Unity

Introduction

A few weeks ago a news story broke that got my attention. There’s a bill—bill 2943—that was just adopted by the California State Assembly and is on its way now to the state senate that would make it illegal to sell books that represent traditional Orthodox historic Christian teaching on gender and sexual orientation.

So if you connect the dots, that would necessarily include—yes—the Bible. Under this bill, it would make it an unlawful business practice to engage in “a transaction intended to result, or that results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer that would, for example, offer to engage in or do engage in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual.”

In other words, if you are a pastor or a biblical counselor, it would be illegal to engage in a transaction—any situation where money is being paid—in exchange for services or counseling with the goal of changing a person’s sexual identity or orientation.

This would make it virtually illegal, in the state of California, for anyone to represent Orthodox Christian teaching on issues of gender and sex and sexual morality.

We should expect nothing less from an increasingly progressive culture. There are threats out there to the church, and they are real threats, and we don’t want to be ignorant of them.

But there are other threats to the church that are more insidious than this. The cultural threats are out there and blatant and in your face. But I would suggest that the church—our church—faces a subtler and potentially more dangerous threat than anything that’s coming from the cultural progressives.

The threat I’m most concerned about is stealthy. It’s elusive. And it’s one that potentially face daily. That threat is disunity in the church.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve really thought very hard about the unity of the church. Maybe we’ve taken it for granted. But if a church like ours doesn’t stop to ask some basic, foundational questions—what makes us one? Why does it matter?—then we’re standing on the edge of a dangerous precipice.

Our church has been around for 40 years. That’s a long time for a church. But that 40-year legacy can be undone in no time by allowing division and disunity to infiltrate. If there’s unity in our church, we can withstand anything society throws at us. It doesn’t matter how hard or forceful the coercion is, Anchorage Grace Church can and will endure it—if there’s unity.

So I want us to think about unity tonight.

The Basis of Unity

Let’s start with the basis of unity. What makes us one as believers? Now, what we’ve seen is that the church at large has a tendency to make the basis of its unity whatever the social or moral issues are that are swirling around in the milieu of the culture. So we unite around causes—abortion, sexuality, gender.

But the biblical basis of our unity as believers really has nothing to do with social or moral issues. In fact, I’ll go far as to say that we as believers cannot create unity in the church. Unity isn’t an ideal. Unity is a reality in which we either participate or withdraw from.

Dietric Bonhoeffer, in his book Life Together, put it this way:

Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.

So the basis of our unity isn’t something we decide on. It’s not even something that we ourselves accomplish. Unity is something that has been accomplished already by God through Jesus Christ.

We get a foreshadowing of this unity in the OT. In Psalm 133, David writes, “How good and pleasant is it when brothers dwell together in unity.” So he has the unity of God’s people on his mind. But what’s interesting is what he uses to illustrate this unity in the nation: “It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes!”

Isn’t that fascinating? He ties the unity of the nation of Israel to the anointing of Aaron. This is actually an allusion to Leviticus 8, when Aaron the installed as high priest. Moses clothed Aaron in his high priestly garments—the robe, the ephod, the breastplate, the turban—and then anoints him with oil, setting him apart as Israel’s high priest.

And what we have to understand is that the high priest symbolized the unity of Israel before God. Aaron wore an ephod—like an apron—with stones on the shoulders engraved with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. And he wore a breastplate over his chest in which 12 stones were set, each representing 1 of the 12 tribes. And he wore these garments so that he could represent the entire nation as he met with God.

So as David was contemplating the beauty of unity among God’s people, the high priesthood naturally came to his mind, because the whole nation was spiritually unified in this one individual.

And it should be no surprise to us that in the NT, the unity of the church is represented and accomplished in our high priest, Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2:14 says, “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.”

The unity that we have with each other has been accomplished by Jesus Christ. The church represents a group of people, both Jews and Gentiles, whose animosity and hostilities toward each other have been transformed into peace. We have peace with each other—that is the best word to capture what we mean by unity.

ILLUSTRATION: It’s interesting to read the charter of the United Nations. In the preamble, is says one of its stated purposes is to “practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.” In other words, the goal of the UN, as expressed in its charter, is to promote and accomplish through diplomacy universal peace.

Across the street from the UN headquarters in New York is Ralph Bunche park, where engraved on the wall of a staircase is a quote from Isaiah 2:4, which reads, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Universal peace—it’s an ambitious goal. And it’s doomed to fail. Why? Because the world has a fundamentally false view of the moral nature of man. When sinful man tries to live together, it results in violence, strife, and enmity. And until you deal with man’s nature, you cannot manufacture peace.

The basis for the peace that they want is right under their nose—but they cut it out of the quote from Isaiah—“He will judge the nations…” God is the only one who can create peace on this earth. And the peace in that passage is a macro peace that has already been accomplished through Christ in the church.

Bonhoeffer put it this way:

Without God there is discord between God and man and between man and man. Christ became the Mediator and made peace with God and among men. Without Christ we should not know God, we could not call upon him, nor come to him. But without Christ we also would not know our brother, nor could we come to him. The way is blocked by our own ego. Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother. Now Christians can live with one another in peace; they can love and serve one another, they can become one. But they can continue to do so only by way of Jesus Christ.

