Unity in the Church

Introduction

Last week, we covered most of the verses in this last section of Romans 12, but we skipped over vs 15-16 because the focus of these commands are different than the other verses in 14-21. Most of the verses tell us how to love those who have hurt us with a special emphasis on those outside the church. Verses 15-16 focus on another way that we show our authentic love to those within the church. This morning I want to focus on unity from the two persepectives in these two verses. You might be thinking, where do we get unity from both of these verses. I want you to notice a couple of key words in this passage that really drive home that idea of unity in the church: with in vs 15 and same… one toward another in vs 16.

When we look at many churches, they are composed of various groups. These groups all have their own activities or invite each other over to their houses. They naturally gravitate to one another when services are over and to some extent atleast they try to be there for each other. Some of these groups often are composed of:

The singles

The married couples with kids

The senior saints

The kids

The teens

Age and station in life make natural dividing lines for who we spend our time around, but those same categories can become dividing lines that destroy the unity of the church. These may be unintentional or accidental means of division in the church. When we get so focused on our groups or our friends, we forget the rest of the people in the church that we are united with. There are other types of intentional divisions in the church. Two people are fighting amongst themselves, someone disagrees with a teacher and lobbies others to their side. But Paul sees both the intentional and the unintentional divisions as a breakdown in the love of the church. I keep coming back to this point on purpose because I don’t want us to forget Paul’s main point. Everything in vs 8-21 are the expressions of authentic love. So how does authentic love relate to a united church? If unity is the result of us living together in community, then love is the glue that makes that unity possible. If I truly love my brothers and sisters in Christ, I am going to seek unity amongst us. Paul is going to focus in on two specific aspects that drive unity in our verses this morning.

The Emotional side of Unity

Romans 12:15 “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.”

Verse 15 deals with the emotions of others. How attune are you to the feelings of others? Some within the church like those with the gift of mercy are going to be very attuned to how people are feeling while others tend to be more oblivious. We can sometimes get so focused on the problems or events in other people’s live and we think, “Oh they got it handled. Or time has passed they should be fine. Or they seem to be doing fine.” and so we never check to see how they are really doing.

There are some problems in life that might seem like they are no big deal. Honest truth, this past week I took a couple days to rebuild portions of my fence because our old chain link fence is breaking all around the property. If someone were to ask me about it, I’d say I got it done and that probably as far as the conversation would go. We wouldn’t delve into how I might have struggled with this. The frustration I am feeling over my dogs finding every weakness in my fence and exploiting it like the veloca raptor in Jurassic park. We probably wouldn’t discuss the stress of having to get this done while also having a million other things that still need to be done. I don’t use this illustration to make anyone feel sorry for me. But the point here is we see the actions, we don’t see the emotion struggle behind them unless we ask.

Part of true biblical unity involves an emotional awareness of how our brothers and sisters might be doing. 1 Corinthians 12:26 “And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.” ties this to the unity of the church. We are one body so if you hit one body part the whole thing feels the pain and suffers for it. We are intricately tied together. Paul address two sides to this emotional unity:

Rejoice with those who rejoice- I think when we look at this verse we think this is probably the easiest of the two. Chrysostom argued in his Homily 22 (numbers vary)

“that requires more of a high Christian temper, to rejoice with them that do rejoice, than to weep with them that weep. For this nature itself fulfils perfectly: and there is none so hard-hearted as not to weep over him that is in calamity: but the other requires a very noble soul, so as not only to keep from envying, but even to feel pleasure with the person who is in esteem”

I think he was on to something. It can be harder to actually feel joy for someone’s good fortune than it is to feel bad for them when they are hurting. There are a variety of reason’s why this can be the case:

It is to some extent natural to feel bad for people who are hurting, but it is just as sinfully natural to envy those who are doing better than us. These two things come easy to us by nature. Only the hardest of hearts doesn’t feel bad for someone who is hurting, but also only the most abnormal of people really is excited when others prosper and we do not.

Weeping over someone can actually feed our pride. When we weep with those who weep, we are condescending to help them. We are in the position of strength. My mercy can be all about me and not truly about them. How easy does our culture virtue signal? but when it comes to rejoicing with those who rejoice, we have to set aside our pride.

Their rejoicing often shines a light on our struggle to rejoice and makes us uncomfortable. Maybe this isn’t you, but it is me at times. I find depressive feelings more natural than rejoicing. So truly joyful people can make me feel out of place or uncomfortable.

We have perfect example of this struggle in Luke 15:25-32. This is the story of the prodigal son which we all know pretty well, but I want us to focus on the older brother in these verses. Vs 25 music and dancing are expressions of joy, but notice in vs 28 how he responded to the joy of the father and the family. He was angry and refused to join in. But key here is noticing why he could not rejoice with his brother and his father. Verse 29-30 reveals his heart:

I have served you all these year- pride

neither transgressed- moral superiority

thou never gavest me- envy

Out of the heart the mouth speaketh- this older brother revealed exactly what was in his heart by these words. His pride, superiority and envy kept him from being able to rejoice with those who were rejoicing.

