Biblical Unity: What is it?

Biblical Unity: What is it?

Biblical Unity. What is it?
Unity in spirit, says Bonhoeffer, is from God’s sovereign establishment, from his book, Life Together. Thus He views her as a collective person. This collective person has been entrusted to the elders, prophets, priests and kings to help guide her in this establishment of a sovereign God.
Theology is used to guide and lead this collective person according to Ephesians 4. This photo was taken in Ephesus. These fallen pillars can be a reminder of what can happen to the church when our theology and doctrine falls. It leaves the church in ruins trying to find unity in Liberty alone. This can not build a church.
The church becomes a cacophony when those God gave to equip the church become apathetic allowing subjective truth to become louder than objective truth and devalue hermeneutics. It can also be said that without grace theological intellectualism results in righteous and pious phariseeism. But we don’t exclude theology to ward off the latter. We do theology to shepherd the church in Gods sovereign establishment and to fend off apathy and tyranny in the church.
The Reformation was birthed from the biggest reaction to the apathetic and hermeneutical corrupt Catholic Church, followed by the countless schemes and schisms of reactions to reactions. In fact, Francis Schaffer’s entire scope of ministry was to wake the Church up to its apathy and wayward doctrines and simplistic theology that all we need is love. Schaefer, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Luther all wrote to a church growing apathetic to sound orthodoxy.
Sound orthodoxy equips us to live sound orthopraxy. Sound doctrine among the pastors and elders and teachers… allows us to equip the saints, small group leaders, pastors, youth volunteers, parents, youth, children, etc. for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, “13until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine”. When people inside the church begin to be unwilling to test what they already know with Scripture and are unwilling to sit under the teaching of Elders and pastors to help them grow in knowledge, they hinder unity and their very own sanctification. Without sound orthodoxy and doctrine how does the church keep from being carried off with wrong doctrine?
The Apostle Paul wrote, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! Galatians 6:6-9.”
Seems Paul was concerned about what was being taught to the church. Maybe, just maybe such things should concern us. Maybe more than a title or ones experience should be used to verify if their teachings are sound and true so that we know we are placing sheep in competent hands who we call mentors and shepherds.
From what I read, unity is emboldened and strengthened by a strong biblical hemeneutic that gives rise to a corporate orthodoxy, which results in an orthopraxy of unity- being the hands and feet of Christ allowing the worshippers to worship in spirit and truth and not just a resounding noise of kumbaya (Amos 5).
When theology disappears from the church and its leaders, unity will also, Paul’s Epistles speak to this, as we will have a “free for all” of what we think is truth and this is becoming more obvious in the western church today. Bonhoeffer and Barth both speak to a subjective truth that has infiltrated the church and has been influencing the church since the post enlightenment, swaying her away from objective truth. It sounds utopic to say all we need is love, but the moment you ask what is love and who is Jesus, you enter into the realm of theology.
“Theology comes from the Greek and literally means “knowledge about God.” “Theo” means God and “olgy” means the study of, while doctrine means the system of particular beliefs. Theology contains the character and attributes of God, whereas doctrine houses the various teachings, instructions, principles, and creeds of the church that are accepted and that are essential for faith and our practice of Christian growth (Ezra 7:10; John 6:45; 7:17; 8:31-32; 7:17; 16:7-14; Rom. 10:17; Eph. 4:14-15; 2 Thess. 2:10-12; 1 Tim 4:6-7; 2 Tim. 3:15; 1 Peter 3:15; 2 Peter 3:17-18).”
Paul wrote to those who became apathetic in thinking doctrine is relative when he calls those who should be teachers, kindergartners and this is not a term of endearment: “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:12-14 . So many in the western church are not able to distinguish good from evil because her deacons, prophets priests and kings, elders, and teachers choose to never graduate from preschool. To be an overseer and elder is to be a theologian not a kindergartner. Karl Barth takes us to the obvious next step given we are to disciple and multiply disciples when he said, “In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologian”. He sounds a lot like Paul to the Hebrews and who the church needs her Shepherds to be today. He is Schaffer speaking to a theologically impotent church. He is speaking of who we all are to be in Christ unified in mind and heart and theology. Trying to be unified around Liberty of belief alone does not conceive biblical unity.
I’ll close with these words from Francis Schaeffer, in his book, The Great Evangelical Disaster: “God’s Word will never pass away, but looking back to the Old Testament and since the time of Christ, with tears we must say that because of a lack of fortitude and faithfulness on the part of God’s people, God’s Word has many times been allowed to be bent, to conform to the surrounding, passing, changing culture of that moment rather than to stand as the inerrant Word of God judging the form of the world spirit and the surrounding culture of that moment. In the name of The Lord Jesus Christ, may our children and grandchildren not say that such can be said about us.”