1 Corinthians 1:10-17
I appeal to you , brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11 My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12 What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”
13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?
14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
There Is No Unity Without the Gospel
So, I’m putting together a pizza order for the congregation for lunch today. The thing is, I talked to a couple places and they said that for an order this size, they’d only make one kind of pizza. So, what’s it going to be? How do you feel about pineapple on pizza? Black olives? Mushrooms? Maybe some pesto sauce instead of marinara? Throw a bunch of spicy Italian sausage on there too? Soft goat cheese. Anchovies too.
I’m not actually ordering pizza. I just wanted to make a point. It’s hard to agree on things, isn’t it? Whether it’s pizza or the movies, paint color or where to go on holiday, everyone has an opinion and rarely do they line up perfectly on the first attempt. That’s reality. That’s normal human behavior. But it’s not enough to stop Paul from saying:
“I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.”[1]
Of course, Paul’s not talking pizza. He’s talking about something infinitely more important and immeasurably more intimate. He’s talking about the unity between believers. We mentioned it very briefly last week, but here Paul focuses his whole attention on the divisions that were cropping up in Corinth as one of – if not the – major problem in that congregation.
What he’d love to see is everyone being in agreement and perfectly united in mind and thought. You know, nothing challenging.
If you thought pizza was hard to agree on, try talking religion. And I don’t even mean talking about Jesus with unbelieving friends or the world around us. There are plenty of divisive topics that we could talk about in-house, among believers and members of the same congregation.
So, as we consider Paul’s appeal to unity here, maybe the first question that we should consider is, what do we have to agree about?
I mean, we don’t all have to agree on a pizza order, but there are some things that we should agree on.
Paul says that we should agree “in what [we] say,” and be perfectly united, “in mind and thought.” Another way to say that is that we should agree on what we believe and teach.
I said it last week, but it’s worth saying again: we don’t come here for the coffee or the music. We formed this congregation and continue meet week after week because of the Word of God. That’s what is most important and that is what we must agree on.
As Christians, we have to agree about what the Bible is – the divinely inspired Word of God. That’s our foundation and the basis for everything we do.
We have to agree about who Jesus is and what he came to do – he’s the Son of God and our Savior from sin, who sets us free and gives us hope for heaven.
We have to agree about what we should be spending our time doing, both as individual Christians and as members of a congregation – growing in our faith and sharing that faith for the salvation of others.
What unites us is not common interest or a shared sense of humor; it’s what we believe and teach. So, how do we get on the same wavelength in terms of doctrine?
Well, let me tell you a story about the Septuagint. About 200 years before Jesus was born, the Jewish church decided to translate the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek. Now, translation can be a tricky thing and you want to make sure that nothing gets lost in translation. So, 72 Bible translators each took a copy of the Old Testament, went off on their own, translated it and when they came back together to discuss their translations, they were all the same! All 72 scholars had identical translations! That’s how they knew the translation was accurate (or, at least, so the story goes).
That’s not exactly a good model for us to adopt – to take the Bible, go off on our own and come back expecting everyone to be on the same page. That’s not only impractical; it’s impossible. If we want to be united – as Paul encourages and as God wants for us – then we have to talk to each other. We have to spend time together studying God’s Word.
The better each of us knows God’s Word, the deeper the conversation, the greater the growth, the closer the unity. And as we do that – as we engage in conversation about God’s Word together – true unity requires a few things:
First, it requires a commitment to the Word over and above any personal opinion. In other words, the Bible always has the last word. Opinion changes from person to person and from time to time, but God’s Word for us never changes. It always remains God’s message for you, whenever you read it. It’s our job to listen and apply it to our varying life situations.
Second, if we want to have conversation about God’s Word that results in unity of faith, we need to create a safe space for that conversation to take place. On the one hand, what we read here inspires strong reaction – denial, fear, despair, anxiety, joy, hope, confidence. Each of us is likely to respond differently when we hear the same message from God.
More than that, though, each of us is at a different point along the spectrum of spiritual maturity. You may be new to Christianity or Lutheranism or this congregation. Or, you might be a lifelong Christian with a Masters Degree in Theology. The truth is that many of you are somewhere in between, with varying degrees of scriptural knowledge and personal experience. To expect everyone to be at the same level, spiritually speaking, only sets us up for failure and primes us for judgmental, condescending, ignorant responses to each other. But to be patient and listen and understand and, above all, to let God’s Word be the voice in our conversations with each other, is of utmost importance for true unity together.
If you’re sensing a theme so far – that the Gospel is the single most important factor for unity – then I guess I’ve done my job. The good news of Jesus is what binds us together. It creates a unity that’s greater than whatever differences there are between you and me. It creates a unity that’s greater than the incidentals that we happen to like about each other or this place.
The truth is, we could raze this building, sell the land, disband the congregation, and still be perfectly united in mind and thought, as long as the gospel is the reason and the cause. It’s the Gospel that produces perfect unity, because it’s the Gospel that reminds us what Christ has done for us.
We were all equally lost in sin, but in Christ and by his cross we are all equally saved. Jesus died for you. Jesus did; no one else. He is our hero. He is the one we follow. He is the one we worship and adore, whose name we praise and cherish above all else, whose name we call on and call ourselves by. This isn’t Deutschlander’s or Habben’s or Metzger’s church. It’s Christ’s church. Jesus is our Savior.
Jesus died for you. That’s how much he cares about you and how much our unity matters to him. He died for it. His primary concern when he came into this world was that you be reunited, i.e. reconciled, to your God. Our sins separated us from him, but he came to us and paid the price for our sins with his own blood on the cross and washed us clean.
And he did it for you. Jesus died for you, and you and you and you. He died for all of us that each of us might know the love of God in full, that each of us can be united to him in everyway. But, guess what? If you are united with Christ, and I am united with Christ, then we are united together.
I don’t think it’s overstating the case to say that Jesus died so that we could be united together, under his blood, in his love, through faith in him and for eternity with him.
There is real danger in being divided. Isolated we become vulnerable and weak. It’s a bad color on the Christian church when its members don’t get along. But more than anything, it threatens to empty the cross of its power, i.e. to mute the message of God before it even reaches the ears of those who need to hear about Jesus’ love.
But united we proclaim the cross with all its bloody power and we begin to experience here the unity that God intends for us in heaven. There is no unity without the gospel, but its proclamation produces it. So, let’s make the gospel our sole endeavor, our rallying cry, the banner under which we gather, because it’s the gospel that unites us with him and with one another. Amen.
[1] 1 Corinthians 1:10