Pursuing Unity and Purity

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.