What Characterizes Your Worship?

A remarkable feature of early Christian worship is its high degree of unity.  Notwithstanding fluidity of form in different places, there was substantial agreement in the essentials.  Services of the same kind were held everywhere.… With all its freshness and spontaneity, the public worship of the early church was characterized by dignity, simplicity, and restrained fervor.  Neither persecution nor the lack of institutional strength gave it a gloomy countenance.  Rather its forms were pervaded by  a spirit of peace, consolation, joy and thanksgiving.  Grave and moderate, the early church also possessed a richness and warmth not found in later Puritanism.  A common spirit determined what should be done and what should not be done.  The authority of leaders, and their agreement upon essential principles, undoubtedly account for liturgical unity as well as the larger unity of the church which confessed “One Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5).

Luther D. Reed, The Lutheran Liturgy, 38-39

Let Peace Reign, Bringing Unity

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.  And be thankful.  (Col 3:15)

Having called us, God made of us all one body.  Do not divide it, therefore.  Instead, if someone experiences trouble at another's hands, let them have peace in their heart, for it will judge in their favor and award the prize and bring about the harmony that is dear to God.  Give thanks to the Lord even when it happens.

Theodoret of Cyrus, "The Letter to the Colossians"

All for One, and One for All?

We were reminded in the sermon this past Sunday morning that one thing Christians are called to do is encourage one another to continue in unity.  On one hand this sounds easy: all we need do is believe God's Word.  In reality Satan opposes this at every turn by setting his schemes (Eph 6:11) and raising up fierce wolves (Acts 20:29) who will destroy the flock.

But not only must we guard against things which are open and manifest but also against those which deceive with the subtlety of clever fraud.  Now what is more clever, or what more subtle than that the enemy [Satan], detected and cast down by the coming of Christ, after light had come to the Gentiles, and the saving splendor had shone forth for the preservation of man,… devise a new fraud, under the very title of Christian name to deceive the incautious?  He invented heresies and schisms with which to overthrow the faith, to corrupt the truth, to divide unity.  Those whom he cannot hold in the blindness of the old way, he circumvents and deceives by the error of a new way.  He snatches men from the Church itself, and, while they seem to themselves to have already approached the light and to have escaped the night of the world, he again pours forth other shadows upon the unsuspecting, so that, although they do not stand with the Gospel of Christ and with the observation of Him and with the law, they call themselves Christians, and, although they walk in darkness, they think that they have light, while the adversary cajoles and deceives, who, as the Apostle says, transforms himself into an angel of light, and adorns his ministers as those of justice who offer night for day, death for salvation, despair under the offer of hope, perfidy* under the pretext of faith, antichrist under the name of Christ, so that while they tell plausible lies, they frustrate the truth by their subtlety. This happens, most beloved brethren, because there is no return to the source of truth, and the Head is not sought, and the doctrine of the heavenly Master is not kept.

Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 3.

* Latin perfidia, here translated 'perfidy,' is in Cyprian always the opposite of fides, 'faith'; hence, lack of faith.

Unity of the Body

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

You were accorded one Spirit.  You make up one body.  You have been given one hope both of resurrection and of the kingdom of heaven.  He repeatedly put one to bind the Church together in harmony.  We have one Lord, he is saying, we enjoy one baptism, we offer one faith, one is the God and Father of us all.  It therefore becomes us as brethren to exhibit concord with one another—over all indicating lordship, through all providence, and in all indwelling.

Theodoret of Cyrus, "The Letter to the Ephesians" on Ephesians 4:4-6

United in One New Man

That he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

He put to death the enmity by the cross, offering the flawless sacrifice.  He reconciled both, that is, those from the Gentiles and those from the Jews, in one body offered for all, so that they might form one body.  He called all believers one man since while Christ the Lord is the single head of all, those granted salvation fill the role of the body.

Theodoret of Cyrus, "The Letter to the Ephesians" on Ephesians 2:15-16

There Am I

And do not let this also pass unobserved, that He did not say, where two or three are gathered together in My name, there “shall I be” in the midst of them, but “there am I,” not going to be, not delaying, but at the very moment of the concord being Himself found, and being in the midst of them.

Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Book XIV, cap 4

Somewhat in passing, Origen makes this comment on Matthew 18:20. Though the words are few the impact is great. He has been teaching on the harmonious relations found in marriage, the Trinity, and God's word between the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. He ends by turning our attention to Christ's harmonious relationship with the church. When believers are administering the Lord's discipline in the proper manner, Christ promises his presence, and by extension his blessing, on the action and outcome.

We should not take this passage to be applicable to any gathering of believers. To do so disrupts both the intent of this passage and Jesus' intent for believers to be regularly gathered together, functioning as a body. He never intended for splinters to form using this as a sanctioning verse as has been the case. Rather the unity of the body is to be pursued in love fortified by sound doctrine.