Editorial: There is one body, so let’s act like it

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NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEV. — A motto commonly associated with the Restoration Movement goes like this: “In essentials, unity. In nonessentials, liberty. In all things, love.”

But over decades — as members of the movement split into modern Churches of Christ and other groups — the list of essentials has grown endlessly, while the list of nonessentials has dwindled.

And often, love has been abandoned.

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Indeed, “we are a people who have a divisive spirit,” Rodney Ellison told a crowd gathered at the North Las Vegas Church of Christ for the West Coast Preachers and Leaders Forum.

“We like to split. We like conflict. We keep conflict going,” added Ellison, who preaches for the Randolph Church of Christ in Universal City, Texas.

In a workshop on conflict resolution, he outlined three levels, or arenas, of faith: A private faith, built on personal experience and conviction. A corporate faith, built on the way Christians fellowship, worship and function together as the body of Christ. And the common faith, built on the Gospel of Jesus.

That corporate faith is most often what leads to contention and division, the preacher noted.

Ellison pointed to a New Testament example of two corporate faiths clashing: that of Jews and Gentiles in Acts 15.

Some Jewish believers were teaching that Gentile Christians must keep the law of Moses, particularly circumcision. For Jews, circumcision was a key symbol of their covenant with God going all the way back to Abraham. For Gentiles, it was a hindrance to the Gospel, to say the least.

It was a dispute that would doubtless cause a great split in the church today. And yet, Jewish and Gentile Christians found Spirit-led compromise, not of the truth but of deeply cherished tradition.

The apostles and elders of the Jerusalem church wrote, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.”

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This agreement called on Jewish Christians to accept that some of their long-held practices were no longer essential. And it called on Gentile Christians to follow some Jewish practices, partially for morality’s sake but also for the sake of their fellow believers’ consciences, as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 8.

Both groups made sacrifices for the sake of unity.

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” — Ephesians 4:2-3

To be sure, there are essentials of the faith that can’t be compromised. And in those cases, we should continue to exhort our fellow believers toward the truth in love — not blast them over social media.

But if we make it our goal to be one in Christ, and if we approach every disagreement with meekness and grace, we may find there are not so many essentials as we once thought.

Let’s not forget that unity, too, is an essential, as the apostle Paul instructed the Ephesian church, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

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CALVIN COCKRELL is the media editor for The Christian Chronicle and serves as the young adult minister for the North Tuscaloosa Church of Christ in Alabama. Reach him at [email protected].

Filed under: Acts Apostles Christian unity Editorial First-century church One body Opinion Restoration movement Stone-Campbell Movement Top Stories unity West Coast Preachers and Leaders Forum