Do you operate independently of Truth and Love and show little growth? It affects unity in the body of Christ.
Paul wrote to the Ephesian Christians to encourage them to continue in their unity and love for each other. With Ephesians 4:15-16, Paul reminded them how they can be unified. He told them God causes unity. Yet believers must live out what God puts in them to be unified. So, how did Paul say believers could achieve unity? Speak the truth. Be faithful to your covenant within the body to each believer. Grow up into a mature Christian, into Christlikeness.
Note: We manufacture none of these. The agape love Paul wrote has its source in God. As God loves us—sacrificially -we are to love other believers. Truth originates with God, too. It permeates the Bible from Genesis to Revelations and continues throughout eternity. Truth teaches and guides us as we grow, act on it, and teach others.
Why do we need to live in unity? First, to be part of the body of Christ. If you are the leg but do not work as a leg should, you cripple the whole body. If, however, you, the leg, get your instructions/motivation/ability from God, then you work in a way that benefits the whole body.
Unity is not an ideological fantasy. Unity occurs because of the agape love that originates with God. Before we believed in Jesus and He saved us, we had philia love, but we sometimes overrode that love with selfishness. Since Jesus saved us, we can love sacrificially. God gives us His power to overlook our self-interests and love sacrificially always; that’s agape love. To use another phrase, loving other believers sacrificially is covenant faithfulness. We have God’s interests—the best interests—of other people in mind. Others before self; the whole before themselves; these create unity.
Unity, Paul said, also occurs when believers, as the body of Christ (a Christ-unified whole) seek, in attaining or maintaining unity, to edify individual or groups of believers within itself. The growth can occur in many things that align with God, have their source from God, and cause unity within the body of Christ. Some of these things are Christian wisdom, purity, piety, holiness, joy, and peace. This edification is both organic (learning from God’s word in personal time with Him) and relational (learning through another Christian like a pastor, teacher, deacon, and friend).
None of these three—truth, agape love, or Christian growth—comes from oneself. Each of them has its source solely in God. Again, a believer cannot absorb any of these things just by being a believer. God provides these things, with or without another believer’s intercession. God expects each believer to function as a member of Christ's body. Without operating/living actively as part of the body, we are not beneficial to the rest of the body, and we do not grow in our faith and unity with the body, and the gifts the Spirit gives us stay merely seeds, useful to no one.
Truth, love, and growth must be lived out. God’s truths and love within us should compel us to seek Him more, tell other people about Jesus, and strengthen the body of Christ, the local and universal Church. Using the gifts the Spirit put into us, exercises and grows them; they, then, grow within us. Sharing God’s truths, His agape love, and what He has taught us as we have individually grown closer to Him and become more like Christ by living them out, is what helps grow the church to be unified.
God’s gifts plus Christian action grow the believer and the body of Christ, who is the Head, so the body matures into the image of Jesus Christ. Each believer is supposed to embody these grace gifts from God for a purpose. That purpose is not to hoard them for themselves. The purpose is to unite all believers into one likeness, Jesus. When we are like Jesus, we love sacrificially (covenantal faithful) and desire that all people know the truths of God, mature into Jesus’ likeness, and unify into the body of Christ, thereby projecting Him to the world.
Today, what aspect of your Christianity does not show your uniting with the body of Christ, Jesus? Are you always living out and teaching God’s truths? Do you love sacrificially? Are you growing in your relationship with God, so that your life shows Christ’s likeness? God gives each of these to us as grace gifts. Pray to God asking for forgiveness for not living in His power to share His truth, love sacrificially, and build up other believers. Ask God to help you stay focused on Him and use the power He gives to be unified in the body of Christ with Jesus as your Head.
Run to the Father
