There is one Spirit, Who gives us the earnest of our heavenly inheritance and seals us

to God and through Him (the Spirit) we have access to the Father (1: 13, 14; 2: 18). The

One Body of Christ identified with Him as the Head, is seen to be seated in the heavenly

places in Him (2: 6).  The one hope, sure and certain, will be the realization, in

experience, of this position they now hold by faith. This will be by resurrection if death

has intervened, or by change if alive.  The manifestation of Christ's glory in the

heavenlies will be shared by His Body. For this blessed hope they ardently wait

(Titus 2: 12, 13). The One Lord, as we have noted before, stands in the middle and holds

the seven-fold unity together by reason of His redemptive work on the cross and His

resurrection and ascension to the highest glory at the Father's right hand. He is the one

Lord of the Old and New Testaments. Indeed, He is the Lord of Lords (I Tim. 1: 17;

6: 15; Rev. 19: 16), and one day, in the future, every knee shall bow, in heaven, on

earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess Him as LORD and at last,

although once despised and rejected of men, He will come into His own and the whole

creation will manifestly give Him His rightful place.

In further consideration of the seven-fold Unity of the Spirit the Lord charges us to

guard, we come to one faith. Sometimes in the N.T. the word faith is equivalent to truth:

". . . . . and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith" (Acts 6: 7, and see

also 16: 5, Gal. 1: 23 and Jude 3). The one faith in Ephesians is the "good deposit" of

truth passed on to Paul from the risen Christ. It is this body of truth that Timothy is

exhorted to guard (II Tim. 1: 14). The same deposit occurs in II Tim. 1: 12, and note the

R.V. margin, Greek "my deposit". It is, as Paul describes it, "the form of sound words,

which thou hast heard of me" (II Tim. 1: 13), and never once does Paul refer Timothy to

the truth given through Peter, James, John or Jude. This is most significant. We can

never understand the Apostle's constant reference to himself, unless we see that he is not

thrusting himself forward, but pointing specially to the unique and exalted truth of the

Lord given through him as the channel. Note the "I" and "me" in II Tim. 1: 5, 11, 13, 15;

2: 2, 8, 9, 10; 3: 10; 4: 17. This faith or body of truth has special features, not to be

found in the ministry of any other N.T. servant of the Lord. As we have seen, it is

directed to us far-off Gentiles (Eph. 3: 1), and this is why the careful study of Paul's

ministry is so essential if we who are saved Gentiles are to understand, live and witness

for its marvelous content. Faith and truth go together like a coin; they are two sides of

the same thing. The "one faith" then that the Lord exhorts us to guard is the whole

content of truth relating to the Body of Christ of which Paul was divinely chosen to be

the minister (Col. 1: 24-27; Eph. 3: 4-7).

The next item is the one Baptism. We do not intend to deal with this exhaustively, for

we have already dealt with the subject in the pamphlet Baptism. The fact remains that in