LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
United
The Road toward Unity
John 17:21-23.
The third petition that the Son makes to the Father in favor of His disciples is that they be one. In order for this to be possible, Jesus has given us the glory that the Father had given to Him. On the other hand, the model of unity; its degree and quality, are given by the unity that exists between the Father and the Son.
–Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. (John 17:21). –As we are one. (17:22) –I in them, and you in me. May they be brought to perfect unity. (17:23).
As we can see, unity of Christians is a spiritual fact; it depends on another spiritual fact and the quality of which is absolutely spiritual. Unity of Christians is not matter of agreements, of negotiations, because they only reach the epidermis, they are only skin deep; they are reduced to a few agreements and handshakes.
If we don't know the Son's glory and if we don't see that Christ is in us, unity will only be a concept. For that reason the way toward unity has been hindered.
If, as it is usually stated, all roads lead to Rome, it must be understood that not all today’s roads traveled in the name of unity will lead us there.
Some roads
From time to time, and more so in our days, promoters of unity run off in one direction to another. They say: –Come to me, and let us be one.
They want everyone to convert to their cause and to their way, which to them is the secret of unity. They are willing to carry out a great "sacrifice" to produce unity in Christians.
To invite unity from a particular doctrine, or from a structured haven, is either being naive, presumptuous, or haughty. It is the naivety of one who does not know himself; the presumption of thinking that their way is the correct one, or the haughtiness of thinking that all others are misguided and that they don't realize that something is wrong with their own ideas.
There are those who trust in doctrines. There are “salesmen of doctrine”; of correct, famous, and ancestral doctrines. They seek that their doctrines (in fact they are not theirs: they are lent) be the way to unity. But those “proven” doctrines are not the way to unity.
Those who use doctrines as a means to unity don't know, they don't realize, how modeled they themselves are by their doctrines.
The history of the Church demonstrates that the emphasis on doctrines doesn't unite Christianity, but rather, it divides it.
Others think that if Christians joined to follow some great man of the past, and they walked after their vision and their theology, they could reach unity. The leaders of the past -reformers, prophets - are attractive as agglutinants for Christianity.
However those who think in this way usually commit to that special vision in such a way that they lose all sense of proportion. The wide and rich truth of God –God’s advice - is reduced to a plane vision, a single reading which is sterile and one-sided. In this way, they fall into the merits of one man’s mind and understanding, and increasingly so, according to how spiritual he was.
The vision of the greatest man of God is too narrow for God to put all His wide thoughts inside, and to serve until the end of the ages. What a man of God said in his own days may well be what God had to say in that moment (although, perhaps, not all that God had to say, nor in the form in which He wanted it, but, in short, God is merciful, and cannot hope for more from such vile vessels), but ten, or a hundred years later, it becomes evident that the vision is, regrettably, unsatisfactory.
If in the passing of time, from then until now, God had wanted or even “dared” to say something different, or to “add” something to what that great man in his days saw, regrettably it won't be taken into account! God’s new action isn’t even sketched or hinted at in any of the multitude of works written by that man. His body of doctrines is so well configured; its system is so hermetic, so refined and brilliant that God Himself cannot even penetrate in to modify it.
Again we have the same old problem: we can’t see the forest for the trees. God cannot be heard nor obeyed because that particular interpretation of the Word of God doesn't allow for it, and because the great men of God already put a cap on what God might want to say in the future.
Another path that is beginning to open up in our days is one of the great agreements at a legal level. The transnational religious leaders are sitting down at the dialogue table. Conciliatory documents have already been elaborated among the two greater Christian currents in Europe. And there are also approaches in the same sense toward Eastern European. Those that were disqualified at one time, today, look to shake hands over differences. Therefore, the editors of the agreements have to put each word, each comma and each tilde in the balance, so that no one is offended.
It is necessary to hear from God
However, the unity of God’s children won't take place along the paths we have examined. Such ways are inadequate, because they remain in a very superficial level: that is, the mind.
Unity among God’s children is spiritual and can only be spiritual. What are the resources that will make it possible?
Christians that are called to unity are, by way of necessity, those that have seen something of God, those that have seen God’s glory. If we all place ourselves before God with an open heart, we will receive a vision from God. And then, when confronting that vision with those other servants in other places to whom God has given the same vision, we would see that unity is possible, because God does not contradict Himself.
God doesn't have two different wills for a generation. He could have different emphases in order to reach certain specific purposes in determined areas, but the substantial cannot differ. It is God’s will, God’s purpose and God’s work.
When we come before God, a deep and glorious work begins to take place in the heart: we can see God and hear God. At the same time that our arguments are silenced, God’s begin to be heard. And a transformation begins to take place, because our great doctrines, our idols, big and small, fall down and our prejudices become very small in the face of the greatness of God. Our heart becomes detached from the crutches that sustained us until that moment, and we begin perceiving a new degree of freedom that we didn't know before. Panic will also surely invade us on more than one occasion; we will be terrified –like one falling into a void - but then we will be able to feel that a superior Hand sustains us.
