Let Jesus Lead

But you see this division within the church happening over and over again as I said earlier. Often, such division is over petty things, many of which have no connection to the spiritual life of the church. I don’t think the color of the carpet is going to have any eternal consequences in the lives of the church people or the lives of those outside the church. But when the church squabbles over such matters and there is division, it does quite often affect the spiritual life of the church. All too often, when it happens one time that the church is divided, it becomes like a seed that is planted that will produced more division. Very easily, that division becomes what the church is known for by those outside the church and their witness to the community around them is totally destroyed. When this happens, it does have eternal consequences both in the lives of church members and those outside the church.

I could go on with many stories of the unbelievable things that I have seen happen in churches and I am sure that you could add many of your own. We could talk about all the things that have happened that have caused churches to split and the many mean-spirited things that have been done during these times of disagreement among the church body. But, I think you get the picture. I believe that we need to ask ourselves why these things happen and accept in our hearts that this is not what Jesus desires for His church. He does not want division or strife to happen in His church. I believe that He has shown us a better way in His Word. The model of the New Testament Church is given for us to emulate in our churches. The example is given for us to follow and the principles are there that can show us the way to "do" church without having these situations in our body of believers.

At this point, I want you to see the problem that I am talking about. All too often we have division within the church and much of this division is because we have allowed our democratic way of life in American to creep into our churches. We have not realized that that the New Testament teaches us a different way of functioning as the church. We are so used to functioning in a democratic way and have been so proud of our country because of its democratic way of government that we have somehow failed to see clearly the New Testament teachings. We have failed to apply them to our situation in our current day. Thus we have not understood the emphasis that Jesus has put on unity among us as Christians in His body. Let’s look at these things in a little more detail.

The first reason that we have so much division in our churches is that we do not see and understand the importance of unity within the body of Christ. As Americans, we live in a democracy where we think that it is good to have diversity of opinions. We can freely express our individual opinions and we can debate matters. We can disagree with each other and often do. This is not a bad way to govern when you are referring to our country. But, this kind of thinking can be a problem when it is carried over into the church and we need to understand that. Jesus did not give that directive to the church. It is easier for us to accept the way of our culture than it is to accept the Word’s way on how we "do" church.

In His prayer, Jesus prayed that we would all be one, even as He and the Father were one. In their letters, the apostles also wrote that believers should be one and have the same minds together as they interact as the body of Christ. What this means is that we come together diligently seeking for God to show us His will concerning the things we should do and how we function as His Church. As we do that, I believe that the Holy Spirit will lead us to think the same thing in our mind. I do not believe that the Holy Spirit is going to show one idea to one member and something different to another. The Holy Spirit knows the will of the Father and as we come together with differing ideas, He will lead us to understand that will and come together in unity. I will deal with this idea in more detail when I share about the solutions to this issue of the lack of unity within the church.

The second reason for so much division could be that we do not function in the way that New Testament teaches that the body of Christ should function. Ephesians 4 and Acts 2 give us clear teachings about how the body of Christ should function. Ephesians 4 gives us a beautiful picture of a body living and working together in unity. Christ is the head of that body and the leaders that He gives to the body are teaching the members how to do the work that Christ wants done. The members are all working together in unity and supplying all that the body needs. Each person is supplying what is needed to build up the other members. Each member of the body is using the abilities that he/she has to be the part of the body that Christ wants them to be so that the body will function to perfection. Acts 2 gives us specifics about how that early church lived and acted as a perfect body of believers. It is the model that we should follow and we should follow those characteristics that made them the perfect model. It is when we do not function as these two passages teach us to function that the body of believers is weakened and we have disorder and division among us.