We Are One In Christ
Unity Series
“In times of great civil division, it is important that we are slow to speak and eager to listen…”
WRITTEN BY DREW MATZ
“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
Explanation:
Here, James unpacks for us the underpinnings of strife between those in the churches. More specifically, he lays out what is beneath all the contentiousness and traces it back to the problems that are rooted deep within the hearts of all men. The truth, as James teaches us, is that we are all engaged in a battle within ourselves. We have desires and passions that “well-up” from a spring that is tainted and is rooted deep within our nature. What’s more, we cannot free ourselves from this condition. Our hearts and minds follow the pattern of evil, exemplified by our association with what James calls “the world.” The solution cannot come from the world, but only from something which transcends the world.
Connection:
Many would have us believe that history repeats itself. Right now, who could argue with that? We are, once again, wrestling with that same old ghost. I don’t mean racism, at least not per se. It is the ancient problem of how to reconcile the “one” and the “many” - a problem that, when all the noise is removed from our current experience, is underneath it all asking the same questions. History ever since pre-Socratic Greece has been a working-out of the different answers to this question, and even earlier in some cases. Some forms of Eastern spirituality, for example, have essentially worked to get rid of the notion of an individual “self” by erasing all sense of identity, subsumed into oblivion - as a drop of water is subsumed into the ocean. The problem, as they say, is that you think you are distinct from anything else, and this illusion needs to be realized if enlightenment is to be achieved so that you can be reconciled as an individual to the whole. Another example is the atomized western man of the enlightenment heritage filtered through the French Revolution, where the “individual” is in direct tension with some tyrannical collective. Liberty. Fraternity. Equality. The equal opposite would be the collectivist filtered through Marx who stands in solidarity against the greed of the often single individual at the top of the financier class. We are therefore caught in a vicious zero-sum game, where power is the only language and is wielded mercilessly to stamp the “other” out of existence. There is only allowed to be one narrative. What is the “chief end of man” in this scheme? What is the goal to which all this “progress” is working?
The Bible teaches us a completely different way to see the world - and once you have seen it, it cannot be unseen. God has provided us a solution that teaches us not to be ruled and mastered by our passions and desires. You see, there is a place where all distinctions break down. All are one In Christ Jesus, to be sure, but in a way that allows us to keep our individual identity. We need not despair and strive against one another. No - God has called us to peace. He invites us to participate in this mysterious divine economy, where we are allowed to keep our distinctions yet remain one in the Christ, in whom we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Perhaps the answer is more about embracing the mystery, than it is about finding the “perfect” utopian solution whose false eschatology will never become imminent despite what the revolutionaries promise you. Maybe at the bottom of it all, there is only the harmony of doxology.
Action:
1. Seek Understanding -
In times of great civil division, it is important that we are slow to speak and eager to listen (James 1:19). Often, these discussions can be very dominated by emotion and pain as opposed to sober and sanctified reason. Therefore, approach these conversations with nuance and a will to learn. Seek understanding in all things, not according to the world - but according to the word of God.
2. Make Peace -
Our Lord taught us that his followers would be known not as brutes who stir up strife, but as those who make peace (Matt 5:9). Therefore, go out into this world full of hate and division and proclaim the kingdom of God. Sow seeds of peace where there is division, proclaiming the Gospel for the forgiveness of sins so that all may be reconciled to God and one another.
3. Know Who You Are -
The Devil loves to make us question our core identity. If he can get us to doubt that we are children of God, he can tempt us to believe a whole swath of lies. Therefore, hear the word of the Lord that you have been crucified with Jesus, and it is no longer you who live, but Christ alive in you (Gal. 2:20).