The Road to Real Unity
For the Christian there is no doubt about it: the cross of Christ is our only path to unity, because in it God broke down the dividing wall. God has appointed no other way by which we may be saved from our divisions and strife.
What is the crucified life? In his little book The Grace of Yielding, Derek Prince describes its essence: [1]
Paul says, “We ought not to please ourselves.” Do you know what I’ve learned? I’ve learned that every time I do anything effective for God that’s acceptable to Him, I begin by not pleasing myself. I’ve discovered this is an invariable rule: every time I’m pleasing myself, I’m doing nothing that’s worth anything to God. The first thing I’ve got to do is deny myself . . . If you don’t say no to yourself and keep saying no to yourself, you cannot lead a Christian life. You cannot be a self-pleaser and a Christ-pleaser. It’s impossible.
Mick Jagger, considering this truth, concluded, “You’ll never make a saint of me!” [2] He deserves credit for squarely facing the issue – have we done as much? Do we face the fact that obeying the Truth always leads us to the cross, and that ducking the cross always means denying Christ and embracing the Lie?
I want to please myself for just one reason: in my heart I don’t think God can or will please me. But can anyone else? Can I really please myself?
Why does pleasing myself not work?
To really please myself I need life, and I can’t get that from myself. I can only get life from God. Ignoring God’s will in order to please myself is a decision to cut myself off from life, and that can’t possibly wind up pleasing me, no matter how right it seems.
I once found myself wanting to hurt someone for trying to harm another in an Internet discussion. I soon realized that I was reliving a pleasant memory of punching someone in the nose 45 years before and feeling relieved of oppression. This pleasant memory felt euphoric, not like an obviously traumatic memory of abuse, but in exactly the same way, it had trapped me in a course of life-long self-destruction.
Our own pleasures yield the torment of addiction, not real pleasure such as we find in God’s presence. As James said, wars and fightings arise among us because of our pleasures warring in our members. We want to be cured of our diseases and pains, and relieved of the torment of our painful memories. But are we as eager to be cured of our pleasures, of euphoric memories of our time in bondage?
Saul and his army were pleased to annihilate the Amalekites as far as everything they found worthless, but they kept what was good for themselves - supposedly to offer it to God (1 Samuel 15). Did this not cause Saul to lose his kingdom and for the army of Israel to be destroyed at Mount Gilboa?
Did the hard labor and the murder of their children in Egypt destroy the people? Was it not the memory of the melons, the cucumbers, and the fleshpots as they sat by the Nile that kept Egypt in their hearts and caused them to perish in the desert?
Did Peter exaggerate when he wrote that our fleshly desires wage war against our souls – our lives? Are God and his servants bad guys because they call us to abandon these to the death of the cross in exchange for real life? Consider with me the torment we find by seeking unity apart from the cross of Christ.
A name for ourselves, or life in the Name?
The men of Babel were afraid of disunity, so they devised a way to unify themselves. But God answered by confusing their language and scattering them (Gen. 11:1-9). The men of Babel were not divided from each other by their differences but by trying to unite in their own devices. They were divided from each other because they were first divided from God, instead of finding unity in God's truth (Eph. 4:11-16).
Just as God made Sodom and Gomorrah an example to all who would live in an ungodly way (2 Pet. 2:6), He made Babel an example to all who try to manufacture unity in some formula they devise themselves.
The people of the true God have no excuse to rely on such devices, since the One God is our unity. Real unity is from above, the product of His Spirit (Eph. 4:3-6). Unity is a holy thing, not manufactured by us but produced by His anointing and commanded by His blessing (Psalm 133). When we imagine that we can work out our own thing and maybe slap a prayer on it, God moves quickly to confuse and scatter us, as we learn both from church history and the history of the Jews to this day.
When we disagree there is hope, because our opponents may succeed in dragging us to truth. When we divide ourselves from the Truth by building a shallow unity based on our own ideas, is God unjust to divide us from one another?
Every communion emphasizes something which others are neglecting. Those involved are tempted to find their identity in that thing which makes them different, encouraging one another to hold on to it as their ultimate treasure in the same way that idolaters do (Isa. 41:6-7). Didn't Hezekiah have to destroy the bronze serpent God had told Moses to make because the people were burning incense to it (2 Kings 18:4)?
