THE ONE BODY
Harold Key

A while back, visiting in a hospital ward, one of the patients there asked me what church I belonged to. I told him, “If you are a Christian, we both belong to the same church.” At first he seemed surprised at my answer, but then he said, “You know, that’s right. I really meant to ask you what denomination you belong to; but denominations just divide us, don’t they?” The answer of scripture and history to that last question is: Indeed, they do!

The title of this address is from Eph. 4:4, which declares, “There is one body.” This body spoken of here is the same body introduced in the first chapter, where it is affirmed that God the Father has made the Lord Jesus Christ “the head over all things for the church which is his body.” The thing to note is that the scriptures do not say, “There ought to be one body,” but rather, they declare, “There is one body.” This is an important point especially for us, because if the church is his body (which we accept), and there is but one body according to scripture, then there is but one church. In other words, the church is one.

This truth that the church is one is the very foundation of the nineteenth century Restoration Movement in the United States. In the famous Declaration and Address by Thomas Campbell in the year 1809, the first proposition sets forth this affirmation: “that the church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one.”

How, then, did the present-day world, and especially the heirs of the Restoration Movement, arrive at such an idea which generally exists that the church is not one? Why would any professing believers in Christ Jesus deny the unity of his body and conduct themselves as though Christ were in fact divided? I think the cause, of course, is the devil working through the fallen, unregenerate human nature which we all share through Adam. In the very first instance of brotherhood, when Cain murdered his brother Abel, is seen the typical response to a relationship shared by jealous, self-seeking, loveless natures that all mankind inherits from the first man.

If it is at all possible, let me drive home this point. Reduced to one word, that which seeks to destroy brotherhood is lovelessness. Lovelessness has been the main factor in every instance from the time of Cain down to the present. Men may claim that it has been things which have led them to turn against one another, but that is not correct. Men may differ over many things and still sit down around the Table of the Lord together, for people simply cannot fight and destroy those whom they fervently love. We do not destroy those whom we most love because love always perceives a unity which transcends any things.

The history of the Judo-Christian religion is a clear testimony to how difficult it has been for God our Father to bring men to perceive a real unity with Himself and with each other. The efforts of man to achieve his own basis of a lasting unity simply leads to a tower of Babel --- to confusion, strife, alienation and separation. If ever a real unity is to be attained, God Himself must produce it. Accordingly, God called one man, Abraham into a special relation with Himself and promised to bless through his descendants all the nations of earth. By entering into a solemn covenantal relation with this family, a sense of unity eventually was achieved which bound the twelve tribes to the God of Israel and to one another. While Israel actually was united from their beginning through the same covenantal relation with the same Lord, yet it required several centuries before they achieved a vital and permanent sense of their unity. In fact, this did not occur until after the Babylonian Captivity.

However, God had a much larger end in view than simply unifying the twelve tribes of Israel. What He was really endeavoring to do was to use Israel as a beginning in a plan that would ultimately bring the entire human family into an eternal spiritual unity with Himself and with one another. Accordingly then, the church of our Lord Jesus Christ His Son was not of another and different purpose in the mind of God and unrelated to His original intention. Rather, the church was the direct outgrowth and fulfilling of the divine plan for unifying all things in heaven and on earth.

The point I am trying to make is the very theme of the New Testament epistle of Ephesians. The theme of this letter to first century Christians in particular and to all Christians in general, is that “in Christ” is fulfilled that ancient purpose of God. In Christ is achieved the long-sought unity of man with God and of men with men. Let us read the opening statement:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us. For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Ephesians 1 :3-10)

Following this declaration that God set forth in Christ His plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, the continuing first three chapters are an elaboration of how this is actually accomplished in Christ, using as an illustration the alienated Jew and Gentiles.

