Christian Fellowship Community Group
A safe place for Christians who Love Jesus Christ to meet and ask for prayer and share scriptures from the bible. We value the posting of Christian music, poems, stories and also personal testimonies. Please let us know your needs, concerns and have some fun getting to know each other. We treat each other with respect.
“The wisdom of the fathers”
PERFECT UNITY
Another beautiful characteristic of sanctification is perfect unity. One of the most striking features of the religious world today is division among those who profess to believe in and follow Christ. There is no greater evil existing than this. Men have made creeds and sects and have persuaded the people to join them, until the disgusting spectacle of division is seen everywhere, and the non-professing world is amazed at the sickening sight. Hireling preachers are pleading for their respective denominations, and while many honest children of God are dissatisfied with this sad state of affairs, they are taught from the pulpit that God has made these divisions and it is the duty of every Christian to join and support them. But such is not the will of God; He has designed that His people should all be one, and in His prayer Jesus expresses the extent of this unity. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.”
This certainly implies a wonderful and perfect unity. Many sect advocates cry, “Impossible, impossible; God’s people cannot be one,” But the whole theme of Jesus’ prayer is unity. As we carefully read this prayer we can readily perceive the divine method to effect this unity. It is plain and simple: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth…. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one.”* (John 17:17,20-21)
This grace not only brings us into a perfect inward unity with Jesus Himself, but it just as truly brings us all into a perfect inward unity with each other. Divisions, sects, and factions are productions of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) and not of the Spirit. Sanctification destroys all the works of the flesh and extracts the very root itself and renders divisions impossible. Every sect yoke is destroyed “because of the anointing.”* (Isaiah 10:27) It is the work of the Holy Spirit to effect this unity in us with God and with each other. Every human effort to accomplish this must necessarily end in failure. There are many efforts today to effect a union among Christians, but union is not scriptural unity. Union of sects is far from the scriptural unity of believers. A union consists upon a human basis and may consist of a union of sects, or a union of individuals, without any conditions of spirituality whatever. Each individual or body retaining its distinctive and separate division. Scriptural unity is based upon the inner-wrought grace of sanctification, where everything non-spiritual is entirely destroyed and the Holy Spirit has the right of way in every respect according to the perfect will of God.
It is only as we are thus perfected in this grace that the prayer of Jesus will be fully answered and His people lose every vestige of division. No sanctified heart can remain loyal to anything that separates the people of God. All sect holiness is below the Bible standard, for it upholds that which sanctification destroys. This is a far-reaching assertion, but in the light of God’s word it is true. Many have lost this experience by listening to the perverted teachings of false shepherds and remaining in sectarianism. God says the “anointing” breaks and destroys the yoke, and no sect yoke will ever again fit on the neck of a sanctified person, if such remains loyal to the Holy Spirit. Praise God! He alone can effect perfect unity in us, by His divine process of sanctification. Then by the careful adherence to sanctification the teachings of God’s word, this beautiful apostolic unity can be maintained and demonstrated among men, and the prayer of Jesus further answered, “That the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”* (John 17:21)
(by Jacob W. Byers)
PERFECT UNITY
Another beautiful characteristic of sanctification is perfect unity. One of the most striking features of the religious world today is division among those who profess to believe in and follow Christ. There is no greater evil existing than this. Men have made creeds and sects and have persuaded the people to join them, until the disgusting spectacle of division is seen everywhere, and the non-professing world is amazed at the sickening sight. Hireling preachers are pleading for their respective denominations, and while many honest children of God are dissatisfied with this sad state of affairs, they are taught from the pulpit that God has made these divisions and it is the duty of every Christian to join and support them. But such is not the will of God; He has designed that His people should all be one, and in His prayer Jesus expresses the extent of this unity. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.”
This certainly implies a wonderful and perfect unity. Many sect advocates cry, “Impossible, impossible; God’s people cannot be one,” But the whole theme of Jesus’ prayer is unity. As we carefully read this prayer we can readily perceive the divine method to effect this unity. It is plain and simple: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth…. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one.”* (John 17:17,20-21)
This grace not only brings us into a perfect inward unity with Jesus Himself, but it just as truly brings us all into a perfect inward unity with each other. Divisions, sects, and factions are productions of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) and not of the Spirit. Sanctification destroys all the works of the flesh and extracts the very root itself and renders divisions impossible. Every sect yoke is destroyed “because of the anointing.”* (Isaiah 10:27) It is the work of the Holy Spirit to effect this unity in us with God and with each other. Every human effort to accomplish this must necessarily end in failure. There are many efforts today to effect a union among Christians, but union is not scriptural unity. Union of sects is far from the scriptural unity of believers. A union consists upon a human basis and may consist of a union of sects, or a union of individuals, without any conditions of spirituality whatever. Each individual or body retaining its distinctive and separate division. Scriptural unity is based upon the inner-wrought grace of sanctification, where everything non-spiritual is entirely destroyed and the Holy Spirit has the right of way in every respect according to the perfect will of God.
It is only as we are thus perfected in this grace that the prayer of Jesus will be fully answered and His people lose every vestige of division. No sanctified heart can remain loyal to anything that separates the people of God. All sect holiness is below the Bible standard, for it upholds that which sanctification destroys. This is a far-reaching assertion, but in the light of God’s word it is true. Many have lost this experience by listening to the perverted teachings of false shepherds and remaining in sectarianism. God says the “anointing” breaks and destroys the yoke, and no sect yoke will ever again fit on the neck of a sanctified person, if such remains loyal to the Holy Spirit. Praise God! He alone can effect perfect unity in us, by His divine process of sanctification. Then by the careful adherence to sanctification the teachings of God’s word, this beautiful apostolic unity can be maintained and demonstrated among men, and the prayer of Jesus further answered, “That the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”* (John 17:21)
(by Jacob W. Byers)
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