Our differences do distinguish us from each other in our own minds, but they do not make us who we are or give meaning to our lives. Only God in Christ, the maker of all things, can make us real, because He is I AM, the source of all being (Ex. 3:14). Whom we have in common, not what is unique to us, makes us who we are.
Even when "right," the things that distinguish us from other believers are unable to give a common life even to those who share them. Thus we see Protestants divided from the beginning into multiple streams, all originally claiming to hold the Bible as the supreme authority. Only in the living Jesus are we all to be gathered together (2 Thess. 2:1). Nothing else will work.
Since our divisions are not rooted in our disagreements, getting our opinions straightened out is not the cure. Real unity comes only through radical self-denial, through God leading us to the cross. We have to find our identity in the true God who made us, no longer in ourselves, either as individuals or groups. This only happens when we find out that there is indeed no life to be found in ourselves. Only then do we truly begin to see the value of others and become able to love one another.
The disillusionment needed to bring us to this understanding never feels good. The surprising revelation that we cannot be the source of life to ourselves amounts to circumcision (Phil. 3:3), and circumcision is not pleasant. But without it we find nothing but a barren life and pain which never ends (Jer. 15:18-19). C. S. Lewis explains this through the incident in the Chronicles of Narnia in which Aslan saves Eustace from being a dragon. [3]
When Eustace turned into a dragon and his arm turned into a dragon's leg, the bracelet he was wearing became much too small. It hurt Eustace terribly to have Aslan's claws strip off his dragon skin, but otherwise the bracelet would have tormented Eustace for the rest of his life, and he would have lived that life as a dragon, all by himself.
Laodicean "life," or friendship with God?
When we find our worth in something good in ourselves or in our group, we have to find some way to be "right." With great skill, we develop and defend doctrines to that end. The letter to the Laodicean church shows how our success looks to God (Rev. 3:14-22):
The Amen, the faithful and true witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this:
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I would that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich, and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
What was wrong with this church? To better understand that, what was not wrong?
It was not wrong that they were wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. Jesus complained only that they did not realize it. Although these deficiencies did need to be cured, they were not what nauseated the Lord to the point of vomiting - this is the same Jesus who gladly touched lepers and healed them. What then does nauseate Jesus?
Although Jesus is about to vomit them out, if anyone hears His voice and opens the door, He will instead come in and eat with him. Since hearing and opening to Jesus instantly cures His urge to vomit and makes Him ready to sit down to a meal, we see that Jesus is nauseated when we say we are His while refusing to hear His voice, thereby shutting the door against Him.
Why do the Laodiceans not hear? Is it not because God's voice is showing them their wretchedness, poverty, and blindness, which makes them feel unlovable? So Jesus reminds them, "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; be zealous therefore and repent." To be zealous for reproof and discipline, and thereby to repent, will let Jesus in.
Since Jesus says, "Be zealous and repent," some suppose that they were lazy or indifferent. But to feel rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing, they had to have had many members contributing lots of money and busy doing many things. Churches with few members contributing little money and doing few things are not able for long to call themselves rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing. To sober them up, God needs no more than mortgage payments and utility bills.
The command, "Be zealous therefore and repent," follows from the preceding statement, "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline." So the Laodicean church needed to become zealous for one particular thing - to be reproved and disciplined - because that is the special privilege of those whom the Lord loves.
The essence of being a Laodicean church, or an individual Laodicean Christian, is loathing the Lord's reproof. If you reject His discipline, or if you accept it as a wretched necessity like dental work, you are a Laodicean Christian. This is precisely what it means to be an enemy of the cross. All the other symptoms proceed from this one delusion. Let's briefly survey those mentioned in this letter.
In the first place, they were neither cold nor hot - that is to say, they were at the same temperature as their surroundings. This is no surprise, because Christians are exactly like other human beings. The only difference there can be between ourselves and other people is that our God is different and speaks differently - so what becomes of us if we won't listen to Him?
