Part 14

The Holy Spirit Gives Unity

Ephesians 4:1–6 (ESV) —  I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,  with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,  eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—  one Lord, one faith, one baptism,  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. 

The Holy Spirit In Common

The last few months these newsletter articles have hammered the point that Jesus works through the Means of Grace. We started by looking at the promises attached to the preaching of the Gospel. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16, Galatians 3:2). We then spent time examining how Christ works through Baptism. Last month we hammered the point that the Holy Spirit is given through Christian Baptism (Acts 2:38, 1 Peter 3:21, Titus 3:5-6), and so that leaves us with this powerful truth: Unless they’ve walked away from their faith, whoever has been baptized into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has received the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

Every Christian has the same powerful Holy Spirit dwelling in them (2 Timothy 1:14, Romans 8:11) and pouring God’s love and hope into us (Romans 5:5). Conversely, everyone that does not have the Holy Spirit does not belong to Jesus (Romans 8:9). In later newsletter articles we will talk about losing the Holy Spirit and falling away from salvation, but in this article we are going to focus on the inverse truth: All Christians have the Holy Spirit. 

1 Corinthians 12:13 (ESV) —  For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is something we have in common with each other. He is the “One Spirit,” apportioning out to us a diverse set of gifts (1 Corinthians 12:4-11). As diverse as we all are, and even continue to be after our Baptisms, we are also united together by the “One Spirit” who dwells in and empowers us all. 

The Unity of Baptism: Spiritual Unity

1 Corinthians 6:17 (ESV) —  But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

While it should feel slightly arrogant even for us to claim this, the truth is that we have the very Spirit of God dwelling in us. More than that, He unites us to Jesus and to His death and resurrection (Romans 6:1-11). We are united with Jesus because the Spirit of Christ dwells in us (Romans 8:90).  

From this flows another beautiful and probably under-appreciated truth: All Christians are united to each other, because we’re all united to Christ by the One Spirit. 

The instant you are saved you receive the Holy Spirit. The instant you receive the Holy Spirit you are saved. Scripture doesn’t really say one comes before the other, just that they go together. The other thing that Scripture says is that the instant we’re saved we’re incorporated into the “one body” by the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:13). The very instant you are saved you are drawn into this incredible unity that all Christians have with each other. 

This unity is given to us, not earned or built by us. It’s a simple reality of the gift of salvation. As gracious a gift as your forgiveness, holiness and righteousness are, so also your unity with all other Christians is a gracious gift. This is why Ephesians 4:3 says we should be eager to “maintain” or “guard” the unity of the Spirit. We don’t create this unity. We don’t even strive to build it. We receive it, and by grace through faith we continue in it. 

Guarding Spiritual Unity

It’s not uncommon for people to complain “the church is so divided!” I find, though, that very often the people most concerned about church unity do not fully appreciate the gift and reality of spiritual unity. Spiritual unity requires only one thing for it to exist: people to be saved and receive the Holy Spirit. We do not need to worship in the same building to have spiritual unity. We do not need to worship in the same way to have spiritual unity. The only thing we need to have in common is that we worship the same savior, Jesus of Nazareth the Christ of God. 

So a good way to define who we have spiritual unity with and who we do not is to use the ecumenical creeds. The Apostle’s Creed is the shortest and perhaps the most familiar to western Christianity (possibly because it’s the creed in our Small Catechism), but the Nicene Creed is more widely used globally. So when it comes to spiritual unity, a good way for us to think about this is: If you can confess with your mouth and believe with your heart (Romans 10:9) the words and beliefs of the Nicene Creed, then you and I are spiritually united, because we both have the Holy Spirit. 

Spiritual unity is something that simply exists between Christians. It is as inseparable from your new identity in Christ as your righteousness and holiness. Therefore, our spiritual unity is “guarded” in the same way that our faith is. 

Colossians 2:5–7 (ESV) —  For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.  Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,  rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Our spiritual unity in Christ is guarded the same way our salvation in Christ is: by continuing in our faith.  When we continue to walk with Christ in the same way we received Him (Colossians 2:6), we also continue in the unity of the Holy Spirit. How did we receive Christ and His Spirit?

Galatians 3:2 (ESV) —  Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Spiritual unity is maintained by the diligent use of the Means of Grace, not by Christians being in perfect agreement with each other. Spiritual unity, which is an eternal unity, cannot be attained or earned by our works any more than our salvation can be, but when we continue in our faith, trusting in the promises of Holy Scripture, spiritual unity is ours.  

The Unity Of Faith

Ephesians 4:11–16 (ESV) —  And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,  to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,  until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,  so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.  Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,  from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Many will reject the idea of spiritual unity by grace as simplistic. Others will point to a number of Scriptures like John 13:35, John 17:20-21, Mark 3:24-25, Ephesians 2:15-16 and many others to argue that Christ is not only calling us to “exist” with each other but to actually love each other. I’ve never heard someone explicitly argue this, but their idea really seems to be that if we don’t worship and work together, then we aren’t united. Their insistence that unless we’re “together” in all earthly things it means we’re hopelessly “divided” is really an insistence on their part that spiritual unity is no unity at all. Basically, they deny that two faithfully confessing Christians are united by the Holy Spirit if they happen to disagree about something. 

