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(Romans 15:5-6)
Unity is a hard thing to achieve. It is hard for our great nation to come to anything approaching political unity. About the only thing we can agree on is that we are frustrated.
Unfortunately, spiritual unity is not much better. We have a multitude of protestant denominations, some of them not accepting any of the others and each of them with a tale of division and schism. After all, their very existence verifies that after one group decided they could not stomach the Orthodox or the Catholics, it quickly became apparent that they could not stomach one another either.
I understand, there are those within our own Presbyterian Church (USA) who are teetering on the brink, wondering how we might get along, or if we can get along with one another. Those who choose to leave usually go to some already established denomination instead of creating yet another one.
Read through the Scripture that begins this short article one more time. Does it strike you that we might be going about it all wrong? Certainly our list of groupings bear witness to a general lack of unity. Oh, we speak about the Church as unified and the churches as not always the best representatives of the Church. But, the truth is the world sees the Church through the churches, just as surely as the world sees Christ in Christians.
No, while all that is important, I’m talking about something else. It’s in the order. We want unity with those we follow Christ with. Unity first – following Christ afterward. Paul seems to put it quite differently. Unity only comes AS we follow Christ Jesus. We can’t expect unity with one another until we put Christ himself ahead of our petty theological wars and differences! It would be nice if we could read that today and tomorrow all conflict among Christians would melt away. However, the development of unity is as much a growing in Christ process as is your Christian life or mine. We have not arrived yet, but as we follow Christ we know we surely shall!
Pastor Craig
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