When we reject His reproof and nothing bad seems to happen right away, it hardens us against the truth. In this way Judas Iscariot came to believe that he was getting away with something because Jesus said nothing to him about stealing from the money box (John 12:4-6).
Refusing correction makes us just like those outside, only worse, because we are more likely to put on airs about being different, even though we're not. This condition brings the Lord to the point of vomiting, and others who see through us agree with Him.
By rejecting the light of His word, the Laodiceans became in their self-inflicted darkness completely unaware of what they were. Their hearts, unrestrained by truth, ran wild in self-deception as they convinced themselves of their own excellence.
They were truly blind. They could not see their own condition, but to anyone outside it was obvious - their nakedness was a public spectacle, as ours is today.
Therefore, the Lord advised them to buy from Him gold refined by fire so that they might become rich, white garments to cover their nakedness, and eyesalve for their blind eyes. But how can wretched, miserable, poor people buy such precious things?
No earthly wealth can buy such treasure, as Simon learned in Samaria, so Jesus hastened to tell them how to buy these things without money: "Those whom I love I reprove and chasten; be zealous therefore, and repent." Being zealous for reproof and discipline obtains these good things because it is through reproof and discipline that God breaks the spell which keeps us in our self-destructive ways - as we see in the prodigal son (Luke 15:14-20), and in King Manasseh (2 Chron. 33:10-13).
We have all gone astray. At least in other people, we find this obvious. It stands to reason that when the God of Truth speaks to us, love and truth will often constrain Him to speak correction. Paul describes the word of God as follows: "Every Scripture inspired by God is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Abraham, whose children we are if we believe God as he did, was called the friend of God. He and God could speak freely to one another. A friend of God is open to God's correction and reproof. In turn, he is able to speak freely to God.
Abraham could stand before the Ancient of Days, the Maker of heaven and earth, and remonstrate with Him as an equal, saying, "Should not the Judge of all the earth do right?" For one who accepts God's correction, servility is no more.
If we find reproof and discipline distasteful, the word of God can find no secure place in us, and we cannot possibly be friends of God (John 8:31-45). In this way we exclude Him from our midst, and we become Laodicean churches full of Laodicean people, inadequate for any good work - whether healing the sick, comforting the afflicted, reproving the ruthless, setting prisoners free, or any other good works like these which ought to adorn God's people.
Unfortunately, we remain more than adequate for the self-deceptive work of weaving out of the Scriptures coverings of our own for our nakedness. The more we loathe God's correction, the more skilled we become at explaining how it is not really God's will to do any good thing among us that He is not already doing. No matter how wretched we are, we can persuade ourselves that we are indeed rich and in need of nothing at all!
Can reproof and discipline be anything but distasteful? Doesn't
even the Bible say, "All discipline seems for the moment not to be joyful,
but sorrowful?" Indeed it does, but people everywhere are eager to
endure painful things, when they consider them worthwhile.
The discipline of God - what's in it for us?
My sons are happy to let me to dig out their splinters, even if it hurts a little. People enjoy the beach more than work, but when they're unemployed, they want a job. Many pay good money to go to school and study all night for exams. Others spend six hard hours in the pool, every day of the week, so they can swim in the Olympics.
Do we dislike the Lord's discipline just because it causes pain? Not at all! We all willingly accept harsher discipline every day. We reject the Lord's discipline only because we see no value in it, or because we do not recognize it as a sign of His favor (Prov. 3:11-12, Heb. 12:5-11). So then, consider with me a few benefits of the Lord's reproof, correction, and discipline.
The Lord's reproof delivers us from legalism and self-condemnation
We try to be good so that God can find no occasion to speak to us about anything wrong. This makes us slaves of law, because if we're not hearing from God, we need to get rules to go by in some other way. Many who have learned that legalism is bad are still trying to be good by not being legalistic!
We always fail to keep the rules, no matter what they are, not so much because we are sinners, but because God has not designed us to function through rule keeping. Then we accuse ourselves and receive the accusations of others in order to deny God the opportunity to reprove us Himself.
By striving to fend off God's discipline by disciplining ourselves, we get ourselves under some heavy burdens! No wonder Jesus says, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28).