Custodians of a previous revival
It is too easy and comfortable to have a perfectly structured religion. Everything is clear and defined. In that rigid structure God has difficulties in being made heard. Because His ways are higher than ours, and His thoughts surpass our highest imagination.
The structures of the best currents usually obey the pattern of some previous revival; to a relatively ideal state of things, to some new Pentecost. But God wants to introduce us to the current of His Spirit that goes beyond the previous revival. God wants to take us to a more advanced state of things, which will always seem more and more like the beginning, the genesis of the Church.
We usually feel bound to our past, (to ours in particular, or to that of our denomination or group), but we don't feel that we must return to the most remote past of the Church, to Pentecost in Acts 2 and the pattern that was shown to Paul, as we see in his epistles; the only model that deserves to be our example, with all its consequences for the church life.
To bear His disgrace
The Lord said that He had given us His glory so that we would be one. Without glory there is no unity. Without freedom there is no glory. Because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17). Therefore the way to unity doesn't begin in man, but in God, in the glory of God.
How can we have God’s glory? It is when we are willing to reject man’s glory (John 5:44). There are an infinite number of things that we lose (of quite relative value, in any event) when we take the way which is scorned by men, but, without a doubt, we gain God’s glory!
It is necessary to leave the camp bearing the disgrace He bore. (Hebrew 13:13). We cannot remain inside the systems and hope that God reveals His perfect will to us.
Inside the systems, the will of God will viewed only through the sieve of the system. That is to say the will of God will have the same distortions and deformities as the system. If the emphasis of the system is the healing of the sick, then to know the will of God will mean knowing how we can heal more of the sick. If the emphasis of the system is on spiritual gifts, then to know the will of God will mean to know how we can have more spiritual gifts.
It is necessary to leave that behind and to listen to God’s heart.
Some encouraging signs for unity
If a child of God has any of the symptoms that are pointed out below (obviously it would be better if they have them all), it means they are on the way to unity.
Dissatisfaction
The dissatisfaction that we feel in the work that we are doing is a good symptom to look for among those who are on the way to unity. Dissatisfaction is a fruit of all that is less than Christ, or of what exceeds Christ. When we are perfectly in Christ and doing God’s work, this dissatisfaction disappears.
Man's ways are routine, dry, and heavy; this is not the way of God. The way to God will be able to endure infinite sufferings, but they will never produce dissatisfaction. The rivers of God will flow without stopping because it is God Himself who is in the river. It is preferable to suffer amid the river than to be joyous in the drought of a systematized religion. The routine of programs, the burden of the infinite number of strategies, the inoperable emphases, the trackless vision of the way to follow, will be unbearable, despite all that we do in the name of the Lord and for -as we say – His glory alone.
Sense of the failure
Another encouraging symptom for unity is the repeated failures that we have had, in spite of the enormous efforts to avoid them. God can only complete His work with unsuccessful people. God can only work with those that have passed some years lifting up their own work, without fruit. Or with those that have been raising their voice to be made heard, without anybody paying them attention. With men like these, unsuccessful, tired, broken, who in the height of their desperation look to the heavens in search of some answer, of some explanation; God can produce unity.
The successful man has a recipe for everything. The vanity of his small victories makes him think that everything could be improved if only they would give him the opportunity to do it. His agile mind, his years of experience, his gifts, cannot be but a sign that he is a chosen vessel, and therefore, that he is called to direct this matter, or that he has a lot to say in this respect. The others must listen!
A successful man may be necessary in a declining company, or in a transnational and ambitious one, but he will never be entitled to a voice -and even less to a vote - in God’s work. If he has not learned that he is absolutely useless and completely destined -and with full merit, without excuses – to be a failure, a clumsy slave, a stammering spokesman, a cowardly warrior, a blind guide, and a naked sinner, he won't be able to have any part in God’s work.
God brings failures together
Then, supposing that these unsuccessful Christians have learned something before God about their nullity, they will progress to another directly related point. They will see that God wants to bring failures together so that they may walk together. They will be a crowd of people, bitter of spirit, with a black past, that cry over their disgraces together and without restraint before God. They will learn how to be loved and to be supported there, in the most ignominious place: in the cave of Adullam. (1 Samuel 22:1-2).
Here God will reveal their “David” to them, the Lord Jesus Chris. They will find, in Him perfect beauty, a joyous remedy for their hurts, and the only contentment for their souls. In that dark place they will be able to experience how wonderful His radiating light is; in that inhospitable place they will be able to see that they can be joyous in His company and that, in fact, they don't need or desire anything else. In that place they will be healed of all their soul’s ailments, and all their fateful wounds will be bandaged. Their bitterness will be exchanged for peace; their rancor will open the way to generous forgiveness. All darkness will fade away and light will break through.