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” (Ephesians 2:13-18)

Then, as in all the letters of Paul, the doctrinal part (that is, the presentation of what God has done for man) is followed by a statement of man’s response. The question here is, “What are the practical implications of our being one with God and with each other?” The answer comes,

“ . . . lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph. 4:1-3)

The unity is already there. All you have to do is to recognize it and nurture it. You do not have to create it yourself. God has already done that in His Son. In fact, you cannot create it; you can only accept it. Just as the unity within a physical family is derived from the parental source, so it is in the family of God. God through Christ is the source of its life and its unity. The church is one. We do not have to make it so. The Father has already made it one, consisting of all those in every place who confess His Son Jesus to be the Christ and who endeavor to obey him according to their understanding of his will.

How, then, is this unity of the Spirit which we all have in Christ maintained so as to be kept in the bond of peace? Truly God chose what is simple and despised in the eyes of the world to confound the wise and the mighty. The unity of the spiritual body of Christ is to be maintained in the gentle ties of peace and harmony by an individual manifestation of the nature of him who called us into our relationship. The Ephesian letter points out specifically that spiritual harmony is maintained by the inward disposition of lowliness and meekness and by the outward manifestation of patience and forbearance in love. These characteristics are the exact opposites of pride with its corollaries of ambition, love of control and prestige, hyper-criticism and faultfinding. Unless the gentle and loving disposition of the Savior be manifest in the saved, our unity of the Spirit will not be maintained in the bond of peace.

Colossians, the companion epistle of Ephesians, also presents the dynamic of love as the factor that maintains harmony among the members of the body of Christ.

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.” (Col. 3:12-15)

Let us remember this point: love is the cohesive element within the divine nature.

If this is the will of God and the Spirit of His Son that the church be united, then why is the church not united today? But that is just the point! The church is united today, and it has always been united. If there is still only “one Spirit,” if there is still only “one Lord”, if there is still only “one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all,” then there is still only “one body”. Since the body of Christ is still one, this is why partyism, sectarianism and denominationalism is so sinful. They are the opposite of lowliness and meekness, of patience and forbearance in love. They obscure the unity of the body of Christ and lead us to act as though we were not all really members one of another. This negates the Good News by robbing the gospel of Christ of its greatest credentials, and it leaves an unbelieving world disdainful of the only means of unification with God and with itself.

Brethren, it is weakening to have conflicts within any body, but it is tragic to have factions within the body of Christ, regardless of whatever euphemistic designation or denomination by which they are called. One of the Arch-adversary’s cleverest tricks was to get us to call these party divisions “churches.” The father of lies knows they are not different churches, for the Father of Heaven says plainly that there is only one church. It is no better to call them “false churches,” because this is still a part of the same trick to defeat the unifying power of Christ. To regard some members of the body as “false churches” leads directly to the concept of there being a “true church” (to which we belong, of course, which is completely free from error and sin). Deep down within us, we know there is no such congregation or groups of congregations anywhere which are not without members who are mistaken on many things and continually in need of cleansing from sin. But, if the devil can somehow trick us into a doublethink so that we can admit this fact and yet at the same time disregard the implications of it, he succeeds in leading us to repudiate brotherhood by a process of semantics.

To avoid just such a mistake, the Apostle Paul refused to consider for one moment that those in the church at Corinth who called themselves by their different factious designations were really different “churches”, He refused to fall into the error of recognizing those who distinguished themselves from the other parties by saying they were “of Christ” as the true church, implying that the others were not of Christ also. The truth was (and so Paul emphasized it) they were all “the church of God which is at Corinth, sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours” (1 Cor. 1-2). The appeal to all the parties to agree, to have no dissensions among them, was not in order to be one in Christ, but because they already were one in Christ. In the ensuing discussion concerning spiritual gifts, Paul reminded them, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27).

