A Call for Unity
In identity politics, political causes and actions are based on one’s group identity; be it ethnic, gender, racial, or religious. One’s world view, alliances, and agendas are determined by the groups' perceived grievances and perceptions as an oppressed group. And they see other groups that do not share their views as the oppressors. Another belief of identity politics is the view that truths regarding human life are merely social constructs. In other words, truth is relative-- there is no absolute standard of right and wrong by which one’s values are formed. And if you don’t wholeheartedly affirm and support the socially constructed realities of a group, and dare to voice your own views, you will be labeled as a hatemonger; shamed and canceled out.
Rosaria Butterfield helps illustrate how viewing truth as a social construct plays out in the lives of people. While speaking at a university, Rosaria shared a story about a transgender friend who had placed her “large hand” over her own as an expression of support and comfort. At that point, a woman approached the microphone and shouted: “That’s hate speech!”
Butterfield replied, “So . . . it is hate speech to say that Jill’s hands are large?”
The student exploded: “Of course it is!”
Rosaria explained: “Jill stands six foot two without heels…I’m five two. My hands barely cover an octave on the piano. Compared to mine, Jill’s hands are large. Large is a descriptive adjective.”
The woman replied: “Transgender women are hurt by such insensitive observations. It’s hateful.”
Rosaria asked: “Why is it hateful to say Jill’s hands are large?”
The woman insisted: “This is what leads LGBTQ+ people to suicide!”
Rosaria responded: “But the size of Jill’s hands is a measurable, objective truth.”
The woman protested, “Who cares about truth? Your truth isn’t my truth. Your truth hates my reality!”
What confusion! What a distortion of objective truth and reality! As illustrated by Butterfield’s story, Identity politics, which is worldly human wisdom, is redefining good and evil in the lives of people today. It’s antithetical to the gospel because it’s opposed to the objective truth that one’s true identity can only be found in God, who created man in His own image, and in Jesus, who shed His blood to reconcile us back to God.
Sadly, the ideology of identity politics, which is behind much of the polarization and division in our society, has crept into the Church and divided it. To be a healthy church that impacts the world for Christ, we must be united.
In this blog, we are going to examine 3 keys by which the church can experience unity and harmony that exalts the beauty of Jesus, edifies the church in love and executes His mission on earth to the glory of His name.
1. Recognize our common problem: Pride
The first key to achieving and maintaining unity and harmony in the church is to recognize our common problem, which is rooted in pride. After reminding the church in Corinth of their position and provision in Christ, which they are to live out, Paul begins to address a major problem in the church, namely division. He makes this urgent appeal in verse 10:
“I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.” (1 Corinthians 1:10)
Now, when Paul writes "that all of you agree," he’s not saying that they are to all agree about everything including non-essential matters. To agree doesn’t mean that we all must have the same preferences for music, like the same ethnic foods, or share all the same political views. Unity is not uniformity.
In our humanness, we tend to gravitate to groups that share things in common with us like age, race, ethnicity, culture, social economic backgrounds, and aspirations. A church can have uniformity in this way, and still not have unity.
Paul is not saying that to achieve unity we all have to look the same or think the same about everything. On the contrary, as Eric Geiger put it, “Our unity is most pronounced when we are unified with people who are not like us because the source of our unity, Christ—is put on display. Unity, not uniformity, is an essential mark of a healthy church.”
There’s nothing necessarily sinful about our cultural, social, and gender distinctives. The problem lies when we allow these distinctives to divide us from others or to exclude others because they are not like us (Revelation 5:9). Notice that the division and quarreling in the church in Corinth was rooted in pride as factions had developed where each group felt superior to others based on their associations and group identity. Paul wrote: “For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers...” (1 Corinthians 1:11).
