17 Mar E Pluribus Unum

“Truth is being killed in the streets in the name of harmony.”

A few years ago, I read this quote on the state of the Church in America. At the time, it vividly expressed for me a trend that I had already begun to notice: the subjectification of truth as a misplaced means of maintaining unity within the Church and credibility with the pluralistic culture outside our doors. A crisis, I thought.

So I took the fight for truth upon myself. She will not be killed on my street. I had many conversations with others within the Church concerning truth in doctrine and practice that year. I brandished the Calvinist TULIP as a weapon, hammering others with learned points on why predestination must be true. I dismissed the practice of altar calls with contempt, parroting arguments against them that I had found on YouTube. That year, I was, by my own lofty thoughts, a defender and arbiter of the truth. Sadly, I was also irritatingly dogmatic, harmfully severe, and unquestionably divisive.

In my defense of the truth, I had completely trampled on the unity of the Church, a truth in itself upon which the Apostle Paul places a great premium. The value I had for truth was well-sourced, and as Christians we must be advocates for sound doctrine (Titus 2:1). But if the Church is to stand as a pillar and buttress of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15), she must do so as a single entity, as Paul’s overwhelming New Testament emphasis on unity makes clear (Romans 12:4-5; 1 Corinthians 12:12-26; Galatians 3:25-29; Ephesians 2:11-22; Colossians 3:11).

A Blood-Bought Unity

In His letter to the Ephesians, Paul follows His classic explanation of their salvation by grace through faith with a similar explanation of how Christ has won this definitive unity for His Church. Speaking to a church of predominantly Gentile heritage, Paul directs them to remember their one-time state of hopelessness and estrangement from both God and Israel (2:12). The Gentiles were strangers and aliens, objects of the wrath of God and the derision of the Jews.

But now the Gospel has come to them. The Gentiles, who were once far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ (2:13). Christ Himself is the peace that the Gentiles now have with God and Israel. Indeed, all who are in Christ have been made “one,” and the wall of hostility that once existed between them has been broken down (2:14). Where there once were many individuals of differing heritages, there is now “one new man,” (2:15) and together they have been reconciled to God in Christ (2:16). The hostility between God and man, as well as between Jew and Gentile, has been decisively annihilated. The Gentiles have been grafted into the new commonwealth of Israel, the Church of Jesus Christ, and are now heirs of the covenants of promise.

Today, we no longer think in terms of Jews and Gentiles like Paul’s audience did. Our categories for grouping and placing ourselves as individuals are not as broad as the simple division of Jews and Gentiles. We tend to classify ourselves according to, among many other qualities, race, age, socio-economic status, geographic location, and ideology such as denominational preference or political affiliation. As such, we can be quite fragmented as a Church. There are any number of dividing lines for us to choose from and separate ourselves from others by.

This makes the unity that Christ has bought us as a Church all the more significant. Across all of these dividing lines, “one new man” has been created, and the resentment that once festered between us eradicated. Notably, we are not reconciled to God as separate individuals, but as one unified people.

Amidst Diversity, A Purposeful Unity

In addition, we do not grow in Christ as separate individuals, but as one unified people made up of a diverse body of individuals.

As Paul declares the Ephesians to no longer be strangers and aliens, he tells them that they are now the members, the very building blocks, of the household of God (2:19), which is the Church. Christ is the cornerstone of this structure (2:20), and in Him, the whole structure grows into a temple for the Lord – but that growth only happens when the whole structure is joined together in Him (2:21). This is not unity merely for unity’s sake – it is by design. Only when it is sought can the Church grow as it should.

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians gives insight into how this works. The Church, Paul says, is a body made up of many members (12:12), and like a human body with a variety of necessary parts, the Church requires all of its members, and all of the diversity that they bring, to operate (12:14-20). God has composed the Church as it is to have the diversity, and the unity across that diversity, that it needs (12:24-26). We cannot function without one another.

This is difficult for us to grasp today. Independence and individuality are celebrated in our culture, and it may be that these values, while not inherently immoral, have seeped into the Church, obscuring the Biblical emphasis on Christian unity and hindering our ability to operate rightly as an interdependent body. When we don’t believe that we need the people around us, we won’t seek unity as readily. It is all too easy for us to give up our relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ because of petty slights and disagreements. However, when we burn these relationships as sacrifices on the altar of individuality – when we kill unity in the streets in the name of self – we stand in direct opposition to God’s design for His Church, and for that matter, His purposes for all of Creation (Ephesians 1:10). Let us, then, not forego in our disagreements the opportunity for confession, repentance, and reconciliation, a trio of sacrifices that are far more fragrant in the eyes of God (Psalm 51:17) and far more helpful to His Church.

A Unity Worth Fighting For

The Church of Jesus Christ is made up of an incredibly, delightfully diverse range of individuals. The power of God for salvation is showcased to the world through the mysterious unity that He has created in individuals from an astounding mosaic of backgrounds. Look and see the unity that God has wrought: one between Republicans and Democrats, Gamecocks and Tigers, and whites and blacks. It’s a unity between men and women, teenagers and retirees, rich and poor, and pornography addicts and the pure of heart. Above all, a union between Himself and His people to bring them near and give them, as one, access to Himself (Ephesians 2:18). This is a unity well forth fighting for.

-Brian Barbee, Downtown Campus