It was this truth, “that the church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one” in spite of its apparent divisions, that led to the beginning of the Restoration Movement, which Alexander Campbell declared was a “project to unite the Christians in all the sects.” This common aim recognized the unity of the church even though the church was separated into the various sectarian folds. This ability to see the one body under such circumstances requires unsectarian eyes. But because they were able to see the people of God “caught in sectarian thickets,” they spoke of the church as “the scattered flock.” This is why they urged all believers to be Christians only, saying, “We do not claim to be the only Christians, but we would be Christians only.”

It is such an absolutely sectarian spirit among us today, and so completely contrary to the aim “to unite the Christians in all sects,” which denies that the church is a scattered flock or that there are Christians outside our own party fold. This attitude of being the only Christians, of being the church of Christ, is a comparatively new innovation, completely against the instruction to early Christians and contrary to our own history as a Restoration Movement. This partisan attitude among us, so reminiscent of Corinth, is chiefly a development of the past generation which we are by no means obligated to maintain. There have always been voices warning against this drift. Even as late as 1920, such a paper as Gospel Advocate was deploring this growing sectarian spirit among us. M. C. Kurfees, the esteemed opponent of the use of instrumental music in congregational worship, wrote a series of articles pleading with the readers not to narrow their concept of the one body of Christ simply to those who agreed with themselves on points of controversy, but rather to keep a perspective of the church as a whole. In his third article on the subject he wrote:

“The facts presented in previous articles warrant the conclusion that, in the present divided state of the church, precisely as if there were no divisions, the only correct use of the term, when applied to the Christians or children of God in a given community, even though they be separated into different denominational divisions, is to make it include them all, regardless of the errors in which some of them are entangled . . , “ (These articles originally appeared in August and September, 1920, and were reprinted in the’ “Pioneer Pulpit” section of the Gospel Advocate in April and May, 1956.)

Men of perception, from apostolic times down to the present, have realized that it is erroneous to equate unity with uniformity. The unity of the one body of Christ is far more than the “ticky-tacky” uniformity of the houses in a modern real estate development that are all built from a single set of blueprints. The unity of the one body of Christ is comparable only to the unity within the human body, where the unity of the members is a real one of interrelation and function rather than uniformity of appearance. This is why the Apostle Paul wrote to the factious Corinthians:

“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 by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body --- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free --- and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many, If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honor able we invest with the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which are more presentable parts do not require. But God has so adjusted the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12 :12-27)

In the church at Corinth there was unity even though there was a lack of harmony. Although there ought to have been “no discord in the body” ( verse 25), yet there was discord, and it was in the body. What this means is that since unity ought to produce harmony, the unity has to be first, and then the harmony. It is an insurmountable mistake to turn it the other way around and insist that harmony is that which produces unity, Unity is essential to the body’s being, while harmony is essential to the body’s well-being, When the members of a body fail to function in harmony, the body becomes sickly. But the body is still a unity, whether sick or well.

As it was in the beginning, so it is now. The solution to the problem of discord in the one spiritual body of Christ back in the first century is the same solution to the problem of discord in the one spiritual body now in the twentieth century. The solution to the parties and factions in the one church at Corinth was the “more excellent way” of chapter thirteen. We have praised love and preached love as the greatest thing in the world for almost every situation except the express application to which it was made: --- the solution that dissolves the fractions and separations within the body of Jesus Christ. Love not only dissolves the irritations within the body, but it is the cohesive element “which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:14). In all our concern for unity, or fellowship, or ecumenicity, or whatever we call it, though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels in councils and conferences, but have not love, it profits us nothing.

The only source sufficient to move us to love each other into harmony is the old, old story of God’s great love for us. It is the gospel which is the power of God, --- the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God who was born in the likeness of sinful men and gave his life even unto death on a cross to make atonement (at-one-ment). It is the Good News of him who was raised by the power of God to be our living Brother, who even now intercedes for us, and who promises to come again in a little while to receive us unto himself. He is the source of our love. The Apostle John states it simply, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20,21)

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Harold Key is minister of the Central Church of Christ, St. Louis, Missouri.