One in Christ

“We are one in Christ Jesus” is a familiar statement one hears many times and in various places. This phrase and many like it are frequently used to describe the common ground for Christians as they describe the basis for the common life of the Church Universal. However, when it comes time to deal with particular issues, we easily abandon the oneness we confess around the Person of Christ, and splinter according to habits, expediency, localized agendas or simply strongly held opinions.

Perhaps that pattern is inevitable. We especially live in a time when events and opinions are converted into impassioned words and pictures which find their way into the minds and attitudes of people in almost every corner of the globe. There is precious little of verification in the vast clouds of information and opinion that become the environment within which our sense of reality forms. Conclusions are readily drawn from the most convenient medium: the press, television, the web gossip, friend and neighbors, fellow workers, bosses, politicians, celebrities and clergy.

The personal opinions of the ancient common classes are hard to research, but they seem to have been shaped by the tyranny of heavy handed rulers, clever religionists or primitive myths and superstitions, and of course by the compromises forced by the struggle to survive. Many similar pressures still weigh in on us, shaping the arenas of our conflicts. For us, however, there is more. We are the recipients of messages, arguments, images that we often do not even recognize, bending our minds to lean one way or another. Many of these messages bring us information which is often either subtly biased or blatantly claiming our allegiance to one or another vested interest. We are tempted to join ourselves to various communities of similar opinions, and find comfort not so much in the desirability of the positions we endorse, but rather in identifying ourselves with certain persons whom we respect. Having either incomplete information or simply overwhelmed, we allow them to sway our allegiances.

Isn’t it true, especially in our times that the “One in Christ” phrase actually could have the power to pierce through the din of all the chatter and debate and dissent of our times? The chief matter is still that rightly or wrongly the grace of God reaches out for every heart whether an ally of ours or an opponent, whether we can persuade him to agree with us or not. When the Day comes that the wise and the proud are long disenfranchised, when the celebrities and the rest of us are indistinguishable, when the suffering and the agonies are long past and when the heated debates about all the issues of this moment have long been swept into the rivers of history–the one shining reality will explode to the farthest reaches of heaven itself– One in Christ!

As a matter of fact, would we not be very wise, even now, to examine every issue of our time, every challenge and every allegiance in the gracious light of that final and inevitable day?

Of course,

Pastor Jansen