Uniquely Unified

One comedian said about single-life, “It’s just like magic. When you live by yourself, all of your annoying habits are gone.” If the church were made of only one person, there wouldn’t be division, but that’s not how it is. We can get frustrated with the hardships that come from a melting pot of different personalities, different fears and strengths, different levels of maturity, or different abilities all found within the body of Christ, OR we can stand in awe of God’s amazing design for it.

If Christians are to be the salt and the light to a lost world, it makes sense that we need as many capable people serving as examples as possible. Here’s where the humanistic way of thinking comes into play – “selfishness becomes the driving force in doctrine” – was a way I heard it described recently. We have the capability to be unique, yet unified with the same focus of living according to the Spirit. We have the capability of being unified, yet we’re not forced to think just like each other. This can be refreshing or frustrating.

The unity of the body of Christ has always been a struggle; that’s why there are thousands of denominations – inability to be unified. However, this seemed to be an important point in Christ’s final prayer before His arrest that we read about in John 17, “that they be one as we are one.” After the church began, efforts were made by the apostles to convince brethren to think like Christ, and thus, reach a level of unity unobtainable without Christ.

Therefore, most of the epistles were written to churches, bodies of believers, who were “biting and devouring each other” (Galatians 5:15). One group was too selfish to recognize, or appreciate, the uniqueness of each believer. Instead he mentions in Galatians 2:4-5 that “some so called believers there—false ones, really—who were secretly brought in…[to] take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow the old ways.” But we know that wasn’t Godly, yet we too often struggle with falling into their same footsteps.

In Ephesians 4 Paul “begs them to live a life worthy of the Gospel,” then he describes what that entails. Ephesians 4:2-6, “Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.”

In 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, Paul describes his freedom that he has in Christ; a concept that scares many believers. To realize that the “good news” is good because of the level of freedom Christ has made possible. It’s in this passage where Paul says he “became all things to all people so that I may bring many to Christ.” Regardless of which group he was around he understood how he could demonstrate unity among deeply diverse cultures and still live within the realms of the gospel. What if our motto was truly: I will do everything to spread the Good News and share in its blessings?

What if?