Unity Around the Gospel
Written by Erin Richer
When was the last time you had a conversation with someone you care about and you know disagrees with you on something important? (Facebook doesn’t count.) Take a moment and truly think about the last time you had a healthy dialogue of disagreement with someone you love. What was it about? How did it end? Was it with another Christian? How did everyone walk away feeling?
Unity is a passion of mine, it’s the heart of Dive Collective, it’s what Anneke and I model in The Recap conversation. We come from different backgrounds, we have different stories, and our stories inform the way we interpret Scripture. We honor those interpretations and stories even if they don’t fully align with our experience and interpretations. This past week as we were discussing the Bible Reading Plan I came across a Scripture that captivated me and I’ve found myself chewing on a great deal lately.
In 1 Timothy chapter 3, I find what just might be the key to unity in the midst of clouds of dissension. In fact, the passage comes at the conclusion of passages we use as church doctrine—or at least use to choose which churches to attend or not to attend. The passages surround leadership and the parameters around who can hold those positions. I’m not going go get in the weeds on this topic; rather I want to draw your eyes to something we’ve probably read right past every time we’ve come to these passages in order to prove our case.
To give some context, this letter to Timothy is just that; it’s a letter to Paul’s protégé. Paul has been mentoring Timothy for quite some time and wants to offer him wisdom as he begins, in Paul's absence, to tend the flock Paul established. Every emotional, spiritual, and physical cent Paul had was spent planting and fostering these churches. This particular letter is not exactly the same as his letters to churches to establish doctrines. It’s wisdom being passed from teacher to student.
Regarding servant leadership in the church, Paul says, “They must be reverent before the mystery of the faith, not using their own position to try to run things.” What does that mean, “reverent before the mystery of the faith?”
If you move down to Paul’s concluding sentence after all the gems of wisdom that create conflict nowadays, you’ll find the word mystery again, and I love the way Eugene Peterson translates this verse in the message: “This Christian life is a great mystery, far exceeding our understanding, but some things are clear enough…” and then Paul concludes with what is clear enough. What is not a mystery is the Gospel: God came in a human body, was proved God by God’s Spirit, proclaimed among the nations, and taken up in His fully glorified state.
After Paul laid out a solid and wise plan for how to handle church affairs to his mentee, Paul—who knows there are outliers, who knows that rigid rule-following leads to religion that strangles, who loves the law but preaches freedom from it for the sake of faithful Christ following, concludes it all with the reminder that there is tremendous mystery to Christian life. But not in the Gospel. The Gospel is solid. The Gospel is “clear enough.” The Gospel isn’t debatable because God Himself proved Himself true.
He emphasizes this again at the end of his letter to Titus. In chapter 3, after starting out with a reminder to submit to rulers and treat others with kindness and gentleness, he reminds us of who we each were, then reminds us of the Gospel—that "when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us"—not by a smidge of our own righteousness, but fully by His mercy (Titus 3:4-5). Then, then, he says this: "I want you to put your foot down. Take a firm stand on these matters so that those who have put their trust in God will concentrate on the essentials that are good for everyone. Stay away from mindless, pointless quarreling over genealogies and fine print in the law code. That gets you nowhere" (Titus 3:9).
If you’re following along on The Recap, if you’re studying Scripture with me, you know that Anneke and I find the mysteries of God, the mysteries of this Christian life, to be catalysts for worship. Every week we take what we’ve read and hold out our ideas and interpretations on a text to one another, and it’s a lot like kids pouring out their halloween candy together and showing off their loot to share, compare, and trade with one another. One of the things I love about Anneke is that she honors me by listening and I hope I do the same for her. She doesn’t always agree with me and she sometimes challenges me to think differently. But in the end, these differences spark wonder between us, not division. They lead us to draw closer to one another around the things that are “clear enough.”
This is the challenge: to hold to our strong beliefs and doctrines while truly loving others and accepting their contrary positions. If learning how to unify even in the midst of differences piques your interest, I want to point you to a resource I think you’ll love. This week we will release a new episode on our Dive Collective podcast. We interviewed one of our members, Amber Jones. The episode is packed with wisdom. As Amber shares her story, interwoven throughout is a theme of “radical acceptance.” There is tremendous power in learning to listen to one another’s stories, even and especially to the ones which involve ideas we strongly disagree with and experiences with which we can’t relate. This was a powerful conversation and even in the editing as the episode ended, my heart quickened at the power of the message. I know it will bless you, too.
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Lately on the blog…
Hello again, Dive Collective! It has been so long since we’ve seen you, studied with you, sent you any news. So much has happened since we decided to take a break, and we will be telling you a lot about that in an upcoming podcast episode!