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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman The
Unity In The Faith Ephesians 4:11 through
13 reads: "So Christ himself
gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and
teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of
Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the
knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole
measure of the fullness of Christ." Much could be said about
the above passage but I will limit my comments to the term "unity in
the faith" because it is a term I often hear associated with
doctrinal unity among Christians. Allow
me to suggest a different association.
Since our English word
"faith" is translated from the Greek word "pistis"
which simply means trust, I suggest unity in the faith means unity in
trust, a corporate unified trust in Jesus among believers, the church.
This association also best fits the literary context of the
passage, which is a healthy productive church. As individual Christians
we have entered into a trusting relationship with Jesus, but the context
of the above passage is not in reference to individual Christians trusting
Jesus. It's about individual
Christians living in proper relationship with each other who collectively
trust Jesus for all that pertains to church.
As an individual Christian trusts his life with Jesus, so the
community of Christians, the church, trusts its church life with Jesus.
It is a corporate unity of trust.
I believe this corporate
unified trust, or common faith, is fundamental to a healthy church,
whether it's the world-wide church or a local expression of church.
It's something that we don't think much about these days because we
are so immersed in our individualistic western-world culture that we have
no clue to the communal nature of church, making the unity of trust
unlikely to be realized.
As individual Christians
we trust our lives with Jesus, and in the process we should be attempting
to trust each other as we corporately trust Jesus for the life of our
local expression of church. It
is a corporate unity of trust, a communal faith.
It's the unity of faith.
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