UNITY IN DIVERSITY

While there may certainly be diversity without unity, there can never be unity without diversity. It is true of all that is beautiful, whether a painting or a symphonic composition, that variety and diversity are so mingled in creative symmetry as to make for something lovely. It is true of all nature, whether a single atom or our entire solar system, that its diverse elements are so proportioned as to make for unity and orderliness. To achieve unity a bouquet of flowers or the planets in their orbit do not have to bring their diverse elements into conformity or sameness, which would be an absurdity anyway, but only to bring the variety of the various elements into the scheme of their Creator. Plato wanted his students to watch the behavior of the planets, thinking it would build order into their lives. It is the unity in God’s diverse cosmos that staggers the imagination and arouses wonder in man’s mind.

It would be folly to suppose that the church of God on earth would be anything different. The unity for which Jesus prayed had to be for a unity in diversity, for the background of the apostles ranged from that of a Roman tax collector on the left to a dagger-carrying Zealot on the right. But it was Jesus who made them one in Himself, making them brothers together by the gospel. True evangelism conforms men to the likeness of God through Jesus, while it takes indoctrination to conform them to a sect or party. Conformity to doctrine may be necessary to fellowship among sectarians, but it is conformity to the likeness of Christ that makes men children of God, and surely there is a vast difference between the two. Those who are thus conformed to God by transformation of life enjoy unity in diversity. There can of course be no other kind of unity, man’s nature and God’s nature being what they are.

The scriptural images of the church make unity in diversity evident enough. The church is both as much one and diverse as a human body: “For Christ is like a single body with its many limbs and organs, which, many as they are, together make up one body” (1 Cor. 12:12). It is this diversity in the Body that challenges the church to be one: “But God has combined the various parts of the body, giving special honour to the humbler parts, so that there might be no sense of division in the body, but that all its organs might feel the same concern for one another” (1 Cor. 12:24-25).

Marriage provides another image, with the church as the Bride of Christ, and what serves as a more beautiful picture of unity in diversity than the oneness of a man and his wife. As Phillips’ rendition of Eph. 5:32 puts it: “The marriage relationship is doubtless a great mystery, but I am speaking of something deeper still — the marriage of Christ and his Church.” In terms of the problems that divide us, this image of oneness may be more practical than we realize, for every married person realizes that it is love and devotion that holds a marriage together, not conformity of viewpoint. The last one of us would have to denounce his marriage and “withdraw” from his partner if the basis of unity was unanimity in opinion or interpretation. We must conclude that it is love that “binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:14), and that it is something less than love that has caused all the divisions. Any marriage could end in a day if love did not hold it together.

The marriage symbol is extended to include the family, God’s church being His household, with all of us as brothers and sisters together (Eph. 3:14-15). God chooses us to be His sons, the Holy Spirit confirming this by crying “Abba, Father” within us (Gal. 4:6). It is not that we select each other as brothers, like we might choose fraternity buddies. All who are in God’s family are brothers, and the Spirit does not have to get an OK from any of the rest of us before He dwells within them as a Guest of heaven. The question of fellowship is just that simple: all in whom the Spirit dwells share in the common life (which is what fellowship means) and they are made one by His presence. If we have no control over in whom the Spirit dwells, then we have no control over who is in the fellowship, however different he may be from ourselves.

Since diversity is within the nature of unity, the Scriptures need not urge us to preserve diversity, but unity. That the Bible bids us to preserve unity through forbearing love is evidence that there will be differences between us, otherwise there would be nothing to forbear. If people are free to think and encouraged to be their unique selves in the Lord, there will be exciting differences between them. But in the true Body of Christ there is the common bond that unites them as one, and that is faith in and loyalty to Jesus Christ as Lord, which means they will also be loyal to each other as sisters and brothers.

So diversity may be very diverse (such as we see between the Jewish and Gentile churches in the New Testament) so long as there is unity in Jesus Christ as Lord.

This is not to say that doctrine is not important, for it is important, even crucial to the well-being of the church. But doctrine is teaching and teaching is the function of a school. With the church as the school of Christ, we must recognize the individual differences in the students. They are in different grades; some are slower than others; they have different needs. But they have the common bond of being enrolled together in the same School under Jesus Christ, who is master as well as Lord. That is unity in diversity. —the Editor