For those of you who follow Alan Knox’s blog with me, you know he has been challenging us to consider unity, and especially to consider how we mistakenly build or break unity based on (often emotionally laden) doctrinal differences. *sigh* Me, too.

Thinking about this, I’ve noticed that God took extraordinary measures to maintain unity in the early church. I’m planning individual posts on the seven themes of unity found in Acts and the Epistles. They are:

1. Acts 2-6 Hellenist Widow Division – Unifying the Jew
2. Acts 8 The Samaritan Division – Unifying the Half Jew
3. Acts 10-15 The Gentile Division – Unifying those Cut Off
4. Acts 19 The Disciples of John Division – Unifying those Left Behind
5. I Cor The Divisions Based on Men and Doctrines – The False Unities
6. III Jn The Independence Division of Diotrephes – The False Leaders
7. Rev 3 The Division Between the Church and Jesus Christ – The False Members

Should we also consider church discipline in this category? Under certain circumstances, the church might need to separate a single individual who remains in sin after friends have repeatedly sought to restore them. Sin is the only valid divider, but the division is between a church and an individual. Church discipline–valid separation–isn’t something we were ever meant to practice church to church, or denomination to denomination.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 6:20 am by Art and is filed under The Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.