Purity and Unity

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. The Apostle Paul wrote these words and we find them in his letter to the Philippians at the beginning of chapter 2.

It shouldn't take too much thought to get to what Paul is trying to convey to the Philippian church, and to us: UNITY. Does this mean we agree on every point? Does it mean we can't have differing opinions? Does it mean we're all mindlessly on the same page marching lock-step with every other Christian? Wayne Grudem makes a good case in his Systematic Theology book that the pursuit of PURITY in the church is tied to UNITY in the church. "We are to work for the purity of the visible church... and we must recognize that this is a process". Because it is a process and during that process different people will have different thoughts and ideas, UNITY is necessary to keep the process going in a healthy direction.

Grudem goes on to say that 'not all churches will respond well to influences that would bring them to greater purity'. Some churches will drift into liberal Protestantism, which are more man-centered and less God-centered. I think we see that all around us... churches that no longer put a premium on the infallable, inerrant Word of God. This kind of thinking is a cancer on the face of the modern church. How do we know if we're drifting into liberalism? Here are a few signs:
1). Our conversations and activities are of little spiritual content
2). There is little or no emphasis on the need for daily individual prayer concerns
3). We've become 'politically correct' instead of 'biblically correct' and replaced words like wretchedness and sin with words like ‘moral deficiencies’ and 'mistakes'.
4). There is little emphasis on the need for repentance and forgiveness
5). There is a severe lack of disciplined study and daily personal reading of scripture

To keep away from the DRIFT, with the help of Christ, we need to wake up every morning determined to set our minds on striving for PERSONAL PURITY and CORPORATE PURITY in the church… and to do so with a spirit of UNITY, letting inconsequential differences no longer divide us.