Paul's Grace Message: Unions Or Unity? - by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Unions Or Unity? - by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

Unions Or Unity?

Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

Here is a company of Bible-believing Christians joined together in, let us say, an evangelistic endeavor. All are trusting in the shed blood of Christ for salvation, though some are Baptists, some Presbyterians, some Episcopalians and some represent other denominations.

Are all these believers one? Yes, in Christ, for “there is one body” (Eph. 4:4).

What united them? The “one baptism” (Eph. 4:5) by which the Holy Spirit unites all believers to Christ and to each other: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body whether we be Jews or Gentiles…” (I Cor. 12:13).

Yet these same believers, all trusting in the finished work of Christ for salvation, remain sadly divided as far as fellowship in the work of the Lord is concerned. They may have blessed fellowship in their evangelistic endeavor, but at its conclusion they go back to their mutually exclusive church organizations.

The reason? Basically it is that they have confused “the gospel of the kingdom,” proclaimed by Christ on earth and His twelve apostles, with “the gospel of the grace of God,” proclaimed by the ascended, glorified Lord through the Apostle Paul (Acts 20:24; Eph. 3:1-3).

Striving over baptismal modes and meanings, most of them still require their particular forms of baptism for entrance into their churches, while explaining at the same time that the ceremony has no saving value and that it is not required by God for entrance into the true Church.

Can’t we stop being Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists and just be Christians? Why should the Church of Christ remain divided and weak, when God says: