The Church: Unity

Intro

We’ve started a new summer series called “The Church” because what we believe about Jesus and his church impact and influence how we operate, how we lead, and how we live and do life together. A few weeks we started on Mothers Day looking at a few passages of scripture foundational to understanding these things.

We first looked at John 2:23–3:21 and the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus seeing that to enter into the kingdom (bigger picture) of which the church os the part of, we must be born again. Good news: Jesus is an available, knowledgable, dependent, and patient savior.

Last week we looked at Matthew 16:13-20 and Peter’s confession on behalf of all the other disciples, seeing that Jesus is the king, the cornerstone, and the keeper of the church.

Q: What is the church? Why is the church important? Why is it important to God?

A: The church is important to God because it is his people, and they are the means by which he displays his glory to the world, and to all the rulers and authorities of the heavens.

Ephesians 3 and 4 reveals to us that unity is integral to a church’s (our) ability to display God’s glory. As we continue our series on the church, we’re going to take a look at unity. Everything after this, will be expositions on how we grow in and build unity for the glory of God.

Credit: While the study of the church and what scripture says about the church has certainly my own over the last few years, how I have organized this mornings message and my thoughts are from material that was taught and

There are three simple facts that we find throughout the Bible:

God has called Christians to be with him forever, but for a time, he’s left us in this world, gathered into local churches

He has chosen to use our life together in churches as a primary method of displaying his glory

We are sinners. This fact complicates church life considerably.

God in his infinite, multi-faceted, wisdom has left the task of displaying the glory of his perfect character to the very imperfect people called his Church. How is it that as we gather together as a a church, as we live in this world as the church, that we are truly a display of God’s glory (imperfectly) to the rulers and authorities in the heavens?

How is it that we as sinners can gather together as a local church where unity abounds—not the forced unity that denies differences, overlooks difficulty, or compromises the message of the gospel—but unity that preserves the message of the gospel and acts as a compelling testimony to its value. How is it that as sinners, we can respond to sin in our midst without descending to gossip and slander? How can we trust our leaders but still recognize that they are sinners too? How can we love people who make us feel uncomfortable because they are so different from us? How can we critique an imperfect church without grumbling?

If you’ve been around the church long enough, you know these are lofty goals.

II. Ephesians 3-4: God’s Goal for the Church: Unity

I cannot get Queen Latifah’s song out of my head every time I say that word. It’s like the Verizon commercial. Anyway…

Context + Summary of Ephesians 1-2

The mystery of the gospel (3:6):

God’s intent for unity of Jews and Gentiles in the Church (3:10):

Living a worthy life (4:1-13)

Three conclusions:

Unity is central to the gospel Unity glorifies God’s wisdom. The church showcases a unity so powerful that it can only have come to pass by the hand of God! Unity is the responsibility of all of the church members, not just an elite few. This is not representative government!

(see also 1 Corinthians 1, James 2) It is the entire church that is rebuked when unity is damaged. Not just church leaders. Church members. All of them. Remember Jesus’ letters to the seven churches?

We see these examples of this principle elsewhere in Scripture:

“I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

(John 13:34-35)

"I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.” (John 17:23)

“Now the entire group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but instead they held everything in common. With great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was on all of them.” (Acts 4:32-33)

“If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

(I John 4:20)

III. What is Christian Unity? A Definition.

The concept of unity has actually become quite divisive.

Unity is not an “All Play” Unity: All of us who call ourselves Christians should organize together—or at least cooperate together as a single body of believers. There’s too many divisions! “Come on people now, cry out together everybody get together try to love one another right now!” What would the end goal of that unity be? We have some agreement but there are lot of disagreements as well. organizational unity for the sake of organizational unity is quite meaningless—and can have the extremely negative result of utterly confusing the world as to the nature of Christianity and of the gospel. Cooperation? Certainly. On those things we have common interests to accomplish common goals.

Unity is not an “Anti-Unity" Unity: This approach to unity is equally confusing to the world and contrary to gospel purposes. This approach creates churches that are more focused on getting their theology right than on considering how that theology should work itself out in our love for other believers within and outside of our local churches. Many of these churches place primary focus on doctrines that are not clear in Scripture—eschatology, for example, or particularly detailed rules for living. They become known more for being divisive, schismatic, and sometimes legalistic—than for holding out the life of the gospel. The idea that a local church would isolate itself and cut itself off from other churches is almost as preposterous and unbiblical as an individual Christian isolating himself from other Christians.

Jamie Dunlop, “Even as we struggle against an idealistic, yet wrong-headed view of global, organizational Christian unity, we must also fight to reclaim the high place that real Christian unity should hold in our lives.”

Unity is not uniformity.

Christian unity is what falls in-between those two ends of the spectrums.

How do we display unity? We love across boundaries.

What’s the purpose of displaying unity? A witness to and vindication of the gospel.

What is the source of our unity? The Spirit and Love of Christ. "We love because…”

Where can this unity be found? It is not contained to the context of a local church gathering, but it is certainly concentrated in that context when the church is gathered together. It is indeed among us when the local church is scattered.

Unity is the God-glorifying, gospel-revealing love for all brothers and sisters in Christ, fueled by our forgiveness in Christ that expresses itself most clearly in the assembly of the local church.

III. The Benefits of Unity in the Church

1. Assurance of Salvation

19 This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20 whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows all things. (I John 3:19-20)

2. Encouragement

23 Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, since he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, 25 not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching. (Hebrews 10:23-25)

Our need for the church

3. Preservation of the Gospel.

Unity protects our doctrine. Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy. Efforts to recapture unity often get a bad reputation because they are seen to come at the expense of orthodoxy. But far from seeing a delicate balancing act between doctrine and unity, Paul sees unity as our only hope if we are to preserve our doctrine.

14 Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. 15 But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ. 16 From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part. (Ephesians 4:14-16)

4. Evangelism

Martin Lloyd Jones on John 17

20 “I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in me through their word. 21 May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me. 22 I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one. 23 I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

Modes of evangelism: Body Evangelism. Ministry Mode Evangelism. Relational Evangelism. and Random Evangelism! i.e. “No one could have planned that!”

Through the church’s unity non-Christians see the divinity of Christ and his divine mission—and it is the way that they come to understand the love of God. This should make us consider the role our church has in our own evangelism. Evangelism is much more than simply bringing people to church but that doesn’t mean that the church has no role to play in evangelism.

I became a pastor, or pursued ministry in the local church BECAUSE I wanted to reach people with the gospel, and gathering people and talking to people and speaking to agree groups of people is something I was good at! (maybe more on this…?)

Exposing a non-Christian to the love we have for each other is at least as important as exposing them to Sunday morning sermons. This is hospitality on Sunday mornings. Why Liberti Kids is so essential. What the church looks like. They are important aspects of being a local church. How we accomplish this is a good thing to consider carefully and practically—we’ll be discussing it in a few weeks.

Unity is essential to preserving a gospel witness in a local community; unity comes from and celebrates God’s pure message of the gospel.

There are so many other benefits of unity that we could cover as well: a unified church is more likely to pray for itself and others. Its members are far more able to hold each other accountable—because they know each other and love each other. Even the disciplinary actions of a unified church are more powerful because they are more clearly driven by love. A unified church has the luxury of focusing the attention of its leadership outwardly rather than solving problems within, etc. etc.

Q: How can we work together to build a local church family whose unity protects and proclaims the life-changing message of the gospel? What’s your role? My role.

The answer to this question is the focus of our summer series on “The Church.”

I pray that God will use this time in all of our lives to help us better understand the role that each of use are to play in the local church.

Let’s pray.

“Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, we pray that you would give to us, according to all the riches of your glory, the supernatural power of your strength by the Spirit for our inner beings that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. We pray that we would be rooted and firmly established in love, and that we would be able to comprehend with all the saints of the church what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and that we would know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of You. You Lord are able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to you be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”