UNITY IS GOD’S GIFT

Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (Jas. 1:17)

A great truth like this is a good antidote against the ugly pride that is in us all. Whether it be our good fortune or good health, we like to assume that it is mostly our doing. We can become handsome, rich, articulate, successful, influential, and even the parents of bright and happy children, supposing all along that we get the credit. Pride is surely a grievous sin against God, and the medieval monks who came up with “the seven deadly sins” were right in giving pride first place. Some experts on sin (!) insist that all sin is basically pride, which is vicious enough to express itself in many ways. 1 Tim. 3:6 seems to be telling us that even Satan’s fall was due to his pride.

In these days of unity meetings and unity movements in our own ranks, not to mention ecumenicity at large, we must not allow our pride to assume that any of this is by our own power or wisdom. I have helped put together many unity conferences, dating back to the time when the idea was almost unthinkable, and these have been more or less successful. I say successful advisedly, for this only means that they have been fairly well attended by disciples who have made some new adventures into brotherhood. It is a joy to bring people together who have not even been speaking to each other. I have seen men who would previously only debate one another in a bloody arena reach out in love and accept each other as brothers, sometimes embracing and weeping. We have sometimes had eight or ten different groups of “loyal brethren” in these forums, and how great it is to see them singing, praying, and studying together. To paraphrase the psalmist, it is like the aroma of an elegant aftershave daubed upon the face!

How vain it would be to view all such victories as anything other than one more precious gift from God. James speaks not only of good gifts but perfect gifts as well. This distinction may point to gifts that are benevolent in character, the good gifts that are such blessings to us, and gifts that are complete in every detail, the perfect gifts. A gift may of course be both, such as God’s gift of a lovely wife. Ouida is certainly a bundle of benevolence to me in that “She doeth him good all the days of his life,” and I must say that she is also a perfect gift in that she is all any man could ever want in a wife.

How true this is of unity among disciples. What is more tragic than a feuding church unless it is a divided church? Brothers in Christ that cannot even speak to each other on the street are a denial of all that they profess as followers of Jesus. Churches that have to parcel out their efforts according to the dictates of partyism, even in the mission field, do little more than to preserve a self-defeating program. How sad it is that so many yearning hearts want to reach out like Jesus and touch the untouchables, but they dare not if they expect to get along at home. Many a minister longs to say what he really believes and to accept those that he secretly acknowledges as his brothers, but he holds back in favor of sectarian pressure. And how cruel it is for us to drive God’s sheep from one flock to another, insisting that if one is “faithful” then he must be with us and not with them. We even invade small towns with a “loyal church,” to the embarrassment of our brethren who have carried out a labor of love in that town for several generations.

It is beautiful to see this change. Jesus is at work through his Spirit when men who have hated start loving. It is God in the hearts of men when they stop being bruisers and start being blenders. We may in our stumbling efforts provide the setting in which the Spirit can do his work, but let us never forget that this blessed and perfect gift of oneness between brothers who were once at war is from the Father. It is the Spirit’s unity that we are to preserve in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3), and not any kind of union that this forum or that conclave might cultivate in its own wisdom. It is folly to have a plan for unity unless that plan calls for a total reliance upon resources of the Spirit. Any other kind of unity would be futile anyway.

And it should occur to us that if, after all, unity is God’s good and perfect gift, then He will dispense that gift in His own way and time. If unity is His to give and not ours to achieve, then we must take care in supposing that a congregation is one just because it has no open splits. Unity is a gut issue, reaching deep inside man, and has to do with the way he feels and acts toward his fellows. It has to begin with one’s own relationship to God. If it is one of love rather than of fear, and trusting faith instead of nagging doubt, then he is ready to relate to his brother in the fellowship of the Spirit. People are not united just because they sit together in a building a few hours a week, nor even because they may agree on all the things they believe to be important. Unity is not simply the opposite of division. It rather has its own quality that is tied closely to the Father. God gives unity in giving His Spirit. The Spirit in turn cultivates the cohesive influence of love, joy, and peace. It is the bond of peace that preserves the Spirit’s unity.

Despite its doctrinal unanimity, a church cannot be united if it does not have the Spirit of God. If it does have the Spirit of God, it cannot be divided. This means that believers might have considerable disparity in their thinking, and thus be “divided” in a looser sense of the term, and still be one in that the Spirit has made it so —like Peter and Paul! Some of our people have been both surprised and threatened in the presence of some Episcopalian or Roman Catholic with whom they experience more spiritual affinity than with the “right” folk back at the church. And they come to see that such ones give no more importance to being an Episcopalian or a Roman Catholic than we should give to being Church of Christ. God sees us as individuals, not as part of a religious community, and He deals with us accordingly. And when He deals with us and we respond obediently, then we are not only His, but we are brothers to all others who also respond. This is unity. We don’t work for it nor do we create it. We simply recognize it and take the steps the Spirit has given to preserve it, which are “with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love” (Eph.4:2-3).

Preserving the unity that God has given comes also through prayer. Surely it would make a difference if our people all around the world would bombard the throne of God in agonizing prayer for the oneness of all believers. Rev. 5:8 refers to the prayers of saints as “golden bowls full of incense.” which were held by the elders and the living creatures as they bowed down before the throne. Surely if those bowls overflowed with the incense of prayers for unity, God would take our concern to heart. But are we really concerned that much? Do our people seriously pray for unity? If we all prayed every day, like Jesus did, “that they might all be one,” and asked to be used in making it so, we could look for things to happen.

Several years ago while visiting Westminster Abbey in London, I was impressed by a sign I noticed in a remote corner of that famous shrine. “Prayers for Christian Unity in this Chapel Every Tuesday at 3 P.M.,” it read. Despite the supposition that I have long harbored that God doesn’t listen to Episcopalians anyhow, I was moved by this simple announcement. “I have never seen such a notice or heard such an announcement in any of our buildings back home,” I thought to myself. If our Lord could make the unity of his followers a central concern in his high priestly prayer in the shadow of the cross, surely we can pray fervently that his prayer will be realized in us.

But back to the apostle’s tender statement in James 1:17. Despite its simplicity it is beautifully profound. He sees every good and perfect gift as coming down from heaven to bless us. He calls God “the Father of lights,” which is probably a reference to God’s lordship over the heavenly bodies. It is an appropriate reference in view of the gift of unity. Astronomers and philosophers have long been impressed with the majestic unity of the heavenly system, the planets moving about as they do with precise timing. Plato believed he could build order and dignity into the lives of his disciples by having them study the brilliant disposition of the heavens. It may well be that a divided church needs to ponder the unity of the stars and planets, and then go and do likewise.

James sees God as the Ruler of the heavenly lights, and yet God is different from the sun in one important respect. He is not given to change as the sun is, which, because of the obstreperous earth, casts its shadow variably. But in God, unlike the sun, there “is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” God never leaves us in the dark as the sun does half the earth at a time. God is always the same, at all seasons of the year, and for all our lifetime. His sameness reaches back into all of eternity, long before there was any earth. The sun, for all its glory, does cast shadows. But it is as if God stood as the sun in the meridian at high noon, never casting any shadow.

The good endowment of unity and the perfect gift of fellowship are for us if we really choose to walk in His light. There is really no excuse for the darkness of faction and partyism. —the Editor

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. —Walter Lippmann