A Church United
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· 6 viewsA church united in Christ to share God's grace and show God's glory.
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Introduction
This morning we are on week 2 of a 5-week series unpacking our new mission statement. If you weren’t here, or need a reminder, our mission statement can be found in the bulletin insert, it reads, “A church united in Christ to share God’s grace and show God’s glory.”
Last week, as we celebrated the Lord’s Supper, we talked about what it means to be united to Christ on a more individual basis. This morning, we will consider how our personal union with Christ is connected to our interpersonal relationships with other believers. Or to put it another way, last week we talked about being united in Christ, this morning, we will talk about being a church united in Christ.
Scripture
Our passage this morning is found in . If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word. We do this in recognition that God’s Word is the most important thing we can hear today and to show appreciation to God for His Word. says,
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.”
Thank you, you may be seated.
As I already alluded to, our union with Christ is more than just an individual, personal thing. When we are united to Christ, we are united to what He is united to. For example, our union with Christ, as believers, is the basis of us being adopted into God’s family. We are now members of the household of faith in which we have many brothers and sisters.
In the passage we just read and in other passages, Paul uses the analogy of a body. Because of our union with Christ, through His Spirit, we are intimately connected with other believers. It is absolutely true that because of our union with Christ, we are more connected to the genuinely Christian illegal alien than we are to our genuinely atheistic neighbor. In Christ, we are part of the universal Church. We are united to all other believers around the world, but when Paul uses the analogy of the body, his concerns are more local. Paul is talking about the local church. His letter was to the church at Corinth, and so it applies more directly to us as a local body of believers.
Imagine, with me for a second, a church where almost everyone is alike. Same ethnicity. Same stage of life. Same age. Same background and culture. Same likes and dislikes. Same musical preferences. Same politics. Now, there may be a few outliers here or there. A few people who don’t quite fit all of those marks, but for the most part I described group of people who are very homogenous – there isn’t much variety. That church which I described is very comfortable. It is easy to go to and relaxing – as long as you are like that church. As long as you look, act, think, live etc. like the other people in that church. And to be clear, I’m speaking of any church, whether it be a cowboy church, a hipster church or our church. What often happens is that we forget where our union comes from and start find connections elsewhere.
Look again at verse 13 in our passage. It says, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” You cannot get more culturally different in the ancient world than a Jew and a Greek. They had totally different cultures and worldviews and ideas about worship and government and everything else, yet there they are part of one body. Likewise, you cannot get a broader view of social status than that of slave and free. Again, we see they are part of one body. The same body.
We cannot be a church of only hands. Well, we will allow an elbow or two or maybe a shoulder, because they are close enough, but none of those ears or feet. They just don’t fit in. So often I fear that we have given up the precious jewel of our unity with each other through Christ. I fear we’ve traded our unity through Christ for uniformity in preference and practice. I fear we’ve become a social club instead of a church.
On occasion, I read books on church growth strategies and whatnot, and some of them have some helpful insights, but many of them are simply not worth the paper they are printed on. I say that because so often they are built on this pragmatic, preference-based model. Let’s give people what they want, what they prefer, and they will come to church. Let’s make church comfortable for ourselves, or for this group of people, or for that group of people. How about instead, we simply obey the Word of God!? Let us be a church that is united in Christ.
One of the things we must understand is that our vertical and our horizontal relationships affect each other. If my relationship with God is not right, that usually overflows into the way I treat other people. And likewise, if my relationship with my brothers and sisters in Christ is fractured, then my relationship with God cannot be whole. tells us exactly that. It says, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
Those are serious words. He is a liar. Cannot love God. You can try to hide behind the whole, “I love them, I just don’t like them”, but God is not fooled by your semantics and word play. We cannot take disunity within the body of Christ lightly. Scripture warns against it over and over again.
Look at with me. It says, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
We might be tempted to think of corrupting talk to be using foul language, but that is not what that passage is talking about. It is talking about any type of speech that does not build up and edify.
Scripture is explicit in how believers are to interact with one another within the church. Listen to What Paul says in . “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Paul issues a serious warning there. He is talking to people who claim to be part of the church. People who claim to be united to Christ. And Paul tells us what the works of the flesh are. Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, and envy. De we have any of that in our midst? We ought not. Those sins should be as shocking and distasteful to us as the others in the list like sexual immorality and drunkenness and orgies. We’ve been warned, those who do such things – not just the “really bad ones” – will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Disunity in the local church is not just an “oh well” kind of thing. It is a symptom of serious spiritual illness. Disunity can only exist where the Spirit of Christ is not welcomed.
says, “Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.”
