We could start a discussion on what you think unity is, but perhaps I can just present you a little bit of what is going on in Ephesians concerning unity. We do not necessarily need to look for a statement, a definition in Ephesians that says unity is blank and then fill that in. Rather, we need to analyze and explore what does Paul speak about in the total epistle and there we find that the image of the body is a very significant beginning. The body of Christ, the image of the head and the body working together. Only that image is given, I believe, to the Ephesian church and to us to address one simple question. Is Jesus Christ the real head of His church or do we need a mediator? Do we need a human representative for Christ? Now the Roman Catholic structure is exactly that, that you need to have a human visible representative, a vicar, who represents the head, makes the head visible. But that is exactly the question in Ephesians as the image of the body is being developed and used. Is Paul not saying that Christ is the real head of the body? Well, some of you are church leaders, some of you are on sessions, some of you have to make daily decisions about the life of churches. I have been in that place myself. What do you do when you have a lot of questions and problems in your church? You just say at 12 o'clock at night when your eyes are droopy and you know next morning you have to get up at 6 o'clock again, you say, come on, let's just make a decision. Hey, let's just do it like this, that's the way we are going to need to go. And let's just talk with this and this and this and this person and then we are just going to get it done. Rather than to say, I don't think we have a mature unity among ourselves as a leadership here. We need to know the mind of Christ, we need to explore and search the scriptures and we'll wait. We'll wait for two months, we'll wait for half a year, we live under the true headship of Christ and our commission as leaders in the church which Paul is explaining here, some of the offices in the church is not to replace the head but to lead the church to maturity towards the head. Every single member needs to grow in maturity of dependency relating to and growing up in the head. If your purpose as a leader in the church is to make people come to you and ask you for advice and to feel that wonderful feeling of, wow, I'm somebody really important, they come to me. And you are suddenly making them dependent on yourself. You are not exercising the real headship of Christ which means let's walk together, let me share with you my struggles. What are you struggling with? How can you grow in trust in Christ? My goal is to make myself superfluous to you, not to make you dependent on me. If I can be out of here in half a year, then I've done a good job. If you live well before the Lord without me as a leader, I've done my job. I need to work myself out of a job. If I don't, I'm really not doing my pastoring, my caring, my counseling, whatever type of a job. Our purpose is to make mature before the head, under the head, our purpose is not to make dependent. And so the single most important question on the unity question of the body as Paul describes it in Ephesians is not, how should we organize ourselves? Should we be uniform? Should we be connected? Should we have organizational connections? What about all the denominations, et cetera? The questions that immediately come to mind when we think about unity. But rather to ask the single most important question, is there real headship? Are we all pursuing the true headship of Christ? Yes or no? Ephesians 122 leaves no question about that. It says this. And in him, you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His spirit. Oh, excuse me, I read 222, 122, which is much more clear. When God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, I'm glad you pay attention. Some of you would have nodded and said, sounds good, but this sounds better. 122 sounds definitely better to the argument that I was trying to make. Namely, Christ as the real head appointed, as the real head, over everything for the church which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way. You can't come away from Ephesians and say, yes, Christ is the head, but we don't see Him, we don't feel Him, we don't know Him, let's have a representative, let's have somebody we can see, let's have somebody who will speak to us, who will comfort us. That replacement of the true headship of Christ is the single most fatal cause for disunity. I do not know if you have read Fjodor Dostoevsky's Great Inquisitor, a section there where a Christ appears to a church leader in the medieval times, I think. I don't know exactly the context anymore. The church representative says to Jesus in this novel, why have you come to disturb us? Why are you here? The people need us, they need visible leadership, they need to be dependent on us, they can't handle freedom that you give them, they can't handle the kind of life that you want to give them, they need to be kept in dependency on us, they're much more happy this way, don't disturb us, go back. It's a very moving commentary on this whole question of where is the true headship of Christ in the churches. So I believe that the way Ephesians approach the issue of unity is really the way we need to follow in reflecting on that issue, namely who is the true head of your life, of your marriage, of your relationships, and certainly also in most importantly here for Ephesians of the body of Christ. Ephesians 3.21 then gives a further commentary, Ephesians 3.21 to him, namely to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations. So Christ is the appointed head to him be the glory, this is the worship of the church. So not only submission to him but worship of him and then the theme of submission, again echoed in 5.24 where Paul says this. Now as the church submits to Christ and then it's applied to the family situation of marriage, submission to Christ, so when you think about unity and often you think about horizontal unity of believers, the initial question is who is your head, how is the head honored and glorified and what is the level of submission to the head, so that my aim in a highly fragmented and denominational puzzling world of the church, I don't ask the first question of how can we organizationally make this all uniform, how can we get out of all this fragmentation which is a legitimate question, no? The beginning for unity is the question of the true headship of Christ, namely then Christology of who is Christ, who is he revealed to being and worship of Christ and submission to his authority and leadership so that wherever you are, whatever denomination you belong to, whatever concerns you have, you would commit yourself to that point, namely the true headship of Christ, who is he really and to speak about that gladly and openly and freely, to confess