As we continue our series in 2 Corinthians 13 tonight, Pastor Tim considers what it means to be “of one mind” as Paul calls on Christians to be.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be here with you again tonight as we continue our series Renewed. Tonight we’re thinking about a topic that we don’t like to think a lot about, but we see an awful lot of, and that’s division.
Before we dig into that topic and the challenges around it, let’s go ahead and come before our God, the one who brings us together, the one who offers true unity in Him, and ask for His guidance. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your goodness and your love. Thank you for being the God who reconciles, the God who draws us together, the God who breaks down the divisions that separate us from You and also separate us from each other. Lord, as we consider the topic at hand tonight, would You help us to see what You have called us to see and to apply Your word to our hearts? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
What’s your favorite fun rivalry? Maybe it’s tied into that famous St. Louis question, “Where did you go to high school?” and you have a favorite rival school that you love to poke fun at. Maybe it’s a sports team. Of course, we love that here in St. Louis, talking about the Cardinals versus the Cubs. And it just wouldn’t seem like St. Louis without such things. Maybe it’s something to do with food. For example, here’s a favorite St. Louis entree or part of an entree: a St. Louis-style pizza, which has to have Provel cheese that I have a picture of. Sometimes people have very divided opinions on that and like to poke fun at each other over it.
I was talking to a friend not long ago who was busy mocking Provel cheese, and I jokingly said, “Well, I can’t be friends with you then,” because, you know, this is serious stuff.
We like making those sorts of jokes and teasing each other with those sorts of divisions. But as we joke about those things, we know that there are much more serious divisions that often do genuinely divide us, that break up friendships, that tear apart families, that come into our states and our nations and pull them apart. We live in a very divided world. In that sense, we’re no different than the Corinthians, who also found themselves constantly in the midst of divisions.
As we continue looking at 1st, excuse me, 2nd Corinthians chapter 13, we see Paul address that point. Let’s go ahead and jump right back into the passage we’ve been looking at. Once again, Paul says, “Finally, brothers, rejoice, aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
Tonight we’re looking specifically at that statement, “agree with one another.” What does it mean to agree with one another? Well, it’s obviously in some sense a step away from division, but it can mean all sorts of different things. I think what Paul has in mind, though, and we see that throughout his letters, both 1st and 2nd Corinthians, as well as his other letters, is that it means to quit dividing over things that don’t matter.
So often we divide over silly things, and maybe we’re joking about sports rivalries or food rivalries or that sort of thing. But in the church, we still manage to divide ourselves up on things that are equally unimportant in the scheme of eternity.
And to address that, we need to start with recognizing what Jesus does and what He’s done for us. We see that if we jump back a little bit in 2nd Corinthians, in chapter 5, Paul talks about what Jesus has done for us. If we pick up at verse 18, we read this: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”
Notice what we read about there. We as human beings divide ourselves up from each other all the time over all sorts of things. What does God not divide us away from Himself over? It’s in itself the very thing that should cause us to be separated from a holy God. Rather, Jesus came into the world so that that division—a legitimate division, a reason to divide holiness from that which is unholy—would not be a division between us and God.
And in that, then, we have a mission that He gives us: that we would go into the world and communicate what God has done. Paul says that God has entrusted us with that. He hasn’t just said, “Go and do it.” We’re entrusted with something special, something holy. We’ve been given a commission by God to go do something, and that is to speak of the God who reconciles, who brings people together.
But how do we communicate that to the world? How do we say to those who are outside the church, come in to know about the God who reconciles, who breaks down the divisions that have kept us from Him and from each other, if inside the church we’re busy dividing? If the world sees us as people who follow Jesus, and they see us bickering and constantly fighting over the same sorts of things that the world divides over, how can we be relaying that message we’ve been entrusted with, that we serve a God who reconciles and draws together?
You see, the Corinthians had been struggling with this for a very long time. We see back in the first letter to the Corinthians that Paul addressed the ways that the people in the city had been following different leaders. Some were following Peter, some were following Paul, some were following Apollos, and some said they were just following Jesus, but had separated themselves off into yet another camp. In each case, they were dividing themselves up, and it wasn’t a matter, it seems, of some huge important theological point. It was trying to elevate themselves by saying they belonged to a certain group, to say that they were part of the in-crowd.
And in that, we see, I think, what we often do as well. It’s amazing how often we as human beings divide over things, and we can even really hold on to it and say, “This is important, you have to be a part of this group that I have decided is the right group.” But when we start to ask, “Well, why is that? What’s the important thing at stake? What is the biblical matter at stake?” we can’t really define it. We can say, “Well, I like how this group approaches something.” See, there’s the critical phrase: “I like.”
