Unity

                                            

 

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.  Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”  Eph 4:1-3

 

 

It seems that the effects of Covid-19 are more than just physical.   Followers of Jesus Christ are arguing, publicly, about church closures and the state mandated  restrictions for  church goers.  One viewpoint says churches should open while observing reasonable precautions.  Another viewpoint says churches should stay closed relying on internet church services until there is a vaccine or sure treatment.  A third viewpoint holds that churches should open but obey whatever mandates the state requires; for distance, masks, corporate singing and the like.

These three viewpoints, and there may be others, are not similar.  They divide us as the body of Christ on earth.  And while suspending the gathering together of the saints has many drawbacks that is not the whole of it.  Rather the blemish is how we are treating those with whom we disagree, our brothers and sisters. 

 On social media, fellow Christians are treating each other with disdain.  They are using words to degrade the intelligence and morality of each other, calling into question the legitimacy of the other's  faith.  Churches are taking confrontational stands against each other, not seeking to understand but to humiliate the other and boost their own position.  And this is for the entire world to see.  How did we come to this?   How did we come to scorn our brothers and sisters and discredit other churches?

 I believe the primary point of departure for all of us is that we have neglected practicing grace.  That sounds a bit awkward, but grace is missing in the bulk of these circumstances.  SO back to the beginning we go.

 “It is by grace you are saved.. and that not of yourselves,” Paul writes.   And again he says; “When you were dead in your sins… God made you alive with Christ.  He forgave us all our sins…” 

 We, in the body, were all at one time traitors to God, idolaters having turned our backs on Him so that we could do whatever we jolly well wanted; and it left us dead.  Dead to goodness, dead to joy, dead to love, dead to beauty and dead to hope.    That was who we were.   We existed in the place of darkness, evil and wickedness.  But then the very God we had discarded reached out to us.  He reached across the infinite gulf of our inherent evil and because He loved His creation, He rescued us.  He rescued us from our sin, from the evil in which we lived.  In His holiness, He sought us out and judged us as sinners and then sent His Son, Jesus, to serve the mandatory sentence due us; death.  

The holy, perfect Creator, Lord and King of all that is seen and unseen stooped down to us to offer us all a way out of the destiny that our sin had carved out for us.   

 And we, having a disagreement with a fellow sinner, find it difficult, if not impossible to extend grace.  I fear we open ourselves to the condemnation that fell on the unmerciful servant, who sought repayment of a tiny loan after receiving total forgiveness for his huge and impossible loan.   We are urged by Jesus to forgive each other from the heart and to do that as often as needed.  And further we are instructed to be unified.  You may ask, “how can I be unified with those who call me foolish or frightened or worse?’  You do that by recognizing that Jesus has put us into the church, His Body, through His death, His painful, torturous death.  You do that by realizing that grace has been lavished on you, the little creature that sought to oust God from His throne.  You do that by realizing you are not enemies with those of other viewpoints on Covid-19.  You have an enemy, but it is not your fellow believers.  You do that by remembering what you have in common with other believers, namely you are sinners saved by the grace of God for His purposes, not yours.  And then you repent and behave in  as Christ like a manner as you are able through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.  Even if the others are wrong, even when you disagree, we are called to unity in the essentials.  And the reaction to Covid-19 is not one of the essentials. 

Qualified?

Have you ever considered the people God uses to work out His will?  Often we think of Mary, the mother of Jesus, or Hannah and her struggle to have a son, only to give him, Samuel, back to God.  These are indeed admirable people. Stellar women, sacrificial and obedient.   But they are in the minority when you read through the Scriptures.  Let's consider just these three; Samson, Cyrus and David.
You may be familiar with the account of David, raised from shepherding  to be king by God, only to take another man's wife and kill off her husband.  In addition, he was so attached to his son, Absalom, that David nearly caused the  mass desertion of the army that defended him against Absalom's treachery.  Yet, God used David in all his weakness, womanizing and weeping.  David authored many of the psalms, he lead Israel as king for forty years, he saw to it that Israel worshiped God and not idols.  His sins were real, but that did not stop God from using him.

Or consider Cyrus, the pagan king of Persia.  The Scriptures tell us that "the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus, king of Persia to make a proclamation...he has appointed me to build a temple for Him at Jerusalem...any of His people among you...let him go up,"  2 Chronicles 36.  In Isaiah 45 the Lord, speaking of Cyrus says, "This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of...For the sake of Jacob, my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me."  In the life of Cyrus, God directed him God honored him and God used him to restore the Jews to their land after the exile in Babylon.  Cyrus also commanded the temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem,  even though he was not a worshiper of God.  The legacy of this pagan man is bright.

In the book of Judges we learn of Samson, a man of physical strength and moral weakness.  Samson's desire to marry a foreign woman, which was forbidden by God, turned out to be used by God to begin liberating Israel from the Philistines.  The ensuing battles and skirmishes arose mostly because Samson was seeking revenge on his  Philistine enemies.  He used wild foxes to spread fire in grain fields. Not exactly an animal lover it seems.  But Samson's downfall was his lust for women.  Lured into a romance with the pagan Delilah, he told her the secret of his strength and she betrayed him.  Imprisoned and humiliated, God used him one last time to kill the  Philistine elites and so he killed more while dying than he did previously.   He was an obstinate, passion filled man who let his passions lead him astray.

None of these men were saints.  I think many of us would not want them near our children.  They were known for strength, but also for lust, anger, cruelty and more.  YET, God used them.  God moved upon them to direct His will for His purposes.

Two thoughts I take away from this.  The first is that God will use whomever He chooses.  Their character, beliefs and actions are not necessarily a part of the job requirements.  And that leads to the second thought; the  realization that  there are not any people qualified to serve God. It is time we wise up and stop looking for them.  Stop looking for the perfect husband, the perfect wife.  Stop hoping God will find the perfect, sinless person to be a  leader, ruler,  judge, legislator.   God does not look for perfect people, because there are none.   Until the day Jesus Christ returns we live as flawed persons among flawed people in a broken world.   It is astonishing that God uses any of us, but I thank God He does.