"The Source of Our Unity"

Unity is something we long for; we cherish it. But unfortunately, unity is tremendously lacking in our world. What is worse, it is often lacking where it should exist most clearly, in the Church. The foolishness of our divisions over the Christian faith is illustrated by a story I recently came across.

A man was walking across a bridge one day, and saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off; so he ran over and said, "Stop! Don't do it!"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Well, there's so much to live for!"

"Like what?"

"Well... are you religious?"

"Yes."

"Me too! Are you a Christian?"

"Yes."

"Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"Me too! Are you Baptist?"

"Yes."

"Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

"Baptist Church of God."

"Me too! Are you Original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!"

The fellow said, "DIE HERETIC SCUM!" and pushed him off.

Even putting aside the differences in the larger church, unity is also often lacking in our local churches as well.

It's impossible to be deeply involved in the life of a church without bumping elbows with a saint who's … well, let's just say a saint who puts our Christian love and patience to the test! And, if the truth were known, there's probably a brother or sister who could say the same for us!

Division among Christians brings shame and disrepute to the church, to Christ, and to His gospel. Christian unity brings glory to Jesus Christ and demonstrates the reality of God's grace, love, and forgiveness. In other words, our oneness is our witness!

As we saw in our study of Ephesians 4:1-3, we in the church must recognize that, like Paul, we are prisoners of Jesus Christ. We do not have the right to chart our own course. Our goal has already been set. Our purpose has been determined by our Lord. That is what Paul says in the first three verses of Ephesians 4.

He goes on in verses 4 through 6 to show us that keeping the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace comes down to one thing: oneness.

Unity is oneness. Not sameness, but a special oneness centered on a few core essentials--one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God the Father. Some would seize on the word unity in verse 3 and say, "That's the problem with the church today! It's not unified! We need to gather all the churches and all the denominations into one big church. Then the church will have power, because there is power in numbers! Churches of the world, unite!"

From the world's point of view, such feelings certainly make sense. Those sentiments account for the great move toward ecumenism, toward a single universal church, in the world today. But those who pursue a unification of all church bodies into a single, worldwide church body miss what the Bible teaches about the unity of the Spirit.

In verse 3 Paul declares two great facts that we must clearly understand about church unity. First, he says we must allow for differences among Christians. He says we must make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There would be no need for this exhortation if differences did not exist.

The fact is, there is no group in the world as gloriously diverse and heterogeneous as the church. Its glory is that it is made up of different kinds of people. In the church of Jesus Christ, you find rich and poor, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, black, brown, and white, male and female, sitting side by side in one body, waiting upon one hope, worshiping one Lord, practicing one faith, partaking in one baptism, praying to one God and Father, unified by one Spirit.

But let's be honest: We do not ignore these boundaries easily. Friction often arises from our differences. Those frictions exist today, and they existed in Paul's time. In Philippians 4, Paul addresses two ladies in the Philippian church who cannot get along with each other. Their names are Euodia and Syntyche--though some wag has fittingly rendered their names Odious and So -Touchy. Paul says, in verse 2, "I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord."

Are these women just a couple of church troublemakers who bicker with each other because they have too much time on their hands? No, Paul makes it clear that these women are serious-minded, committed Christian workers who have labored hard for Jesus Christ. "I ask you, loyal yokefellow," Paul continues in verse 3, "help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life."

Churches have been shattered by divisions over issues as small as the color of the carpet in the fellowship hall--and as large as the direction and philosophy of a church's overall ministry. Frequently, spiritual gifts are a source of friction, because God distributes different gifts in every congregation, and our natural human tendency is to disparage the gifts of others while exalting our own.

So there are differences among Christians--differences of class, race, background, viewpoint, philosophy, attitude, personality, and spiritual gifts. Those differences offer fertile ground for friction.

The source of our unity

But the second fact Paul brings to our attention is crucial for us to understand if we are to transcend our differences and fulfill the command of Christ that we become one in Him: Beneath our differences, there is a basic unity that is given to the church by the Spirit. That unity exists right now, throughout the church, even between Christians who are at odds with each other. The fact that they don't feel unified and act unified does not negate the fact that they already have the unity of the Spirit among them. They simply need to act worthy of the unity that already exists.