Truth is very important, but so often it’s more about my preferences or my comfort or what’s in it for me, as opposed to, “Am I rightfully approaching God’s word?”
Back in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul writes this: “For I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish, that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.”
Those things that Paul lists there are the things that actually divide us, because they’re about our own self-interest. We’re jealous at how other people are doing, so we want to talk about how the people that are like us or fit into our group are better. We’re selfish, and so we want those that we’re affiliated with, that we have an affinity with, to prosper over those who seem to be doing better at this moment.
I want to be more important. Instead of being humble like Jesus, we want people to exalt us and talk about how wise we are for the ways that we relate, the affiliations that we have. And that can be denominational, but not necessarily based on denomination. It can be what style of worship music we like, what sort of style of church in general that we want, what programs are offered in that church, how political or unpolitical we are as a church, these sorts of things.
And we take these things—these things that maybe even have important drivers behind them. If we have a certain style of worship we like, we may be biblically motivated by that, and yet it may not be a biblical mandate. We take these things, and we elevate them and elevate them and elevate them until we start to wedge a very serious division in the church.
And instead of proclaiming to the world by our actions that we serve a God who reconciles, it appears that we are in desperate need of reconciliation.
I think all of us need to ask the question, because as sinful human beings, all of us are going to fall into this temptation in some way at some point. We need to ask this: How have I played a part in dividing over unimportant things?
This is a challenging part about preaching this message, because when we read what Paul has to say, this is a huge point for him, and it’s one that I can bring up and I can think of a thousand different ways that other people divide the church, and I could just start listing them off. But I don’t think that’s where we’re supposed to go. I think we’re supposed to challenge ourselves. Where have I played a part in this? What things do I hold as important that aren’t really that important to Jesus? What things, when someone really presses me, am I unable to say why I feel like this is like a hill to die on? And I realize it’s just what I like.
Nothing wrong with liking it. The body of Christ isn’t called to be homogenous where all of us are exactly the same. No, we’re told actually that the body of Christ is meant to have many different parts, that God delights in how He has made us each and every one different. The problem is when we don’t celebrate and draw together because of our differences, but rather we separate over them. And oftentimes it’s just very much our own little slice of culture that we hold on to.
Again, worship style, for example. It’s sort of funny, we talk about contemporary worship versus traditional worship, and what we generally mean is, do we like worship that’s sort of like the end of the 20th century or the beginning of the 20th century in America? That’s typically what that worship war means, at least in the context here in the United States. We’re not even arguing over the grand history of the church; we’re arguing over a very limited time period. We turn it into something really, really serious. And then we see churches split up and divide over such a thing when they were willing to overlook all kinds of other matters.
Likewise, on politics. How often is it that we allow politics to rise up? And certainly, it’s very hard in our politically charged culture not to do this, but we start to divide up over whether you agree with my candidate or you disagree with my candidate. And we wouldn’t divide if someone’s dramatically misinterpreting scripture, but we’ll divide over whether someone applies that scripture in a particular way in our current political sphere.
It’s funny, as we read through scripture, there’s a lot of things about what we should do, but scripture never advocates dividing over whether we support a certain national or international leadership. After all, the Christian church formed under an oppressive government and then spread to other oppressive governments. God could have called the people to say, “If you support the Roman emperor, if you are a citizen of Rome, then we should have nothing to do with you.” But on the contrary, that’s not how it worked.
Again, it comes down to our preferences and our comforts. And so often when we try to justify it, we can find a scripture here or there, but how many other things that are really important to God do we overlook in the meantime?
Here’s a question I think all of us should ask when we start to feel like we need to divide and separate ourselves from others. And that’s this: Will anyone come to know Jesus because I took this stand? Will the body of Christ be healthier because I took this stand?
In other words, is this something that makes me comfortable or brings me to some advantage? Or am I focused on what makes the body of Christ healthier with more people coming into the church and knowing Jesus and having their lives transformed and growing as disciples of Jesus?
See, when we start to ask those questions and we start to understand what really is important to divide over, then that allows us to go to a second question. Because division—this doesn’t sound the best—but division isn’t always wrong. Consider this.
Second question: Am I sacrificing important values for the appearance of unity?
The funny thing is we’ll divide over all kinds of really unimportant, in the grand scheme of eternity, matters. Things that are important maybe in our moment, in our jobs, in our neighborhoods, even in our lifetimes, but don’t really affect eternity. And then we’ll go ahead and we’ll overlook things that deal with dramatically taking scripture out of context, in ignoring scriptural truth, in ignoring the call to disciple believers, in ignoring the call to show love to one another. And those are the sorts of things we need to actually stand on.