Christ, to seek that worship of the Son of God, worship of the Father, worship of the Holy Spirit, is pursued biblically and that submission to his headship would actually be lived out in this indicative imperative sequence, not in a stoic sense of, you know, pull yourself up and do something decent for God, then I believe you are a member and a tool towards the unity that Paul speaks about. So while we may be concerned about organizational association, God's concern in the fragmented situation that we find ourselves in is the true headship of Christ and the truth about this head because we know that from him life is drawn and life grows and we see them in chapter 4, a major section on the unity of Christ, how this is developed, namely that we are brought in a relationship with God and from that grows out the unity, just see how the offices in the church are being described in chapter 4, verse 11. It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists and some to be apostles and teachers. Why? Verse 12, to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until what? We all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. That's a handful and it nearly flows our head because it's so full with maybe heavy theological terms but in a simple way to describe this is that the office and responsibility of leaders in the church is nothing else but to help people serve each other and also to grow up in maturity in Christ so that the entire body would be mature. That you could go to anybody in your church and find a living worship of the living God, a appreciation and a knowledge but also a worship of the Son of God and knowing why he or she worships Jesus as God. Glorifying honoring Him and also learning to live out that which is the will of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. There's a wonderful climax to this and we find it in Ephesians 4, 13 to 16 and we will just briefly look at that. Verse 14 says, then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men and their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth and love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the head that is Christ. From Him the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work from Him. So it's a completely Christ dependent, maturing process but you can't leave anybody out, you can't overlook somebody in your church that looks inconspicuous, that looks a little shy, that looks a little bit cumbersome, somebody that puts his or her foot in her mouth all the time, you can't leave them out. The whole church is to grow in this mutual service, to build each other up in that maturity in Christ. You are a beloved, an important part of this whole horizontal but vertical growth, conditioned by the vertical growth, conditioned by the head that is Christ Himself. So it is so plain to me and I hope I don't have to raise my voice that late in the evening, that everything depends on the relationship to the head. Holding onto the head will be a basic term used in Colossians and so much of distraction, deception and deviation arises because we are not holding onto the head, we are substituting, we are finding easier ways than the challenging way of worshipping one we do not see, of speaking to the one we do not audibly hear and yet who has left us with the seal of his spirit and who will truly come back and who is working mightily in our hearts to compel us to grow in this invisible sense and yet clear sense that he is working in our midst, that he is strengthening our trust in him and that he is growing us up. That's unity and therefore I cannot support efforts of such institutions as the ecumenical counsel of churches, because the initial decision has not been made of who is Christ, what is taught about Christ and are we all on the same page in seeking the supremacy, the greatness and the worship of Christ as our head? Are we on that same page? There cannot be unity unless that's the first page. It is well meant, it is good intended. I understand the Catholic Professor Hans Kuhn who is a great leader in Germany at the University of Tuberingen advocating, understanding an empathy and sympathy for other religions to the point of saying Christianity is not the only truth. Now there is as much truth in Islam and Buddhism and we will never get out of all this fighting, see Yugoslavia, if we don't learn tolerance, it's all well meant, it's all well intended, but the first page has been sacrificed. Namely, the head is established from the beginning of time as the one from which we draw our sustenance, our salvation but also our daily life, our daily bread, our wisdom and which is the condition for any kind of powerful growth within the body. That we can actually forgive each other, that we can actually accept each other, that we can actually love each other unconditionally, where can you find that kind of bread, where can you find that kind of nourishment only at the feet of Christ? And therefore, if we cannot meet on the first page, I cannot talk to you on the second page of unity, because it won't work, it's not because I'm stubborn, or because I have my little religion that I need to preserve, or I'm an intolerant person, it's because the truth is so strong on that point, the south revelation of God that I cannot deviate from that. But I must be willing to associate with those who seek the greatness of Christ, who confess Jesus as Lord, who seek the same God that I'm serving that I am called by, and I must lie down my barriers so that I do teach about God wherever I'm called, and I'm very glad that I'm moving in circles that are rather against the gospel. I'm glad to be invited to speak about the gospel of Jesus Christ in no circles. I would be a fool not to go there and to testify about that God. But that's how we can grow in unity, for people to come to the head, and then under the head to grow that out, to live that out, across denominations, etc., but not at the expense of the truth of the gospel. So there is unity ahead of us. There is a commission to unity because the world will believe on the basis of what they see, so there is a great challenge for us. We're not ready to sit back and just to say, well, I believe in Christ so I've arrived. We have a great commission, but page number one needs to be at the center and the heart of our concerns and Ephesians is the single most important document in New Testament that calls, besides John 17 and other aspects, to that inner unity under the head, and that would be our definition, unity under the head, not unity of any other sort, unity under the headship of Christ, that's where we need to grow, and that's where we need to develop. We're close tonight, that is at least the major section on Ephesians and read through Ephesians with that in your mind, and you will benefit greatly from it. Thank you very much, we won't have an exam next week unless you insist on it. Have a good night.