In Ephesians 4:2-6 we read, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
In Matthew 9:16 and 17 Jesus taught, “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Beyond a shared commitment to the integrity of the biblical record and the testimony of the apostles as handed down and condensed into the Nicene creed, thereafter, as soon as a particular system of faith or practice is put forward as being essential to friendship with Jesus and usefulness to him, it seems to me Jesus is being marginalized and the scene is ripe for division.
By system I mean, “special” rituals or routines, “special” ways of praying or acting, “special” emphasis on certain truths or days or seasons. I see nothing wrong with such distinctives in and of themselves. Explosive creativity and diversity in response to the greatest truth on earth — the truth that is Jesus — is natural, welcomed, and even warranted. The Gospel wine does indeed constantly need new wine skins to be preserved and passed on from one generation to another. But when those born into a given church system, or who are attracted to the creativity, the diversity, the history, the stability, or structural authority embodied in a given system begin to assert: if you do not think as we think, believe as we believe, do as we do, sound like us, or look like us, you are not truly, fully Christian, then, as I see it, the wine skins have hardened. It is the spirit of pride at work. And that spirit of pride is the taproot of all division in the body of Christ.
