Thoughts on Church Unity

 In the book of Acts, there's a word use in Greek to describe the Church prior to the events of Acts 5, and that's "homothumos" and its cognates. It translates literally to "same-passionate fervor," and is usually translated as "united in mind" or "united in purpose." The Church in the first five chapters of Acts acted, though many persons, as a single entity with a single mind, heart, and emotions. One body with many members just like a human body. 

      You can see this play out in those chapters. Every member of those 120 assembled between the resurrection and Pentecost had spent time being taught and discipled by Jesus Himself. They knew Him, they walked with Him, and when the time came, they were all joined as One thing with Him, one body with Him as the head which controls and coordinates that body. It might have been Peter's body and voice that accused Caiaphas and Annas to their faces of Jesus' murder, but it was, in reality, Jesus Christ Himself speaking through him. 

     This changed after Acts 5 when, by all appearances, Pharisees infiltrated the Church and began causing disunity based on whether or not someone was a Hellenist or a Hebraist. This was the beginning of factionalism in the Church. People whom even Paul calls false brothers had an agenda that wasn't Jesus Christ's, and who were obeying their own ideas of what should or shouldn't be done. Unfortunately, the problem only grew worse over the last 2000 years or so. 

     The problem isn't the visible unity of organizations and religious bodies. The problem is that the actions, responses, and behaviors of many if not most of those who profess to be Christians are instead informed and sourced in their own natural psychologies, experiences, and ideas, and are not sourced from the head because they have either disconnected themselves, or they were never connected in the first place. 

     Right now, without real discipleship taking place, without the majority submitting themselves to the control of the Spirit of Christ within them, the best we can hope for is mutual tolerance of divergent views and the demonstration of kindness and compassion on one another. It does not matter whether someone is Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or from some weird church out in the boonies no one's ever heard of. It does not matter what the earthly authority structure really is. It does not matter what liturgy or worship style someone uses. The only thing that truly matters is connection to the Head by voluntary submission to the control of the Spirit of Christ within us. Without that, there can be no truly Biblical unity among us because then, instead of one heart and mind calling the shots and coordinating everything, there's a multitude of malfunctioning people trying to do what is right in their own eyes and failing miserably.