Unity of Christians | About God and Gods

Last time we have seen how the Lord Jesus Himself describes the unity of His disciples, namely as a unity that resembles the unity that there is between God the Father and His Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. That union of two Persons is complete, perfect, and permeated with divine love. Therefore, God's children have received the Spirit of God who has poured out the love of God in their hearts. That gives them new life that is characterized by

A relationship of love with God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus. A relationship of knowing and loving;
Het loving the Word of God to obey it wholeheartedly;
A relationship with all who are born of God; a relationship of love and mutual submission.

This is the core of the spiritual life of every man who is born again; this is what your spiritual life revolves around. But it is also the core of the common life as believers, as people who are born of God. In these aspects there is a unity that you experience that you cannot make yourself; it is a unity made by the Spirit of God. It is also a unit between persons, not a unity between organizations or movements or whatever.

In connection with the unity of the believers, it is interesting and instructive to consider how the apostle Paul deals with it in his first letter to Corinth.

Denominations in Corinth

In Corinth, where Paul had worked and taught for a year and a half (Acts 18:11), the necessary questions and problems had probably arisen within 5 to 10 years, which Paul addresses in his first letter.

He immediately begins with the division that has arisen among the believers. Translated to today, you could say there was a Paul church, an Apollos church, a Cephas community and even a Church of Christ (1 Corinthians 1:12).

He elaborates on this in the first four chapters of the letter. Looking at these chapters we see the following.

First, he describes their relationship to God and the fact that in Christ they have received all that is necessary. They are called to be one community, namely the “communion of God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1:1-9)
Then comes a call toto be of one mind in speaking, (…) one of thinking and one of feelings” (1:10). How united can you be? Can you have more unit than this? That is how the Lord Jesus intended it and Paul says it again with his own words.
Then he mentions the rifts and quarrels that exist among the believers.

Remarkable

Immediately a few things stand out that we would probably do differently today and we can immediately learn a few lessons from that.

In the first place he does not address the letter to a few leaders of the church, nor to the pastors of the different denominations, but to all individual believers together. From this you may conclude that the demand for unity is not a question for the leaders of the community, or for a working group of people with influence, who should restore unity. No, every believer must answer the questions that arise here for your own heart and conscience and act according to the insight that God gives.

In second place Paul does not indicate what the solution to the problem of division. He has described (in 1:10) what that unity should look like, but he does not mention how you achieve it. There is no process description, no step-by-step plan or route to the goal. Paul describes where things went wrong and what caused the divisions to arise. He proposes that to the believers in Corinth and leaves the decision about recovery and the way there to themselves.

The big picture

As you go through chapters 1-4, the following issues regarding division come to the fore.

They have lost Christ the Crucified (1:17, 18, 23; 2:2).
- Him Paul preached and laid as a foundation (3:11) and they should have stuck with this.
They preferred human wisdom.
- Christ is 'the wisdom of God' (1:24,30). If all questions in the Church are not really about Christ, then human wisdom becomes the guiding principle for action.
They were carnal, not spiritual (2:14; 3:1-3).
- They apparently no longer knew the difference between 'walking after the Spirit' and 'walking after the flesh' as Paul had explained in his gospel (Romans 8:6,7).
They thought that Paul was finished (4:1-4, 16).
- Paul had preached the gospel to them, which was fine. But now they had to move on and thought they could do without Paul. In doing so, they also distanced themselves from the teachings Paul had given them and went beyond what the Scriptures taught them (4:6).

Carnal or spiritual?

These things hang together. A believer has the Spirit of God indwelling that will guide him in his love for Christ, who was crucified for him. The same Spirit also leads him into the truth, God's Word. This is the new life. But the believer also has the indwelling sin (Romans 7:20), this is the flesh, the old life.

It is God's purpose that a man who is born again'walk to the Spirit' (Romans 8:1 KJV, 8:4). But if he doesn't, he automatically falls into a 'walk after the flesh' and minds the things of the flesh, things that are contrary to God (Romans 8:4-8). As a result, his loving relationship with the Lord Jesus disappears, brotherly love cools and the Word of God loses its power.

