John Chapter 17. Is Unity Amongst Churches Always Good?
Chapter 17 is a prayer from Jesus to God. His first prayer is that God would be glorified in and through his life so people can come to know him. That should be our prayer.
Jesus also prayed for the disciples that they would proclaim his truth in holiness.
Jesus also prays for all believers that there would be unity amongst the believers in his truth.
I see where communities promote unity amongst the different denominations. They do a lot of different activities to show the love of Jesus and his Salvation.
It’s great to see the denominations wanting to bring unity amongst the believers. Here’s a problem that could and is coming from that:
1. The churches end up emphasizing unity over God’s unified truth. It’s admirable and is a very religious thing to gather all denominations together, but the problem that is happening today is that more and more denominations are accepting the truth of the world. Sexual sins are not preached against. The churches are accepting how the world defines sin versus how God defines sin. The Holiness that Jesus prayed for amongst his believers is not being promoted. So you end up with “unified churches” promoting only half truths. As a result, new believers end up learning false truths and are not challenged to be holy as God is Holy.
2. Here’s the problem we must avoid, we can’t let the goal of having a unified bunch of churches over power the greater goal of having a unified truth that is proclaimed from God’s word. This means people may call us Arrogant Christians, or other names, but I don’t want to become a church like the religious leaders in the New Testament who would reach someone for the Lord but then ended up discipling them in false truths that took them further from God. Matthew 23:15 says the Pharisees made converts for God but then ended up discipling them to become twice as much a child of hell as they themselves were. God’s truth, love and holiness was not preached.
So let us be unified as body of believers but then let the unity of God’s truth be our guide and not the world.
