and maintains it through his Spirit. When the body divides unto incoherence, what is left of its witness except that Christianity, rather than engendering peace, is a seed of faction and conflict?
The unity of men in the church stands at the center of God’s cosmic plan. “With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of his will,” writes St. Paul, “according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time” (Eph 1:9–10). Westerners might be astonished that this plan is not for individuals per se, not for the lonely man before God. The divine plan gathers up “all things in Christ, things in heaven and on earth.” Recall that Christ is the great gatherer, and see here that the eternal purpose of God gathers all things in him! God has “raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things”—for what reason? What manifests and embodies the rulership of Christ, exemplifying his lordship over all? Where is this headship located and for what is it established?—“for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (1:20–23, emphasis added). We must affirm that Christ is the head of his body, the church; that Christ is put over all things for this body as his fullness; and that in it he gathers all things in heaven and earth under himself. For “through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety . . . [is] made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord” (3:10–11). Should we deny the centrality of the church for God’s purposes, we deny also the words of Christ and his foremost apostle.
I urge you to pray for those who divide the body of Christ, who attempt to reconcile God’s plan of gathering all things in Christ with the scattering of his body! I further urge you to pray for those who say that they can believe in Christ without submitting to the church. Beware those who say “I am loved by God and will be gathered to him in eternity” but who spurn Christ’s body now. Those who reject the body of Christ in this world may well be shut out from it in the next, for God is not mocked.
God saves men by grace through faith, “and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph 2:8–9). Paul directed this statement to Jews who used their inheritance, including the law, the prophets, and the covenant of the Old Testament, to raise themselves up above Gentiles. Paul declares that the Jews do not find justification in this inheritance but in the faith of Jesus Christ, a message that applies equally well to believers today. The upshot of this justification in the first century was that Christ “is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups [Jews and Gentiles] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances,3 that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it” (2:14–16). Justification in Christ does not occur without man’s assimilation into his body, which reconciles him to those against whom he formerly raised himself up. Christ means to create one humanity out of believers at peace with one another and devoid of hostility, men who manifest the divine wisdom in which Christ gathers all to himself.
Faction in the church contradicts both the cosmic plan of God in Christ and the reconciliation brought about for those justified in him. For this reason Paul berates the Corinthians who would segregate themselves from one another. “Each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Cor 1:12–13) Those who divide according to their apostolic teachers misunderstand what it means to follow Christ. They raise up leaders against one another when they should bear in mind that Christ, the Lord of all, led by humbling himself. When Paul came to the Corinthians, he knew “nothing among [them] except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). He knew nothing of leaders puffed up in pride, nothing of men in competition for human honor or recognition, but he knew the Lord who lowered himself to become a servant of sinners. Faction according to leaders undermines this example because it sets men up as antagonists, tending toward the division of Christ’s body as though the servants and stewards of God’s mysteries surpassed their master.
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” Paul asks in the midst of this discussion. “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (1 Cor 3:16). These words should send chills down the modern spine. Faction is the destruction of the church, according to Paul, and men who destroy the church through faction shall be destroyed by God. But what are Christians of the West if not totally at home in and approving of faction? Do we not see that the body of Christ has fallen, that it has become a desert and been destroyed, overwhelmed by schism, secularity, and disregard for the church? If we turn our back toward the dissolution of Christ, will he not also turn his back upon us?
As Paul exhorts, let us “lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:1–5). Where there is “one body” there is “one Spirit,” as the Holy Spirit holds all things together for the glory of Christ, but where there are many bodies, separated by indifference if not by disdain and violence, there are many spirits that goad men to conflict with one another. The Christian cannot affirm one Spirit, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, and at once affirm a multitude of bodies born out of antagonism and mutual condemnation.4
One discovers the New Testament’s emphasis on the unity of God’s people in the Old Testament also. When God promises Abraham that he will make him a great nation, bestowing upon him land and blessing, and giving him a great name (Gen 12:1–3), one does not need to add that this nation will be unified. When God announces of Israel through the prophets that “I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” it goes without saying that this people is one, strengthened in their singularity by their worship of God and their obedience to his law. We learn more of the necessity of Israel’s unity not through direct assertions of national solidarity, which the Old Testament often presumes, but through the forms of punishment leveled on the people: division and exile, both of which are kinds of scattering.5
When Solomon sinned by idolatry, following the gods of his foreign wives, God announced that “Since this has been your mind and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and give it to your servant . . . I will not, however, tear away the entire kingdom; I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem” (1 Kgs 11:11–13, 29–36). God fulfilled this sentence by dividing the kingdom from Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, who enforced harsh labor on the people and so drove them to rebellion under Jeroboam. The line of David lost 10 tribes but retained the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem.
Later and more prominently God punished the people through exile, uprooting them from the land. This happened in two events, each a turning point in the history of Israel, and each the result of the people’s turning from God. In each case, the prophets brought accusations against Israel for the two sins of idolatry and disobedience. The conjoining of these two infractions signaled the impending judgment of God. In the first manifestation of that judgment, the Assyrian Empire defeated the Northern Kingdom around 721 BC, deporting the people. By this action the Northern Kingdom died, being wiped out completely.
