biblical vocabulary: unity

It’s been a little while since our last installment in the Biblical Vocabulary series, but there has been a word on my mind recently that I think deserves a closer look, especially because it’s so easily misunderstood. The word is unity.

The concept of unity (or the lack thereof) seems to have crept into conversations across a broad range of topics in recent years. We are confronted with division and conflict on every side, and in spite of the fact that so many voices in the public square are denouncing that divisiveness, the splits and chasms only seem to broaden. It matters now more than ever that the Church understands unity - what it is, what it isn’t, and why we so desperately need it.

So, what is unity? How does the Bible define it?

What is unity?

Our dictionary defines unity as “the state of being one; oneness.” I think that’s a good starting point, even though it sounds rather elementary; unity is one of those words that’s pretty easy to throw around without remembering its most basic meaning. The prefix “uni-” means “one” - not “same,” not “compromise,” not “fairness,” not “equality.” One.

That’s the word and meaning Jesus used when He prayed, the night before His death, that His followers and all those who would believe in Him be “perfected in unity.”

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”

John 17:20-23

Unity, by Jesus’ description, is the ultimate evangelistic tool the Church possesses. It is the ultimate representation of who God is and what He has done for humanity. It was Christ’s unity with the Father that made Him willing to come to earth as the salvation for humanity, whatever the cost. It is the Church’s unity with God and one another that makes us the guiding light toward Jesus in a dismal, dog-eat-dog world.

But we can’t fulfill that mission if we’re striving after a mistaken understanding of unity.

Jesus was one with the Father without being the same as the Father. He desires us to be one with Him, even though we can’t possibly be equal to Him. He asks us to be one with each other even though we all come from different backgrounds, have different opportunities, and experience different wounds. He envisions unity, oneness, among all of His children - even when some of them have absolutely nothing in common beyond Jesus Christ Himself.

Sometimes, we think we’re fighting for unity when we are really fighting for sameness. Or we think we’re fighting for unity when we are really fighting for fairness. Or equality. Or compromise. We often mistake for unity a room in which everyone acquiesces to the status quo, everyone looks and acts and speaks the same, and no one rocks the boat with a hard question, rebuke, or dissent.

But the real power of real unity is only found in oneness, which defies all our natural prerequisites for camaraderie, community, and teamwork to bring together the unlikeliest of human beings and unite them in Christ, the cornerstone.

Unity is a value statement.

True, Biblical unity is reflected best in Christ’s oneness with the Father. Father and Son had very different roles in the mission to redeem fallen humanity; One remained on the throne, holding the universe in His hands, while the other cast off His holy power and royal rights to become a sacrificial Lamb. To accomplish the greatest rescue of all time, these two Persons of the Godhead became unequal. The demands on one of them became unfair. Their actions and experiences became completely different and separate.

Yet they were still One, because they both gave equal, all-important weight to the ultimate goal: the salvation of the world.

In the Church, we frequently get unity backward. We rally together as groups of people who look and act and think the same, but divide based on how we understand and interpret truth. (If you don’t believe me, consider the sheer number of different denominations that exist, and what “kind” of people stereotypically attend each church in your area.) Biblical unity is the opposite: It’s very different people with very different experiences and perspectives coming together to stand on the same truth and pursue the same goal.

The kind of unity that points the whole world to Jesus can’t be accomplished when we select our churches based on whether they serve our similar demographic or cater to our exact interests, or when churches silence the legitimate questions, ideas, changes, and concerns of individuals in an effort to prevent “division.” We all need to keep our eyes on the big picture, and examine the value statements we are making at individual, local, and denominational levels. Do we balance the weights of different issues in a way that’s consistent with the priorities of God’s Word, our foundation - or are we clinging too hard to certain preferences and petty differences?

Is abiding in life with Christ and the sharing of His abundant love with our brothers and neighbors the foremost concern on our hearts?

If we can all become one behind that cause - even if some of us like to sing hymns and some of us like to worship in dance, or if some of us are decades younger in age and experience than the congregation around us, or if some of us are Calvinists and some of us aren’t - then our testimony to the world will be impossible to snuff out.

There is a reason Paul uses the metaphor of a body to describe the Church. Just as a physical body needs all its different parts in order to stay healthy and accomplish its created purpose, the Church body needs a diversity of people that work together in unity toward its common health and common goals.

For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:12-13

The issues we unite behind are a clear and direct statement to the world about what we believe and value. If we can only unite around our demographics or around secondary theological issues, they’ll notice that in the big picture, we are just as divided as they are. But if we can become one, despite all of our differences, around the ultimate truth of who God is and what He has done? Then, as Jesus said, the world will know exactly who He is, and how He loves.

---

how to bear fruit (that will remain)

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another."

John 15:1-17

Though it's now one of my most-beloved (and by far the most annotated) pages in my Bible, I once had a very negative understanding of this passage - one shrouded by the dark shadows of guilt and fear. I looked at the requirement of fruitbearing as a threat (what would happen if I didn't bear enough fruit?), not a loving call to walk with Jesus and allow Him to work through me.

Key to this unfortunate misinterpretation was one central issue, which I have slowly come to recognize as I've studied God's Word for the last half-decade: I had a very limited definition of what “fruit” really was.