Weep with those who weep- As I have presented, we may find this one the easier of the two though often we don’t know what to say or the pain of others is messy so we stay out of it. Galatians 6:2 “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” so that involves taking on the hardships and the griefs that others bear. People will not always tell you how they are feeling even when you ask because they assume you don’t really want to know or don’t really care. Wouldn’t it be something if we could cultivate a culture at HHBC where when someone asked how you were doing, you felt they honestly wanted to know?

People don’t always need us to fix their problems. Paul doesn’t here say exhort them how to move forward or remind them how maybe this was their fault or join in with attacking the person who hurt them. Sometimes what people really need us to do is just weep. Express emotion over their situation. Weeping is not platitudes or solutions. It is joining in with how they feel and actually feeling that.

When I taught through Lamentations, I mentioned that the book gives us a good primer for dealing with those who suffer, those who lament. The first few chapters of the book are a dialogue between the narrator and Lady Jerusalem who is lamenting what has happened to her. In those chapters, we see atleast 10 things that the narrator does in relating to the greiving Lady Jeruslame. In Lamentations 2:11 “Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, My liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; Because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.” He Himself has entered into her grief and cried to the point that there are no more tears left to cry. But there are times when there is nothing we can say, nothing we should say; but we just need to be present and be with them.

The Intellectual side of Unity

Romans 12:16 “Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.”

The next verse focuses in on intellectual unity. Be of the same mind- or literally think the same. Many have pointed out that this is not uniformity like we are all robots, but unanimity. We are all focused on the same direction. In some passages, when the topic of unity comes up it is dealing with doctrinal unity. An entire message could be preached on that, but this verse is not about doctrinal unity. Notice the words one toward another- This type of unity focuses in on the way we think about each other.

How do we think about other Christians?

Sometimes we structure other believers into categories of more or less spiritual. While there is such a thing as a carnal Christian, there is a danger of a two-tiered thinking about other believers because we can give into thinking we are better than they are. We might think “I am more spiritual than they are” or “They still have a lot to learn” This type of thinking can feed our pride and split the church into two groups: the spiritual ones and the not so spiritual ones.

We can give in to cynical attitudes about other people’s motives thinking that they are only doing certain things so they can climb a ladder or look good.

We can define people by their worst moments instead of the whole trajectory of their lives.

We can also split the church into groups of the wealthy, the influential, the good, the poor, the needy, struggling. We must be careful not to give in to thinking thoughts about our brothers and sisters that devalue some and elevate others. Make certain one’s more worthy of love.

James addressed this same thing in James 2:1-9 when he gave an example of a poor man coming into the church and he is given a menial spot in the church while a rich man comes in and he is given a place of honor. The way we think about other believers should push us to love all of them.

The Enemies of Unity

Romans 12:16 “Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.”

The second half of the verse highlights why we do not experience more unity among believers: it can be summed up in one word pride. But Paul looks at the enemies of unity in two ways-

Minding high things instead condescend to men of low estate- High things in this verse does not mean don’t strive to achieve something higher, but it does refer to High positions, High opinions of yourself, rubbing shoulders with high society. I have known some pastors who structure everything about the church to be appealing to the rich and famous. Even in contemporary culture we see this with pastors wearing $3000 yeazy shoes and hanging out with pop stars. Timothy 6:17 “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;” This should not be our goal or our focus instead we should condescend to men of low estate- literally means to be lead away with but means to associate or accommodate.The phrase men of low estate is actually a word that could be translated as low things nor low men, but with the context in mind it is better to see this as men of low estate. We should not shy away from those the world thinks are beneath us. Don’t give in to that type of thinking.

Being wise in our own conceits- This hits directly at our pride- we think we are better than others. It is difficult to set our thoughts aside about things and esteem someone else’s opinions as equal. Philippians 2:2–4 “Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” If we are going to esteem or be of the same mind one toward another, we have to put aside our thoughts sometimes. We have to be willing to acknowledge that other people might be right, they might have good thoughts and not be so stuck on our own thoughts that we can’t learn from others.

Conclusion

Love is essential for true unity to be experienced in the church. I think that too often unity is boiled down to believing a lot of the same things, but there is a deeper level to it that we should be striving for. We should pursue that united connection that comes from truly relating to one another on an emotional and an intellectual level. We can enter into their lives and be a part of their lives. Probably the best example of this is the family. In a family, when one is hurting, we all hurt. We gather around and comfort one another. It greives us to see our children hurting. But we also get excited for them when great things happen. We celebrate those victories in life. Good families also share a connection in the way that they think. They communicate with one another, they share ideas, debate ideas lovingly, they mold each other.

More often than not when we don’t experience this kind of community we blame it on everyone else and others do share the blame often. But the focus of Paul’s commands this morning is not on what others are doing, but what am I doing. Am I pursuing emotional and intellectual unity with my brothers and sisters? AM I weeping with those who weep? Am I rejoicing with them? Am I willing to share and listen to others ideas? Do I think I am better than others and build these artificial barriers between me and them? This morning I want you to ask yourself these questions. If there is something you need help working through come see me at the front and we can arrange a time or partner you with a counselor to help you work through these things, but let’s strive for a deeper unity this morning.