain from the imaginary dreams with which it had been consoling itself during the strike, about when they all together savored those delicious dishes, so succulent that even the fingers were licked by the mouth. Then, with a fixed idea, the brain began to alert the whole body: ‘Let’s look for something to eat or I die! Let’s look for something to eat or I die! Let’s look for something to eat or I die!’ It was like a desperate cry that stirred even the skin, which bristled and even changed color. So the body got up, and the eyes moved desperately, and the mouth watered, just imagining the feast they were going to have. In that way, they all began to work for that single purpose, understanding that they were members one of another and dependent on one another. Each one watched, and almost begged, that each one do the function that corresponded to him, so that everything might return to normal and they could all feel better. And so it happened.”
“Shoemaker, to your shoes,” says a proverb that advises that each one should limit himself to attending to his own activity or to what he understands, so as not to hinder the work of the other. Therefore, we could well conclude this brief allegory with the lesson learned: “The union of the flock forces the lion to lie down hungry.” Without a doubt, unity makes strength. This was only a fable, but it teaches us that when a unit refuses to work in the whole, the whole is affected and the unit itself is also prevented from fulfilling or doing anything. The whole is not whole if a part is not involved in it. Therefore, we can see how complicated and difficult it is for God —speaking in human terms— to complete that whole. God is powerful, and He can and will do it, but if we analyze the matter deeply, we see how complex it can be. If God has a hundred people in a certain place, in whom He wants to be the all, He has to unite all those units. But it happens that there are five who do not understand or want to participate, and then there can no longer be a “whole.” That is why God needs your heart and your will surrendered totally and voluntarily to Him to fulfill His purpose.
The whole is not whole if a part is not involved in it
There is a joy, a peace that surpasses all understanding, in being participants in the all of God, but one must know how to function in it. For it to work, each unit must have the same mind, which is why it speaks of one faith, one Lord, one hope, one God and Father of all who is above all, through all and in all. If the church had three hopes and three faiths, and had seven callings, then it would be chaos, anarchy, because the members would be divided according to their emphases and interests. But God is not divided, and that is why He, in that process He is working in us, wants to win us completely.
It cost Jesus three and a half intensive years, and then continuing through the Holy Spirit, to gather one hundred twenty individuals into the all of God. The one hundred twenty in the upper room were units, each of which had a different idea, a different aspiration, a different concept about the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, it was necessary to bring them together in unanimity, so that all would go and preach the same thing: one Lord, one faith, one hope, one calling, one God and Father of All. That has not been and is not an easy task. That is why, my brother, I have to learn to work within that all and understand what a whole is, to know how I move and function in it. For example, let us think of the altar, of the platform where the singers are located in the church. If there are seven musicians there, but there is no harmony, because some think they should start on C, others on D and others on F, it would be chaos, no music would come out, but noise. The one in charge of the direction would be the one who would look worst, since he is responsible for directing that whole matter. That is how serious the ministry of the Holy Spirit on earth is. When we understand this truth, it makes us love God more and understand how much it cost Christ to achieve the purpose of redemption, so that God may be the all, and then we value the work of the Holy Spirit, for the patience He has had with us for twenty centuries.
[Taken from the book “So That God May Be All in All,” pp. 391-401, Pastor Juan Radhamés Fernández]
