The Church - Practical Unity In The Body

The Foundation of Church Unity in Christ

Alright, we're going to be continuing our study of the church, and today we're going to be discussing practical unity in the body. Connelly's passing out a handout for you, and the two primary passages that we're going to be thinking through today are going to be Philippians 2, 1 -8 and Matthew 18.

So, I'll go ahead and read Philippians 2, 1 -8 and later we'll get to Matthew 18 as well. But Philippians 2, 1 -8, so if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourself. Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interest of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death.

On a cross.

So, when we're talking about practical unity in the church, it really is important that we recognize the foundation for our unity as believers. And that foundation for our unity is what this passage starts out with.

So Philippians 2, 1 says, if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in spirit, any affection and sympathy, our unity is founded on the person and work of Christ.

The only reason why we can come together as a group of very diverse people and have any hope of really getting along and working together is because Christ has done a great work for us as Christians. We believe that he has come to earth, that he who was God came to earth, took on flesh and dwelt among us, and did for us something that we fundamentally couldn't do ourself.

So he lived the life we couldn't live. He died the death that we deserve. And as a result of his sacrifice, when we trust in what he has done for us, we receive his righteousness as a free gift imputed to us.

We are reconciled to him. There are benefits that come from what he has done. One of those benefits is that we're adopted into his family. So all of us become adopted children into God's family, and his sacrifice basically grants to us this shared familial status.

So as you know, this shared familial status was not just given to the Jews. God has given this familial status to everyone who believes in him, whether Jew or Gentile. And when you think about the nature of Jesus' early disciples, the nature of his early disciples, they're a pretty diverse group.

So how do you get a tax collector and a zealot to be unified and to get along with each other? How do you get people who are natural enemies to get along with each other and to work together? If you think about Jesus' disciples, he had poor disciples.

He had rich disciples. He had disciples who were political enemies. He converted Pharisees. He converted tax collectors. He converted those who wanted to bring the system of Roman oppression down. He converted Jews and Gentiles.

He put them all together as members of one family. So when you think about the foundation for our unity, it's going to be found in this encouragement in what Christ has done, this comfort from the love that he has given, this shared participation in the Spirit, and the affection and the sympathy that comes from that.

And I would tell you to pay attention to that word, sympathy. As a preview, we're going to be talking about some of those things later on in the afternoon. But basically, the foundation for our unity is this work that Christ has done for us.

And so as we think about pursuing unity within the body, we're pursuing a unity that has been one on the basis of what Jesus has done. Now how do you pursue unity? That'll be our second point in thought that we're going to be thinking about today.

Pursuing Unity by Renewing Your Mind

Philippians 2 says, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and one mind. So how do we pursue unity? Well, we're pursuing unity by renewing our minds. Now, I think when we think about unity, particularly within the body, we think of unity as something that we're supposed to try to produce at times.

I think we're naturally tempted to think about unity that way, like it's something that we need to, like certainly it's something that we need to work towards, but we think about it as something that's our responsibility.

And a lot of times, because we live in a very feelings-oriented society, when you think about pursuing unity, if you notice that there's disunity, you might lead with your feelings, if that makes sense.

Like meaning you might think, well, I don't feel unified with this person, but God tells me that I need to be unified with them. So then you may think, I either need to figure out how to change my feelings towards them or I need to get them to act in a different way towards me so that I don't feel what I feel, right?

Because you do live in a society that doesn't really think that we're responsible for the way that we feel. But here's the point. Now, when you think about pursuing unity, you may think about some feeling of unity that you're trying to produce or that you're trying to work yourself up towards having.

You may think about like actions that you should be taking in order to produce that, but then when you think about the way that Paul describes unity, unity is not really something that we're producing, it's something that we have.

So it's not something that we're trying to achieve in that kind of way, it's something that has been won for us and the way that you have unity within the body is recognize the unity that you already have.

So the path to unity is going to be found in renewing your mind. Unity in the Bible is something to maintain because it's already been won for you, if that makes sense. When a church has disunity or when a family has, like a Christian family has disunity, it's not because they're missing this concept of unity and they have to somehow get it.