First off, Holy Scripture does not depict the church as always getting along. Disagreements and divisions are obviously undesirable, and the Holy Spirit through Paul calls people to fix them (1 Corinthians 1:10). Some disagreements and divisions are unavoidable though. In Acts 15:36-41, Paul and Barnabas are recorded as getting into a fight and literally separating. To say that this breach of peaceful relations is also a breach of the unity of the Spirit is to say that either Paul or Barnabas lost the Holy Spirit. You can include John-Mark, the author of the Gospel of Mark in the list of men who potentially broke the unity of the Spirit and walked away from his salvation. But let’s be clear here: no one lost their salvation. None of these guys lost the Holy Spirit over this, and years later, by the power of the Holy Spirit, their breach was repaired (2 Timothy 4:11). 

Secondly though, Christians need to understand that while our “Unity of Spirit” (Ephesians 4:3) is an already existing reality, our “Unity of Faith” (Ephesians 4:13) is a work in progress that we are still striving to attain. Furthermore, we will still be striving to attain this unity of belief until we see Christ face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

In the New Testament the word for “faith” and “belief” is the same word. The two can pretty much be used interchangeably. In Ephesians 4:13 it is acknowledged that inside the Christian church we do not all have the same beliefs. We have the same object of our faith, namely Jesus Christ. If He is not the object of your faith (i.e. if your trust is not in Him), you are not saved or Christian. Yet none of us holds our faith flawlessly (again, 1 Corinthians 13:12). Our “flawlessness” comes from being united to Christ (Ephesians 5:27), not from the perfection of our faith. 

So in humility, we all have to admit that our belief is imperfect. We also have to admit that the imperfections in our understanding and belief cause divisions. 

Divisions and strife ought not be among us. Our Lord prayed for us (you and I!) that we would be sanctified in the truth and one with each other (John 17:17-22). I see Christ’s prayer for our unity as a prayer for both our unity of Spirit and our unity of faith. Jesus is calling us to strive for the unity of faith and be at peace with one another (Mark 9:50, 1 Thessalonians 5:13), but He is also asking the Father to send us the Spirit and unite us all together, just as He and the Father and the Spirit are one. We ought to get along with each other so we can be united in our beliefs. We are united by the Spirit. 

Attaining The Unity Of Faith

As I noted before, the unity of faith will not be fully attained until Christ arrives a second time. That does not mean, however, that we all ought to go our own way. We’re called to love our brothers and sisters in the faith (1 John 4:20-21) and together grow in our knowledge and understanding of our faith (2 Peter 3:18). Ephesians 4 tells us we ought to strive toward the unity of the faith even though we know we won’t attain it right away. How is it that we should do this?

The answer isn’t that we just jam everyone together under one roof, one organization or one name. Those types of approaches are often set forth as ideas for creating or demonstrating our unity, but that doesn’t really yield unity of faith and as a human work, can’t bring about the unity of Spirit. Forcing Christians who have sincere disagreements to simply ignore them for the sake of “unity” is not a step toward unity of faith. It’s actually a tool that the devil uses to chain people to false doctrine. 

Ephesians 4:11-16 explains how it is that we should strive towards the unity of faith. The short answer is, we should rely on the power of the Holy Spirit. Thankfully though, Ephesians 4 doesn’t leave us with only that short answer. Not only does Paul point to the Spirit of Christ as the power to unite us, Ephesians 4:11-13 also lays out the means through which the Spirit intends to do this work. 

In Ephesians 4:11 the phrase “apostles and prophets” is shorthand for Holy Scripture. You can read Paul employ and explain this same phrase in Ephesians 3:1-5. Back in 4:11, he said that the work of the Apostles and Prophets was given, along with that of the evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip the saints and build up the body of Christ (verse 12). Basically, the giving of the Bible, the preaching of the Bible, and the teaching of the Bible is what equips and builds up the body. And to what end? To lead us toward the unity of faith and to mature us as disciples (Ephesians 4:13). 

The Holy Spirit knits us all together as one body, attached to each other by the unity of the Holy Spirit. He also, through His chief Means of Grace, the Bible, is leading us ever more into the unity of faith. 

We ought to think about, pray for, and even work towards the unity of the Church, but not with any sense of despair over the fissures we currently see. Our divisions do not negate the unity of the Spirit. 

Christians will always be divided by place. We’re called to worship in congregations which means, unless we all live in the same town (which’d be a tall order for the 2 billion-ish Christians on our planet), there will be many congregations in the world. Probably though, Christ would like to see Christians in a given place worshipping and fellowshipping together (including receiving the Lord’s Supper together, Matthew 26:27). That doesn’t mean, though, that we should simply merge everyone together and pretend like we don’t have doctrinal differences. The path to unity of faith lies through the Means of Grace. The only way we can resolve our differences and find agreement is to come together around Holy Scripture and let the Holy Spirit give us the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:14-16) as we share the truth in love with each other (Ephesians 4:15). 

Those who are willing to join us in the process of searching the Scriptures for the true faith (Jude 3) are definitely our brothers and sisters in Christ, united to us by the Holy Spirit. This is true even if we do not yet have unity in belief with them. While we mourn over the separation our disagreements cause, we can still find joy in our unity of Spirit with all who trust Him to speak to us through His Word.