The Connection of Unity and Grace

Acts 2:42-47: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

The fellowship of the early church, once Jesus had ascended to heaven, was to live in a community that anticipated the imminent return of the Savior. All of the teaching they had came directly from Jesus’ ministry, and was explained by the apostles—they did not have the Bible as we have access to it today or all the different factions, denominations, and divisions that exist today. They were a unified body.

This past semester I had the ability to study the major events of the church history, spanning the two thousand years that the church has been in existence—beginning about fifth century and continuing to present time. Many common themes flow through the transitions that the church has gone through as people have nit-picked details and argued about the minor, grey areas that have nothing to do with the validity of one’s salvation. It was this detail nit-picking that caused the factions and divisions to develop amongst Christians, throughout history.

These divisions were not always carried out in the most “Christian” manor—as seen in the notorious crusades—but these splits have lead to the formation different denominations and religions in existence today. In looking at the modern, American, Christian church, this split in ideology has evidenced itself in the amount of existing churches and the separation that develops because peoples alliance is wrongly, first and foremost to their home church, when it should be to Jesus Christ.

The division that the body of believers is experiencing as a result of the alliances that people are making with individual churches, has confused the concept of what a “Christian” is. People on the outside are not drawn to the grace of God because there is so much confusion and condemnation between groups that call themselves Christians.  It is when the church begins to heap condemnation on each other, and forget the humanity and fallibleness that we as humans innately possess, that Christians gain the negative reputation as judgmental and non-understanding. And it is this reputation that has caused Christians to turn against one another and nonbelievers to want absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.

As a believer in Christ, I have seen the damage that judgmental-ness can cause, and have been the subject of judgmental-ness from other, fellow Christians. For what it has done to me, I can only imagine how it makes people, who don’t share my belief in Jesus, feel. I do understand that we are all human, and that humans are, by our nature, going to make mistakes. However, as people who claim freedom from sin in the grace of Christ, we should strive to bring reconciliation and unity rather than condemnation and confusion. Through the grace of Christ, Christians have the ability to be a united body, and not be separated by allegiance to certain pastors or specific institutions.

It is ultimately to Jesus Christ that our allegiance should belong, and he is whom we should strive to replicate our lives after.

1 Corinthians 3:1-9 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.  You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

It is through God that we are saved, and for God that we should, then, live.