What's happening is that their sin is getting in the way of the unity that Christ has established. So Ephesians 4 .1 is a good passage which describes this dynamic which I'm trying to describe. So Ephesians 4 .1 says, I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

So notice the language here of unity. Unity is something that's won for us on the virtue of what Christ has done and we're told, like if we're going to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we've been called, we need to be eager to maintain that unity.

So you notice the difference between maintaining that unity and trying to produce the unity? You're not trying to produce in yourself feelings of unity. You're trying to maintain the unified status that God has granted you.

And the things that get in the way of unity are your sins.

You understand?

So the path to unity is going to be found in the first instance in renewing your mind. So renewing your mind, like if you renew your mind on this topic, then what you realize is not, I need to figure out how to be unified with my church members.

That's not the thought you should have. You should be thinking, I need to recognize the unity that we have and walk in accordance with that unity and do nothing to destroy that unity. So what are some ways that we can destroy unity within a body?

Any thoughts? This is a quiz? Gossip, yeah, gossip. Anything else? Thinking of yourself as more important than other people, trying to take on responsibilities that don't belong to you, that kind of thing, yeah.

Yes, yeah, so part of, like Paul is saying, complete this joy by being of the same mind, being of full accord and of one mind. That one mind later on we're going to find out in the passage is the mind of Christ, which is revealed to us in the scriptures, and we're going to have an example of what that looks like within the passage.

But God, like the fundamental heart cry of the Christian is that Jesus is Lord and what He says goes. And so when you teach things that are not in accordance with sound doctrine, that is an act of, like you're violating the unity that you have, because you're all supposed to be marching towards the same orders, right?

So there's a, God has given you in His words, His will for you. So Jesus is Lord, what He says goes. You should all have that kind of mind, the mind of Christ, namely a desire to be, to do His will and to be well-pleasing in His sight.

Now if you have that mind together, that's a fundamental source of unity that is coming outside of yourself and outside of your efforts to produce a kind of unity. So I mean, in any organization that you might find, there's supposed to be some sort of mission statement that is going to hold the thing together.

There's going to be some sort of rules that are holding the society, the organization, the company together, and to the extent to which people align their hearts and minds towards that mission, towards that goal, there's going to be unity.

Now in the secular world, that unity may not be a good unity. It may not be a worthy pursuit. It may not be a perfect pursuit. But then with the scriptures, what we have is we have a perfect foundation for unity that's going to be found in the work of Christ and His revealed will for us.

And then if you have people who are teaching things contrary to His will, that's going to be disrupting that unity that His word is trying to produce in you. So if everyone has the mind of Christ and you're teaching something contrary to the mind of Christ, you're disrupting the unity, right?

That's what you're doing. You're disrupting the unity. So gossiping, yeah, gossiping is one way that you can disrupt the unity of the body. Arguments, fights, elevating your own selfish preferences above the preferences of others, making demands that you be treated in ways that you want to be treated, you know, conflict,.

Divisions, yes sir, being active.

Participating in fellowship, not being involved in it.

Yeah, distancing yourself from the body, forsaking the assembly, yes, that would be disunifying. That would be an example of something that would be disunifying. Instead of pursuing the shared mind of Christ together, placing yourself under the authority structures that God has ordained, remove yourself from that and basically say, keep yourself at a distance.

You're not pursuing your responsibilities to build up one another in love. Those would all be examples. But notice how like what you're doing there is you're doing things that are disrupting the unity that you have.

So Christ has won the unity for us. He's given us his word which is meant to unify us. There are things you can do which disrupt the unity you have and the primary way that you regain the unity is stop doing those disruptive things, if that makes sense.

Stop doing those disruptive things. Submit yourself to God's will because he's the one who defines the terms of your unity. So don't walk contrary to his will and disrupt the unity. Those are the primary instructions the New Testament gives us in order to attain unity.

What the Bible is doing is not telling you to produce that unity or feel unified. It's telling you to recognize the unity you already have, if that makes sense. Any thoughts, questions about that? So recognize the foundation of unity, like practical unity body.

