Unity in the Body

Unity of the Body I have always stood against the normal preaching about unity in the church, mainly because it is used to cover up bad leadership and at times sin within a particular physical church. One cannot gossip, if you have an issue take it to the offending person. Do you realize to take an issue to someone requires that the person have an attitude or personality sufficient to do so. There are those who avoid any type of conflict. Often times, the doctrine of no gossip is used to silence congregants, used to control the people. Leadership it seems is infallible and untouchable. To challenge leadership is descension and thus evil. With such statements, sins are often hidden from the congregation, even the church board or elder board. When things are swept under the carpet, hidden in the dart, like nasty mold, it grows until it infects others. Thus, I have also stood up against this doctrine. However, I do support a different concept of unity in the body. Unity in the body does not mean hiding sin, it means being one, it means there is but one church, one denomination. As I stated, often such calls forbidding gossip, taking offenses to the offender, etc. tends to sweep sins of the leadership and lack of leadership ability under the carpet. Christians often quote the bible, Proverbs 27:17, “Iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another,” but rarely do we practice it. James 5:16 states, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” Many, if not most, protestants berate Catholics for their policy of confession, yet here we see James telling us to confess. Here again, this is something we do not do until we are usually imploding. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 again tells us to be there, two are better than one, to catch the other. Consider the importance of James 5:19-20, “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul form death and will cover a multidate of sins.” I can list many more passages that tell us to hold each other accountable. It does not say wait for the spirit to move you or push it off to a pastor or a pastor to push it off to another. No, we, each of us, are to hold one another accountable for the purpose of catching a falling brother or sister. This applies to even holding pastors and ministry leaders accountable, and I would dare say, even more so. In order to be united, then we must be equal in all things. One church, one denomination. Unity does not mean following a doctrine, person or denomination blindly. Ephesians 4 tells us to walk worthy of the calling for which we were called, to keep the unity of the Spirit, a bond of peace. This does not say I must agree with you in everything but rather to walk worthy of my calling, to allow the spirit of the Lord to unit us so we can live in peace. We are one, 1 Corinthians 12:12 speaks of this. It is not good to say some are toes others are hands, it is better to understand we are one. We are one. We have the same God, the same salvation, the same faith, the same spirit, the same word. We are not supposed to be Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Nazarenes, Methodist, or any one of the 40,000 world wide denominations. Some will argue nonetheless, we are still one. No, we are not. We are not one, when one denomination does not accept another’s baptism, refuse to administer communion to people from other denominations, cannot even bring themselves to walk into other churches. We are not one when we do not work for the same causes together. We are not one when we have competing ministries within the same community. We are not one when we feel or even say, our pastor is on fire, our worship band is the best, our building has so many great things. We are not one when pastors from different churches will not come to the rescue of another pastor who is falling. Rather many pastors accept new congregants into their church, never inquiring why they are leaving the church they had attended for 15 years. Even though they know there is something wrong at the other church, they mind their own business. A brother may be wounded, may be in trouble and like James 5:19-20 states, help someone when they are wandering from the truth. I ask you brothers and sisters, can you imagine? I so love the song, I can only imagine, but lets place it in a different context. Can you only imagine what this world would be like if instead of 40,000 different denominations we were truly one? A world where I can walk into a church and be served by that pastor, offered communion, my wounds bound, my hurts healed. A world where if a pastor serving a physical location is sinning, and a pastor a few blocks away hears of it and comes to his side and brings him back to the truth. What a place this world would be. Finally, I cannot, and I refuse to, believe that what we now call church is what God wants or that Paul and Peter ever thought would have happened. We have allowed our humanness to infect the body. Every schism, every denomination is a creation of man due largely to differences in doctrine. I say, let us begin by throwing off our manmade ideas. Let us go back to the beginning, back to the basics and start all over again. Start with prayer and then put action to it. Put God in the center not our own ideas. May God bless us in our churches and may He unveil the truth to us all.