A plea for Christian unity.

“Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.”-Romans 14:4

The unity of the church was not something I cared much about when I was younger. Instead, being right on every, single, little issue was more important to me. And if disunity, division, and discord occurred in my quest to be right, then oh well, I considered it all just a necessary consequence of something more valuable.

It wasn't until later in life, after seeing the effects of division first hand as an adult (I knew of it growing up as kid as well), and reflecting on the havoc disunity has wreaked on church after church, did I start to sense I had not personally given the unity of Christ's Church the attention it deserved.

My eyes began to open to the many passages in Scripture that clearly teach that divisiveness is actually sin (e.g. Rom. 16:17). I also perceived that the unity of the church is no small matter, nor is it optional, but on the contrary is of monumental significance. In fact, unity is a biblical command for believers, not a private preference for church members to vote on. And while many verses of Holy Scripture could be cited in support of this point, there's one in particular that's been quite moving to me, John 17:20-23.

In John 17:20-23 Jesus is facing His impending betrayal, crooked court proceeding, torture, and death. At this point, if Jesus had simply forgotten about all of us, forgot all about the Church, and all of its future troubles, who could have blamed Him? In His humanity he certainly had enough to deal with in that moment without also worrying about us future believers and all our drama. And yet, here Jesus is, about to die, and what is He thinking about? Us. He says, "I pray for those who will believe in me” [italics mine]. We were on His mind. But what was He praying for us about? "… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you." [italics mine]

I don't know why it took me years to see the magnitude of this utterance, but it did. I still don't think I've fully grasped it. But I have begun to realize this, the unity of Christ's Church matters DEEPLY to Jesus. Much, much more, then it often does to many professing Christians.

Years ago, I might've attacked a post such as this. Not so much for what was said, but because of what was NOT said. I might have said something like, "Oh, so you don't care about biblical orthodoxy, or this political issue, or that thing over there.” And I know why. There's always going to be some people who push for a shallow, superficial, disingenuous unity. But I can assure you that was most certainly not the kind of unity on the heart of Jesus before His passion.

But we must remember that we cannot throw out what is holy and good just because some people will misrepresent it. Instead, we must instead try all the harder to display the unity of the Church in all its Christ-centered glory.

Trying harder means looking first for that which is most important, that which is sure, that which is grounded in the clear and explicit authority of Scripture, and not in the mere judgments of men. We must avoid sacramentalizing our personal opinions by entangling them in emotional and divisive rhetoric. Just because you feel it, doesn't mean God said it. Unity comes when we affirm what God has said, not when we dogmatize that which fallible, finite, sinful people have said. (See Matt. 15:1-9)

 So practically speaking, how might we apply these biblical truths today? First, believing comes before doing. We must make the unity and peace of the Lord’s Church a core conviction. There is only ONE Lord, and therefore division among Christians misrepresents our Savior (1 Cor. 1:10-15, Titus 3:10). Unity must not be thrown away every time someone gets excited or carried away with some new and/or non-essential matter. Second, we know that we are all going to have personal opinions on many things. So after first submitting our opinions to the scrutiny of Scripture, we are not to judge people for not holding the exact same opinion. Personal opinions should never be a prerequisite for fellowship. Third, we must proactively seek to bring divided brothers and sisters in Christ together. This might be as simple as reminding people in the midst of a hostile, social media debate that they are one in Christ, and that as Christians we must keep the main thing the main thing.