The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-15, titled "Bible Questions and Answers." A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.
Question
There are some movements in the body of Christ to unite the body of Christ. I’m not just talking about channel 40 or KTBN, but I am thinking of Wycliffe too, where they have Catholics and some Charismatics in their organization. Do you think that there are any movements that are good, or do you think that they all endanger sound doctrine?
Answer
Well, thank you for the question. First of all, let’s make one thing clear.
The body of Christ is intact, spiritually.
God knows those that are His—they are His flock, they are His body, and
it’s intact. So, from the
spiritual side, we are one. And
therefore, it behooves us to pursue a temporal expression of that unity.
So, I want to say at the very beginning that we must do everything we can
to endeavor to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, right?
We want to do everything possible we can to maintain the unity of Christ.
It is, I believe, that unity that is crucial to our testimony.
Jesus said, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples,
because you have love one for another”…as He told the disciples in John.
So, let me say that no one is a greater advocate of the unity of the body
of Christ—the expressed unity of the body. The body is one; we’ve all been baptized into one body,
right? I Corinthians 12, “We’ve
all been made to drink of one spirit.” So,
we are one in Christ. He that is
joined in the Lord is one spirit. Everybody
who’s joined in the Lord is one with the Lord so everybody’s who’s joined
to the Lord is one with each other. That
is a spiritual reality, and I believe, by the way, that in John 17, when Jesus
prayed that they may be one, that prayer is answered. It is answered in the spiritual unity of the church.
I don’t think His prayer was for ecumenicity.
I think His prayer was for spiritual unity of the body of Christ, and I
think—and I know—his prayer was answered.
Now, to the issue at stake, the church has always struggled with unity—the
apostle Paul struggled with it, right? That’s why he wrote about unity, and that’s why he wrote
Christians not to argue and quarrel and abuse each other, but to love one
another and to pursue unity on every front.
But, as you’ve pointed out, unity is not true unity at the expense of
theology, true doctrine. And, to be
honest with you, I don’t see any great movement in the church today to bring
together a visible unity around doctrine, around the truth.
I see an awful lot of effort to try to bring together a unity that
doesn’t want to talk about the truth because the truth divides.
I think it’s such a remote possibility, because doctrine is such a
remote issue. I mean, how are we ever going to get a real unity when we
don’t even want theology to be an issue.
Not only can’t we agree on doctrine, we can’t even agree doctrine is
important.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that you could ever create some kind of ecumenical unity in this temporal life, but I can certainly be one with a brother or a sister in the body of Christ who has a different view. I can express my love to them. I want to build on what we agree on, and if I happen to be, say, with someone who’s convinced about the gifts of the Spirit differently than I am, I can choose not to make that an issue of fellowship or of love or of ministry. I would definitely choose not to make that an issue. However, if somebody is wrong about the Gospel, I will make that an issue. Or, if they are wrong about the deity of Jesus Christ, I would make that an issue. Or, if they are wrong about issues of the atonement, such as we were just discussing, I would make that an issue.
But again, I’ve never felt compelled to create an organization to make this happen. Here we are at church like this. Now, just out of curiosity, how many of you come, say, from—well, let’s start with what might be the largest group—a Baptist background, put your hand up. Ok, put them down. How many of you come from a Presbyterian background? Ok, a few noble souls. How many of you come from a Methodist background? How many of you come from a Lutheran background (probably more)? Yeah. How many of you come from some kind of Independent background, that only you could define? Ok. How many of you would come from a Roman Catholic background? Put your hands up. Or, how many of you would come from a Jehovah’s Witnesses background? Anybody? Yes. How many from a Mormon background?
You want to see unity in the body, there it is.
Only, it’s around the truth. Now,
to be honest, I can’t orchestrate that where I have no influence.
I can’t orchestrate that where there’s no agreement on truth, but
I’ll tell you what. If the Lord
continues to bless our church and we keep sending out other men to minister and
other men to teach and preach the Word of God, we are affecting—by the lives
that we train and send out, the men and women that we send out to serve and
minister and be pastors and leaders in churches and missions around the world,
we can find that kind of unity. And
it does exist.
If I go to—in fact, I have to go to Russia; I think I may have mentioned that to you last Sunday. Did I say that? Or, Ukraine rather. Because they had a meeting and Bob Provost called me and said, of course, "Dokonchenko" (sp?) died two weeks ago and they lost their leader. So, when Bob Provost went over there, they were all sitting at a table and they said to him, “We want John MacArthur to come.” And he said, “He’s very busy,” and they said, “Yes, but he loves us and if he knows of our need, he’ll come.” There is a bond between us—there’s nothing to create—and the bond is built upon a common love for the truth, and it transcends this church, but there’s a common love of doctrine and a common commitment to the Word of God that ties us with people beyond the people we have normal influence with.
And I am not really concerned with trying to orchestrate some other kind of unity than that which is organic unity built around the truth. I don’t really see that as happening much in the current picture in the church, because the church has downplayed the role of doctrine to such a degree that if you bring it up, you’re considered to be sort of anti-unity. Now, this week I got a request to go meet with some people that I wouldn’t necessarily agree with doctrinally, but I know they love Christ and so I want to go and I want to celebrate with them the unity that we share around those things where we commonly believe. But, I certainly don’t want to create an artificial unity that wants to ignore doctrine.
So, inevitably, when we meet, we’ll rejoice in the common faith and then we’ll discuss the differences. As gentlemen in love, but we always wind up discussing those things because that’s the issue of interpreting scripture. Good question. Thank you.
I wish we could say there was a real coming together in the unity of the church, but I see the church getting fragmented. In fact, folks, you know, it’s funny, I write a book and I think, “Well, that has cover that issue,” and before that book gets out, I have to write another one on another issue that’s fragmenting the church—it just keeps breaking into so many pieces.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and
Answers" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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