One

And this is where we are going. Many, maybe most, of us have grown tired of our isolation, tired of our infighting, tired of our majoring in doctrines that separate rather than those that unify. Like Barton Stone dreamed, we are ready to “sink into union with the Body of Christ at large.”


We are tired of using the ‘Ones’ of Ephesians 4 as a weapon. We have realized that the key to understanding this passage is the admonition to, as the NIV puts it, “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” We have discovered that being “completely humble and gentle…patient, bearing with one another in love” goes much further toward unity and Christ-likeness than continual debating and attacking. After examining the text, we have discovered that the word ‘only’, which we have taken to be the key to the text, never appears. We understand now that the list of ‘ones’ means that we are unified because the given list brings and binds us together, that the word is used in the same sense that U2 used it in the song by that title and declared, “We are one, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other.”1


For the first time, the unity that Stone and the Campbells envisioned has a good head of steam. The Christian world at large is talking about house churches and kingdom life now. This should be our time. In order to enjoy this movement, in order to contribute, we have to get out of our own way. We must understand that we are not the focus; Christ is. We must reach for unity on his terms, not ours.


And his terms are amazing. He asks us to come to him. He says that unity is created by the Spirit, not by us. We keep the unity, then, not by having everyone conform to us, but by loving each other and loving God. That’s all that counts (Galatians 5:6).


From Escaping Self Idolatry: How Churches of Christ are finding their way into the future.


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L4VG3UK