How do we live with such differences among us? Paul says, “As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions” (Rom. There was also a difference among them about whether certain days were to be honored (v. “One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables” (Rom. There was apparently a thriving vegetarian faction within the church at Rome (Rom. Tensions arising from diversity of belief and practice among Christians are already apparent in the pages of the New Testament and remain with us today. With deep longing our Lord prayed for our unity, knowing that on it rests our own blessing and the credibility of the church’s witness for Christ (John 17:20–23). Manifesting fully the unity in Christ that already is given to us belongs to the “not yet” perfection of the faith that will come at our glorification. Even the Lord's Supper was not sufficient to bring them together in love and unity (11:17–34). Their disunity could be seen in the public square as members sued one another before the ungodly in civic courts (6:1–8). Christians can display ugly divisions between one another, as at the church of Corinth (1:10–17). But the manifestation of that unity is not always apparent. 12:12–13), it is true of all Christians now, a fait accompli. Because it is a union created by Christ in baptizing us all by one Spirit into His body, the church (1 Cor. It is a mysterious thing, and to understand it properly we will need to see it both in its “now” and “not yet” aspects. We call this union the communion of saints. Those who are united by faith in Christ are thereby united to one another in the church, the body of Christ. Might it serve us well as a motto for every church and for every denomination today? Unity The saying has found great favor among subsequent writers such as Richard Baxter, and has since been adopted as a motto by the Moravian Church of North America and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The phrase occurs in a tract on Christian unity written (circa 1627) during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), a bloody time in European history in which religious tensions played a significant role. Philip Schaff, the distinguished nineteenth-century church historian, calls the saying in our title “the watchword of Christian peacemakers.” Often attributed to great theologians such as Augustine, it comes from an otherwise undistinguished German Lutheran theologian of the early seventeenth century, Rupertus Meldenius.
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