We escape from this trap when we realize that God Himself will do everything possible to avoid having to inflict painful discipline on us - "He does not afflict willingly, or grieve the sons of men" (Lam. 3:33). Because He loves us and wants to spare us needless pain, we are being good to ourselves when we eagerly seek to be taught, corrected, and disciplined by the Lord, instead of trying to avoid His voice and His hand.
If we are listening to any criticism God has for us, who can add anything to it? God's criticisms don't hurt much, and unlike others, He stops nagging the instant we wise up. We acknowledge the truth about ourselves that He shows us, He forgives us and gets to work on the problem with us, and we're on our way together - on the same team (1 John 1:9, Heb. 12:9-13).
Self-condemnation is impossible in this case. If we're letting Him teach us His rules, our own rules and those of others no longer seem quite so important. Neither does it seem quite so necessary to judge and evaluate ourselves and others, because the Lord's judgments are both more gentle and more accurate - and unlike ours, they result in change.
The Lord's discipline assures us that we're His and that He won't reject us
David wrote, "Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me" (Ps. 23:4). The Shepherd's rod and staff comfort us because they assure us that He will not let us wander off and be devoured by enemies.
His discipline keeps us in the way of life, where we can find good food and clean water. If we feel insecure about our relationship with God, let's first make sure we're accepting His discipline before we look at other possibilities.
This is obvious in all human relationships. If your boss can't correct you when you make mistakes, can you feel secure about your job? Can a child feel secure in his family if no one can say anything to him when he's wrong? If my wife has trouble getting me to listen, I'll have some trouble myself!
Although we may not enjoy being warned at the time, we all know who our friends are by who speaks up when we're headed for disaster. Whoever willfully shuts his eyes to problems in order to avoid conflict is refusing to walk in the love of God - he "causes trouble" (Prov. 10:10) and "devises perverse things" (Prov. 16:30). In the end, we avoid plenty of trouble by walking in the truth.
God's insistence on correcting and disciplining those that are His does not suggest that He is rejecting us. On the contrary, we know by this that He is a real friend, committed to His relationship with us.
Discipline heals us, and those who accept it receive the Holy Spirit
Peter wrote: "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sins and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. For you were continually going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls" (1 Pet. 2:24-25). Sins, and especially going astray like sheep, are a form of disease.
Jesus obtained healing of these things through the cross, but we actually receive that healing through God's reproofs and chastenings – the cross applied by God to our lives, not just talked about by us as a doctrine (Heb. 12:11-13, Isa. 19:22). Because the righteous live by faith (Hab. 2:4, Rom. 1:17), and the “faith” which talks and does not act is in fact unbelief (James 2:14-26), mere mental “belief” unaccompanied by real life obedience is useless, as the lives of many make obvious.
God's Spirit comes with His word, which discipline causes us to accept (Ps. 119:67). It follows logically that God's discipline causes us to receive the Holy Spirit. David, who was often disciplined by the Lord, and frequently by means of other men, made this clear. In Psalm 141:5 he said, "Let the righteous smite me in kindness and reprove me; it is oil upon the head; do not let my head refuse it." We know that people received the Holy Spirit when the apostles laid hands on them, but here David says we receive the anointing oil of the Holy Spirit when the righteous smites us in kindness and reproves us. So let's not refuse it!
God's discipline cures the injuries we've received from abusive authority
Contrasting his authority with what we have all suffered under and inflicted on others, Jesus said, "The kings of the nations lord it over them, and those who have authority over them are called, 'Benefactors.'" This point is so vital that it is recorded in three gospels and emphasized by Peter in much the same words (Luke 22:25-27, Matt. 20:25-28, Mark 10:42-45, 1 Pet. 5:3).
Often we shy away from God's authority and discipline because life has taught us what to expect from authority. Although the Bible enjoins us to submit to all legitimate authority, even if exercised badly, what it says about the rulers of this world is not pretty. The essential mark of their authority is that, being called benefactors, they lord it over people.
This arose right in the beginning, when mankind was first separated from the life of God in the garden. God's life brought man forth from the dust, and the woman from the man. Separated from God's life, the man was doomed to sink back into the dust he was formed from. In the same way, the woman came to cling to the husband she was taken from, who ruled over her for his own pleasure.