In my mind, fruit could only mean evangelism. New converts. Revivals and altar calls, Billy Graham style. Or handing out tracts, or having "intentional" (that word always sounds a bit salesy to me) conversations with the cashier, or preaching on the streetcorners, like John the Baptist. Maybe I was alone in this assumption, but even now, rarely do I hear the word "fruit" mentioned in Christian circles without implications toward sharing the Gospel with unbelievers. It was foreign to me for the first 18 years of my life that it could mean anything else.

But when I actually read the Bible I found (as so often happens) that I was wrong. While evangelism obviously does make up an important part of the reproductive process of Christianity, I can't find any indication that Jesus looks for a mere tally of “decisions for Christ” in our harvest. This is about more than fruit—it is about fruit that will remain.

My fear is that we tend to teach and model evangelism disproportionately, under-representing the vital role of discipleship, so that what we end up with is a whole lot of fragile baby grapes that are never given the tools they need to grow bigger and stronger, and won't even be able to withstand the first frost.

The Apostle Paul, by far one of Christianity's most prolific fruit-bearers, seemed well aware of this hazard, and outlined his goal for the harvest like this:

We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

Colossians 1:28-29

Notice that he does begin with the declaration of Jesus Christ, which we would call “evangelism.” We proclaim Him. But the sentence does not end there, because evangelism is not the end goal. A “man complete in Christ” is the goal! Evangelism is only the beginning, and to reach the point of completion, every man must be admonished (warned of the depths of his sin nature so that he can choose life in the righteousness of Christ) and taught with all wisdom (retrained in the Word of God so that he can navigate a hostile world without wavering). This can't be done in a weekend retreat or a single conversation; it takes, without exception, a lifetime.

This process, empowered by God, of taking a baby Christian and tending him to maturity in the faith is the whole purpose of Paul’s life of ministry. It is also the exact pattern of biblical discipleship as shown and spoken by Jesus. Compare Paul’s statement with one of the most familiar discipleship passages in Scripture, the Great Commission:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Matthew 28:19-20

Go therefore. This short phrase is one of the most-quoted snippets of Scripture in promoting missions, but mistakenly so. Go therefore is not the imperative of the sentence, but rather the qualifier—it answers the “When?” and “Where?” of this command, but does not embody the command itself. This technicality gets a bit muddied in the text’s translation from Greek to English, and might be more accurately phrased “In your going . . .” or “As you go your way . . .”

And make disciples of all the nations. Here, finally, the actual command—and in fact, the only active verb in the sentence—surfaces: make disciples. We have been given the where and when (“in our going”); now is the “What?” and the “Who?” This is where we find the actual task at hand, the fruit-bearing ministry to which we have all been called as followers of Jesus and branches of the Vine. It's not a call to get more people through the door or to get more hands raised during the altar call; it's a call to invest wholeheartedly in the health and growth of another person's soul as a bondslave of Christ.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. A two-part answer is given to the remaining question, “How?”, and this is part one - the part that might fall under our common term of evangelism in the church today. This is the “We proclaim Him” that Paul declared in Colossians, and it is more than mere street preaching. It is the demand upon every sinful heart to make a choice. Christianity, by its very nature, is is an ultimatum: a choice between Jesus and the world, between eternal life and spiritual death, between the truth and the lie. Those who choose Christ are asked to publicly reject all else and root themselves henceforth in the Truth of the Triune God.

Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And here is part two, the essence of discipleship itself: the building up, the training and edifying and carving and shaping of a rough-cut soul into a beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit. The tending and watering and nourishing of a delicate sprout into a healthy fruit-bearing plant. The presenting of “every man complete in Christ” that Paul labored for. And this is by far the piece that demands the most time, energy, perseverance, and focus - which might be why it's the piece that sometimes gets overlooked, or passed off as a job limited to those in full-time ministry, when in reality it's part of the commissioning of us all.

Contrary to what I thought for many years of my life, it takes the whole Great Commission to create a picture of the fruit that the Church was intended to bear. It is the kind of fruit that will remain steadfast and reproduce in like manner through trial and hardship, through cultural rejection and social isolation and family ridicule, and even through the deceptive waters of prosperity and blessing.

The Great Commission isn't summed up in evangelism. Christian fruit isn't measured in how many people we can persuade to pray a prayer. There is so, so much more to this immense calling than just shouting down the world with the Gospel - it's so much bigger, so much harder, so much more beautiful. We're called to abide in Christ and to feed ourselves from His life-blood (apart from which we can do nothing), to allow God to lovingly trim away the things that dilute our effectiveness, to walk in obedience to Him by sacrificially loving one another, and to proclaim His Name with the intent of patiently cultivating the soil of every softened heart with the incredible story of the Word of God.

All of this is part of bearing fruit.

As any farmer can tell you, there is no way to rush the production process, and the imperative tasks aren't the same in all seasons of the year. Sometimes it's the preparation of the soil, sometimes it's the seeding of the earth, sometimes it's the watering of the crops, sometimes it's the harvest. And other times, the only thing to do is wait and rest and trust that God is still at work even while the ground lies dormant.

And I'll say it again: all of it is part of the fruit-bearing.

We, believers, are farmers. And evangelism is just one tiny piece of the vast, patient process of bearing hardy and prolific fruit; both before and after it come times of waiting and tending and weeding - and never giving up.