Invisible Unity and Matthew 18

March 3rd, 2008 · No Comments

The topic of discussion on that Protestant homeschooling forum I hang out on, has turned to the subject of unity. It has been proposed that the Catholics who post there just don’t understand that Protestants are united in the “essentials” (which leads me to ask “So why divide over the non-essentials?…but I digress). It is being argued that parachurch organizations (which I think are great by the way) are an expression of that “invisible unity” thing that the Protestants have going.

So….if this invisible expression of unity is what Jesus intended, how does dispute resolution a lá Matthew 18 work? Matthew 18 says the following

Quote:

Matthew 18:15-17 “If your brother sins (against you), go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.

Let’s say you have a disagreement with HappyBaptistChristian [a hopefully made up name that is not intended to reflect on Baptists at ALL] or another Christian that is outside of your denomination and you’ve gone through verses 15 and 16 not been able to resolve your difficulty. Now you are supposed to “tell the church”.

Which one? Whose?

What authority does HappyBaptistChristian’s church have over you? Or vice versa? Let’s say that you are an unrepentant ne’er-do-well but agree to go to HappyBaptistChristian’s church for mediation. They rule against you and you decide you don’t like the ruling and continue doing whatever it was that got HappyBaptistChristian’s knickers in a twist in the first place. So HappyBaptistChristian’s church THROWS you out and treats you like a tax collector. (That’s a stretch I know that no decent person would ever work for the IRS….just joking!!….sort of) Do you care that HappyBaptistChristian’s church has thrown you out?

Has the dispute been resolved?

What good is Matthew 18 in the face of “invisible unity” or “unity on essentials”? If Jesus intended for us to be divided into thousands of denominations, why did He set out a dispute resolution process for Christians that only works if we are visibily ONE CHURCH?

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