The essence of worldly authority is that the ruler uses his authority to satisfy his own desires, and this always ends in his oppressing those he rules. For this reason, even when rebels sincerely wish to free people from oppression, their habit of resisting authority in favor of their own desires leads them to establish regimes far more oppressive and ruthless than those they overthrow.
Fortunately, since God does give His wisdom to all men, worldly authority seldom fully expresses its essential nature. But we have all felt its bite. Even the earth itself groans under the feet of those who exploit it with no regard for its welfare, forgetting that we are its stewards, not its owners (Gen. 2:15, Rev. 11:18) - and that every steward must one day give account to the one who appointed him.
Jesus and his apostles preached the good news of the kingdom of God. At the heart of the gospel is good news about authority. Unlike Adam, who was dragged back to the dust of death because he rejected the life-giving word of God, Jesus willingly went to the death of the cross in obedience to that word, and so He was raised from the dead.
Although Eve was the mother of all living (Gen. 3:20), she was subjected to the rule of a dying man. But the Lamb's wife, taken from His bleeding side, lives under the authority of the One whose kingdom is based on self-denial leading to endless life. Our King does not live off his subjects; his subjects live through him, because he gets his life from the Father and shares it with them.
It stands to reason that the correction and discipline of God are completely unlike what we're used to. Hebrews 12:9-10 captures the essence of that difference as follows:
We had fathers of our flesh to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they were disciplining us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.
This news really is too good to believe, because all rulers claim to be ruling us for our good and it's never so.
In His mercy, it is true, God has established them to do us good even as they serve themselves, because to serve themselves effectively they need to give some thought to the welfare of those under their charge. Just as we, being evil, know how to do good to our children, other rulers to some extent do the same.
But the bottom line is that people exercise authority as it seems best to them. Often enough that means for their own pleasure, so when God claims to be disciplining us for our good, it takes a while to realize it's really true. We never really know and can believe it until it touches us. When it does, everything changes.
By experiencing God's discipline, we learn to rule as He does
God has in the strongest terms required all who exercise authority in His kingdom to do so as He does, denying themselves in the same way (Ezek. 34, 1 Pet. 5:1-5, Eph. 5:25-28). But how can we actually learn to do this?
Every person is called to be a ruler (Gen. 1:26-28). At a minimum, each of us must become ruler of his own spirit (Prov. 25:28). But, by definition, one who cannot deny himself lacks the power to rule his own spirit, so how can he rule justly over anyone else? To exercise authority justly is impossible without self-denial in favor of justice and the welfare of others. As Jesus put it, "My judgment is just because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me" (John 5:30).
A self-indulgent ruler oppresses those in his charge in three main ways, which Jesus confronted in the Pharisees (Matt. 23), and which are especially obvious in the way parents handle their children.
In the first place, he buys himself personal peace by being slack when he should be firm, avoiding confrontation with himself and others (Matt. 5:17-20, 21, 27, 33, 38, 44). Moreover, he relies on violence to keep himself and others in line, instead of earning his credibility by living out a life of truth (Col. 2:20-23). Finally, what he really wants for people is not their good but that they should make him look good (Gal. 6:12-13).
In combination these are especially abhorrent - for example, it is commonplace to deal harshly with others so that we can go easy on ourselves. A better recipe for misery, whether at home, at work, or anywhere else, is hard to imagine. But these things are unavoidable when we aim to please ourselves instead of trusting God to please us in due time (Ps. 16:11).
When we meet God's discipline, we keep finding to our surprise that in Him these things are completely absent. God never buys Himself personal peace at the expense of truth. Temper tantrums, sulking, and other power games don't ward off His hand because He cannot be manipulated - a delightful reward of self-denial which can be ours as well. When necessary, He has given up His own sanctuary to destruction and His people to exile - He even gave His own Son up to death on a cross rather than compromise with His people in their rebellion.
Rather than keeping people in line by force for His own comfort, He has often suffered violence in order to remain faithful to Himself in truth. This is so much the case that almost everyone is exasperated with God for not being as impatient as we are.
