One Boss. One Trust. One Drenching.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph 4:5).

Focus.  Tunnel vision.  Here in this incredible description of what it means to follow Jesus, Paul tells us to put on the blinders and only consider what is truly important (Eph 4:4-6).  I don't know about you, but I'm easily distracted.  You what I'm talking about, don't you?  Once a bright, shiny object catches my attention, I'm gone.  I can be deep in prayer, passionately calling out to the King of kings and then "look, a bird!"  I need focus.  I need blinders.  I need tunnel vision.  The apostle sets our scope on three key focal points.  "One Lord, one faith, one baptism" (v5).

One Boss.  One trust.  One drenching.  Don't be fooled by imitators.  Don't fall for counterfeits.  

First we see "One Lord" (v5).  We meet the Second Person of the Trinity here in this passage.  Jesus.  Paul mentions the Spirit in Ephesians 4:4.  And the Father is right around the corner in verse 6.  While you can't find the word "Trinity" anywhere in the Bible, the idea is everywhere.  And this is one of them.  Father.  Son.  Holy Spirit.  Three "Whos."  One "What."  Complete and perfect community.  So close.  So intimate.  It's impossible to pull them apart or separate them.  Jesus was, is and always will be a member of the most exclusive club in the universe.  The Godhead.

Paul uses the word "Lord" or Greek noun kurios.  Aren't you just the least bit "kurios" what it means?  Oh my bad.  That was terrible, wasn't it?  Sorry 'bout that.  Anyway, this is the word we see all throughout the New Testament that literally means master, controller, owner, one with authority, one who commands or one with power.  This is the person who decides.  This is the person in charge.  This is Jesus.

When we place our faith in Christ, we don't just buy the fire insurance.  We don't simply say, "Thank you, Jesus.  I've got it from here.  Appreciate keeping me out of that nasty eternal torment.  Check Ya later."  When we trust in Jesus, we trust in His leadership of our lives.  He's our Lord.  He's the Boss.  He's the Controller.  He's the Master.  He's the Owner.  He's NOT our Co-Pilot.  In the words of the great philosopher and theologian Carrie Underwood, "Jesus, take the wheel!"  He's in charge.  He's our "one Lord" (v5).  He's our one Boss.

So do you do what He says?  Do you obey His commands?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  But that's what He's calling us to do.  He told His posse that our obedience is His love language (Jn 14:15, 21, 23).  Here's the amazing thing about following God's commands.  Jesus did it perfectly.  He's the sinless Lamb of God.  When we trust in His complete obedience, He saves us from our disobedience.  We can't save ourselves.  I don't know about you, but I can't follow the rules for 5 minutes, much less for my entire life.  I'm SO blown away that I can trust in His perfection.

By trusting in Jesus as my boss, we're trusting that He knows best.  He knows what we NEED.  Notice how I didn't say "what we WANT."  Christ loves us.  Wants God's best for us.  He sees what we don't.  He knows what we don't.  Let's trust Him to lead and guide us.  No matter what.  He's our one Master.  He's our one Controller.  He our one Boss.  He's our "one Lord" (v5).

Our next focal point is "one faith" (v5).  These two little words are jam packed with tremendous truth.  This is the Greek word pistis, which means trust, belief, conviction, reliance, assurance and confidence.  First of all, there is the trust and reliance in Jesus and Jesus alone to save us.  Paul is NOT talking about the strength of MY faith.  (Sorry about screaming with all the CAPS but this is REALLY important.  Oops, did it again.)  He's talking about the strength of the Object of our faith.  Strong faith in a weak object is pointless.  Weak faith in a strong object is powerful.  There's no stronger object of our faith than Jesus.

By referring to "one faith" (v5), Paul is making sure we know that Jesus is the only means of salvation.  Jesus Himself said that He is "THE Way, THE Truth and THE Life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me" (Jn 14:6).  I'm sorry to report that all many roads do NOT lead to God.  If that's what you believe, you might want to get a new GPS.  There's only one way.  There's only "one faith" (v5).  It's Jesus.  Trusting who He is.  Trusting in what He's done.  Period. 

And don't miss the point that there's "one faith" for everybody.  Jews.  Gentiles.  The working class.  The aristocracy.  Every ethnicity.  Every culture.  Every level of society.  "One faith."  Same Jesus for all.  That was a REALLY big deal for the church in Ephesus.  It was a real jambalaya for Jesus.  Folks from all around the known world coming to trust in the radical and resurrected Rabbi from Nazareth.  One trust.

Have you placed your sole trust in Jesus and what He did for you?  Are you still trying to save yourself?  Stop.  Relax.  Place your "one faith" in Him.  One size fits all no matter who you are, what you've done and where you're from.  One trust.

Our next focal point is "one baptism" (v5).  Paul uses the term baptisma.  The problem is that this word has become so "churchified."  Sorry to use such deep theological terminology.  Let's peel back a few centuries and see what it originally meant to the folks back in Ephesus.  Immersion, submersion or an overwhelming by something.  Something completely dunked.  Something going all the way under.

Paul could be talking about a believer being baptized in water as a profession of placing their trust in who Jesus is and what He's done.  An outward expression of what God has already done on the inside.  If he is writing about water baptism, we need to know something about the common use of the word back in the first century.  The original Greek term described what happened when a ship sank into the sea, Titanic style.  We also find it in ancient recipes that call for pickling a cucumber by immersing it completely in the brine.  I just can't squint hard enough to make see sprinkling as the biblical means of baptism.  You get soaked.  You get dunked.  You go all the way under.  Change John the Baptizer to John the Dunker.  

But the apostle could also be talking about the baptism of the Holy Spirit when we come to faith in Jesus.  Some of our Pentecostal and charismatic friends believe there's a second baptism by the Spirit that enables us to speak in tongues.  IF Paul's writing about that Spirit drenching at conversion, there seems to be only one.  I personally think that IS what he's talking about.  We don't see God's Spirit showing up for a second dunking anywhere in the NT.  That doesn't mean the Third Person of the Trinity doesn't fill us when we get out of the way.  Paul encourages his Ephesian friends to stop hitting the sauce and "be filled with the Spirit" (Eph 5:18).  It happened to Pete (Acts 4:8).  But God's Spirit only dunks us in His goodness that one time.  "One baptism" (v5).  One drenching.