THE CAUSE AND CURE OF DISUNITY

Vol. 3, No. 2, Mar. - Apr. 1974 Brychan Davies THE unity of God's people is a fundamental doctrine of the faith. It is the rock upon which the Church is built. Yet Christians who are truly born of the Spirit will shun one another's company or refuse to sit together at the Lord's Table because they cannot agree over a certain point of doctrine. They deprive themselves of the richest and sweetest of God's blessings because they have never really grasped the fundamental truth that all born again believers are in Christ and are grounded upon the foundation laid of God. What is the foundation of true unity? It is not found in any creed or statement of faith, it is not found in any man-made systems; for the real question is not 'What' but 'Who' is the foundation, and the answer is that "other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11). In Christ irreconcilable extremes meet and are reconciled. In Him the great doctrines of God's [23/24] sovereignty and man's responsibility which appear to us throughout the Scripture as parallel lines, find their meeting place and are one. As finite beings we can only see and stand at one extreme at a given time, and all is well if today we stand at one extreme and tomorrow we stand at the other. The danger lies in entrenching ourselves at one extreme and refusing even to acknowledge the other. Both extremes are in the Word of God, and that is why no creed, no set of doctrines, no, not even the Bible itself as we understand it, can be the foundation of the true unity of God's people. There is but one foundation, laid of God, which is Jesus Christ, through whom all God's eternal purposes will be fulfilled. We who are members of the Church, who have been redeemed by Christ's precious blood and baptized by one Spirit into one body; have we ever realised the power of true unity? Sadly we must answer, No! The Church which is to be to the praise of the glory of God's grace is under reproach because she has never worked out fully in practice the unity which is hers in Christ. There is power in unity. Satan, the arch-enemy, knows this, and seeks to exploit every situation for his own ends. The story of the tower of Babel illustrates this. The people of the fallen creation sought to build a city and tower to reach unto heaven. The Lord took notice of it and said: "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is what they begin to do: and now nothing will be withholden from them, which they purpose to do" (Genesis 11:6). These were the people of the fallen creation under the curse of sin. The Lord saw that they were one people, united in word and purpose, and that this meant that there was almost limitless power in their hands. As long as they remained united in this way they would work out their own plans and follow their own devices successfully. God knew this, so with one stroke He removed that danger. He confounded their language; they could no longer communicate with one another; so their power was destroyed. But God is not the God of confusion, so He would not have caused it at Babel had it not been absolutely necessary. The foundation of their unity had been laid by the god of this world. It was a false foundation from which the devil would have tried to fulfil his proud ambition to be "like the most High". God destroyed this false unity at Babel that He might provide full and true unity at Calvary. BY the cross we are born again of the Spirit and by Him baptized into one body. No longer are we individual, self-contained, self-centred units; we are members together of the body of Christ. What we need urgently to realise is that the unity of the whole body of Christ is of far greater importance to the Head than the seeming temporary good of the one member. We need to pray and seek for unity and oneness between the members of Christ with far greater intensity than for our own personal blessing. The Church of Jesus Christ has been troubled and distressed by divisions, splits and schisms down through the centuries. It matters not what period of Church History we study, one fact stands out starkly, the disunity of God's people. From the early days of the Church, recorded for us in the book of the Acts, until the present day, there is ample evidence of this terrible, disastrous and evil plague eating into the body of Christ here on earth. Deep distress has been caused, not only to the children of God themselves but to our God and heavenly Father. How His heart must ache at times when He sees His children, whom He has loved with an everlasting love and redeemed at infinite cost, flying at one anothers' throats. How distressing it must be to the heavenly Bridegroom to see His bride wounded and suffering because of internal strife! She who has been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, who should be marching forward "as an army, terrible, with banners" is so often weak and defeated, become easy prey for the enemy, owing to internal conflict. WHAT is the cause of this disunity? It is to be found in Genesis 3. The serpent, whom we are told in Revelation 12:9 is the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world. He is the direct cause of all disunity among God's people. We know what he had purposed: "For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; and I will sit upon the mount of congregation. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:12-14). And ever since that day -- the day when the devil's heart was lifted up because of his beauty, and his wisdom was corrupted because of his brightness -- he has been at war with God. He has purposed in his heart that he will be like the Most High, will rule and will [24/25]become omnipotent so that God Himself will have to make way for him. And when man, God's masterpiece of creation, was made, then the devil saw his chance. 