You see, Paul isn’t calling the Corinthian believers to find some way to be unified at any cost. Rather, he’s calling them to a very specific form of unity. And so often in the church what we end up doing is something more like this instead.
If you look at this picture that we see on screen, the apple looks beautiful in the mirror because you only see one side of it. And yet we can see in reality there’s a huge chunk taken out of it. If someone offers me the apple in the mirror, I’d like to eat that apple, but if you show me the apple with the huge chunk already out of it, I think I’ll pass.
When we’re willing to sacrifice the things that God values for the sake of unity, that’s equally disturbing to when we’re willing to divide over unimportant things. Because we can get that nice appearance of the beautiful apple, but in fact it’s in horrible shape.
But so often as Christians, when we do focus on unity—ironically, after all the divisions that we’ll go ahead and participate in, after the times that we’ll elevate our tradition or our music preferences or whatever else over others—then we suddenly realize we need to have unity and we’re willing to do it at any cost, even if it means hiding the fact that the apple is actually one that needs to be thrown away. That’s not what Jesus is calling us to.
He’s calling us to unify around the truth of His word, the things that really do matter.
Take a look at what Paul says in Philippians chapter 2, where he uses that same picture that he uses in the passage that we’re looking at tonight. He says, “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others.”
You see, the phrase Paul uses in 2 Corinthians when he says to “agree with one another” can be translated “be of one mind,” “have the same mind.” Exactly the same phrase we find in Philippians chapter 2. And he says there much more clearly, what does it look like to have that same mind? It looks like not looking after my own ambition and my own selfishness—what makes me important or what makes me comfortable—but looking out for the benefit of others, looking out to what Jesus has done.
He goes on in verses 5 and following, one of the most famous passages of the New Testament, when he says the mind that Jesus had, that He gave up everything, humbling Himself, being a servant, going to the cross for us. We see in the example of what kind of mind we should have an actual confession of what Christians believe, the core of what’s really important. And those are the things that should drive us to stand.
When we see others being hurt, we should take a stand. When we see others distracting us from what Jesus has actually done, who Jesus actually is, those are the times that we take a stand. It helps us to start to divide off those things that are simply preferences of ours because we realize what the call is: to value Jesus and to value those around us more than ourselves.
And when we’re doing those two things and we realize we need to take a stand because of those things, that’s when it’s right. And when we do that, we can go back to that earlier question, “Does what I’m doing help the body of Christ? Does it help people to know Jesus?” And we can say absolutely yes.
You see, when we’re focused on things that are our preferences, it often doesn’t make any difference to what happens in the church. But when, for example, we see those who need help and aren’t receiving it and we stand up for them, even if it causes division, then we’re building up the testimony of the church because we’re rescuing people just as Jesus rescues us. When we see scripture being misused and we stand up for God’s truth, is the body of Christ healthier? Yes, because we can’t be healthy unless we’re coming to the truth of God’s word.
And so we start to see that it’s then not about myself but rather about Jesus and those whom He has rescued.
The commentator James Scott, in referring to this remark that Paul has to be of one mind, says, “It’s not just the cessation from strife but rather a state of mutual harmony based on genuine agreement in the truth.” That’s the core of the truth. When we’re focused on the truth that God has given us, and that’s what we’re willing to stand on, that isn’t dividing, it’s seeking to be healthy. And when we do that, we start to see all those other petty divisions start to fade away because when we’re focused on the truth of God’s word, all those other things start to seem less important.
Not because they’re completely unimportant, but they’re not the core of what we value for eternity.
When we start to see how this integrates with what we were talking about last week about being those who comfort, we see again that turning away from myself and my preferences to focusing on those around me, just as Jesus didn’t focus on what brought Him the most comfort, but rather what brought us to Him.
Today is Martin Luther King Day, and so it would seem almost odd not to bring in a good quote from Dr. King, and he has so many of them. I wanted to bring this one up to us.
You see, Dr. King was confronted with a lot of churches that didn’t really want to join him in his cause to bring about justice. There was a lot of discomfort, even though he was advocating for a peaceful approach. Even though he was drawing deeply on the words of Jesus, there were many that said he was not actually helping because he was causing divisions. He was causing tension. But why was he doing it? What was the driver?
It was a driver not of self-importance, it wasn’t a driver of hate, but rather love. I love what he says here. Listen to this quote. It comes from his letter to Birmingham from Birmingham jail. He says, “So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love?”
If you think about the calling as a Christian, that actually describes what Jesus has called us to: praying for our enemies, loving those who hate us. That’s extreme. Praying up for the truth of God’s word, even when it costs us, that’s extreme. But why do we do it? Because we want to see more and more people hear about the ministry of God’s reconciliation.
