Principles of Unity and Fellowship . . .
LOVE: THE UNIFYING POWER OF THE GODHEAD
Our son Philip has been working at a neighborhood
drive‑in grocery. He came home the other night excited over an incident
that took place in his store. In came this distraught woman, battered and
bloodied, wanting him to call the police. Her husband had beaten her and stolen
away in her car, leaving her
stranded, and she wanted the police to do something about it. Since he does not
witness anything exactly like that at home, he was eager to share the
excitement with us, but of course there was nothing unusual about it to the
police. The couple had been drinking, and there were indications of several
other problems, as she ranted and raved while awaiting the patrol car. As we
talked about it I explained that it all boils down to one basic problem: they don't love each other anymore, if they
ever did. The basis of a marriage, as ordained of God, is love. If that is
lost, the marriage falls on its face, however long and awkwardly it is kept
propped up by artificial means.
The other night a picture was flashed on the TV
screen of a young teenager who is being held as a runaway by Dallas
authorities. Runaways in Dallas are not all that newsworthy, but there was
something unusual in his case: he persistently refused to reveal his identity
or to tell the detention people anything about himself, not even his age. He
was a handsome lad, and you would think that any parent would be eager to issue
their claim for such a son, but they
were slow in coming out of hiding. And the boy
wouldn't tell who he was because he didn't want to go back home. His problem
too is as simple as it is complex: he doesn't feel loved and wanted, and he has
probably not yet learned to love others. God's philanthropy in creating the
home would quite obviously have it otherwise. Homes without love can hardly be
happy homes.
John Udell, one of our pioneer preachers in the
West, told of some of his experiences in Incidents
of Travel to California across the Great Plains, 1856. He made three trips
from Iowa to California afoot with various groups, and he had some wild tales
to tell. While he was impressed that he could stand on a hill and see wagon
trains stretched out across the horizon toward California as far as the eye
could reach, he was appalled by the wretched, immoral lives of the emigrants.
Men who were once civilized and Christian demeaned themselves in language and
conduct beneath the brute. Even men who were preachers of the gospel back home
turned to gambling, profanity and obscenity. So disgusted was he on one of
these journeys that he separated from the others and traveled alone, without
provisions, for 1500 miles. Those were wild and woolly days.
Udell describes one situation
that especially caught my eye. It was common, he reports, to see companies
and families travelling together that finally
separated into smaller units because of quarreling and fighting. In some cases
brothers would dispute, cut their wagon into two carts, and pursue each his
journey alone. Can't you just see that, out on the great American desert where
people are sorely in need of each other's resources and strength, two brothers
dividing their meager supplies, even to cutting their wagons into two parts. It
dramatically illustrates the peril of divisiveness.
In all these stories we can
easily see what would be more in keeping with God's purposes, who has
"destined us in love." The wife bloodied by her husband's cruelty
once stood with him at the altar, exchanging vows and sharing hopes. Love made
them one, but now it is shattered by sin. "If that is love, I want no part
of it," she told Philip, and that about tells the story, whether it be a
marriage, a family or a church. The' heavenly Father gave each of us the
capacity to love, as well as the resources of love, and it is His cohesive
power that holds together all these things that we treasure.
If we in the church cut our
wagons into carts through party strife so that each sect can go its own way,
the world is going to say, "If that is brotherhood, then I want no part of
if." If we reject those among us who fall short of our notion of doctrinal
purity, causing our "runaways" to feel unloved and unwanted, people
will have to look elsewhere who seek the compassionate Christ.
God is unity. This is evident
in all His handiwork, whether in His creation, legislation or redemption These
three areas of His activity illustrate the nine attributes of God.
In creation He manifested His
wisdom, power and goodness. In legislation (the laws and commandments He has
given man) His truth, justice and holiness. In redemption (or salvation) His
mercy, condescension and love. And all these are one, reflecting a single
purpose, the ultimate glorification of redeemed humanity. Disunity stands over
against all this, as darkness does light. There is no way for us to be
divisive, whether in the family or in the church, and be like God. Just as God,
as light, overcomes all darkness, God, as one, defeats all divisiveness. That
is, He does so in the lives of all those who walk with Him. No man can love God
and hate his brother, and no man can walk with God and be factious.
This is why division is a sin.
It is unlike God and contrary to all His purposes for us. Just as fornication,
uncleanness and indecency are sins. Just as God is one He is also pure, clean
and decent. The party spirit is as contrary to being like God as indecency or
uncleanness, and so in Gal. 5 the apostle puts them all in the same category and
insists that they who practice such things shall have no place in the kingdom
of God. We have no problem in seeing that we are not to condone and perpetuate
fornication or idolatry, but we are slow in seeing that it is just as wrong to
condone and perpetuate our party-splits, to use Moffatt's translation.
