Unity in the Bond of Peace

  • by Lance Parrott
  • Friday, August 7th, 2009
  • Series: Committed To One Another: A Study Through Our Church Covenant

 We will work and pray for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace among this fellowship.

Growing up with a sister only 11 months older than me had it's share of challenges. Sure, we were born from the same womb and shared the same father, but that didn't mean love came easy for either one of us. We often spent many days arguing over who got to sit in the front seat of mom's Dodge Caravan. Or fighting about her locking me out of my bedroom. She was my sister. My own flesh and blood. Some have even said we look alike. However, blood connection did not always entail love connection with my sister and me.  

I guess you could say that unity is easier said than done.    

The same is true for God's children, the church. What is already true in the gospel is that we have been united in Christ for the glory of Christ. When Jesus "bore our sins in his body on tree," he did so in order to redeem his Church. And the church has been united into one body with Christ as head of the body (Col. 1:18-19). When writing to the church at Corinth, Paul reminds them, "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and all were made to drink of one Spirit," (I Cor. 12:12-13). Therefore, the picture of the gospel is that God has united in the death and resurrection of Christ many people into his precious body, the church.  

So, the question is not "How do we create unity, but how do we preserve unity in the body of Christ?"

As believers in Christ, we are called, "to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:3). This means one of our greatest desires should be to display the gospel in living out the unity in Christ. The problem we face in preserving unity in the church is that "the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for they are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do" (Gal.5:17). That means on a larger scale the flesh is at war with the Spirit of the church, and Satan wants nothing more than to destroy the church's unity.   

This is exactly why we must work and pray for the unity of the Spirit. We have committed to one another to work for unity. That means we work to dissolve divisions that are rising among our members and seek to destroy anything that could tear the church apart.  Also, that is why we commit to pray for unity. Nothing in the church that is of God will be achieved without God. Therefore, we must fall on our faces before God that he might bless the church with unity.  

In the end, the unity of Christ is a blessing for the church but ultimately it is used for the glory of Christ. That is why Christ prays to the Father - "The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me" (John 17:22-23). Let us work and pray together that the prayer of Jesus might be the reality of the church in Bowling Green. Unity might be easier said than done, but it is worth the battle for the good of the church and for the glory of Jesus.