When we understand our role of what God has entrusted us to do—to proclaim that He has reconciled those who believe in Jesus with Himself—it’s a motivation of love. And that is the dividing line between those times that we divide over unimportant things and we actually stand up for those things that are important.
It’s a matter of love. Are we being extremists for love?
When we have the mind of Christ, what we’re called to in Philippians chapter 2, that’s exactly what we are. We might fail at times. We might still turn—we’re going to turn back into our own self-interest at times. But as we seek to follow Jesus and we seek to have His mind, we are extremists in that sense.
We can answer more and more in our actions those things we take a stand on versus those things we pass on, that we’re seeking to build each other up rather than build ourselves up.
You see, it’s not a call to quit standing for what’s right, but we need to keep in mind what it’s right to stand up for. When we’re standing up for the truth of Jesus and for those people whom He loves out of our love of God and love of our neighbor, then that’s right. But when we’re standing up for our own self-interest and our own self-importance, those are the things that we need to shed. That’s what it means to follow Jesus.
That’s what Dr. King was referring to there with that phrase, the extremists of love: to follow Jesus, not to abandon the values of Jesus, but rather to hold onto them so tightly that whatever we do, whenever we take a stand, it is utterly and unequivocally clear that we do so out of love.
We are called quite simply, but also quite difficultly, to follow Jesus. That’s our calling as Christians. And when we have that as our mind, when we agree with each other in Jesus, that’s when true transformation takes place. That’s when the church of Christ that He has established is healthy because we appreciate and love one another, and then we show that light to the world.
So let’s pray that we can do that tonight. Will you join me?
Father, this is hard. It’s easy to say, it’s easy to see where others choose division over unity on unimportant things, but then when it comes to the things I prefer and the things I want, it’s so much harder. It’s harder to even see that it’s a problem. Would You reveal those places where I hold too tightly to things that aren’t what is important to You and help me to let go of them? Would You help each of us to do that? And then those areas where we seek a false sense of unity and we stand on things that don’t really—rather, we don’t stand on things that are really important to You, even as we’re standing on those things that aren’t important, would You help us to reverse our priorities? That in everything that we do, we might be extremists for love, that we might love You so much that we wouldn’t let go of things that are important to You, that we might love our neighbors so much that we would let go of those things that are unimportant. Would You help each and every one of us to do that, that Your light might shine brightly as we are sent out with that which You have entrusted us to do, to proclaim Your ministry of reconciliation, that You have broken down the ultimate division, which is the division between us as those who are sinful and You. We pray for Your strength, through Your Holy Spirit, in the name of our precious Savior, Jesus. Amen.
Well, we’ve been talking tonight, really, about how we relate to each other as Christians. What does it mean for the church? How do we avoid division in the church? But we’ve already had somewhat of an eye on how that affects our witness to the world. And next week, we’re going to roll into that further, thinking about how do we live at peace in the world in a way that we proclaim a God of peace?
It’s a very challenging topic, but it’s one that we have to deal with this first part first. If we’re not dealing with how we love each other, then we can’t really show that love to the world. But as we work on the one, then we can start to work on the other as well. And I hope you’ll join me next week for that.
If tonight’s been an encouragement to you, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d subscribe to our YouTube channel, share this on Facebook or Twitter. Help us to get the word out. Give us a like. These sorts of things can help us to get the word of God’s ministry of reconciliation out to more people. So I hope that you would consider joining me in that effort tonight.
Thank you for being here tonight, and please make an effort. I really hope that you’ll be with me and with a bunch of others on Thursday as well as we have our third online community prayer walk in partnership with other Faith Tree churches. It’s going to be a wonderful time. We have all kinds of wonderful devotionals coming from across the world, reflecting on different areas of prayer need, and then guiding us in prayer.
We have some slides that will rotate all day long, so you can come in whenever you have a moment or a longer period of time, spend some time in prayer, spend some time being encouraged by God’s word, post a prayer request and be prayed for.
Would you please take part in this? Would you please share that upcoming event so more people can gather together? We’ve had hundreds of people gather each time. The more, genuinely, the merrier, because when we come together and we pray for one another and we come before our God together, that’s transformative. I really hope that you’ll make time to be there this Thursday.
If you have any questions, if there’s any way I can be praying for you in the meantime, or if you have a private prayer request, feel free to shoot me an email at the email address on screen. I would love to hear from you. Of course, you can also leave a prayer request or a question down in the comments below, and we can discuss it together, pray for each other.
I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week. I hope to see you at the prayer walk and then again here next Monday night.