Thursday: Is Christ Divided?
WEEK 41
THURSDAY
IS CHRIST DIVIDED?
1 Corinthians 1:10-13
In the pages of the New Testament the Christians were one. They all belonged to one Church with local manifestations. When separate sovereign groups began to spring up in Corinth—one around Paul and his emphasis, another around Peter, and a third around Apollos—Paul was outraged and cried, “Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you?” (1 Cor 1:13). They had slipped off the center—Christ—and began to be centered in good men instead of the God-Man. And that is always and everywhere divisive. For if you separate from others on the basis of this doctrine or that doctrine, this emphasis or that emphasis, you have to defend yourself against the others who do not hold your position. By its very nature it is divisive.
Only Jesus is the Truth. Since we imperfectly comprehend him who is the Truth, what we hold is truths about the Truth. Someone has put it this way: God has let down a rope from heaven for us to take hold of; that rope is Christ. But we have taken the end of that rope and unraveled it into strands. One group takes hold of the strand of a particular mode of baptism, another of a particular type of bishop, another of a particular doctrine such as justification by faith, another of a particular ritual, another of a particular emphasis such as holiness, another of a particular attitude toward man, and so on. Each thinks they have the Truth, when all they may have is truths about the Truth—the Truth in the rope—not the strand. And we will be surprised that, when God pulls up that rope, a lot of other people holding to their strands will come up too.
Jesus prayed that “they will be one just as we are one” (John 17:11). How is God one? Undifferentiated union? No. There are Lord, Son, and Holy Spirit; each with his own name, identity, and function and yet fundamentally one. Then if we are one the way God is one, we are to have a union of diversity, some form of federal union. That points the way to a union not of compromise but of comprehension. Such a union is possible and is possible now.
O Jesus, we thank you for your prayer clarifying the kind of union we are to have, a union around you but with varying emphases on other things. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Since I am one with everyone who belongs to Christ, I shall act that way today.