How We Seek to Promote Christian Unity

In these postmodern times, many may wonder why our ministry appears to emphasize issues that divide Christians. They may object, "Didn’t Jesus call us to peace and unity? Aren’t you majoring on the minors?”

We respond that Jesus did call Christians to peace and unity, but Biblical peace and unity is only found when Christians adhere to the one truth of Scripture. When the teachings of the Bible are under attack, these are not “minor” issues. While it is not essential to believe and fully understand every teaching of the Bible prior to being saved or justified, there is no teaching of Scripture that is a “non-essential” truth. All of God’s Word is absolutely true and the truth. To say otherwise would be blasphemous, for it would be to call God a liar. The entirety of God’s Word is truth (John 17:17; Psalm 119:160; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Jesus Christ calls us to live by every word of God (Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4). Therefore, all of God’s Word is essential truth for His people.

Some people seek to emphasize that Christianity is big and that Christians all agree on things like the Apostles’ Creed, for example. Why don’t we just focus on these basic beliefs that are common to much of Christendom? Because such an approach goes contrary to the example Jesus gave us.

John MacArthur explains in his book The Jesus You Can’t Ignore[1] that Jesus “wasn’t interested in reinforcing the “common-ground” beliefs where His message overlapped with the Pharisees’ worldview. On the contrary, He stressed (almost exclusively) the points on which He disagreed with them. He never acted as if the best way to turn people away from the damnable heresies of Pharisee-religion was to make His message sound as much as possible like the popular beliefs of the day. Instead, He stressed (and reiterated again and again) the points of doctrine that were most at odds with the conventional wisdom of Pharisaism.”

Martin Luther, who is remembered for launching the Protestant Reformation in Germany, beginning on October 31, 1517, once stated the same truth:

“If I profess with the loudest voice and with the clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not professing Christ, however boldly I proclaim I am professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. No matter how steady on all fronts beside, it is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that vital point.”[2]

So actually we are not emphasizing issues that divide Christians. We are proclaiming the truth, which ought to unite all Christians and give them true peace and unity. We are seeking to obey God’s command to proclaim “the whole counsel of God,” lest we be guilty of the blood of the blind who are being led by the blind (Acts 20:27-28; cf. Ezekiel 33:1-6; Luke 6:39).

If Christians all united behind the sufficiency of the Bible and its teachings regarding the issues discussed on this website, the Church of Jesus Christ would be far more united, and there would be far less corruption and far fewer divisions and denominations. So we pray that these articles will help to foster true Christian unity among those who fear the Lord and seek to obey His Word in all things.

[1] Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008, p. 187.
[2] Quoted in Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Wheaton: Crossway, 1984), pp. 50-51.