Those verses teach that one of the things that should make us stand out from the culture that surrounds us is our unity. Again, we aren’t a social club. We are the body of Christ! And we should act and look like it. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. There is supposed to be something markedly different about the way Christians interact with each other.
Passage after passage warns about disunity and the types of actions that cause and flow from disunity. Take as yet another example. “For I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish—that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.”
It is well past time for us to put away these works of the flesh. I’m not naïve. I know that people talk and spend time on the phone and gossip and complain and stir up strife and dissension, but I also know that that type of behavior is unbecoming of a Christian. Is fleshly and sinful, and harms the body of Christ and grieves the Holy Spirit.
So, how can we as a church united in Christ conquer this type of sin? First, we must actually desire to. We must desire unity in Christ over uniformity in preference. We must be convinced from the Scriptures that disunity harms the cause of Christ. We must realize that a body that is in disunity cannot grow. It dies.
And it starts with us individually. The very first thing that we should do is ask ourselves the difficult question. Is the reason that there is disunity in the church because of me. An even harder aspect of that question that we need to ask is this, “Is my contention with others an indication that I am not united to Christ?” It is a serious question, but also a real possibility. If are to be believed, there will be many at the judgment who will be expecting to hear, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”, but instead will hear, “Depart from me you worker of iniquity.”
That is one of my greatest pastoral fears, that someone for whom I am responsible will hear those terrible words – especially in light of these warnings that we’ve seen and how common division and dissension and strife and gossiping and quarrelling and disputing are.
Believers can fall into this type of sin too, no doubt about it, but the difference is that a believer when shown their sin will repent of it and go and sin no more. An unbeliever will seek to justify their actions in some way. “Well, I’m just venting.” “They deserve for people to know this.” “This is for the greater good.” Or some other way of justifying themselves so that they can continue in their sin.
So, the first thing we can do to combat disunity – after realizing how serious it is – is to make sure we are united to Christ and where we have sinned to correct that.
A second thing we can do is hang up. It takes more than one person to sow discord and division. It takes the sower and the one who listens. If someone calls you and begins to discuss things that falls under “corrupting talk”, tell them – lovingly – that you do not wish to discuss such things. If they are complaining about another person, encourage them to handle it biblically according to . Likewise, if these conversations happen face to face, simply point out that you have no desire to partake in divisive conversations which harm the body of Christ. If no one listens to the rumor mill, the rumor mill dies. May the grapevine die so that the church can thrive! As says, “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, “knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.” The people who stir up division, already have shown themselves for what they are. Do not be afraid to hang up. To screen your calls. Sometimes it is the godly thing to do.
I want to mention something in passing to avoid becoming unbalanced. Although these passages and many others along with them talk about division and being divided etc., there are some instances that division is acceptable and even good – And that is when the Gospel is at stake. If someone is teaching a false Gospel, it is good to refute and rebuke that, but even then, it is not done through backchannels and whispers, but is confronted in the plain light of day.
To wrap up, let us all be intentional in having our unity with Christ flow into our unity with each other. The reality is that in Christ, there is no division, and so any division that there is must not be of Christ.
Conclusion
If you are here this morning and this talk of being united to Christ seems foreign to you, and you see the works of the flesh playing our in your life, I want you to know that only through Christ can you be reconciled to God the Father. You must repent of your sin and trust in Christ. The Holy Spirit will indwell you and cause good works to grow in place of the bad.
Perhaps you are a Christian, but you realize that you have been harming the cause of Christ by sinning against His Body. In reality, we all fail in this area from time to time, but we are promised that if we confess our sins, God is faithful to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
One last word to you, fellow believers. It is almost impossible to stop a bad habit – especially a sinful one such as gossip and divisiveness without replacing it with something else. Because of the Spirit within us, we can and should replace it with something else. Earlier when I referenced , stopped a couple verses prematurely. After listing the works of the flesh, Paul continues with this in verses 22 - 26, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”
We will now have a time of worship through response. We believe that any time we hear the Word of God, we respond either in rebellion or in worship. Please respond in worship. Do not harden your hearts today. I will be on the front row worshipping with you. If you need someone to pray with you or to talk with you, I’d be delighted to do that. The front is also always opened if you would like to pray here.
Let’s pray.