The root of the division in Corinth lies in the fact that they carnal were (3:1-4) and no longer knew what it was to 'to walk to the Spirit'.

The consequences

They were carnal, not spiritual, which resulted in the following:

Christ the Crucified is no longer central to their thinking. Paul taught them that way, but they lost it (2:2; 3:10-11)
Of course, human thinking finds a place in thinking about 'the things of God' (2:11). Human wisdom becomes more important than the wisdom of God (which is foolishness to the natural man). This theme of human wisdom versus God's wisdom runs through all the chapters, even into chapter 6 (verse 5). This also results in people boasting in their own wisdom and abilities (1:28-31).
they hit the secret lostnamely, that in Christ are hidden all wisdom and all blessings (2:7-10). The Spirit of God was given to them, that they might know the things which God has given them (2:12). But then we must maintain the relationship with Him so that we are spiritual people (2:13-16)
They lost the right view because of this at work in and at the Municipality from God. They had forgotten that it is God Himself who does the work in and on the Church of Christ. The workers like Paul and Apollos are only aids so that God Himself can do the work in the hearts (3:1-9). From their own work of building up the Church, they did not realize that much of it would fail. God's temple is holy (3:17) and should not be taken lightly. They thought they were wise in what they were doing for the church, but they had to become foolish (3:18-23).
Resistance to Paul and his teaching is one of the concrete results of carnality and human wisdom. In the 2^th In his letter to Corinth, this is discussed even more emphatically. But here it also appears; they judge Paul by human standards and accuse him of wrong motives[1] (4:1-5).
Their they put human wisdom above Scripture. But Paul admonishes them that they “do not think of anything beyond what is written”. Paul and Apollos had shown in their teaching that they only applied 'what was written'. Scripture is the standard for every believer and no one can exalt himself above another (4:6). In Corinth, the result was that there were those who put themselves above others and tried to reign about the believers (4:7-8).

Even today, unfortunately, we see the same things on a large scale among believers. I am not going to mention elaborations and examples here, but leave it to yourself to consider and consider these things.

The most important lesson

For any community of believers, the most important thing to learn from this is that every believer learns to "walk in the Spirit," as Paul teaches in his letter to the Romans. We must teach each other from the Scriptures and build each other up and encourage each other to continue in this.

The most important thing is to teach and encourage all believers in a 'walk in the Spirit'.

If we do not do this, we lose this spiritual life on an individual level and carnal Christians arise. We don't have to do anything for that, it happens automatically. And with that we lay the ax to the root of the unity of the believers. A community of believers can only be truly 'communion of God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord' (1:9) in practice, when the believers know and practice what a spiritual life is. That is why Paul also sent Timothy to the church in Corinth to remind them again of what Paul had taught them about a walk with Christ (4:17).

A spiritual life means
“to know nothing, otherwise than Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2)
“nothing too invent above what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6).

A healthy spiritual life is above all to the glory of God, a great blessing to the believer himself and a blessing to the community to which he belongs. But to the world and to the carnal believer it is foolish and contemptible!

Further consequences

When the believers stop walking in the Spirit and end up in a carnal walk, not only the unity of the believers is at stake. It also has consequences as described in chapters 5 and 6 of the 1^th letter to Corinth:

fornication and fornication (1 Corinthians 5; 6:13-20)
broken relationships. Quarrels among brothers over everyday matters resulting in lawsuits (6:1-11).

“Know ye not that ye are God's temple, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? . . . for the temple of God is holy and so are you” (1 Corinthians 3:16,17).

If we keep Jesus' Word
– for the Spirit speaks through the Word –
will He also declare His Word
to those who hear it in prayer.

Yes, that rich Word from above
show us Christ's glory,
where the heart wants to believe
until His treasure is introduced.
Spiritual Songs no. 170 (2016 edition)

[1] The "purposes of the heart" (1 Corinthians 4:5)