Jesus is "the
reflection of God's glory and the living image of his being" (Heb. 1:3)
and so in the flesh, in the likeness
of their own nature, men saw all the attributes of God: wisdom, power, goodness;
truth, justice, holiness; mercy, condescension, love. And all these are one in
the Christ. Jesus manifested these attributes of God so as to make men and
women one in himself. "If any man is in Christ, there is a new
creation," says the apostle. Then he says: "All this comes from God,
who through Christ brought us into peace with himself, and gave us the ministry
of peace‑making" (2 Cor. 5:17‑19). This is to say that Jesus'
ministry was to make men one in God's family, to make them brothers. We are
never so unlike the Christ than when we make havoc of the peace he cultivates
in people's lives.
So it is with the mission of
the Spirit in the heart of the believer. Unity is the Spirit's gift to the
church. With gentleness, quietness, patience, and forbearing love we are to
"preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Ro. 14:17
tells us that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy "in the
Holy Spirit." Then Paul says: "He who so serves Christ is pleasing to
God and approved by man." He goes on to call for that peace and love that
builds up the church. We are not "for the sake of food" ‑our
pet doctrines and traditions ‑ ruin any work of God. The lesson is clear:
a spirit of rivalry and hate destroys God's work; love saves and nourishes it.
In his love hymn in 1 Cor. 13
the apostle spells out the power of love as the Godhead's way of unity:
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy; love has no loud words in
her mouth, no swelling thoughts in her heart; is not rude nor self‑seeking
nor easily angry; does not count up her wrongs; finds no pleasure in evil done
to others, but delights in goodness. Love always forgives, always believes,
always hopes, always bears patiently." (Williams)
There is no way for us to
behave this way except by the power of the Spirit within us. It is natural,
according to the flesh, for us to be self‑serving, which is the real
source of partyism. Self‑denial, forgiveness, and forbearing love can
never be our work, but must always be the Spirit's fruit.
This journal has for some
years joined in what Henry Steele Commager calls "the search for a usable
past," and we believe there is an important use for our history. One
example will serve to illustrate this, one that shows how our pioneers came to
see that love is the only unifying power that we have.
The decade following Alexander
Campbell's death in 1866 was a discouraging period in our history. While we
survived the Civil War without open division, our people were in the throes of
controversy over several issues, instrumental music and the missionary society
in particular. For a time it looked as if the whole thing would go down the
drain. One man was to make the difference, and it was he that began a new era
in responsible Christian journalism, and that was Isaac Errett, who began the Christian Standard the same year
Campbell died.
He had
learned the way of peace. As for the instrument, he favored it, but he urged no
congregation to adopt it if there was even a minority that opposed it. As for
societies, he sought to make love the arbiter. Errett set out to rescue the
Movement from the bondage of the unwritten creeds that had emerged among us,
threatening to divide. Campbell's death had unleashed a creedalism that only
his presence had kept under control. Errett, perhaps more than any other editor
(and we were directed by the Editor Bishops!), caught the essence of the Stone‑Campbell
plea.
Amidst all the controversy he
sent out these words in the Standard (June
20, 1868): "Let the bond of union among the baptized be Christian
character in place of orthodoxy ‑ right doing in place of exact thinking;
and outside of plain precepts, let all acknowledge the liberty of all, nor seek
to impose limitations on their brethren, other than those of the law of
love."
Errett realized that the bond
of union had to be love and forbearance, not unanimity of doctrine. Unity is
possible only in terms of right behavior,
not exact thinking. Errett's emphasis is what is evident in the scriptures:
the problems in the early church, including all the heresies, were primarily
behavioral problems, not diversity of viewpoint. Let no brother impose any
limitation upon another, apart from plain precepts, except the law of love.
That is our freedom; that is our hope. It was the Declaration and Address all over again.
Writing on this, Garrison and
Degroot in their history of Disciples say, "More than to any other journal
and person, it was to the Christian
Standard and Isaac Errett that the Disciples were indebted for being saved
from becoming a fissiparous sect of jangling legalists."
Well, we got our share of
jangling legalists, but it is to the credit of our people of the 1860's and
1870's that a majority of them listened to Errett.
The majority today, even among
Churches of Christ, really believe what Errett believed: that the bond of love
will bring us together as God's people and endear us to one another as brothers
and sisters despite varying doctrinal interpretations. Most of our folk now
realize that debating and dividing is a lost cause, making us no more than
"a fissiaparous sect." Down deep in their hearts they want to reach
out in love and claim all of God's children as their brothers and sisters. Had
it been God's plan that we be brothers and sisters on the basis of seeing alike
on all "the issues" (each sect among us has a different list!), there
would never have been a family of God upon this earth ‑ with even the
apostles themselves being no exception!
So the apostle Paul sums it
all up for us in Col. 3:14 "Above all these put on love, which binds
everything together in perfect harmony." This is God's cohesive power, the
great dynamic, for the unity of His people. There is no other way.
And it is the one message that rings clear to a lost world. A loving, united church has a powerful witness to broken homes and broken lives, to runaways, and to suffering humanity in general. —the Editor
The great criticism of the Church today is that no one wants to persecute it; because there is nothing very much to persecute it about. —G. F. Mc Cleod
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. —Kahil Gibran