Recognize the foundation, pursue it by the renewal of your mind. Three, stop being selfish. Stop being so selfish. This is not a personal attack on anyone. It's what came to mind when I read it. Now Philippians 2 .3, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. But in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. So notice in the passage, the path to disrupting unity of the body is selfishness. And that selfishness is going to manifest itself in all the ways that we've already described.

So that selfishness is going to demand that the church centers around your desires, your will, your preferences, your wants, your perceived needs. You live in a time right now that is filled with rampant consumerism as it relates to the church.

In the business world, in the corporate business world, obviously you have advertisers who have been trying to market their products towards you for a long time. So you're used to being treated as if you are the center of the universe with different corporations who are buying for your attention, who are trying to get your money.

So they're trying to sell you their products and telling you that you're worth it and you deserve it. You deserve a break today. Treat yourself. It's funny when you listen to some of the advertising spiels that people have.

Indulge yourself. Treat yourself. You deserve it. You have corporations that on a regular basis are buying for your attention. That are buying for your attention and engaging in flattery in order to try to get your money.

It's funny, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, just to step back and realize all the ways in which this is happening. So Conley and I were on a business communication platform. When you set up the video for that, it tells you, you look great today.

I thought that was so funny because people really want to hear that kind of thing for some reason. Hear a computer program that doesn't know them or doesn't know what they look like whatsoever. Engage in flattery.

So the words on the screen, you look great today. I guess that does something for a certain kind of person. But that's the culture and society that you're living in right now that incessantly praises you.

Flatters you in order to try to get your money. You look around the church today and there are so many churches that function in this way. There's hundreds of churches all around us. It's worse than the Bible Belt, I guess, but there's still a lot of churches around here in close proximity.

Maybe not multiple ones on the same street, but I'm sure at times there are even that. It's very common as a pastor to have people come to church with their list of demands that they present you. The first time they're talking to you, they're running through the list of all the things that they want from you.

So they'll run through the list of all, like, do you have this? And do you have this? And do you have this? And do you have this? And this is what we're looking for. And there's no indication in their minds that anything weird or strange is happening.

They're treating you as if you're, like as a church. They're treating you as if you're just some kind of car lot or something. You go to the car lot and say, here's the thing I'm looking for in a car.

Most of them are not, like, doctrinal concerns. They're all just reduced to a bunch of preferences that they have and ways in which they want to be treated. And as I've done membership meetings with people over the years at every church that I've been at, if you ask them any questions about, like, their life, they really have a hard time, like, understanding what is happening.

You know, so they say, hey, I want to join a church. It's like, all right, well, let's talk about your life. Talk about your salvation experience. Talk about your understanding of the gospel. And you can notice that they just start getting very, very weird because in their minds what they're thinking is, like, shouldn't you be thrilled to have me here?

You know, like, I'm telling you that I want to be a part of your church. Like, I'm telling you that, like, you can have me as a member, you know. And it seems like you're asking me questions and I don't understand what's happening.

Like, don't you realize the deal that you're getting here? You know, and they don't realize from your perspective that, you know, like, a bad church member can cause a lot of problems in a church body.

And you might want to, as pastors, know who you're letting into your family because sometimes family members aren't all that nice. And sometimes family members cause a whole lot of problems. And we may want to at least find out whether or not you're a Christian before we say, welcome to the family, right?

I mean, certainly you would do that in any other area of life. In general, you wouldn't just extend an open offer to anyone who wants to come and live in your house with you, right? But we live in a time that's so narcissistic to where we think that everything is about us.

We think that we are doing churches favors by coming to join with them, that we're doing them a favor. And we're tempted to view them as if they owe us our list of demands. And, yeah, I mean, I can just tell you, occasion after occasion, this is what actually happens when new people come to visit churches, even solid churches.

They'll come with their list of self-centered kind of demands that they have that are prerequisites for them gracing you with their presence. If you've ever done that, I'm not talking about you because I haven't even been here for any length of time, so I wouldn't know.

But just that's something to be aware of. The Bible says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. The church shopper culture is a real culture, and I wouldn't pretend as if this isn't a real thing and these are not real dynamics.

