The Church's Unity

The Unity of Christ’s Church

It’s Something special.

Not a unity on political persepectives or social agendas. Not a unity over cultural agreements, or of race or gender, or social standing.

It’s something produced by the new birth vs. 15

Being reconiled to God is not something you experience on your own in a corner, you enjoy it in community.

Illustration: Like the men in the OT who, found the spoil of a great army who were defeated and they soon realized that this wasn’t just for them to enjoy.

Application: this is why someone who professes to be right with God but yet won’t make his stand and proclaim that through baptism and align himself to a local congregation is off kilter. You see it’s in our DNA! We want to be with other sheep.

It Joins All of God’s People Together vs.19

While believers disagree over secondary issues, at their root they all agree on the main thing. We have more in common than we do in disagreement. That’s why it’s good to read Church history or the creeds of the ancient Church.

Christ’s Building Project

It’s Foundation

It’s Foundation is the Teachings of the Apostles & Prophets

We are continuing what they have started. We exist in a long line of people who God has been using to build his Church.

He builds his Church upon the standard of truth given by the Apostles and Prophets. The Church is built by doctrine, learned and practiced from the new heart.

Acts 20:32 ESV

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

2 Timothy 2:13 ESV

if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.

2 Timothy 1:13 ESV

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 2:

2 Timothy 2:1–2 ESV

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

2 Timothy 2:1

2 Timothy

Jesus Christ is the Cornerstone

This means that everything squares with him. We are not a group that aligns on social or cultural issues, as a matter of fact we might have differences of agreement on those subjects, but we align according to Christ.

He is the center of our hearts and the content of our ministry.

2 Corinthians 4:4 ESV

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

2 Corinthians 4:5–6 ESV

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:1–2 ESV

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

Read Example of Charles Simeon

The Nature of It’s Construction

God is building it. (Tenor of the Text)

1 Corinthians 12:13 ESV

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:13

1 Corinthians 12:18 ESV

But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.

We don’t decide who is joining the Church, God does. We don’t build it according to our desires, but he does according to His.

Application: I don’t disregard a brother simple because we disagree. I see that they are here on purpose.

It’s Ongoing vs 21

It’s Being Made Into A Temple

The Dwelling Place of God

Illustration of OT Temple and Day of Pentecost