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. | Ephesians 4:1–6
On Sunday, we looked at Paul’s imperative for the church to walk in a manner worthy of the call. Specifically, we talked about living out the unity that we have been invited into. Jesus has already done the work of uniting His people to Himself, with that, uniting His people to one another. Paul’s directive is for the church to declare the manifold wisdom of God by living out Christian unity in this broken world.
In the sermon, I read a quote from the book Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In this book, he describes what it means to pursue this unity. One of the points that he makes is that our ability to live this unity is contingent on our relationship with Christ. The moment that we make unity a goal in itself, our pride will come in to destroy it. He says it this way:
Without Christ we would not know God, we would not call upon Him, nor come to Him. But without Christ we also would not know our brother, nor could we come to him. The way is blocked by our own ego. Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother. Now Christians can live with one another in peace; they can love and serve one another; they can become one. But they can continue to do so only through Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus Christ are we one, only through Him are we bound together.
Jesus is not only the means by which we are brought together, but He also provides us with the way to remain connected. If we attempt to love others for who they are, we will reach an end point. If we try to love from our own will, we will find a limit. When we allow the love of Jesus to flow through us, it builds us up as it also builds up our Christian brothers and sisters. This shared filling unites us to one another, as we become what we were created to be. In an article called Love from a Full-self, Jonathan Edwards scholar Kyle Strobel describes the process this way:
To stand face to face with others in love – brothers or sisters in Christ, spouses with whom we are one, neighbors we are called to love as ourselves – is not to stand before an isolated other, but one with whom we are called to be with as one. Love is what binds together in perfect harmony (Col. 3:14), and we are called to be one in love (John 17:21).
His point is that while we have to sacrifice in order to love rightly, it is not diminishing. Instead, when we love other Christians, we are both bound in perfect harmony and become more than we were.
As we bear with one another in love, the unity that is formed makes more of both parties. We are not loving an ‘isolated other,’ but one whom Jesus died for us to be united to. When we see the Christian community in this way – as a people to be loved so that we are all made more – then we can put down the issues that divide us. The purpose that connects us is greater than anything that is between us.
Division often comes from competing expectations. In the case of community, we have differing ideas of how to achieve unity, so we fight over the best way to be connected. In an effort to unite in an ideal way, we separate from one another. Bonhoeffer addresses this issue, saying:
Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idolized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands set up by their own law, and judge one another and God accordingly. It is not we who build. Christ builds the church. Whoever is mindful to build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it, for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing it…“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.
While the first part of this quote articulates how our idealism about community gets in the way of unity, the end of it gives us a path forward. While our ego can get in the way of destroying community, all we have to do to create community is love the person in front of us. Simply put down our desire for what we want people to be and share the love of Christ that we have been given. In this, we aren’t making unity happen, but bringing to the surface what Christ has already done. We are participating in His work of restoration by living a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called.
We need more people who are willing to bear with one another and less who dream of what could be. By imagining the ideal, we get further from it, while seeing the work of Christ in another person gets both of us both closer to His ideal. It is in learning to love those that are hard for us to love (which all real people are) that we learn how well we have been loved.