We don’t create unity in this church. Christ has done that. He has made us one. So that’s the basis of our unity.

The Goal of Unity

So let’s talk about the goalof our unity. Why is unity important? Or to put it another way, what’s at stake? What’s at stake if division creeps into our church. What’s at stake when there’s a church split? When there’s infighting among members?

Well, Jesus our high priest—the one who is our peace—answers that question in his high priestly prayer in John 17. Starting in verse 18: “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

So what’s the goal of our unity? Why does it matter? Unity in the church testifies to the credibility of the gospel before the world.

Think about it this way: the gospel claims to be able to change your heart. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). We bring that message to the world—the gospel can change your life. The gospel can save you from your sin. The gospel can transform you from the inside out. The gospel can give you peace with God and peace with your neighbor.

That message is vindicated when the church exhibits the kind of change it promises to the world. In other words, the credibility of the gospel to change lives is tied to whether believers exhibit that change in the way they live together in the church.

Nothing damages the credibility of the gospel more than when the world sees fracturing and fighting and divisions in the church. That was what got Paul so frustrated in 1 Corinthians 6 when he found out that believers had grievances with each other, but rather than resolving them internally, they were bringing lawsuits against one another in pagan courts. He said in verse 4, “So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!”

What conclusions can unbelievers come to when they see that these Christians who claim to have the truth can’t even live peaceably with one another? They either see a group of people who follow an obviously impotent gospel which can’t even help them enough to bring harmony, orthey see a radical new community of people who are markedly different from the world around them.

The Pursuit of Unity

Now that brings us to a final point. We’re told in Ephesians 4:3 to “be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” So even though we are united with each other, that unity has to be maintained and protected and pursued.

This is where a lot of churches get into trouble, because maintaining the unity of the Spirit is an active endeavor. You have to be on it. It’s like your individual sanctification. Yes, Christ has saved you and forensically, you are justified and are called a saint—a holy one. But if you don’t actively pursue and fight against sin, you will not grow as a Christian.

And churches that don’t actively pursue unity in the body will not be able to maintain unity for very long. That’s because corporate unity as a church is tied to individual sanctification. Unity in a church is a sign of health, and a healthy church is comprised of steadily maturing believers. Not perfect, but growing and maturing.

So part of maintaining and pursuing unity in our church is when each of you individually is pursuing holiness and maturity in your own spiritual lives.

Now, spiritual maturity doesn’t guarantee we won’t have conflicts. Conflicts are inevitable whenever sinful people gather together. But spiritual maturity will guarantee that conflicts will get resolved in such a way that the unity of the Spirit is maintained in the bond of peace.

And really, it all comes down to the attitudes you have. Spiritual maturity is marked by godly attitudes—like love, humility, patience, forgiveness, gentleness. When those kinds of attitudes prevail in a church, it tends to squash dissention and division before they get a chance to gain a foothold.

But pride, envy, greed, gossip, selfishness—these are the attitudes that cause disunity to metastasize and kill a church—or at least ruin its testimony. When you refuse to even consider that you had a responsibility in an issue with another person. Or when you get disgruntled over some preference that you have or something you don’t like about the church or a person. Or when you hold a grudge against someone and refuse to let it go. Or when you go and gossip about that person and why you have a grudge against them—all of that are the tinder that fuels the fire of division.

Colossians 3:12-15– “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.”

So how do we pursue and maintain unity in our church? We start with ourselves. We make sure we’re growing as believers. And maybe it means repenting of certain attitudes that have marked our own hearts.

Now, another part of maintaining and pursuing unity is loving and upholding truth. I don’t have to read for you all the warnings in Scripture about the dangers of false teaching and false teachers. That was a major source of division in the early church, and it continues to be now.

And one of the reasons these issues are coming up so quickly now is because of this growing wave of cultural pressure to disavow our allegiance to the core teachings of the Bible regarding biblical morality. And this pressure is forcing churches to choose either to unify around truth or to unify without truth.

And some would even make the argument that as long as we’re united around Christ, then that’s all we need. That doctrine and theology is a source of division for Christians, not unity. But I think that’s a cop out. Because you can’t bifurcate Christ from the truth. He is the truth. You can’t say you’re united in Christ if you’re not united around biblical truth as well.

Ephesians 4:11 – “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God…”

So teachers teach the truth so that the church can grow in maturity, so that they can attain to the unity of the faith.

Conclusion

So as we conclude, I want us to think once again about what I said at the very beginning of the message. It’s doesn’t matter what the world throws at us. It doesn’t matter what pressures come our way, what tactics the world and the devil use to get us to cave. We will endure all of that—if we have unity.

This isn’t unity at all costs. This is unity established in Christ and maintained by the personal pursuit of sanctification in your life. And if we have that kind of unity in this church, then we can endure any trial, any hardship, and uphold the credibility of the gospel at the same time.