One Body in Christ
Pastor Tan Thai · Feb 5, 2023
The sermon emphasizes love and unity in the Church as Jesus Christ's most important commandment. The main message is that love among believers is the distinguishing mark of true disciples, and the loss of first love is a grave sin that can lead to the church's destruction. The pastor calls believers to focus on Christ as the center rather than each other's faults, so the Church can properly manifest God's message.
The sermon begins with a familiar worship song about unity and love in the name of Jesus Christ. The pastor points out that Jesus Christ teaches about these two extremely important matters many times on the night before His crucifixion, and they are reflected in Scripture through the image of the vine and branches (John 15:1-5). The urgency of these two matters is affirmed through the fact that Christ prayed for them and repeated them many times, proving they are not easy to practice and must always be remembered.
The pastor develops his theological argument by citing Jesus's commands regarding love from John 13:34-35, 14:21, 15:9, 15:12-13, and 15:17, along with Christ's prayer for unity in John 17:11, 17:21-23. These verses show that love is not abstract but a specific, practical commandment. The pastor then applies the lesson to the church at Ephesus, where Christ rebukes it for losing its first love (Revelation 2:4-5), a sin so grave that unless it repents, Christ will remove the church. This first love is precisely the love that Paul prayed for the Ephesian church (Ephesians 3:14-19).
The pastor details the nature of love through Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 13, listing specific elements: patience, kindness, no jealousy, no boasting, no arrogance, no self-seeking, no anger, no grudge-holding, no joy in injustice, but joy in truth, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. He emphasizes that God's love is concrete: God loves sinners (Romans 5:8) so much that He gave His only Son to die, something no other religion teaches. From this, the pastor poses a logical question: why do believers only accept their brothers and sisters when they are perfect?
The pastor continues by citing John's teachings on love (1 John 4:19-20, 4:7-8), proving that those born again love their siblings, and that God Himself is love. He then uses a quote from French author Saint Exupéry—"Love is not looking at each other but looking together in the same direction"—to explain how to overcome each other's faults. When believers look together toward Christ, small issues disappear. The pastor warns about churches divided over trivial matters, something he has experienced in nearly twenty years of pastoral ministry.
The pastor uses the biblical image of the body and its members (1 Corinthians 12:12-14) to explain that the church is the body of Christ, with Him as the Head and believers as members. He reminds us that people outside the church often say they don't see Christ but only see discord among believers. The pastor uses a story from author Philip Yancey about Carolyn Martin, a woman with cerebral palsy, to illustrate this point. Although Carolyn's body is diseased and uncontrollable, her mind is brilliant. When her friend read Carolyn's essay, for the first time people saw her as a normal person. The pastor uses this story to explain that the church is the same: the diseased, uncontrollable body of believers distorts and obscures the message of the Head of the Church. Finally, the pastor cites Colossians 3:12-14 to call believers to put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgive one another, and above all love—the bond of perfection.