Sunday: The Unity of All Believers
WEEK 17
SUNDAY
THE UNITY OF ALL BELIEVERS
John 17:7-11
We have seen the unity amid immediate disciples through the coming of the Holy Spirit. We come now to the fourth, a larger unity, the unity of all believers. “All the believers were united and shared everything” (Acts 2:44).
All the believers kept together. Today all the believers keep separate. I am writing this in a town of two thousand people, Pembroke, North Carolina; and there are ten churches within the town and seventeen pastors living within its precincts. All are Christians with a common loyalty to Christ and working for the same purpose, the kingdom of God. But nothing binds them together. They are more or less competing with one another, dividing the community at the place of its deepest loyalty, its spiritual loyalty. Moreover, they are canceling one another out. Each has to magnify its minute points of difference to justify its separate existence. There is no sense of solidarity among the Christians. They are not primarily Christians; they are primarily Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, and whatnot. The emphasis is upon the marginal differences instead of upon the central fact, Christ. They have no sense of solidarity as Christians.
And this in the face of world corporate evils, such as Communism. When Eisenhower was about to invade Europe, he turned to his aides and said, “It’s one team, or we lose.” Again for us “it is one team, or we lose.” For a divided church is no match for a united Communism. The next great step is for the churches to get together outwardly. Inwardly, Christians are one. We share a common life. We don’t have to seek for unity; we have it—have it in the deepest thing in life, namely, in life itself. We share the life of Christ in common. The church then is at once the most united body on earth and the most divided. We are united at the center and divided at the margin, united in Christ and divided in the expression of Christ. But we have unity; all we have to do is to express it. These early Christians had unity, and they expressed it. Therefore they hit that ancient world with power.
O Christ, we know that those who belong to you belong to one another automatically and inescapably. Help us to recognize, rejoice in, and act on that unity. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am united with every Christian by unities deeper than the differences that divide.