God certainly shows amazing indifference to how His people make Him look, so that the name of God is blasphemed among the nations on account of us, just as the Scripture says. If God were disciplining us to make Himself look good, things would look a lot different than they do!
John testified, "We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is" (1 John 3:2). How can we be sure of this?
Earlier in the same letter, John wrote, "What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you" (1 John 1:3). John knew that seeing Him as He is will make us like Him because he could see it working that way already.
Our children become what they see in us, not what they hear about us. Should it surprise us that we too become like God by growing up in His household, being trained and disciplined as His children? Being under His authority teaches us to exercise authority as He does (Eph. 6:7-9). By seeing what He is we become like Him; by seeing what He does we come to do likewise (John 5:19, 14:6-15).
The promise of Jesus to those in Laodicea who overcome is that they will sit down with Him on His throne as He sat down with His Father on His throne. As we have seen, they overcome by becoming zealous to be trained and disciplined, even when it's unpleasant.
Being disciplined by God makes us grow obedient like Jesus, because the discipline of God is better than the discipline of the world and brings forth a better kind of obedience. As Jesus promised the Laodiceans, the result of humbling ourselves in this way is to be lifted up to have authority with Him (Phil. 2:3-11, Matt. 8:8-9).
Can we really desire to deny ourselves?
Virtue is nice to think about, but in the average human being, it can't compete with self-interest. The gospel is designed for average and below average human beings - for sinners - not for philosopher-kings and other non-existent beings. The gospel calls us to self-denial and suffering on the basis that it will do something for us.
Having set the consequences of obedience and disobedience before the people, Moses concluded, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your seed, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him, for that is your life" (Deut. 30:19-20).
Jesus put it this way: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny Himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's shall save it" (Mark 8:34-35).
Jesus did not call people to follow Him because it is a saintly thing to do. He called people to follow Him and deny themselves for exactly the same reason they leave behind everything in the house to escape from a fire - in order to save their lives. Failing to follow Jesus is not due to our being self-centered people; we fail to follow because we fail to understand and believe what he says about our own welfare - not having hearts to know, eyes to see, or ears to hear (Deut. 29:4, Eph. 4:17-18, Matt. 13:14-15, Heb. 3:19).
When we do understand and believe him, we realize that denying ourselves for his sake is a good deal for us. Matthew the tax collector recognized a good deal when he saw it and left everything behind for Jesus. If he had not, what would have become of him?
The road to unity in truth
Real unity in the truth is clearly the will of Jesus Christ for us. How can it be otherwise if we are walking in his truth, since our God is one and His truth is one? But that doesn't make it our will. That happens only when we find out that the will of our God is good and acceptable and perfect - for us.
The first step to the unity of the Spirit is to consider the evidence of our lives and acknowledge to the God of Truth that we simply don't want unity, because that would involve being joined to people we don't want to be joined to. God can work with that. Since it's the truth, it's a good place to start (1 John 1:6-9).
Even when we want real unity, we fear defilement by the errors of others. This concern is not to be lightly dismissed; we all have sins enough of our own without participating in the sins of others (1 Tim. 5:22). For this reason, we have to take care to build our unity on truth, and so the issues which divide us must be squarely faced, first before God and then with one another.
We can decontaminate each other, rather than corrupting one another, by receiving one another just as Jesus has received us (Rom. 15:1-7). Because He can receive the most deceived and corrupt of us and become one spirit with us without being corrupted Himself, we know that God is able to make us do this too.
Just the same, we are afraid to try this life. It feels safer to keep our distance. But it's not safer. Although "bad company corrupts good morals," if we take refuge behind a wall of our own making, we separate ourselves as the Pharisees did - and that's real defilement. Playing it safe is not safe!
To be safe we must find out from God how to receive one another as He has received us. If we are not serious about this, will He not fulfill His promise to measure to us the measure we measure to others? Will He not turn us away just as we turn others away?
A fundamental cause of disunity is that we want to be able to feel like first class Christians, at least as first class as everyone else. This causes us to push aside and shut our ears to anyone who makes us feel otherwise. Know for certain that the church in Laodicea did not become what they were by welcoming those who spoke the truth about their condition. Just like us, they shut the Lord out by shutting out anyone who told them unpleasant truth, anyone who was not getting with their program. Without a doubt, they pushed the Lord out by pushing out those that He sent.