'Ah,' he said, 'If I can by any means gain his allegiance, I will reign in this world. The man in whom God has placed His trust by giving him a free will, will provide my opportunity. Through him I can realise my ambitions. He has the power and privilege of living in fellowship with God, enjoying not only His blessings but His very presence. If only I can destroy that, then I will be well on my way to gaining what I have set my heart upon.' We know what happened in the garden of Eden. The devil achieved his purpose by using the helpmeet God had provided for Adam; through her he brought about man's downfall; and this opened the way for him to become the god of this world. The man had been warned of the terrible consequences of disobedience, but what did he do in the face of temptation? Did he remonstrate with Eve, rebuke her, show her the folly of her way and her great sin in listening to the voice of the tempter? Not a bit of it! "And he did eat". This gave Satan the opportunity which he needed. What caused man to fall? God had created him a free being, free within the divinely set limits. He was free as long as he remained dependent upon God, and he was God's friend. In his disobedience he rejected all the sweetness and preciousness of the blessings that true love could ever give him. Clearly the devil had been able to implant in the minds of Eve and Adam the idea of being independent from God and like gods themselves. Ah, this was it -- as gods, independent, knowing good and evil. So Eve looked again, and saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. Wise -- yes, without God. Eve thought it over, this prospect of being wise in themselves and self-sufficient. The temptation worked: the deed was done. And although the bodies of the man and woman did not immediately die, although their eyes were opened, yet their minds were corrupted and their spirits died to God. The victory was the devil's. Man had in that one act transferred his allegiance from God to Satan, God's sworn enemy. He had believed the devil rather than God. So now man was left to himself. And he had become the devil's servant by obeying him. "Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey" (Romans 6:16). The devil was now able to teach man to develop himself so that he would be filled with the sense of his own importance. Man became filled with love of self rather than love to God. God Himself was ignored, or at best expected to fit in with man's plans. IS not this the root cause of all disunity among God's people, this inflated SELF? The trumpet call of the devil-directed world is: Develop yourself; express yourself freely; indulge in the things which please you, for you are the most important person. This, sadly enough, seems to be the principle which governs our educational system today, and it is also the principle upon which some misguided Christian youth leaders work. Allow the young people to express themselves; help them to build their self-confidence and stand on their own two feet; help them to develop that self-assurance which is so necessary for young people today; make them realise that they are the most important section of society and of the Church -- feed their ego! 'Do this,' says the devil, 'and you will please me well.' We must remember that he is at work vigorously and unceasingly in the Church. We must beware when he whispers: 'You are a true Baptist, or a good Calvinist, or an orthodox evangelical, so you cannot have fellowship with others of different outlook or connections.' How Satan loves to hear the Christian say: 'I am convinced of the truth of this particular doctrine, so convinced that I cannot tolerate the opinion of those who disagree. I know that I am right, and everybody else must be wrong.' When he hears such talk the devil chuckles to himself, knowing that he can use that one soon to cause a rift in fellowship. DEAR friends, beware of the devil's teaching, for he has the ability to come as an angel of light and will attempt to deceive the very elect. Remember that all which tends to exalt self can serve the devil, and this is the root cause of all disunity in the Church. God's only way of dealing with this evil is death. Death to self. God's answer to the devil's victory in Eden is the cross of Calvary. It is well for us to understand that the teaching of the devil always runs contrary to the teaching of our Lord. The devil shouts: 'Develop yourself, exalt yourself, assert yourself. Live life to the full now, even at the expense of others.' The Lord Jesus whispers quietly and gently to every believer who will [25/26] listen to Him: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Independent self is the ground upon which the devil works, and where self is dead he has no ground to work upon. That is why he hates the teaching of our Lord, and does all he can to prevent the Christian from entering in fully to all the blessings and benefits of Christ's death. He is not so greatly perturbed to hear Christians say that Christ died for our sins and for the sin of the world. But he is greatly perturbed when Christians realise that, not only did Christ die to make an atonement for sin, but that every true believer might die in Him, die to sin and to self. The teaching of the Scripture is plain and clear in stating that the believer is identified with Christ in His death, so identified that when Christ died, he died. "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). "We, who have died to sin -- how could we live in sin a moment longer? Have you forgotten that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were, by that very action, sharing in His death? We were dead and buried with Him in baptism, so that just as He was raised from the dead by that splendid revelation of the Father's power, so we too might rise to life on a new plane together. If we have, as it were, shared in His death, let us rise and live our new lives with Him" (Romans 6:2-5 Phillips). The teaching here is plain; we who are believers in Christ are so identified with Him that in Him we died to sin, and were buried, and have risen again to newness of life. This is one of the great fundamental truths revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, and when we accept it and really grasp it by faith, we are led into a deliverance and freedom that completely changes our hitherto self-centred lives. The wonder and glory, yes and the great mystery, of the gospel is that the eternal life which was with the Father and was revealed in His Son -- in His flesh, His body, here on the earth of His humanity -- is communicated to the believer and revealed in him, here on this earth. As the cross does its work in the Christian he can say: 'the life which I now live in the flesh is not the old self-centred life inherited from my parents, but the eternal life of God'. If we ask what are the evidences of this new life, this gift of grace, the answer is in being dead to self and alive to God. If you are dead to the world and its dazzling allurements, and the world is dead to you; if you are no longer concerned whether men praise you or reproach you; if you no longer seek to realise your own ambitions and gain your own ends, however legitimate they may be; and if your only purpose is to be a bondslave of Him who loved you and gave Himself for you, then you experience a life which delights to do the will of God, and endeavours to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ----------------