The Necessary Unity

There is an African proverb that says, “The unity of the herd forces the lion to lie down hungry.” It is an illustration that, to some extent, fits us well. The one who prowls around like a “roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” continues to feast in the very territory that Christ purchased with His precious blood so that, far from being devoured, we might have an abundant life. Every day the world seems to drift further astray, while we Christians remain divided. Divided kingdoms end in failure. Every Christian organization, knowingly or unknowingly, fattens up its own philosophy and rejects or questions the others. The truth is that we ourselves, in many ways, cause the spread of the Kingdom to be delayed even further. We all know it, but few dare to address the issue from the heart of the divine perspective. Without the necessary unity, it will take us far too long to reach the lost world.

The art of overcoming is learned through defeats, as a South American national hero used to say; and Christians everywhere must not doubt that unity is biblical and something to which everyone aspires. God speaks to us today, exhorting us to “make every effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:3), and to build up His church with the gifts imparted by the Spirit “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God… to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

God wants us to unite. Unity is not only a requirement for fulfilling the Great Commission; it is also like the watchman who makes visible to the ungodly the testimony of a living hope, the glorious expectation of a Christ who is coming and who, when that happens, will ask us why we were not more diligent in seeking the long-awaited unity. According to the Lausanne Covenant (International Congress on World Evangelization, 1974), “visible church unity in truth is God’s purpose.”

Adam sinned when Eve gave him food to eat. He was not deceived (1 Tim. 2:14); rather, he was conscious of his participation in sin when he disobeyed God’s command. The lesson for us today is that although Satan may be the tempter, we are the ones who sin; therefore, we are not justified in denying our identity in Christ by continually falling back into the depths of the first Adam. Regarding unity among Christians, Satan continues to tempt us again and again.

When we look at today’s world in spiritual terms, we might imagine the Sodom described in Genesis 19, so tightly bound to sin and human wickedness. But that is no longer news to anyone; the bad thing is that we have grown accustomed to seeing wickedness and do not feel the need to denounce it. Christ had no qualms about confronting the injustices of His time and the hypocritical conduct of religious leaders who said one thing and, in practice, did another. Our divisions are not only shameful but sinful. The threads woven together by such doctrinal and philosophical arguments within these divisions weaken the body of Christ. The first to be offended, I suppose, must be God Himself.

The Lord continues to walk through the garden and asks us where we are. The garden is like a symbol of the unity He longs for among all His people… but sometimes there is fear, because there is a certain nakedness we do not want to expose. The lack of unity among Christians resembles that nakedness. I would not want to hide like Adam the next time the Lord asks. I want to be in His garden. And you—what are you going to answer Him? My prayer is that, sooner rather than later, we may meet there. God bless you!