And if you engage in formal ministry to any length of time, you'll see these dynamics playing out over and over again. But the issue is that the primary thing that stands in the way of church unity is selfishness.

When you insist upon being the center of the universe and having your will and your desires and your preferences elevated above God's Word and God's will for the body, you're going to have a disunified church.

And certainly no one ever thinks that that's them. When you're the one who is elevating your selfish preferences and desires and will and your list of demands above the unity of the body, when you're doing that, you're going to be the least predisposed to understand that that's actually you.

I think at some point I had a better answer to this question than what I have now, but then it's gone. It seems that the most natural assumption to have is that you did have a lot of selfishness that was present there at the very least.

When he's addressing that problem of looking not only to your own interests but the interests of others, you certainly had people there who were probably guilty of doing that. Now what form did it take?

I've forgotten. Maybe there's not an answer and I can't remember. Some of those situations are pretty specific too. Conley, you had a thought with that? You might have church discipline situations that they're fleeing from another body, things along those lines.

If they are fleeing from a church discipline situation, you might not welcome them with open arms. You might encourage them to go back and reconcile their situation. There's things like that that can happen.

I wasn't trying to communicate a posture of a pastor saying, do we want them? Do we think they're going to be an asset to the church? You do have to run through, are they a Christian? Then people will treat any of that basic due diligence as if it's weird and strange at times.

Don't you understand? I'm telling you I want to join. I'm doing you a favor. Right, that's exactly what I mean. So they interrogated you. Did they have the lights on? Did they tape your eyes open? How dare they ask you questions?

I thought joining a church was just walking up to the front of the aisle while they played Just As I Am and shaking hands with the pastor. There's a lot of people who have that kind of mindset for sure.

So stop being so selfish. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. But in humility, count others more significant than yourself. The point is Jesus is the Lord of the church. You are not. Jesus is the Lord of the church.

What he says goes. We all have the same marching orders. The authority for how the church is run is going to be found in the scripture. I've been in numerous situations like this where you have church members who are deeply upset with you because you're not doing something that they want you to do that's found nowhere in the scriptures.

So we can elevate our selfish will above God's will. And at times we can do so in a fairly shameless way. And when we do that, that is disrupting the unity of the body. Because Christ is the Lord of the church.

What he says goes. And we must follow him. The church doesn't just exist to execute our own personal wills. Now if it did, you have to understand there's no... Think about how poor of a foundation for unity that would actually be if the church existed to execute our own personal will.

The problem is, in a church of any size, you have any number of different conflicting wills.

Don't you?

So if the church just exists with no marching orders, no structure, no commands, no overarching goal that it is required to do, then what you have is... And the responsibility of the church was to discern the individual wills of the church members and execute that.

Well, the problem is they disagree. And I mean, you notice this in marriage if you've ever been married or you notice this in parenting. How do you get a husband and wife to be unified when they're both different creatures who have different sets of desires?

So if unity is going to be found in each one getting their way, you're never going to have unity. I've often pointed this out when Elizabeth and I maybe have a clash of will. If there's something that she wants me to do, it's equally true.

Like she wants me to do either that I didn't do or she wants me to do something in a different way than what I did. In that moment, you have to understand that I did exactly what I wanted to do. So if there's anything I do that she doesn't want me to do, you have to understand like I did what I wanted to do in that moment.

So who's to say whose want is more important? Are you following what I mean? So every time I do something she doesn't like, I did what I want to do. And so if she were to look at me and say, well, I don't like that.

Therefore, you need to not do that. Then I can look back at her and say, well, I like that. So you need to like that. But then that's no answer to anything, is it? Basically, if every conflict reduces to I like, I don't like, there's no winner.

The only path forward really is just to figure out, well, what does God like? Because if we're both aligned with what God likes, then we're both unified because we have a like outside of our own likes that we're submitting to.

So in every conflict, my point here is to say in every conflict you have, generally you have a clash of likes. I like it. I don't like it. I guess we're stuck. Right? I guess we're stuck. So ultimately, the issue here is there's a like above our likes.

There's a God's like. So you shouldn't be just trying to enforce all of your likes on other people. In fact, I mean in those kind of situations. So in that kind of situation, my natural impulse should be to not just demand my likes but to count her likes as more significant than my likes.

