I’ve been thinking on unity this week. In Ephesians, unity is the first response that we’re to have as  Christians to the overwhelming grace of God. God who in Christ raised us from the dead, abolished the law of commandments against us, and promises us eternal life.

 

What God has done is so powerful; His one-way love for me so incredible! It has birthed in me a deep desire to respond, to have my life be about whatever my Savior wants it to be. And right away, the Word says, be humbly, gently, kindly focused on unity.

 

I’ll save an exposition of Ephesians 4 for Sunday morning… but that begs an immediate question… what is unity?

 

Most of the teaching I’ve heard on unity focuses on what I’d call “behavioral unity.” Eagerness to maintain the bond of peace with each other, I’ve been told, should lead to giving up any action that might be in a “gray area,” and hence avoid causing one’s brother or sister to stumble.

 

What this practically leads to is uniformity. One develops a rather narrow subset (out of all possible behaviors not specifically prohibited by God) of approved behaviors to be done for the sake of unity.

 

I’m not talking about sin, the clear prohibitions against immorality, lust, and evil. I’m not even talking about the wisdom of whether to do some specific behavior (as in 1 Corinthians 10:23). I’m talking about behavioral unity in the sense of conforming to the “lowest common denominator” of what anyone might think is unacceptable. If you don’t conform, you are quickly judged as lacking unity, humility, or violating a “weaker brother” principle.

 

A personal example is rowing crew. I was strongly urged to consider stopping this athletic endeavor because some of my non-Christian associates imbibed too much alcohol and spoke too crassly. It was suggested that the behavior (rowing) was therefore unacceptable because the association might cause other believers to stumble.

 

Scriptures such as Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 8 or 1 Thessalonians 5 are quickly brought to bear. “Avoid every appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22). Conform to the scruples of the weaker brother, so that there is unity; it doesn’t matter if something actually is evil; beware the appearance (as defined by another believer). This will preserve unity.

 

This thinking seems on closer examination to be a distortion of the Bible, and a sullying of what is a beautiful, amazing response to what Christ has done for us.

 

In the case of 1  Thessalonians 5:22, it is important to see that false teaching is in view, not lifestyle or behavior. An accurate capture of the thought  might be, “avoid every kind of false coinage.” The thought is not that the believer should avoid gray-area behavior, but that Christians should test teaching to make sure it is biblical. Dan Wallace, author of a widely-used intermediate Greek grammar, has an excellent article on this here, showing how wrongly this verse is twisted.

 

Similarly, Romans 14 seems to have a different focus than avoiding possibly criticized behavior for the sake of unity. The point Paul is making that we should be doing all that we are doing for the Lord. “The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord… the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord.” (Romans 14:6). You see, you could eat or not eat, and both would be for a single purpose: honoring the Lord. The unity is found not in the behavior, but in the purpose, and Paul urges the Romans not to judge one another in their behavior (Romans 14:10-13), nor to impose one’s own conscience on another (Romans 14:15-19).

 

Neither the “strong brother” (joyfully eating) or the “weak brother” (joyfully abstaining) is to judge the other. The “strong brother” isn’t to eat if it will destroy the weaker’s conscience by making the weaker one partake in it (1 Corinthians 8). The 1 Corinthians passage isn’t about conforming to behavior standards, it is about not actively enticing your weaker brother to do what he thinks is wrong (do you see how this is different than avoiding a behavior because it might be judged by the weaker brother)?

 

So if behavioral unity isn’t the response we need, then what unity are we really after?

 

This is where Ephesians 4 is so helpful. Our response to God’s power on our behalf is that we are to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). This is immediately followed by a list of “ones” – one body, one spirit, on hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, on God and Father. Using an asyndeton, a seeming lack of connection, Paul emphasizes the critical connection between unity and the list of “ones.”

 

So the thought is that unity is unity of truth. Unity is unity of reality, seeing what is actually true. We don’t always see what is true… but we are helping each other, day by day, see what the truth is. Reality is that there is only one body, only one Spirit, only one Lord. Though we are bombarded with differences in appearance and behavior, we have unity at our core because that is what reality is.

 

Even the rest of the passage stresses the strengthening of that unity through equipping, through the teaching of the Word. The unity is “of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” We have the exact same God, the exact same calling, the exact same Spirit sealing us, the exact same Savior. Unity is a fact.

 

So this isn’t lifestyle unity, uniformity of behavior. If anything, this unity is peaceful – Christians will lovingly tolerate each other, even when they have differences. This tolerance is because believers already have true unity, which is a singleness of faith and knowledge, and are maintaining it by growing in faith and knowledge, seeing reality as God sees it. We have a one-ness because there really is just one body, there really is one God, there really is just one Spirit. This unity of faith and knowledge won’t be knocked off by winds of human fancy, but will allow us to love each other even though we have different interests, different joys, different behaviors.

 

Unity is a fact to be understood, a truth to be walked in. We should not aim to destroy it by our petty desires for others to submit to our ways of doing things, when they aren’t backed up by God’s clear instruction. But the truth of unity is a together-submission to God’s truth, which means we all submit to God’s ways of living, when the instruction is there.

 

The fact of unity means that you and I can live to glorify God and truly enjoy Him forever… even as we live lives of different circumstances, experiences, and preferences.

 

Praise God for the reality of grace: true unity in a world of diversity!