Part 4
That raises a point on the negative side of this question. Suppose one is not entitled to a letter of commendation. Such a case comes before us at Corinth. The Corinthians were exhorted to put away from among them “that wicked person.”
About ten miles away at the seaside was a little port town called Cenchrea (where Phebe lived about which we have just been speaking). In obedience to the apostle’s exhortation in the 5th chapter of 1 Corinthians, they had put away a man living in sin; they had cleared themselves by putting him out. Suppose he had taken a stroll of ten miles down to Cenchrea. He might say, “Well, they put me out here, I think I will go down to Cenchrea; there is a church there,” and so he goes down and breaks bread there. That shows the necessity of these letters. What a breach of the unity of the Spirit such a thing would have been. The folly and inconsistency of it is apparent on the face of it. Such cannot be of God.
“Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit.” This unity is not a unity man-formed; it is the unity of the Spirit. The Spirit of God has a unity down here. What are its limits? Most of us here have heard it said that the unity of the Spirit is that oneness into which the Spirit of God leads us according to the truth of God. I believe, brethren, that that is right. The Spirit has a unity, but it is limited by the truth of God.
In the 2nd of the Acts, you read that the disciples in the beginning “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”
What was the apostles’ fellowship? It was that which was established on the ground of the truth of the apostles’ doctrine. That was the fellowship owned at Jerusalem, based upon the truth of the Word of God; and the only fellowship that can have the sanction of the Spirit of God is the fellowship according to the Word of God.
We have been speaking at length of this unity of the Church as established by God, but the Spirit of God anticipated the fact that that unity would be broken.
If I had come to Chicago today after nineteen hundred years of the Church’s, history on earth, and found all believers going on happily together, all meeting together, all of one mind, we could just take this book and say to the man preaching from it, your book isn’t true; I can’t trust that book. Why can’t you? Because that book says that this testimony would go all to pieces, and that this unity would be broken, and that men were going to arise speaking perverse things, and draw away disciples after them; that there would be evil men, trouble makers, defilers and antichrists who would work havoc in the outward unity of that Church here on earth, but here you are going on after nineteen hundred years.
No! the enemy got in his work; it has come to pass as was prophesied over and over again. Paul lived to see it. Before he was beheaded, he bowed his head in sorrow and wrote, “All they which are in Asia be turned away from me.” He lived to see the unity broken. It grieved his heart that the saints were not going on in that unity established by the Spirit of God.
Now the question arises, does the fact that men were to arise and draw away disciples after them, does that negative the fact that the unity still exists—render the unity powerless—non-existent? Has that unity completely disappeared? Is there no unity left that we can keep?
When we read the 4th of Ephesians, it still reads as it read the day Paul penned it, “There is one body,” and it also reads as it read then, “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bonds of peace.”
The obligation and privilege lies before you and me today, just as real and precious as it did when those words were penned, that we too may recognize that there is one body, and it is our privilege and our obligation to endeavor to keep that unity.
That necessarily is going to mean separation. Separation is a word people do not like, but God’s Word all down through the dealings of God with man has insisted upon it; it is not peculiar to Christianity; to be in the mind of God has always involved a path of separation. Back in the days of Jeremiah, 15th chapter, 16th verse, we read:
“Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy Word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart; for I am called by Thy name, O LORD GOD of hosts.”
Note this for a moment; here is a soul in communion with God. “Thy words were found and I did eat them.” Feeding upon the Word of God; it is sweet to him; the name of God is precious to his soul. He is rejoicing in the fact that that name had been placed upon him.
That state of soul is followed further on in the chapter by a path of action; 19th verse:
“Therefore thus saith the LORD, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before Me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth; let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.”
That man, feeding upon the Word of God, and going on in communion with God, receives the power of discernment in divine things; and beloved, to discern the path of godly separation, is dependent upon state of soul. That is exemplified beautifully in this case of Jeremiah.
“Then shalt thou stand before Me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth.”
(To Be Continued)