But then she should also have that same kind of pattern, and she does, to me, which is just to say I am not just trying to demand my likes but trying to pursue your likes. And then the issue is if we're both trying to pursue each other's likes, if there's a clash of likes, we're not going to be fighting over that.

We should be fighting over trying to give the other person what they want as much as we can. But then we know that in the church, too, there's a like above all of our likes that sets the direction for where we should be going.

And his likes matter way more than our likes. So this is like a Jesus first, other seconds yourself kind of passage here. So stop being so selfish. If you want to disrupt the unity body, the best way to do that is being selfish.

Distinguishing Preference, Wisdom, and Sin Issues

So recognize the foundation of unity. Pursue unity by the renewal of your mind. Stop being so selfish. Learn to distinguish between preference issues, wisdom issues, and sin issues. Now you may look at that and say, where is that?

Is that a little bit of a stretch there? And I would say, no, I don't think so. Philippians 2 .4 says, let each of you look not only to his own interests but also the interest of others. This makes sense only if you understand different categories of thought, different kinds of issues.

So this is an appeal to a particular type of issue in contrast to other types of issues. And it might be helpful to know what different types of issues there are so that we can properly put this, right?

So let each of you look not only to his own interest but the interest of others. That would be related to what I would describe as preference issues. So there's three kinds of issues here that could be at work, at the very least three.

And I think it's helpful to think through some of these things so you can understand what's happening here. So there's preference issues, there's wisdom issues, there's sin issues. Preference issues, these are situations requiring decision-making where choices are made based on subjective preferences or desires without moral implications.

So they are non-moral and shaped by personal taste or context. Now sadly, in most marriages, most churches, a lot of the things that are being fought over are preference issues. That's the natural way it works, I think, to our shame at times.

The things that we get really worked up about, we get really worked up about these preference issues. And often the sin issues, the things that are really sinful, we'll tolerate those almost indefinitely, but we won't tolerate violations of our preferences.

It's amazing how that works. If you do any counseling, you'll see this dynamic playing out over and over again that the couple is spending all their time fighting over preference issues, and then they refuse to deal with sin issues.

It's bizarre to watch, but this is the way that the world actually works. And this is the way it works in churches at times. So, I mean, preference issues, color of the carpet, color of the paint. You could think about any number of things that, I mean, really they have very little moral implication.

Now some of this can be a little bit fuzzy because sometimes a preference issue can transition into a wisdom issue, but if you're dealing with like two different colors of blue that are slightly different, I mean, you're firmly into the territory of preference issue.

Maybe there's a case to be made that there's some wisdom involved. Now maybe if it was like if, you know, the elders decided to make the walls all black and the floor all black and, you know, that kind of thing, and dim the lighting down and get the strobe lights out, at some point it transitions into a wisdom issue at a certain point.

But, I mean, most of the time like that you think about, try to imagine most of that's probably preference at a certain point, and then after a certain threshold it becomes wisdom. But just silly examples, you know, couples fighting over the direction of the toilet paper.

Some of you may be like tempted to argue with me and say, no, this is a wisdom issue. It's designed to go down, you know. But putting the toilet seat down, up, you know, a lot of these things are preference.

Borderline wisdom maybe, but probably, you know, preference. Wisdom issues. These are situations requiring decision making where multiple biblical principles apply, but no single divinely prescribed solution is provided.

As an example, who should I marry? The Bible says marry whom you will. Only marry in the Lord. There's a command there that you need to think through. Marry in the Lord, right? But then there's a marry who you will part.

So you have to understand you have freedom to marry who you want to marry within certain constraints. So God created Adam and he put him in a garden. He gave him all kinds of fruit to eat, right? He didn't overload him with commands.

He just said, I give you one command. Don't eat that one, right? But, I mean, Adam, presumably, he could eat on whatever schedule he wanted to eat. God didn't tell him, like, you need to eat 10 times a day at these particular times and these particular intervals.

And then you need to eat this fruit first, and then this fruit second, and this fruit third. And a lot of us approach God's will that way to where we're just hyper about it and we think that there's hidden commands out there.

