The True Gospel Doctrine

Today I want to look at what is probably the most powerful and overt statement of doctrine in the new testament scriptures, and just leave one and all with some really serious food for thought as to why the body of Christ is so divided in regard to doctrine. “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are 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 you all” (Eph. 4:4-6). My goodness, what absoluteness! What pureness of truth! What beautiful simplicity! Amen. Let’s shine the light on three of these absolute ‘ones,with one ’scripture: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body…” (I Cor. 12:13). There just isn’t anything hard there. There is one body of Christ, which is the one congregation of Jesus Christ throughout the world; and there is only one way to get into it - the baptism of the holy Ghost [the same one that first came at Pentecost]. And the Spirit is not a person, but rather it is the life that dwells in God and his Son, for which life Jesus died and rose so that we could have it as well (Jn. 5:26; Jn. 10:10; Rom. 8:2). So that’s three ‘ones’ down and four to go. The “one hope” is the exact same hope that the same apostle Paul spoke of in I Thessalonians 5 when he said, “But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation” (I Thess. 5:8). Seeing that salvation is indeed a hope, this truth dispels the modern ‘Christian’ tradition that salvation is received at the beginning of one’s faith in Christ. It is certain that it is not.

The apostle Paul addressed the erroneous school of thought of receiving salvation at the beginning of one’s faith in this way: “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” (Rom. 8:24). So if salvation is what we are actively hoping for, it is not possible that we receive at the beginning of our faith, but rather we faithfully endure in holiness in order to obtain salvation at “the END of our faith,” as Peter plainly stated (I Pet. 1:3-9; Mat. 24:12,13; Heb. 12:14). And as the scripture stated, we cannot hope for something that we presently see, or have. Next, certainly there is nobody who doesn’t agree that Jesus Christ is the “one Lord.” However, the fact that the one Lord and the one God are listed separately, does away with the faulty “Jesus Only” doctrine that claims that Jesus is the only ‘person’ and that he operates in three offices. Actually, that doctrine and the ‘trinity’ doctrine are both saying basically the same thing, just in two differently confusing manners. Both of those teachings are false, as there are two persons, that being the Father and the Son; and those two are made ‘one’ by having the same life and nature dwelling in them - the holy Ghost. And that is how we as believers can be ‘one’ EVEN AS the Father and the Son are one, as Jesus prayed for us to be (Jn, 17:22-24; I Cor. 1:10). And that leaves only one more one to deal with, and that is the “one faith.” The one faith in fact is the evident truth, acceptance, and understanding of the other six ‘ones.’ If this vastly overlooked and devalued passage of scripture could be understood and embraced by God’s people today, we would begin to see the Lord work in a way that has not been seen in a very long time. Surely that is my greatest desire. Amen and God bless.