The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
The living sacrifice described in Romans 12:1-5 involves our personal commitment to habitual and continuous worship of God demonstrated by the way we think and live. Each verse presents a different aspect of our daily lives permeated by God: Personal Holiness, Personal Purity, Personal Humility, Personal Collaborative Approach, and Personal Perspective of Unity in Christ. Today we will look at verse five.
5. Personal Perspective of Unity in Christ – “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”
There are three factors in our unity in Christ. First, we are called to love one another because of our spiritual new birth: “Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another with a pure heart fervently [because you are] born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1: 22-23). This is in keeping with Jesus’ commandments in Matthew 22:37-39: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
All of us have the same basis of Holy Spirit indwelling from which comes the ability to love one another and to put others ahead of ourselves because of that love. It is our choice to set aside anything that would hinder that relationship. The acrostic for JOY – “Jesus, then Others, then You” – sums it up well.
Second, the corporate collaboration of the Body of Christ is based on the conspicuously distinct nature of our individual relationship with God. In Ephesians 4:1-3, Paul exhorts us to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called with all lowliness, meekness, and longsuffering, forbearing one another in love and endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The exhortation then turns to an examination of the reason for his exhortation in verses 4-6 : “There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in 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 you all.”
The implementation and ultimate goal of our unity is accomplished in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as verses 7-8 and 11-13 tell us: “But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men…And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, and for the edifying of the body of Christ until we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
The opposite of perceptive Christian maturity described in verse thirteen above is “that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (verse 14). Instead, it is necessary to the efficient work of the Church, as a body, that each part “speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, makes increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (verses 15-16).
Next week we will finish this series with the third factor in our unity in Christ, the metaphor of the born-again Body of Christ intentionally working together as a healthy unit because of its individual members embracing God’s call to righteousness.