There's a trap or something, right? So God gives you a bunch of fruit trees and he says, have at it. And then you think, well, there's something in there that he's trying to trick me up. But there was no trick for Adam in the garden.

There was no trick. Here's the fruit tree. Enjoy, right? Don't enjoy that one. And that was it. If Adam and Eve would have just listened to the constraint and accepted the freedom, then they would have been okay.

But, I mean, certainly there's some wisdom in what you eat, what order you eat, how much you eat. There's a lot of wisdom in a lot of these things. But what I'm trying to say is wisdom situations, issues, or situations describing requiring decision making where multiple biblical principles apply, but no single divinely prescribed solution is provided.

So as an example, how much should you save? How much money should you save? Well, I imagine that each individual person in this room might answer that a bit differently based on how, based on the situation that they find themselves in and a lot of the priorities that we had.

So when Elizabeth and I were first married, I mean, I gave her a grocery and toiletry budget for $100 a week. So she needed to get all the toilet paper and diapers and food for $100 a week. That's all we had to spare, right?

So then that was it. Now, you say, how did I come up with that number? Well, I was just looking at other numbers that weren't very much and I was saying that's the number we got to work with. Now, we had other priorities too, right?

So we had that number to work with. We had some attempt to try to save, which we didn't do very well because we're operating on a very slim budget. You have hospitality concerns. You have general holidays kind of concerns for other people trying to honor your family and follow whatever expectations they have.

So how much do you save in that kind of framework? Well, it kind of depends on your life stage and how much income you have and what you're prioritizing in other ways. So you need to think about we need to give to the church.

We need to be hospitable. There is some kind of celebration principles in the Bible that we should be thinking about. There is saving principle. Then there's your basic needs kind of principle. Now, one of my seminary teachers told me before I got into that stage, when you're young, you're going to be tempted to skimp on food and just eat a bunch of garbage, and that's going to harm you later, right?

So you'll get more money as you go on, but don't just eat your ramen noodle meals all day long every day because you should prioritize eating healthier. Throw that into the mix then. So to what degree are you prioritizing trying to eat healthy while saving, while being hospitable, while giving to the church, while taking care of your necessities?

What you'll realize is there's no divinely given answer to that number how much you save, but you come up with that number based on trying to be faithful to a bunch of different priorities that God has given you.

There's no real right answer, but then the thing is, if you sow sparingly, you'll reap sparingly. If you save more, you'll have more for a rainy day. If you save less and prioritize other things, you're going to have less for a rainy day.

So the consequence, and it's like one of the things Connelly says, the consequence will be in the action itself, right? So if you don't prioritize saving as you should, then when you need it, you won't have it, right?

You won't have it. But then there's no, you know, here's the dollar amount that I prayed about. There's no way I can just flip through and see what psalm I land on and that'll tell me something about the nature of what I should be saving.

It doesn't really work like that. At the same time, with wisdom issues, all right, how much should I save? Well, if I save nothing, I've fallen into one clear sin, right? So that becomes a sin issue if I save nothing.

And then if I save way too much, I fall into another sin, which is called hoarding. Meaning like if I'm just laying up treasures on earth with no plan for what to do with them, then I've just fallen into another ditch.

So yeah, at some point, these wisdom issues can crystallize into clear sin issues, but there's a lot of room in there. There's a lot of room for interpretation into how that you're applying any of these individual commands.

Then sin issues, these are situations requiring decision-making where Scripture clearly defines the right or wrong course of action. They involve clear-cut sins of omission or commission, requiring obedience to God's word.

So you shall not kill, I put, because I read the King James early on in my life, and I manfully resisted the temptation to put thou shalt not. But then kill just stuck in there for some reason instead of murder.

But yeah, so you shall not murder, that's the command. You shall not steal. There's no situation where it's ever going to be right to murder someone. There's no situation where it's ever going to be okay to steal from someone.

That's a clear-cut sin. There's clear-cut sin issues that are more black and white. So you understand the categories? There's preferences, these are non-moral. I like pizza. You like burgers or whatever.