They will share the happiness of opportune help in this happy exile with Christ in the cave of Adullam. Outside the “Sauls” will roar, with their sophisticated weapons and their countless armies. But what does it matter? Here inside is the Model of beauty, that heals the heart, that removes fear, and gives perfect rest to the soul.
Here they will know true companionship, fraternal love that is only one step from supreme love (2 Peter 1:7). They will also know the true friend, who supports them on a bad day, the comrade in arms, the sweet brother. Titles remain outside; here we are all brothers and sisters. Now we will truly be able to know God’s family, God as our Father and Jesus as the Firstborn of this family.
Psychological profile of a failure
To define the psychology of a failure (or of one who is broken by God) is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Their appearance might seem like that of a lunatic or of one clinically condemned. Those who are broken by God are strange people.
In the past, they could have attained some title, some human honor, but today they don't have anything like that. This is not because, in an act of humility, they consented to give it up with a hidden satisfaction. Rather, they don't want to speak nor hear one speak about it. They can even feel embarrassed about having had them. Everything that has been weighed in God’s scales and nothing has remained standing. The sobering aspect about this fills the soul with a deep contrition, with a feeling of irreparable loss, because they know that, in the future, anything that may come from that same spring will carry with it the same stigma of death, that nothing like that will ever serve for anything, it will forever remain absolutely worthless!
They had a certain stability of character in the past, a repertoire of very clear and defined principles, by which they could give an answer for everything. Today they are no longer sure of anything, but only that God is good and that His loving-kindness endures forever. If they are able to have any certainty, any feature of stability, it is completely strange to them, something that they know doesn't come from their fragile heart.
They, perhaps, loved art, the subtleties of the human "spirit". They believed in the good things of the world, in the greatness of men, in the nobility of good intentions. They could mix faith with all the countless human sciences, they could make a perfect synthesis of faith and reason. They felt proud of having “Christian” professionals, “Christian” artists, “Christian” politicians in their ranks. It seemed that those Christian who are immersed in the great world could claim faith, and make the Christian profession nobler. It seemed that they could avenge so many insults that Christians received in the past. Each concert, each public intervention, each page in the newspapers was another slap on Christ's back, of which He must have felt proud.
Those broken by God saw that all that didn't make sense. That it was a pure farce, a presumption that didn't interest God at all. That God wasn’t interested in exalting Christ in that way. His Christ is much greater, is infinitely larger, than to need to be pawed, exhibited, as if imitating the greatness of the world.
Those broken by God don't find any satisfaction in anything in the earth, not even the appearance of being associated with that precious Name. Instead, a sensation of horror and fright usually levies them when He is represented so poorly, when He is shown as if he needed or wanted some historical recovery.
Those broken by God are a strange people. They have lost the physiognomy of an ordinary character, of a contemporary, accommodated to the cannons of shifting cosmopolitan vision. They don't think -not at least in the sense as those who love their own thoughts -, because their thoughts are insecure, they are corrupt, they are not trustworthy.
They return their mind to the Source of intelligence, of eternal wisdom. They know that there is only security in Christ. The human molds have broken. The mental structures of the world that are in vogue (read Aristotle and company, Kant and company, Heidegger and company) fell, or go crashing to the ground. Listen: it sounds like thousand mirrors that are broken!
They enjoyed the reasonings of Aristotelian philosophy, of German rationalism and of English idealism before. But now they have lost everything! Now they have gone back to remote times when people could cry in public without being embarrassed! Their weakness is evident, and it usually causes pity in those who surround them. While they speak, they tremble, sweating hands - their knees threaten to double over. They are people with evident symptoms of irrationality.
In fact, such a picture is not so strange in the light of the Scriptures. David, the king from Israel, permanently suffered these same wrongs. When reading his psalms, we see his naked soul, his penances, fears and failures. David was a failure as well. However, somehow, for some strange reason, he was a man that pleased God’s heart, he was a man “after his own heart." (1 Samuel 13:14). The fact that he has been a king, the greatest of all, the most victorious, is almost a simple anecdote. What counted for God was his broken and contrite heart.
The failures know that God does a double work in the heart of His children. That He destroys and that He builds up. And in that, God never stops working. Even though it hurts. When a man has opened up to God’s work, God will take him and never let go. Although each destructive blow brings a cry of pain, in its place comes Christ’s increasingly palpable and sweet character. The failures know it, and therefore are pleased to suffer that they have ended up loving the hand that hurts them.