Notice the apostle does not say we are to produce unity; he says we are to maintain the unity that has already been produced by the Holy Spirit. There is a unity that is already there by virtue of the very existence of the church, because the Holy Spirit is the bond which holds the church together. Here is the fundamental error of modern ecumenical movements. By and large, they strive to generate a man-made institutional unity, ignoring the spiritual unity that already exists in the Holy Spirit. The power of the church is not the power of numbers, but the power of one--one indwelling Spirit, who leads us in worshiping one Lord Jesus, in practicing one faith, in praying to one Father.

The church is not a conglomeration of individuals who happen to agree upon certain things—like a political party. It is bound together as a spiritual organism in a bodily unity. It cannot therefore derive power from the sum of its numbers. It derives its power solely from the Spirit of God who binds these individuals into a unified, spiritual whole.

So we must choose between two different kinds of unity. One is an external unity, a worldly unity, a unity of numbers that seeks to make its plans and enforce its will on society by the power of persuasion – or coersion. The other is an internal unity, a spiritual unity, a unity of genuine oneness that is joined to God's eternal plan and manifests the supernatural power of God.

I am sure we have all had the experience of knowing—or being—siblings who are constantly arguing and fighting until one of them is attacked then the other then jumps in to defend them.

That is an apt metaphor describing the fundamental unity between brothers and sisters in Christ. Yes, there are quarrels and disagreements within the church, but that is transcended by an internal unity--the unity of the Spirit, which surpasses even the blood-unity between siblings. The unity of the Spirit is the ground of our shared life together. We can violate that unity by our actions, we can grieve the Holy Spirit by our sinful behavior toward one another in the body of Christ, we can bring shame and dishonor to the gospel by sinning against our Spirit-given unity, but we cannot create or destroy what the Spirit Himself has produced. The church can be divided organizationally, but the body of Christ can never be disjointed. As the old hymn rightly puts it,

We are not divided,
all one body we,
one in hope and doctrine,
one in charity.

In verses 4, 5 and 6 of Ephesians 4, the apostle describes the real unity of the body of Christ, which he breaks down into seven elements: 1. One body. 2. One Spirit. 3. One hope. 4. One Lord. 5. One faith. 6. One baptism. 7. One God and Father of us all.

These seven elements spell the unity of the body. They include all the essentials of the Christian faith--the fellowship of the saints in one body, our hope of salvation, the doctrinal truths of our faith, and our baptism.

Paul gathers them around the three Persons of the Trinity--the Spirit, the Son, and the Father. This is one place where those who put the verses into the Bible did a good job, because we find the elements that pertain to the Holy Spirit in verse 4; those pertaining to the Son in verse 5; and those that come under the heading of the Father in verse 6.

Let's examine each of these elements in turn:

Our Unity in the Holy Spirit

One body

We are one body. The apostle does not say one organization or one institution; he uses a specific word-picture, describing the church as a body. This picture of the church as a body is amazingly apt. While an organization is an assemblage of departments or units, a body is a living organism. A body consists of thousands of cells with one mutually shared life. That shared life and shared unity exists despite surface divisions and distinctions, even despite differences of culture and language.

I have felt that bond many times when I have been with Christians from other churches. This bond transcends differences between denominations, between theological viewpoint. As we have shared together about our love for Christ I knew that we had entered together into the experience of the unity of the Holy Spirit, produced by the operation of God's Spirit in the human spirit.

Think how a body comes about. You do not create a healthy body by stitching body parts together, as Baron von Frankenstein did in Mary Shelley's classic tale. A body begins with a single cell, which divides into two cells, then four cells, then eight, then sixteen, and on and on and on until it becomes a fully formed mature body--but every cell shares the life of the original cell. You and I are cells in a single body--"one body," as Paul says--that extends geographically around the world and chronologically back to the very first followers of Christ.

