I crossed a national border and a couple of state lines to get here.[1] That’s nothing when you consider that John Calvin said he would cross ten seas for the sake of unity. He wrote Archbishop Cranmer in April 1552 with a particular concern for the Church of England. He was discouraged by the devastation the church experienced in its disunity. Calvin was known as the apostle of ecumenicity.

My assignment is to speak on the biblical mandate for ecumenicity.

We start with the conviction that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is one.

My presentation is based largely on John 17. I will also reference Article 27 of the Belgic Confession and what our fathers have taught with regard to the “one holy catholic church.” I refer you also to a very helpful document on the Orthodox Presbyterian Church website, “Biblical Principles for the Unity of the Church.”[2]

We come from a context of churches that relate to each other in the bonds of the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC), where together we express a commitment to the pursuit of organic unity among likeminded churches.

In the United Reformed Churches of North America (URCNA), we conduct our ecumenical efforts with a view to complete church unity. Admittedly, this is not something that is easily attained, but it is the goal. My challenge is to encourage you from the Scriptures as to why that should be the case. We can become cynical, but we should not be. We ought to live by faith: “I believe one holy catholic … church …” This confession needs to be brought to expression.

Jesus Christ makes plain in John 17 that this is his heart’s desire. Ephesians 4:3 states that we are “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” It’s a unity we are to keep; to manifest; to work out; to bring to expression.

Some suggest we should be content with unity as a spiritual essence and not be so concerned about the expression of unity. That is a false dilemma. Yes, ultimately we must be rooted in what is given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, by the work of the Spirit. But out of that reality we are to be busy.

In our own broken experience we know it is relatively easy to break unity. Sometimes it is necessary, when truth is at stake. It’s a more difficult challenge to bring unity about. We are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation to the world. We need to show that reconciliation to the world.

The church is one.

1. The Declaration of Unity as Reality

Belgic Confession, Article 27 says:

We believe and profess one catholic or universal Church, which is a holy congregation of true Christian believers, all expecting their salvation in Jesus Christ, being washed by His blood, sanctified and sealed by the Holy Spirit.[3]

Over against the accusations that they had destroyed the unity of the church, the Reformers declared, “We believe … one holy catholic and apostolic church.” They believed, based on the Scriptures, that God has one work in the earth.

The Lord has a covenant, and the language of Leviticus 26:12 is repeated throughout Scripture: “I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.” He binds himself to one people and dwells with them. In the New Testament, Ephesians 2:14 explains, the walls of partition have come down. God has one people. If the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles can come down, certainly the wall of partition between Reformed and Presbyterian is not insurmountable.

There is one body. Ephesians 4:3 states, “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:1–16 is a call to manifest that unity and bring it to expression.

The consummation is seen in Revelation 21:3 where the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God as a bride prepared for her husband, and again the Lord says, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

The church is one. It is a declaration of faith.

The Reformers understood that Reformation was required because of the deformation of the church. There had been a sham kind of organizational unity in the place of a commitment to the truth and to the gospel. In the face of this the Belgic Confession describes the one holy catholic church as “a holy congregation of true believers, all expecting their salvation in Jesus Christ, washed by His blood, sanctified and sealed by the Holy Spirit” (Article 27). Unity is found in Christ. The Reformers were accused of rending church unity: “Where the Pope is, there is the church,” their accusers said. But the Reformers responded, “Where Christ is, there is the church.”

Perhaps you’re in a foreign place, and you run into other believers. They are also “expecting their salvation in Jesus Christ, being washed by His blood, sanctified and sealed by the Holy Spirit.” There is a unity you enjoy together. The church is one.

Jesus says in John 17, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him… . I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours” (vv. 1, 2, 9).

The blessed reality of unity roots in what God has given from all eternity. It roots in election; in God’s sovereign grace; it is fundamentally a gift of God. Unity is not, first and foremost, organizational. That was the Roman Catholic error. We need to stand on the right foundation. It needs to be unity in Christ, a work of God’s Spirit. That’s the unity for which Christ prayed, a gift of God, and a reality.

At the very least we understand that it is an eschatological reality. Jesus prayed, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Unity is a reality. And as we look forward to that unity, we need to work it out today. But, in doing so, we must beware the danger of unity as idolatry.

2. The Danger of Unity as Idolatry

The Heidelberg Catechism says idolatry is having or inventing anything that one places trust in apart from or alongside of the one true God (Q.#95). Unity is an idol if it becomes more important than God; if, for the sake of unity, we deny parts of our confession.

When unity becomes an idol, as it did in the days leading to the Reformation, it becomes a weapon with which to pummel those who seek to call the church to faithfulness. “The church is one; you can’t rend the fabric of the church.” Yet the Bible was not opened, and the Lord Jesus Christ was scarcely preached. Hope was not found in the gospel of God’s sovereign grace, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Those who proclaimed these truths were viewed as troublers in Israel. When unity becomes idolatry, it takes on a role more significant than the truth of the Word of God.

A careful look at John 17 reveals what Jesus is praying for:

I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word… . For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me… . Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (vv. 6, 8, 17)

Any desire for unity that would make the Word secondary is a sham. That is the liberal ecumenical movement.

Another form of unity as idolatry demands “everything gets done the way I do it.” But unity is not uniformity, and it is important to understand the difference.

In Colossians 3:11 we read: “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” There is diversity, but it is not a threat to unity. Diversity contributes to the blessing of unity. An overemphasis on uniformity can hinder true unity. Diversity ought to contribute to our sense of privilege and blessing. We have things to learn from each other.

