Unity and Truth

With death at His doorstep Christ prayed for the unity of the church (John 17:23). Likewise, Paul instructed the churches of Rome and Ephesus (Romans 15:15 and Ephesians 4:3) to be unified with one another.

Are we as a church unified today? We have a number of denominations—in this country alone there are too many to count. Churches split over disagreements about what type of music to play during worship or what color the padding on the pews should be. Certainly this is not the unity Christ prayed for and Paul instructed us to keep.

But in our quest for unity we must not react too far the other way and fall into ecumenicalism. When one is a driving a car and they begin to skip left the most common mistake is to turn right too far and in that way crash one’s car. Though we may wrongfully lack unity we must not seek unity at the cost of truth.

We must keep in mind what Jesus said in John 4:23. There he told the Samaritan woman at the well that the Father’s goal is to have people who worship in spirit and in truth. We are to be one in spirit with God and with one another, but this unity must be anchored in the truth. There can be no unity outside of the truth.

Paul wrote that our bodies are temples of God (I Corinthians 6:19). How can we unite what is holy with that which is base? How can we unite our physical bodies with a prostitute, Paul asks. In the same way the church as a whole is the body of Christ. How can we unite what is true and holy with that is false and base? How can we unite the body of Christ with a false church, with a false God, a doctrine of the devil?

Luther and Calvin broke from the Catholic Church because they believed it had moved so far from the truth that it had ceased being the church. The Medieval Catholic Church preached a false gospel; a gospel of works. In Paul’s day men preached this gospel. In Galatians 5 he demonstrated the falsity of this belief and condemns those who hold it. He would have no unity with such men.

In I Timothy 6 Paul warned Timothy to be on guard against men who preach false doctrine. He instructed Timothy to be on guard and hold firm to the truth. Yes we should seek greater unity, but we must be cautious. We are to worship God in truth and we must not exchange the truth of God for a falsehood in order to have unity with others.

It is true that no one has a perfect conception of God. But there are a number of things that the Bible makes perfectly clear: God created man, man sinned, man needed salvation, God provided salvation to man by means of the death of His son Jesus. And this salvation is offered to all freely. If a group claims to come in the name of Christ and rejects any of these central tenants of our faith (and many do) no such unity can be possible. As for other more minor disagreements—disagreements over things which the Bible lacks clear instruction, like type of music, there is no excuse for disunity. In these cases we must sacrifice our pride for the sake of unity. But while doing so we must be careful that we never sacrifice the truth.