Division in the church is a very serious thing to God and must be addressed. It will tear the church apart, damage our gospel witness, and bring shame to the name of Jesus. Repeatedly the scriptures warn against division in the church and exhorts us to deal with it in a God honoring way. (Proverbs 6:16-19). God takes His dwelling place, His temple, His people very seriously. All the gossip, slander, and divisive talk that tears down rather than builds up the church will be dealt with by God (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
In light of this, let me ask you, are you part of the problem or the solution? Are you being used of God to build up your brothers and sisters in Christ’s or are you being used of the enemy to divide and destroy? Do you take the call for unity in the church and warnings against disunity seriously? Do our private actions speak louder than our public amens on Sunday morning?
Now, we learned in verse 11 that Paul heard about the division in the church from Chloe’s people. She didn’t go around gossiping about the problem to people that would not care to do anything about it. She went to the Apostle Paul. And notice that she didn’t have any problems with the church knowing that she was the one who took the concern to Paul. Often Christians disguise their gossip in a cloak of concern. But if we are really concerned, we will talk with people, not about people.
Do you know that at the root of gossip is pride and self-importance? When we speak negatively of others, we are exalting ourselves at the expense of others, which is the opposite of a cross-culture lifestyle. Chloe, on the other hand, wasn’t a gossiper. She didn’t just talk with her people about the problem, which wasn’t a secret. They took the division in the church seriously and brought the concern to the right person so that constructive actions would be taken to deal with the destructive division in the church.
After explaining how he learned of the division in the church, Paul goes on to describe in more detail what was behind it. He writes: “What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:11-12). We see here that the quarreling and division in the church has to do with Christians aligning themselves with different leaders. In other words, they were deriving a sense of superiority based on the group they belonged to and the leader they were associated with.
It’s important to note that these leaders did not have theological differences. The Apostle Paul, Apollos, Cephas (i.e. Peter), and Jesus all preached the same gospel. But as one commentator explained, “Their [followers] had divided themselves along stylistic and rhetorical lines (i.e. who was the most eloquent, who was the most impressive, who had the most pizzazz). The more elite, [the more recognized] the more wealthy, the more upper class, the more honored, by my association with that [person] I will be honored, I will also be elevated.” -Stephen Um
One of the leaders that the people in the church were divisively associating themselves with was Christ. But isn’t alignment with Christ the solution to disunity in the church? This question leads us to a second key to achieving true unity in the church:
2. Reclaiming our common position: Identity
To experience unity, not only must we recognize our common problem, namely the pride of life, and repent, but we must recapture our common position. Although some in the church were claiming to follow Christ, they were not finding their primary identity in Christ. We don’t know for sure, but perhaps people in the church were aligning themselves with Christ’s teaching alone or certain aspects of it and not with the fuller revelation of Christ given through the Apostles.
Do you know that there are professing Christians today who say, “I follow Christ; I don’t need the church to worship God.” It is true that because of the cross of Jesus we can privately worship God. However, the primary purpose of the cross is unity. Jesus was crucified so that we can be united to God and to one another (Ephesians 2:13-22). “To disregard unity is to disparage the cross.” -Francis Chan
If we are all truly following Jesus and finding our primary identity in Him, which all believers have in common, we will not be boasting in any group or any man. We will be boasting together in Christ and our worship of Him will bring the body of Christ together rather than dividing it. After pointing out the source of their division, group identity, Paul continues: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Corinthians 1:13). The answer of course is, no! Then why were believers who claimed to follow Christ divided? Because they were following men who preached Christ and not following the Christ who they preached.
Concerning the difference between the church in Corinth and some churches today, Francis Chan writes, “The advantage they had on us was that their [preferred] leaders weren’t enjoying the praise. Rather than fueling the “Paul fans,” Paul begs them to stop.” The purpose behind Paul’s questions in verse 13 was to stop them from boasting in him. In other words, he’s saying, Jesus was crucified for you, not me. You were baptized in His name, not mine. Furthermore, knowing that some were wrongly aligning themselves exclusively with his ministry to the exclusion of others, Paul continues: “I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else)." (1 Corinthians 1:14-16)
It’s been said that Christians can be glory thieves. God forbid that our desire for praise and recognition would be our motivation for serving in ministry and the cause of division in the church. The souls that Paul won to Christ and baptized were not his trophies. And because there were people in the church more caught up with who baptized them than with Christ who died for them and rose again, Paul was glad that he didn’t baptize any of the Corinthians, except for those he named.