One Spirit

This first truth brings us to the next element: one Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the great, eternal, invisible Person who is the power behind the Christian church. The power of the church never comes from its numbers, but from the one Spirit who makes us one body. This principle is not just a New Testament principle--it is woven into both testaments of our Bible.

The prophet Zechariah, for example, was once confronted with a great mountain that God said would become a plain. When Zechariah looked around, wondering how such a thing could take place and where the power would come from to level this mountain to a plain, the word of the Lord came to him: " 'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty" (Zechariah 4:6).

The Spirit is the true power of the church, and there is only one Spirit. He is the same everywhere, no matter where the church exists, in every place and in every age. That is why the truth remains unchangeable--the passing of time does not change it. That is why the church is not dependent on many or few, or on the wisdom of its membership. It depends on one factor only: the one Spirit.

One hope

Paul links the first two elements one body and one Spirit with the one hope. These three elements link together because the Spirit forms and prepares the body for its ultimate goal, which is the one hope of the church. That hope is expressed hundreds of times throughout the Scriptures, but nowhere more succinctly than in Paul's statement, "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1 :27). Glory is the hope of the church. As the apostle John expresses it, "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). That is our hope--a hope that one day we will no longer be frail, stumbling people as we are now, but we shall finally be like Christ.

This is the one hope of Christians. No matter what our denominational or doctrinal stamp--premillenialists, amillenialists, postmillenialists--all Christian believers hold a common hope. No matter how we believe the events of Daniel and Revelation play out, no matter what form we expect the tribulation and millennium to take place, all Christians expect a transformation, in which we will eventually be like Christ. That is our one shared hope.

Our Unity in the Son

One Lord

The next three elements gather about the second Person of the Trinity, the Son--one Lord. I think it is significant that the apostle does not say "one Savior," though it is true there is only one Savior. Everywhere in Scripture it is only when we acknowledge Jesus as Lord that He becomes our Savior. So the issue Paul centers on is that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Lord means "ultimate authority." As Paul puts it in the letter to the Philippians, "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:9-11). He is the supreme Person of the universe. There is no other Lord; there will never be another Lord.

Peter puts it bluntly: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). That is why the early Christians could not say, "Caesar is Lord," as the persecutors of the early church tried to get them to do. Torture and the threat of death could not wring those words from the lips of a Christian, because there is no other Lord. There is only one Lord, the man Christ Jesus, who lived and loved and died among us, who rose again and lives today, the Lord of the universe. That is why John says that anyone who denies this is not a Christian, he has the "spirit of antichrist" (1 John 4:3). Paul says a man can only say, "Jesus is Lord" by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3).

One faith

The next element is one faith. This does not refer to faith in general--the ability to believe. Everyone believes in something. Atheists believe in the proposition that there is no God, even while evidence continues to mount that our universe was carefully planned and delicately balanced. James 2:19 tells us, "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder"--but that is certainly not the one faith Paul talks about here.

When Paul says "one faith," he means that one body of truth that God has revealed in His Word. There is only one body of revealed truth, only one faith. This is what the New Testament refers to as "the salvation we share. . . the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude 1 :3).

The one faith is linked to the one Lord, because our faith is centered in the revealed truth about Jesus Christ. There may be many questions on minor details of the life and message of Christ, but there is no disagreement as to the fundamental elements of our faith--that Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose again to save us from our sins. God has not given us different faiths for different cultures--one faith for the Jews, another for the Gentiles. No, there is one faith, one total panorama of truth that God has delivered to us through the prophets and apostles, forming a seamless, self-explanatory truth.

No one can truthfully say, as we sometimes hear, "Well, I have my truth and you have yours. I have my Christ and you have yours. I have my faith and you have yours." There is only one truth, only one historic Jesus, and only one faith.

One baptism

The next element: one baptism. Tragically, it is here, on the issue of baptism, that many Christians divide. Some say, "Immersion is the only true mode of baptism." Others reply, "You're all wet! Sprinkling is the only way!" Some believe in infant baptism, while others say baptism is only for adults. There is one thing that is true of all the different modes of baptism Christians practice—they cannot save. Only personal faith in Christ can do that.

