We cannot
over-emphasize these two verses. The unity of Christians has been a
perennial problem since the early days of Christianity. In fact, as early as
Acts 6 unity was threatened. Additionally, in almost every one of Paul’s
Epistles there is something about unity. The most vivid picture is the analogy
of the human body, which is not only mentioned here but elaborated in I
Corinthians 12, where we see three principles: there is one body but many
members, each member has a different function but still edifies the whole, and
one member out of sorts affects the whole.
Tragically, there is
little true unity in the Church, that is the Body of Christ, today. There are
preachers who break fellowship over minor points of doctrine and those who
practice “secondary separation,” which means that they won’t fellowship with
one group because that group fellowships with another group. To illustrate
tongue-in-cheek, I've seen this go even further to “thirdary” and “fourthdary”
separation; one group won’t fellowship with another group because they fellowship
with another group that fellowships with another group that fellowships with
another group. There is also disunity in many Local Churches, which is caused
by petty squabbles over nothing, which in turn comes from spiritual immaturity.
It is said that it was Spurgeon who first said this little jingle, and how true
it is: “To dwell above with saints we love, / O that will be glory! / But to
dwell below with saints we know, / Well, that’s another story!”
So how can we maintain
(keep) the unity that God has produced
in Christ? The answer lies in our text, where we see the “Fruit of the Spirit”
of Galatians 5:22-23 in action.
Galatians 5:22-23 also
cannot be overemphasize: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such
there is no law.” Here is the very essence of Christian living because it is
the very essence of Christ’s own character. Further, of those nine
“character traits,” four of them appear in our text on unity, and these four
will maintain unity.
First, there is love.
This is mention first for the obvious reason that all the others will flow from
it. As we have studied before, the Greek word agape is “a self‑emptying
self‑sacrifice.” As we've also noted, God’s love can be defined as, “A self‑emptying
self‑sacrifice in which God gave of Himself in the form of His only begotten
Son Who gave His life for us.” Now we see that to maintain unity we are to have
and practice the same kind of love toward other believers. Just think, how
can there ever be disunity when we all have “a self‑emptying self‑sacrifice?”
To put it in the reverse, when there is disunity, there is an obvious lack of
“a self‑emptying self‑sacrifice.” If there is some rumbling going on in the
body, if there is some fuss going on, if a fight breaks out, it is because we
are thinking of ourselves instead of someone else.
Paul adds something
else. We might think that to speak of love would be enough, but Paul
knew that it wouldn't be enough because he understood human nature. So he adds
that we are also to be forbearing one another. The Greek behind forbearing
(anechomai) means “to hold one’s self upright, to bear, to endure.” This
is the same word Paul uses in II Timothy 4:3 to describe people who will not
“endure [put up with] sound doctrine” but will seek teachers who will tickle
their ears. The idea here, then, is that sometimes we just put up with each
other, that we bear with each other in misunderstandings, problems, and
conflicts, that we love each other and sacrifice ourselves for them
anyway. This doesn't mean we just put up with it but still boil within, rather
we forbear in love. Without this kind of love and forbearing,
unity will be destroyed and God’s work right along with it. We’ll continue this
next time.
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