How Can Christians Work for Unity in the Church?
If the church of Jesus Christ desires to experience the unity of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:3), then the members of the church must put on humility, gentleness, patience, and love while actively pursuing peace. While Christ has effected a definitive peace and unity among God’s people (Ephesians 2), the experience of this peace and unity must be pursued in the power of the Holy Spirit. We must work for peace and unity in the church. We must seek to grow up into the unity that we already possess positionally in Christ. We cannot simply point to what has been accomplished historically in Christ’s work for the sake of peace and unity. We must “eagerly maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Why Should We Work for Unity?
Why should we work for such unity in the church? Because we are the one Body of Christ, who professes the one Faith in Christ in response to the one, true God (Ephesians 4:4-6). In other words, indifference toward unity in the body of Christ is fundamentally an indifference to the unity of the Christian faith. We cannot merely sing that “we are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord” without also working for such unity by the Spirit for the sake of the glory of God in Christ Jesus.
A Prayer for Unity in the Church
My prayer is that we as the church — with all of our differences — would be unified around Christ as His body. That the church would embrace God’s global vision for the Bride of Christ, which is that she would exist as a group of unique people united by their shared love for Christ and collective experience of the Holy Spirit for the sake of the glory of God. Would you join me in praying for this reality?
CBH
For more articles on Unity in the Church on this blog, see Preference-Driven Worship Services and Drinking Together
If you would like to see articles that I have written elsewhere, check out this article on Racial Reconciliation with the ERLC