The purpose of baptism is all about identifying ourselves with Christ and declaring our allegiance to Him. It’s this scriptural purpose for baptism that is the source of the church’s unity in Christ. This leads us to a third key to achieving unity in the church.
3. Recapture our common purpose: Mission
After pointing out how they were distorting the purpose of baptism, which was robbing Jesus of the glory He deserved and bringing division in the church, Paul clarifies his calling and purpose. He writes: “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Corinthians 1:17). It’s important to clarify that Paul is not saying that believer’s baptism is unimportant or that the church can have a "take it or leave it" attitude about being baptized. He’s not contradicting or nullifying the commission of Jesus that He gave to the disciples before ascending into heaven. Paul did baptize believers in the name of Jesus! What Paul is clarifying is what his primary mission is, which should be the primary mission of the church, namely to preach the gospel of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus so that lost sinners can be saved!
Staying focused on the primary mission of the church to preach the gospel to a lost world and being of one mind in this regard is a vital key to unity. The other side of the coin is that unity is vital to the power of our witness. This is what Paul is saying in verse 10 that we must all be in agreement with if we are going to be united and fulfill the mission of Christ to the glory of His name.
When a church begins to make other things, besides the spreading of the gospel primary, be it social programs, political activism, or even Christian fellowship, unity will begin to break down. And when our unity breaks down, so will the power of our witness (John 17:20-21). When we neglect our mission, unity falls apart. When our unity falls apart, so too will our credibility as followers of Jesus before a watching world. “Unity is a by-product of mission.”
God help us to recognize and repent of our common problem, namely pride and glory thievery, which is the greatest obstacle to unity. And by the grace of God may we reclaim our common position and identity in Christ as sinners reconciled to God and one another so we can recapture our common purpose to live and work together to spread the fame of Jesus in a lost world.
In your service,
Pastor Marco
Rosaria Butterfield helps illustrate how viewing truth as a social construct plays out in the lives of people. While speaking at a university, Rosaria shared a story about a transgender friend who had placed her “large hand” over her own as an expression of support and comfort. At that point, a woman approached the microphone and shouted: “That’s hate speech!”
Butterfield replied, “So . . . it is hate speech to say that Jill’s hands are large?”
The student exploded: “Of course it is!”
Rosaria explained: “Jill stands six foot two without heels…I’m five two. My hands barely cover an octave on the piano. Compared to mine, Jill’s hands are large. Large is a descriptive adjective.”
The woman replied: “Transgender women are hurt by such insensitive observations. It’s hateful.”
Rosaria asked: “Why is it hateful to say Jill’s hands are large?”
The woman insisted: “This is what leads LGBTQ+ people to suicide!”
Rosaria responded: “But the size of Jill’s hands is a measurable, objective truth.”
The woman protested, “Who cares about truth? Your truth isn’t my truth. Your truth hates my reality!”
What confusion! What a distortion of objective truth and reality! As illustrated by Butterfield’s story, Identity politics, which is worldly human wisdom, is redefining good and evil in the lives of people today. It’s antithetical to the gospel because it’s opposed to the objective truth that one’s true identity can only be found in God, who created man in His own image, and in Jesus, who shed His blood to reconcile us back to God.
Sadly, the ideology of identity politics, which is behind much of the polarization and division in our society, has crept into the Church and divided it. To be a healthy church that impacts the world for Christ, we must be united.
In this blog, we are going to examine 3 keys by which the church can experience unity and harmony that exalts the beauty of Jesus, edifies the church in love and executes His mission on earth to the glory of His name.
