The Essence of Christian Unity

Awhile back there was a guest blogger on internet monk who talked about Christian unity. The guest poster was a Catholic and he summarizes the Catholic position on the nature of Christian unity quite nicely. This post is one of the ones that got me thinking about Christian unity. Today I'm going to be supplying my own thoughts on what it means for Christians to be united.

In my last post on Christian unity I talked about how important it was to Jesus that His followers should be united. I also talked about the deep divisions that Christians today face, especially in America. Now I'm going to start talking about solutions.

First of all, we need to decide what it means to say that Christians are united. In the article I linked above, the author describes how the Roman Catholic Church answers that question. The author writes that Christian unity consists of three things, unity of faith, unity of sacraments and unity of government. In other words, we are united when we all share the same faith, participate in the same sacraments and are under the same church government.

It's not a bad definition. In fact, I think it represents a compelling vision for what a unified church should look like, but I don't believe that this definition captures what Christian unity is all about. I believe that Christians are united by their shared connection to God through the Holy Spirit. That is the essence of Christian unity.

We can see that this was true in the early church by looking at the book of Acts. Starting in chapter ten, the church encounters its first major division. In the beginning Christianity was exclusively a Jewish sect, but in chapter ten of Acts God calls Peter to preach to a Roman soldier named Cornelius. Cornelius becomes the first gentile to convert to Christianity, but many more soon follow.

This creates the first major conflict in church history. The first Christians are reluctant to welcome gentiles into the movement. They see it as a betrayal of their Jewish heritage to share fellowship with people who don't follow Jewish practices and customs. This debate nearly tears the church apart. In Acts chapter 15 they have a meeting in Jerusalem to discuss the issue and settle the matter.

In the end the church decides to allow gentiles to join the church. Despite the vast cultural differences that separated Jews and gentiles and despite the strong traditional beliefs that the Jews held that required them to avoid mingling with gentiles, those early Christians chose unity. The question we must ask ourselves is, why did they make that difficult choice?

The only answer is that they made that choice because of the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit that called Peter, Paul and other Christians to witness to gentiles in the first place. When they preached to the gentiles, the gentiles were filled with the Holy Spirit, just as the first Christians had been. The early Christians were persuaded to accept gentile believers despite the difficulty, because they recognized that the Holy Spirit was at work among them.

So we can see that the Holy Spirit serves as the motivation for Christian unity. We seek fellowship with others because we see that God is working in their lives just as He is working in our lives.

Additionally, the Holy Spirit is the thing which makes Christian unity possible. The Holy Spirit demolishes the barriers that divide us and gives us the ability to be patient and humble and show love to one another. In this way the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to be unified with people in even the most trying circumstances.

For a moment I want to go back to the three part definition of unity we saw at the beginning; unity of faith, unity of sacraments and unity of government. I think that the definition still holds, but only if we see that God and the Holy Spirit are at the center of it. We share the same faith because the Holy Spirit has revealed Jesus to each of us. We share the same sacraments because, through the Spirit, Jesus' forgiveness is given to each of us. We share the same government because we all submit ourselves to God with the help of the Holy Spirit.

That is what I think it means for Christians to be united.

The question remains, however, how do we live that out?

Politics and the Kingdom of God

In my last post I talked about how authority works in the Kingdom of God. Today I'm going to talk about how that teaching applies to politics.

In the prior post I compared political power and authority with power and authority in God's Kingdom and I showed that there are some incredible differences. The basis for political power is force, which is used to coerce people. The basis for power in God's Kingdom is love, which is used to transform people.

If we can grasp this truth then we will realize that the Kingdom of God cannot be brought about by political means. Even if our political agenda is holy and righteous and pure and good, it can never take the place of God's own love. And no political agenda can take the place of our obligation to love others.

When Jesus came into the world He gave up His power. He allowed Himself to be killed so that we could be healed. In the same way we are asked to give up power, to lay down our agendas and love people so that they too can know the love of God and be healed.

We have two options. We can choose to follow Jesus or we can choose to pursue power. When Christians make the latter choice, several unfortunate consequences inevitably follow.

First and foremost, the message of Jesus gets obscured. The Kingdom of God is central to Jesus' teachings. If we replace God's Kingdom with a political message we lose the heart and soul of the good news that Jesus preached. The Kingdom of God isn't a nation or a system of government or a party platform. God's Kingdom is altogether different. When we let a political entity take the place of God's Kingdom, we end up with a kingdom that's not all that different from the oppressive kingdoms of the world.

As a result it becomes harder to share the message of Jesus. The message of Jesus becomes associated with a political message. Anyone who opposes the political message will usually feel some antagonism toward Jesus as well.

Of course, it isn't just outsiders who will be repelled by the political message of the church. Often times fellow Christians will find themselves at odds with "Christian" political views. This can result in groups of Christians splitting off and forming their own church. More often than not, the new church will have its own political agenda, which only makes the problem worse.

Before I finish let me just say that I don't think its wrong for Christians to be involved with politics. I just want to stress the point that God's kingdom is not a political kingdom. God's Kingdom is one of love and humility rather than political power. It is important that we remember that.

(Dis)Unity and the Church

I wrote this post after this post on Interetmonk got me thinking about Christian unity. Today I'm going to talk about the brokenness of the American church and reflect on how we got here.

One of the major teachings in the New Testament is that Christians should be united. In John 17 Jesus prays that all who believe in Him should be one. Likewise, Christian unity is a major theme in Paul's letters. Paul's letters to the Romans, Ephesians and his first letter to the Corinthians all address the issue of unity in the church.

I want to talk about how these words are lived out. I would like to talk about how Jesus' prayer has been answered. I would like to talk about how Paul's instructions are being lived out by the church. I would like to talk about these things, but I can't, because the sad truth is that the church is very deeply divided.

I should know. I'm part of the American Evangelical church. As a group, we're some of the least united and most divisive Christians around. We might talk about unity among believers, but all too often we fail to live it out, even in our local church. Even though we may say that we value unity our actions reveal a different picture.

It's not surprising that we evangelicals have a hard time with unity when you consider our history. First of all, Evangelical churches are part of the Protestant tradition, which means that we're separated from the Roman Catholic church. And ever since the Council of Trent, when the Catholic/Protestant split became official, Protestants have tried, and failed, to present a unified front against Roman Catholicism.

Very quickly, different groups of Protestants began to separate themselves, not only from Rome, but also from each other. Over time these different groups of Protestants formed many different denominations that are still with us today.

When Protestantism came to America new groups and new denominations began to form even more rapidly. You see, unlike most of Europe, America has a long history of freedom of religion. This makes it easier for new denominations and new church groups to form because the Government isn't trying to impose a single religion on its populace.

Today not only do we have hundreds of different denominations of Christianity, but we also have an increasing number of nondenominational churches. In one sense nondenominational churches can be seen as a less divisive, since they don't make the problem worse by forming a new division. The problem is that these churches are typically independent, not only from denominations, but also from each other. As a consequence, these days the American Evangelical church is broken up into thousands of tiny pieces.

In such an environment it's easy to see why people feel apathetic about unity in the church. With American Evangelicals broken fellowships are the rule rather than the exception.

Disunity in the church is a problem we have inherited, but that doesn't mean that we have to accept it. I believe that with God's help that we can reunite the broken fellowships and bring unity back to the church. In future posts I will be talking about how unity among Christians happens and how we can pursue it.