More important than the form of baptism is the reality that baptism points to. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:13, “We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body”. That is the one baptism of the church and it is confessed at all times and in every place by the followers of Jesus Christ.

Our Unity in the Father

One God and Father of us all

The last of these seven unities is "one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." Here is the ultimate aim of all the other elements of our Christian unity. As Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans, "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba [Daddy], Father' " (Romans 8:15). He is approachable; He is caring; He is our loving Father.

Over All and through All and in All

But Paul wants us to understand that God is even more than this. God is above all, and through all, and in all. He is the end and the beginning. He is close and approachable, yet He is also vast and deep and beyond our comprehension. Once we gain an appreciation for God's love and God's infinite, awesome glory, we realize He can only be properly addressed, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name" (Matthew 6:9).

That is the nature of Christian unity--not a union to be created, but a unity that already exists, gathered around certain truths that every follower of Christ holds dear. As we bring new believers to Christ, the unity of the Spirit will be produced in them by the Spirit. We maintain that unity by practicing love, acceptance, and forgiveness toward others in the body of Christ.

There will be some who are weak in the faith, who may not have all their doctrinal T's crossed and their theological I's dotted. But Paul tells us in Romans 14:1 to receive the weaker brothers and sisters. Recognize a brother who manifests the experience of the unity of the Spirit, no matter what his label may be.

Occasionally, we will encounter some within a church or a Christian movement who claim to be Christians, but who deny one or more of the seven fundamental elements we have just examined. They are moving in a different direction. They do not share the one hope and one faith that is ours through the one Lord, Jesus Christ. We cannot join in evangelistic or ministry endeavors with those who deny this fundamental unity. Why not? Because our actions are determined by our beliefs.

This is why the Israelites of old were commanded, "Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together" (Deuteronomy 22:10). The two animals move at different speeds, walk with a different gait, and would chafe one another all the time. It would be cruel and counterproductive to yoke them together. This is God's symbolic way of teaching us a fundamental truth, as Paul makes plain: "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14).

This is not to say we are to shun non-Christians. Clearly, there are areas of cooperation that we can have with those who do not share the unity of the Spirit and in the process, perhaps they might even be won to Christ. We can join with non-Christians in the workplace, in social programs, in medical programs, in government, in education, and many other enterprises in life. We can invite non-Christians to Bible studies and church services, where they can be introduced to biblical truth and the joy of Christian fellowship.

We can co-operate with non-Christians in many things, but in the enterprise of proclaiming the gospel, we have to be careful to maintain the purity of that message and never let it be watered down by those who are not one with us. Their understanding of the gospel is entirely different from ours, their purpose is different, and they are moving in a different direction from us.

Once we truly understand where our Christian unity comes from--that it is given by the Holy Spirit, not created by ourselves--our behavior in the church will be transformed. We begin to realize that our job is not to create unity, but to live worthily of the unity of the Spirit that is already ours. Instead of striving toward unity in our own strength, we will simply try to align our lives and our actions with the unity that already exists among us through the Holy Spirit who makes us one.

This is what Paul means when he says, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." If we begin to think of our brothers and sisters in Christ as one with us through the Spirit, then our actions will be transformed. As prisoners of Christ, we will become more aware of the fact that our quarreling and struggling against one another is at odds with the fundamental reality that we are one with each other in the bond of peace. When we are tempted to feelings of resentment or to such actions as attacking one another or spreading rumors against one another, we should stop and ask God to bless the other person.

"That person is my brother or sister in Christ," we should pray, "and we are one together in the Spirit. Lord, show me how I can reach out to my brother or sister in this time of irritation. Make me a blessing and not a hindrance in that person's life. Show me practical ways I can work to maintain the unity between us that you have made possible through your Spirit. Replace my annoyance with understanding, my impatience with forbearance, my grudges with forgiveness, my bitterness with a sweet spirit, my resentment with love, my hardened heart with a tender heart. Lord, I am Your prisoner. I am ready to take orders from You."