FELLOWSHIP BASED ON AGREEMENT?
There have always been disagreements among the children of God, and there is no reason to imagine this will ever cease. No two people can think and reason in precisely the same way any more than they can look exactly alike or carry the same personality traits. Inherited dispositions, differing upbringings, varied experiences—these are only a few of the forces that shape each of us into unique individuals. No two snowflakes mirror one another perfectly, and no two Christians will ever be identical in all things. If we would truly accept this God-given reality, we could avoid many of the “fellowship problems” that so often hinder the work of Christ upon the earth.
Consider marriage. A husband and a wife may love one another deeply, yet they rarely think exactly alike, and they seldom approach every question or concern from the same angle. It is not that one is always wiser and the other always less informed; it is simply that they are different people, each crafted by God with his or her own inclinations and ways of reasoning.
And yet, in spite of these differences, they remain one flesh—united by God Himself—bound together in the most intimate of earthly relationships, even when they disagree. Why? Because their unity is not based on perfect sameness but on a covenant God has formed.
In the same way, every child of God on the face of the earth has been united with Christ and summoned by the gospel into the fellowship of His Son. We have been added to the one body along with every other believer, and we share in the family fellowship of God’s redeemed.
There is one body—Paul says this plainly in Ephesians 4:4. He does not say there should be one body or that we are striving to create one body—he declares that there is one body, and every saved person has been added to it. If Jesus is your Savior and God is your Father, then you are my brother or my sister, and that settles the matter. We do not determine who belongs in God’s family any more than we choose the members of our earthly families.
The only choice we are given is how we will treat one another and whether we will embrace in our hearts what God has already made a reality—that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. Our fellowship is not determined by perfect agreement on every issue or by identical interpretations of every passage, but by our common faith in Christ as Lord and Savior.
When we were baptized into Christ, we entered God’s family—not because we passed a doctrinal examination or held flawless views on every point, but because we trusted in God’s Son and were added by God to His church. If fellowship depends on seeing everything alike, then there will never be fellowship, because we will never see everything alike.
Believers stand at different levels of maturity, and so the command is not to judge one another but to “forbear one another in love” (Ephesians chapter four verse two). If there were no real differences, there would be nothing to forbear. In fact, Romans chapter fourteen is entirely devoted to urging believers to accept one another as brethren without demanding doctrinal conformity.
“But,” someone will ask, “are we not told to speak the same thing?” Indeed, Paul urges the Corinthians to “speak the same thing” and to be of one mind and one judgment (1 Corinthians 1:10). Yet when this verse is used as a weapon to divide sincere disciples of Christ, it is used in the exact opposite way Paul intended.
He was not teaching that we must speak the same thing on every issue, for just a few chapters later he allows believers to reach different conclusions about eating meat offered to idols (1 Corinthians 8). And in Romans chapter fourteen, he permits differing opinions on religious days, eating practices, drinking wine, and other matters of the time. They clearly did not have to “speak the same thing” about all of that.
So what did Paul mean? Read the context. The Corinthians were dividing into factions—saying, in effect, “I am loyal to Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas”—instead of belonging wholly to Christ. Paul was saying, “Stop dividing yourselves around human leaders! Speak the same thing—namely, that your allegiance belongs to Christ alone.”
The very text meant to condemn sectarianism has been misused to justify it, requiring believers to agree on every matter before they can recognize one another as brethren. But such conformity is impossible, and God never required it.
The unity that allows us to “speak the same thing” is not intellectual sameness or doctrinal uniformity. It is the fact that we have been “called into the fellowship of His Son” (1 Corinthians 1:9). We do not speak the same thing in order to get into the fellowship; we speak the same thing because we are already in the fellowship. Our unity rests on allegiance to Christ—not on flawless interpretation of Scripture.
If perfect understanding were the condition for acceptance, then we would all stand condemned, for not one of us knows all that God knows. If God required of us what we often require of one another—agreement down to the finest detail, submission to every opinion, conformity to every interpretation—then none of us would ever find our way into His family. Thank God He does not treat us the way we so often treat each other. God is seeking ways to receive us, not excuses to divide us.
BDD