The craving to feel first class is expressed with exceptional honesty by John MacArthur, confessing that he has questioned himself as follows: "Are all those people who are supposedly having all those amazing experiences for real? Could it be that I'm missing out on what God is doing? Are my charismatic brothers and sisters reaching a higher level in their walk with Christ?" (italics in original). [4]
Do we really need to be like the wicked queen in "Snow White" asking, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?"
I can easily answer these questions for myself from the Bible’s descriptions of worship, intercession for others, and many other things. From these I know for sure that people are experiencing things with God that I know nothing of, that I am indeed missing out on what God is doing, and that plenty of people have reached and will reach a higher level in their walk with Christ than I have. (And if I keep going with Him, I will be one of those people.) The Bible tells me to consider others better than myself because it is true!
A simple example of how friction arises from spiritual pride is the claim that charismatic believers have received something significant from God through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the offense taken by others. Those without this experience feel put down, if they want to believe they're as close to God as anyone else.
Those having this experience are apt to feel superior, especially when others prove it by their defensiveness. The pride and carnality of each is quite obvious to the other, and poisonous doctrines sprout up quickly on either side in order to explain it all. Mary the mother of Jesus said it well: "He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart" (Luke 1:51).
The road to unity passes through humility - you can't get there from pride. Let's see how humility might work in this example.
One who has not experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit as it is understood among charismatics, knowing himself to be poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked, will be delighted to hear that someone else may have something he doesn't have, because it may do something for him too.
The other, having experienced this baptism in the Holy Spirit, still realizes that he too is poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked. Knowing how important it is to consider others better than himself, he fears the temptation to feel superior. He wants to know anything that others might have for him, and what's lacking in his own life that will remind him to honor others.
Humility drives both to be more open to God's truth and to one another, and the way is clear to move ahead in unity, even though their doctrinal understanding and experience are different for now. And when we have a real commitment to honor one another in truth, rather than to be proven right, errors are easily abandoned and do little harm.
Glad says it well in the words of this song: [5]
The only lasting love begins with honesty,
So don't become discouraged when we disagree.
Lies are so appealing when you want to be my friend,
But all you'll do is hurt me in the end.
Iron sharpens iron,
As we get closer there might be pain.
Iron sharpens iron,
We can never remain the same.
If only we have patience while we bear the pain,
Holding on we know our hope is not in vain.
For hope is not deceptive,
When we are not deceived,
And the love of God appears when we believe.
Iron sharpens iron,
As we get closer there might be pain.
Iron sharpens iron,
We can never remain the same.
Every stone for building must be cut to size,
And we as living stones must come to realize:
To be changed into His likeness,
There's so much we must be shown,
And we were never meant to grow alone.
Iron sharpens iron,
As we get closer there might be pain.
Iron sharpens iron,
We can never remain the same.
There it is. Shall we retire each to his citadel (Amos 6:8), like Jeroboam protecting our little kingdoms with our own inventions, comforting ourselves in our Christian ghetto like the Laodiceans until the Lord vomits us out? Or shall we seek humility as Zephaniah advised, the humility which comes only through the Lord's reproofs and discipline, administered to us through the instruments of His choice? Think what will happen if we do (Ps. 133):
Behold how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil upon the head,
Coming down upon the beard,
Aaron's beard,
Coming down upon the edge of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
Coming down upon the mountains of Zion;
For there the Lord commanded the blessing - life forever.
Notes
1. Derek Prince, The Grace of Yielding (Charlotte: Derek Prince Ministries – International, 1977), 13-14
2. The Rolling Stones, “Saint of Me” from the album Bridges to Babylon (Beverly Hills: Virgin Records, 1997).
3. C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" (New York: Collier Books, 1970), Chapter 7, 88-90.
4. MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos, 20.
5. Glad, "Iron Sharpens Iron" from the album Beyond a Star
(Waco: Myrrh Records, Word, Inc, 1980).