Unity and Purity
We had a discussion this past week in Sunday school about
how to pursue both unity and purity in the church. The context of the conversation was
“Catholicity – what it means to strive for unity within the global church.” We are in the middle of a membership class of
sorts, and Independent Christian Churches like ours have always carried as a
priority seeking unity with other Christians.
It is in fact the conversation among many believers today
how to strive for and achieve unity within the church. I’ve had the conversation with more
liberal-minded Christians and conservative-minded ones alike. The truth is that we all want unity, and we
all believe that our unity as Christians is meant to provide a powerful witness
to the nations. That was indeed Jesus’
point when he told his disciples that the world would know that they are his
disciples by their love for one another (John 13:35). He was saying that the culture among His
people would be a clear witness to the world that they belong to Jesus. So we naturally long for this.
But are there boundaries to the unity? I think we all know that there are, but few
want to be “the bad guy” and go ahead defining what the boundaries are. In class we discussed the boundaries as set
forth by 1 John 5:2-3:
“By this we know that we love the
children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his
commandments. And his commandments are
not burdensome.”
It appears here that John defines “love” among Christians in
terms of obedience to Christ’s Word. “By
this” – what? Loving God and keeping
the commandments – “we know we love
the children of God.” John understood
that Jesus is God in the flesh, which is why this statement appears similar to
Jesus’ words which John had recorded elsewhere, “If you love me, you’ll keep my
commands” (John 14:15). What is John’s
point? Among God’s people, love is marked out and defined by the
Word of Christ. It is by their seeking,
keeping, and abiding in Christ that they know they are in practicing love
toward one another. In other words, the
road to unity (among believers) is actually the same road to purity (conformity
to God’s will spelled out in His word).
Christians love one another only insofar as they love the Lord, in
keeping His Word and obeying Him in joyful gratitude. This is why Jesus elsewhere attached the
disciples’ loving one another to His Word abiding in them and they in Him (see John
15:9-12).
Jesus did say He’d build His church on the apostolic profession
of His Person and work as “the Christ, the Son of God” (Matt. 16:17-18). I take this to mean that as Christ’s Spirit
speaks through the Apostles’ witness, as it given us in the New Testament and
is preached and taught regularly in the church by faithful pastors and leaders,
Jesus sovereignly uses it as the foundation and He builds His church.
The upshot of all of this is that there is no unity among
believers if there is no unity in our understanding of what it means to be a believer. “Christian” has many definitions in the world
(and in the church), but it has to be God’s truth as it is revealed in Christ
and spelled out in the Scripture that gives us the final word of authority on
what Christianity is. Otherwise, we’ll
be left up to our own preferences and opinions, all of us filed into different
tribes, and unity remaining a far-off wish-dream. But if we seek purity – each of us seeking a
wholesale conformity to God’s will as we throw ourselves on Christ as the risen
Lord who still is doing good and perfect work today – we’ll find ourselves on a
different road than we originally thought, and alongside one another.
