Protect the Unity

There’s a reality that those who covenant with one another through church membership acknowledge and admit that we all have fallen short of the glory of God and that even as redeemed sinners we still live in and contribute to this broken world. Meaning, we don’t—or at least shouldn’t—expect a problem free church. Those in church membership are open and clear that we are not perfect, don’t claim to be, and confess we need other believers in our lives to help us persevere in the faith because left to our own our sin will deceive us and lead us to harden our hearts to the things of God.

This also means that while at times life together in the church can be soul nourishing, life giving, and God glorifying it can also be messy, difficult, and painful at other times. This reality should not cause us to be discouraged as covenant members here and it shouldn’t stir in us a hesitancy to pour into one another’s lives. But instead, it serves us as a motivator to fight for and protect what Jesus made possible.

Ephesians 4:3 says, as those who have covenanted together as this local body of believers, we should be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The unity that we have as those who share in the Spirit through our mutual profession of faith in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins, that unity is not something we have created but it is something we are called to preserve.

How do we actively prioritize and promote this unity? Well first it requires a desire to know and be known by those you’ve covenanted with. There is no unity if you lack a desire to get into one another’s lives. But secondly, we don’t have to look much further than our church covenant to get a glimpse as what faithfully guarding the unity of the Spirit of God among us looks like.

Listen to just a few of the affirmations we profess as covenant members:

We will prayerfully maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, avoiding gossip, slander, and quarreling, while maintaining a readiness for reconciliation.

We will show hospitality to all, while showing partiality to none. We will humbly love one another as Christ has loved us, and will forgive one another as God has forgiven us.

We will rejoice at each others’ happiness and lovingly bear each others’ burdens and sorrows.

We will walk together in brotherly love, exercising an affectionate care and watchfulness over each other, graciously accepting encouragement and admonition.

We will, when we sin, confess our sin to God and to those affected, repent, and seek help from fellow saints to put our sin to death.

Church, is there an earnestness to protect this unity? There are a multitude of temptation to divide from one another in the church. We will annoy, irritate, grieve, anger, and even sin against one another. But God’s glorious grace is greater than the squabbles of spiritual siblings. If we don’t proactively strive to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, then Satan will have his way with us and the gospel witness to our community will be compromised because all the watching world will hear is that we treasured our preferential differences over our precious Savior. May the Lord strengthen us to protect the unity of His Spirit brought about by the peace secured through His blood.