restoring Christian Unity
“How can we proclaim the Gospel of reconciliation without at the same time being committed to work for reconciliation among Christians?”
Christians ARE CALLED TO ONE FAITH AND ONE MIND FOR THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL
We are called to One Faith and to “stand firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,” and to have “the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (Phil. 1:27, 2:2).
Yet, Christians don’t have one mind. Christians don’t even agree about what Jesus himself meant when he said, “Whoever repents and is baptized will be saved.
“Oh, Jesus doesn’t care about that! All that matters is that we have a relationship with him! ”, some say.
Jesus never said that. A true relationship with Jesus isn’t defined by experience. Jesus said, “if you love me, keep my commandments.” Jesus also said, Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
What is the will of the Father?
Jesus said the world will know who Christians are by their love. Faith, knowledge, prophecy, tongues, martyrdom mean nothing without love. But our unity tells the world something else.
Jesus said that our unity is how the world will know God sent his son and loves them. In John 17:20-23, Jesus explicitly prayed for His future followers to be perfectly one:
“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word (the word of the Apostles) , that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.”
Yet, christianity is divided. We don’t have one mind without Division we are called to
We have become so comfortable with picking a church that we believe is right that we don’t blink an eye when churches disagree about how we are saved, who can be saved, communion, sacraments, eternal security, what qualifies as a sin, or what church did Jesus establish. If you were to walk into 10 different churches tomorrow and ask the pastors their views those topics, you will get diverse answers. And all of the pastors would likely use scripture to support their view.
“Oh, that’s not a problem- we believe in essentials, unity, in non-essentials liberty and in all charity”, many say. While there are legitimate areas of liberty, the One Faith isn’t one of them.
Paul commands: “mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine you have learned; and avoid them.” (Rom 16:17). In 1 Corinthians 1:10, he desires “no divisions,” and that Christians should be “perfectly joined together “in the same mind.” No one can say this is simply a “warm fuzzy” love and mutual recognition. Paul goes on to condemn mere “contentions” in 1:11, and asks in 1:13: “Is Christ divided?”
This photo below illustrates the problem
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This is the Cathedral district in downtown Tulsa. The remarkable thing is that these churches are all so close to each other that Christians can wave and smile at their fellow Christians who believe something different about the Christian faith as they walk in to worship God. This is a picture of what Paul says divides Christ.
“If Jesus desires perfect unity within the Church for the sake of the witness of the gospel, then our schisms are a flaunting of his desires and a counter-witness to the gospel. Such an action can only be a work of the flesh.”- Joe Heschmeyer
division and diversity are two different things!
Some Christians like Kris Vallorton say it doesn’t matter that we have unity in what we believe because God gives various spiritual gifts and that creates a pleasing symphony to God. Let’s not be confused by that kind of faulty reasoning.
Diversity of gifts is a work of the Holy Spirit. Diversity embraces different spiritual gifts, cultures, styles of worship. Diversity in our spiritual gifts and expressions of worship is a beautiful thing. But we are calle to unity in what we believe and what we practice in worship. We are called to the One Faith handed down to us from Jesus to the apostles.
Division is a work of the flesh that has divided the faith into thousands of contradictory opinions. Paul taught that “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God”
Did Jesus Provide a Way to know His mind?
He did. He established a visible church that has authority to interpret scripture correctly. He said, '“whoever hears you, hears me”.
Jesus says that if your brother resists your attempts to correct him, you must ultimately “tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matt. 18:17). If the Church isn’t visible, how can it be the final appellate court for Christian disputes? We see this divinely originated visible Church throughout the book of Acts and indeed all of Church history.” -Joe Heschmeyer
Heschmeyer also explains that Jesus started a visible church with authority but “the Reformation redefined the church as a collection of those who are saved. In the reformation definition, if you’re saved, you’re part of the Kingdom. If you’re not saved, you’re not part of the Kingdom. But Christ doesn’t say that. He says quite otherwise, in fact .(Matthew 13:47-50):
He said the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad. So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.
In Heaven, the Church will only contain the saved. On earth, that’s not the case. Here, the Church contains both good fish and bad fish. Or to use another of Christ’s images, it contains both wheat and weeds. And in response to the question, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” He says, “No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” (Matthew 13:28-30).” So the very attempt to reinvent the Church as just the saved is exactly what He told us not to do.”
At the Last Supper, Jesus said, “I will not leave you desolate” (John 14:18), a promise not to abandon the Church or to leave us as orphans. Specifically, Christ promised to preserve his Church by sending “the Spirit of Truth,” the Holy Spirit, to “teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:17, 26). How is belief in this promise compatible with the idea that the whole Church lost the true meaning of the Last Supper, and that no Christians successfully followed his instructions to “do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24)? Why You Can’t Have Jesus without His Church
To be sure, left to our own devices, you and I would get some aspects of the gospel wrong. That’s why there are so many competing Protestant denominations. But the solution to that is to turn to the Church and to have the humility to be guided, rather than trusting that our own reading of Scripture is superior to everyone else’s. This is the model laid out in Scripture itself. When the apostle Philip found an Ethiopian official reading the book of Isaiah, he asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” to which the man replied “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:30-31). But the Protestant view undermines all of this by suggesting that the visible Church, and indeed all Christians everywhere, might be the ones in the wrong.-What if Protestants are Right About the Eucharist?
For Further Reading And Watching
Where is the Magisterium in the Bible? Part 1: Is the Church an Invisible Collection of Believers?
Where is the Magisterium in the Bible? Part 2: Was James or Peter the Leader of the Early Church?
Denominations and Sectarianims: An Anti-biblical scandal
A Helpful Question for our Protestant Friends
Why You Can’t Have Jesus Without His Church
Watch: Why You Can’t Have Christ Without His Kingdom