Preserve Unity! Series

church and will continue building a theology of the church (so to speak), but his primary emphasis in Chpt.

4-6 are going to be on holy living . . . on living the Christian life. He calls us to “walk worthy”; to live our

lives in such a way that is reflective of this call of God that he has given us. He has saved us. We are

Christians . . . so ACT like it, he says! Well, how?

2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep

the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

The very FIRST thing Paul mentions towards this ‘holy living’ is unity among believers.

Paul says, I want you to walk worthy of your calling by PURSUING UNITY!

Oh, but that’s SO difficult today! We all love the idea of unity . . . but its really hard to practice. We

remember Jesus’ prayer in John 17 where he prays for unity among believers who would come after him.

He prays, " 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so

that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:20-21 NIV) God’s plan was that all believers would be

ONE! Unified! It was never his design that when someone says, “I’m a Christian” we’d have to ask “what

kind?” Denominations are certainly NOT what God intended! And it seems a crying shame that so many

throughout the world CLAIM to serve the same Lord and yet cannot work with one another. Its even more

shameful (in my opinion) that many in churches of Christ cannot get along with one another. Jesus’ prayer

may explain why we’ve not been as successful at evangelism as we’d like: we can’t get along with one

another, so what kind of testimony is that to the world? How we need to understand and have that unity of

Spirit and bond of peace today!!! But how can we get it?

By what means should we seek unity? I suppose there are at least three options . . .

1. Sociological factors

This is where we try to gather folks into the church who pretty well are just like us. They look like us, talk

like us, walk like us. Etc. That way there won’t be any disagreements. We’re all from the same culture; the

similar backgrounds; interested in the same things. And you just MIGHT be able to get a homogenous

enough group to have some sort of ‘unity.’ But, folks, that’s NOT Biblical unity . . . that’s unnatural

uniformity! God created each of us different and unique and (I believe) for a purpose. In fact, I’d suggest

that trying to achieve unity on this basis is sinful! God calls all kinds of people from all kinds of different

cultures and all kinds of different backgrounds into his Kingdom. To not recognize that fact is to go against

the will of God! The biggest challenge in the 1st century church perhaps was in getting Jewish Christians

and Gentile Christians to come together . . . but they did! They worshiped together, ate together and loved

one another.

Gal 3:28-29 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.(NIV)