1. Recognize our common problem: Pride
The first key to achieving and maintaining unity and harmony in the church is to recognize our common problem, which is rooted in pride. After reminding the church in Corinth of their position and provision in Christ, which they are to live out, Paul begins to address a major problem in the church, namely division. He makes this urgent appeal in verse 10:
“I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.” (1 Corinthians 1:10)
Now, when Paul writes "that all of you agree," he’s not saying that they are to all agree about everything including non-essential matters. To agree doesn’t mean that we all must have the same preferences for music, like the same ethnic foods, or share all the same political views. Unity is not uniformity.
In our humanness, we tend to gravitate to groups that share things in common with us like age, race, ethnicity, culture, social economic backgrounds, and aspirations. A church can have uniformity in this way, and still not have unity.
Paul is not saying that to achieve unity we all have to look the same or think the same about everything. On the contrary, as Eric Geiger put it, “Our unity is most pronounced when we are unified with people who are not like us because the source of our unity, Christ—is put on display. Unity, not uniformity, is an essential mark of a healthy church.”
There’s nothing necessarily sinful about our cultural, social, and gender distinctives. The problem lies when we allow these distinctives to divide us from others or to exclude others because they are not like us (Revelation 5:9). Notice that the division and quarreling in the church in Corinth was rooted in pride as factions had developed where each group felt superior to others based on their associations and group identity. Paul wrote: “For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers...” (1 Corinthians 1:11).
Division in the church is a very serious thing to God and must be addressed. It will tear the church apart, damage our gospel witness, and bring shame to the name of Jesus. Repeatedly the scriptures warn against division in the church and exhorts us to deal with it in a God honoring way. (Proverbs 6:16-19). God takes His dwelling place, His temple, His people very seriously. All the gossip, slander, and divisive talk that tears down rather than builds up the church will be dealt with by God (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
In light of this, let me ask you, are you part of the problem or the solution? Are you being used of God to build up your brothers and sisters in Christ’s or are you being used of the enemy to divide and destroy? Do you take the call for unity in the church and warnings against disunity seriously? Do our private actions speak louder than our public amens on Sunday morning?
Now, we learned in verse 11 that Paul heard about the division in the church from Chloe’s people. She didn’t go around gossiping about the problem to people that would not care to do anything about it. She went to the Apostle Paul. And notice that she didn’t have any problems with the church knowing that she was the one who took the concern to Paul. Often Christians disguise their gossip in a cloak of concern. But if we are really concerned, we will talk with people, not about people.
Do you know that at the root of gossip is pride and self-importance? When we speak negatively of others, we are exalting ourselves at the expense of others, which is the opposite of a cross-culture lifestyle. Chloe, on the other hand, wasn’t a gossiper. She didn’t just talk with her people about the problem, which wasn’t a secret. They took the division in the church seriously and brought the concern to the right person so that constructive actions would be taken to deal with the destructive division in the church.
After explaining how he learned of the division in the church, Paul goes on to describe in more detail what was behind it. He writes: “What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:11-12). We see here that the quarreling and division in the church has to do with Christians aligning themselves with different leaders. In other words, they were deriving a sense of superiority based on the group they belonged to and the leader they were associated with.
It’s important to note that these leaders did not have theological differences. The Apostle Paul, Apollos, Cephas (i.e. Peter), and Jesus all preached the same gospel. But as one commentator explained, “Their [followers] had divided themselves along stylistic and rhetorical lines (i.e. who was the most eloquent, who was the most impressive, who had the most pizzazz). The more elite, [the more recognized] the more wealthy, the more upper class, the more honored, by my association with that [person] I will be honored, I will also be elevated.” -Stephen Um
One of the leaders that the people in the church were divisively associating themselves with was Christ. But isn’t alignment with Christ the solution to disunity in the church? This question leads us to a second key to achieving true unity in the church:
2. Reclaiming our common position: Identity
To experience unity, not only must we recognize our common problem, namely the pride of life, and repent, but we must recapture our common position. Although some in the church were claiming to follow Christ, they were not finding their primary identity in Christ. We don’t know for sure, but perhaps people in the church were aligning themselves with Christ’s teaching alone or certain aspects of it and not with the fuller revelation of Christ given through the Apostles.