They are a strange people these men, but they are the only ones that God uses for his work. They are the only ones that will be willing to lose everything for the sake of unity. If you, by chance, see someone that doesn't have these marks, perhaps you have made a mistake, or you will have to look more sincerely, to see what’s behind that apparent normality -and even that wholeness - to find a beautifully broken person; a miracle of God!
A vision
As it has already been stated, unity -like all of God’s work - is only possible originating from a vision. If we have seen something from God, we can adhere to it. If we have seen something from God, we can be convinced by it.
Something will happen in the sphere of our spirit, superior to our reasonings, and will take us to be in agreement with God. Something inexplicable, perhaps, or at least, very difficult to express with human words will happen inside us. An act of revelation, of discovery will have occurred. Something of God, high and sublime will have entered into our bones and it will burn inside. Something superlatively larger than what we had known up until then will fill our vision, and it will conquer the soul.
Then the arguments will all have ceased, and our smaller glories will disappear. Our small feuds will be demolished, our great plans will seem ridiculous, and our grandiose ideas will seem like a child's imagination.
The church won't be seen as an organization or as a system any longer, but rather it will be a vision as God sees it: as a Body. The church is a Body, Christ's Body. To understand this has deep and glorious implications.
Whoever has seen Christ's Body won't see Christians of first or second class. You won't see admirable organizations. You simply see God’s children over here and over there, the disseminated, those who are more or less fed, more or less awake, and that need to be blessed, encouraged, built up. You see God’s work of saving and building up. You don't see human groups in growing rivalry against others. You simply see God’s children, and will try to reach them all, to embrace them all, to serve them all.
To see Christ's Body is to see all God’s children together under the Head, receiving their life, and their supply from Him. It is to see to the living, and very much wider church than the meeting of the brothers and sisters with whom you walk day after day. It is to transcend the limits -all the limits - to feel how God’s heart feels, and to think how he thinks.
The condition of God’s children, being very diverse as it is – due to its degree of growth or for any other consideration -, you will see that there is a much more solid base to bring us together for all eternity than all those differences: Jesus' beautiful Name and the authority of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, sincerely observing that diversity of conditions, we will be able to see which of God’s children are really seeking Him, which are loving Him with their whole heart, and we will see the marks of the work that God is doing in these days within them.
Not all God’s children allow God to guide them. All perhaps request it, but very few accept it when all is said and done. God has serious problems in this way, as we might say, to arrive at the heart of His children. The Holy Spirit makes bold efforts to call the Christian’s attention, but few are the times they pay him any attention.
Unity is not possible without seeing what Christ's Body is truly like. For that reason unity is a work of God, not of man.
More than agreement
So then, the way to unity is more than coming to an agreement, because the strongest agreement is as fragile as a thread, like a strand of corn silk placed in the sun. The way to unity is before the throne of God and there are few that find it. Diversity, disparity, atomization, are sad realities amid Christianity today throughout the world. And this is the fruit of diversity, disparity, atomization of thoughts, opinions, proposals, hypothesis and conclusions.
Only in Christ are we one. Christ alone is sufficient. In Christ's love we are kneaded, in Him we loose the small and great differences. We submerge ourselves in Him so that we don't raise ourselves higher up than before. In Christ we all definitively disappear, and we lift up Him who is beautiful and perfect alone.
Where the way to unity goes
The way to unity runs to the margin of unity promoters, of doctrine salesmen regarding unity, of the great leaders of the past, of the religious systems -whatever the name, quality, founder, emphasis, structures, extension, solvency, or fundamental doctrine.
The way to unity follows the hidden path of silence and of simplicity for those broken by God, in the glorious vision of Christ and His blessed Body, by those that have attached their heart to God’s in order to hear its delicate beat.
Those who love unity won't try to look for it in reconciliation with men, in order to achieve some agreement that fills their expectations. Nor will it take place over a dialogue table, nor in a business meeting. Unity will take place on the throne of God, and He will take the initiative, He will order the circumstances, He will place us on the same path as others, and together we will be a witness of God’s work that He will have done in our hearts.
At most, our participation will be testimonial. We won't be authors of unity, but witnesses, declaring what God has already done. These things will happen, and in the precise moment the Spirit will show us that our ways have united, that we have the same compass, the same hope, and that we cannot continue to separate. We will come to the same clear conviction that to separate would be same as denying all that God has done and of that which we are responsible.
Unity in Christ's Body is a work of God, and He will take it to its conclusion, step to step, without resting. Those that love the Lord, and love the unity of the Body, must only wait, with attentive hearing, with open eyes, to see the signs that the Lord puts in front of us. We must wait for Him to guide us in this beautiful work of the last restoration, so that we are all one, so that we are all gathered and kneaded perfectly in Him alone who is worthy of being loved, exalted and served: Christ Jesus, our Lord, blessed for ever and ever. Amen.