"And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ." Eph 4:11-13
My beloved, we are members of the same body. Each member of the body has a God determined purpose. The mission of this body with Christ as its head is to grow, to be a blessing to non members (with the hope and intent of them being added to the body) and ultimately to glorify God.
I submit to you that none of these would be possible without members of the body being united. We often confuse unity with conformity or sameness. Contextually, it simply means that we have faith in and knowledge of the Son of God or in other words, we believe as though we were one person.
This being the case, we must ask ourselves why we persist in finding so many things over which to divide. We divide over clapping, "lifting holy hands" during worship, saying "amen" and disagreements over things being done differently than we ourselves might do them. Interestingly enough, when we display a lack of unity, it often has nothing whatsoever to do with scripture, but instead, traditions or personal preferences. Paul famously asked the members of the body at Corinth, "Is Christ divided?" He went on to say that this is indicative of being men of flesh rather than men of spirit.
We need to keep the main thing the main thing and that is attaining the fullness of Christ. This is certainly a spiritual pursuit.
[Memory verse of the week: Rom 8:38-39]
In Revival,
Lee
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