Do you know that there are professing Christians today who say, “I follow Christ; I don’t need the church to worship God.” It is true that because of the cross of Jesus we can privately worship God. However, the primary purpose of the cross is unity. Jesus was crucified so that we can be united to God and to one another (Ephesians 2:13-22). “To disregard unity is to disparage the cross.” -Francis Chan
If we are all truly following Jesus and finding our primary identity in Him, which all believers have in common, we will not be boasting in any group or any man. We will be boasting together in Christ and our worship of Him will bring the body of Christ together rather than dividing it. After pointing out the source of their division, group identity, Paul continues: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Corinthians 1:13). The answer of course is, no! Then why were believers who claimed to follow Christ divided? Because they were following men who preached Christ and not following the Christ who they preached.
Concerning the difference between the church in Corinth and some churches today, Francis Chan writes, “The advantage they had on us was that their [preferred] leaders weren’t enjoying the praise. Rather than fueling the “Paul fans,” Paul begs them to stop.” The purpose behind Paul’s questions in verse 13 was to stop them from boasting in him. In other words, he’s saying, Jesus was crucified for you, not me. You were baptized in His name, not mine. Furthermore, knowing that some were wrongly aligning themselves exclusively with his ministry to the exclusion of others, Paul continues: “I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else)." (1 Corinthians 1:14-16)
It’s been said that Christians can be glory thieves. God forbid that our desire for praise and recognition would be our motivation for serving in ministry and the cause of division in the church. The souls that Paul won to Christ and baptized were not his trophies. And because there were people in the church more caught up with who baptized them than with Christ who died for them and rose again, Paul was glad that he didn’t baptize any of the Corinthians, except for those he named.
The purpose of baptism is all about identifying ourselves with Christ and declaring our allegiance to Him. It’s this scriptural purpose for baptism that is the source of the church’s unity in Christ. This leads us to a third key to achieving unity in the church.
3. Recapture our common purpose: Mission
After pointing out how they were distorting the purpose of baptism, which was robbing Jesus of the glory He deserved and bringing division in the church, Paul clarifies his calling and purpose. He writes: “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Corinthians 1:17). It’s important to clarify that Paul is not saying that believer’s baptism is unimportant or that the church can have a "take it or leave it" attitude about being baptized. He’s not contradicting or nullifying the commission of Jesus that He gave to the disciples before ascending into heaven. Paul did baptize believers in the name of Jesus! What Paul is clarifying is what his primary mission is, which should be the primary mission of the church, namely to preach the gospel of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus so that lost sinners can be saved!
Staying focused on the primary mission of the church to preach the gospel to a lost world and being of one mind in this regard is a vital key to unity. The other side of the coin is that unity is vital to the power of our witness. This is what Paul is saying in verse 10 that we must all be in agreement with if we are going to be united and fulfill the mission of Christ to the glory of His name.
When a church begins to make other things, besides the spreading of the gospel primary, be it social programs, political activism, or even Christian fellowship, unity will begin to break down. And when our unity breaks down, so will the power of our witness (John 17:20-21). When we neglect our mission, unity falls apart. When our unity falls apart, so too will our credibility as followers of Jesus before a watching world. “Unity is a by-product of mission.”
God help us to recognize and repent of our common problem, namely pride and glory thievery, which is the greatest obstacle to unity. And by the grace of God may we reclaim our common position and identity in Christ as sinners reconciled to God and one another so we can recapture our common purpose to live and work together to spread the fame of Jesus in a lost world.
In your service,
Pastor Marco