Uniformity hinders unity when we emphasize our distinctive, defining moments as churches, a moment in history, an emphasis, a way of preaching. Distinctives are elevated to the point of confessional status: “We might have the same Confession, we might agree in everything we confess from the Word of God. But we preach differently, so we’ll never be united.” This form of idolatry hinders unity.

3. The Demand for Unity as Responsibility

Finally, if we declare unity as reality, the implication is that we need to engage the demand for unity as responsibility. Jesus prayed for it.

Some suggest that Jesus wasn’t praying in John 17 for the organizational unity of the church; that, instead, Jesus prayed for his return to the glory of the Father and that his people would experience that reality with him. That’s true enough in the ultimate sense. But we can’t deny that what Jesus prays for has implications for practical unity today.

In Scripture there is an expectation that the church be governed in a certain way. “Appoint elders in every town as I directed you” (Titus 1:5). We see that in Acts 14, as well as in the pastoral Epistles. Acts 15 suggests a connectionalism in the life of the church—the need to consult with one another. Having consulted with one another at the Jerusalem Council, what was decided there was communicated to the churches as, “They delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem” (Acts 16:4). The expectation is that churches hold one another accountable, live according to this standard, and continue to interact with each other. Therefore, when Jesus prays for unity to come to visible expression, this kind of connectionalism is an application of what Jesus prays for.

We are taught to work for what we pray for. Ora et labora. Jesus prays and works, says John 17:21, “that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Jesus works for what he prays for. Shouldn’t we do the same?

People say, “Time spent on ecumenicity takes time away from the work of evangelism.” According to Jesus, that’s a false dilemma. For the sake of our witness to the world, we need to strive for oneness. We are ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:20), yet we can’t get along with each other? We need to examine ourselves, and give better expression to what we have in Christ.

In Ephesians 4:32, Paul says to forgive one another as you have been forgiven in Christ. “Ah, but we’re spiritually one,” we say piously. Yet our actions say something different. “I’m not talking to those people. We haven’t talked to them since the 1930s or the 1940s.”

Jesus says, “that they may all be one … that the world may believe” (John 17:21,  emphasis added). It is not either/or: the mission of the church and our call to ecumenicity work together. The world must see that we are serious about the gospel of reconciliation.

R. B. Kuiper wrote:

There are Christian denominations which are so similar in their interpretation of the Word of God [and I would interject that they hold faithfully to the same confessions, historical differences and emphases aside] that they can without compromising their convictions merge with one another. It may be said that organizational unification is their solemn duty. [4]

Not to do so, to be complacent or unconcerned, would be sin. It’s our solemn duty.

Since our inception as United Reformed Churches, we have engaged extensively in the work of ecumenicity. It is reflected in our name. We were born of secession, but want to say to the world, we’re not about being by ourselves. We want to seek in whatever ways we can to bring true unity to expression.

I can speak personally of the blessing of witnessing walls and barriers coming down. We thank God for this, his work.

At the same time we need to strive for more. In relation to John 17 there are those, Martyn Lloyd-Jones being one, who emphasize the essentialness of spiritual unity over against the expression of unity. We should not take that approach.

If unity is a spiritual reality (and it is), why does Jesus continually pray for it? Because he wants to see more of it. He wants it manifested that the world may know. Now, we can sit back complacently and say, “Ultimately in eternity, eschatologically, all will be well.” Or we can become disillusioned and say, “It’s hard work. We’ll never attain perfect unity until the eschaton anyway, so why bother?” But that would be like saying with regard to our own personal sanctification, “I’m not going to be perfect this side of eternity anyway, so what’s the use?”

We are not antinomians; we never stop striving in terms of our desire to be renewed after the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Likewise with our ecumenical calling, we strive for more.

John Murray wrote:

It is to be admitted that the fragmentation and lack of coordination and solidarity which we find within strictly Evangelical and Reformed churches creates a difficult situation. And how this disunity is to be remedied in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace is a task not easily accomplished. But what needs to be indicted and indicted with vehemence is the complacency so widespread, and the failure to be aware that this is an evil, dishonoring to Christ, destructive to the edification defined by the Apostle as the increase of the body into the building up of itself in love (Ephesians 4:16) and prejudicial to the evangelistic outreach to the world. If we are once convinced of this evil, the evil of schism in the body of Christ, the evil of disruption in the communion of saints, then we have made great progress. We shall then be constrained to preach the evil, to bring conviction to the hearts of others also to implore God’s grace and wisdom in remedying the evil, and to devise ways and means of healing these ruptures to the promotion of the united witness to the faith of Jesus and the whole counsel of God.[5]

What is to be indicted, as Murray says, is complacency.

The challenge for us is, are we willing to work, to strive sacrificially? Are we willing, as Calvin was, to cross ten seas for the unity of the church?

Endnotes

[1] This article is based on a lecture given at the United Reformed Churches in North America Classis Eastern US, Semper Reformanda Conference on October 14, 2014.

[2] Accessed September 21, 2016, http://www.opc.org/relations/unity.html.

[3] Psalter Hymnal: doctrinal standards and liturgy of the Christian Reformed Church (Grand Rapids: Board of Publications of the Christian Reformed Church, 1976), 82.

[4] R. B. Kuiper, The Glorious Body of Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 54.

[5] John Murray, Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982), 335.

John A. Bouwers is a minister in the United Reformed Churches and serves as pastor of Immanuel United Reformed Church in Jordan, Ontario. Ordained Servant Online, October 2016.