One Light, Many Rays

On the Unity of the Church

Since the Lord warns us, saying, “You are the salt of the earth,” and since he tells us to be simple enough to do no harm and yet, along with our simplicity, to be shrewd — what suits us better, dear brothers, than to use foresight and to keep watch with an anxious heart, so that we both see through the tricks of our crafty enemy and are on guard against them? We have put on Christ, who is the wisdom of God the Father; we should not be found short of wisdom when it comes to looking after our own salvation. For it is not persecution alone that has to be feared, nor only the things that come by open attack to overwhelm the servants of God and knock them down. Caution is easier where the danger shows itself, and the mind gets ready for the fight beforehand when the enemy declares himself. He is more to be feared, and more to be guarded against, when he creeps up on us in secret — when he deceives under the appearance of peace and comes on by hidden approaches. That is where he got the name of the Serpent. That is always his cunning; that is his dark and stealthy trick for getting around a man. So he deceived from the very beginning of the world, and by flattering with lying words he misled inexperienced souls into a careless trust. So he tried to tempt the Lord himself: he came at him secretly, as if he could creep up on him again and deceive him. But he was seen through, and beaten back, and thrown down, because he was recognized and exposed. [d]

From this we are given an example: to avoid the way of the old man, and to stand in the footsteps of a Christ who conquers, so that we are not carelessly turned back again into the nets of death, but see our danger coming and hold on to the immortality we have received. But how can we hold on to immortality unless we keep those commands of Christ by which death is driven out and beaten? He warns us himself and says, “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” And again: “If you do the things I command you, from now on I do not call you servants but friends.” Finally, these are the people he calls strong and steady. These are the ones he declares to be founded in solid safety on the rock, set there with a firmness that cannot be moved or shaken, against every storm and hurricane in the world. “Whoever hears my words and does them,” he says, “I will compare to a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the floods came, the winds blew and beat against that house; and it did not fall, because it was founded on a rock.” So we ought to stand fast on his words, and to learn and do everything he both taught and did. How can a man say he believes in Christ when he does not do what Christ commanded him to do? Where will he get the reward of faith, when he will not keep faith with the command? He is bound to waver and wander; he will be caught up by a spirit of error and blown about like dust shaken by the wind, and he will make no progress on his walk toward salvation, because he does not keep to the truth of the way that leads there. [f]

But, dear brothers, we must be on our guard not only against what is open and obvious, but also against what deceives by the craft of a subtle fraud. And what could be craftier, what more subtle, than this? The enemy has been detected and thrown down by the coming of Christ. Light has come to the nations, and the rays that save have shone out for people’s rescue, so that the deaf might hear by the grace of the Spirit, the blind open their eyes to God, the weak grow strong again with health that lasts, the lame run to the church, and the mute pray aloud with clear voices. He sees his idols abandoned and his streets and his temples emptied by the crowds going over to faith. So he thinks up a new fraud, and under the very name of Christian he deceives people who are not careful. He has invented heresies and schisms, to overturn the faith, to corrupt the truth, to split the unity. Those he cannot keep in the darkness of the old road he gets around and deceives by the error of a new one. He snatches people out of the church itself; and just when they think they have come near the light and escaped the night of the world, he pours fresh darkness over them without their knowing it. They do not stand firm with the Gospel of Christ, or with his rule and his law, and yet they still call themselves Christians; and walking in darkness they think they have the light — while the adversary flatters and deceives them, the one who, in the apostle’s words, changes himself into an angel of light and fits out his servants as though they were servants of righteousness. They call night day, and death salvation; they hold out hope and give despair, promise faith and practice treachery, and put the name of Christ on antichrist. By counterfeiting things that look like the truth, they cancel the truth by their cleverness. This is what happens, dear brothers, as long as we do not go back to the source of truth, do not look for the head, and do not keep the teaching of the heavenly Master. [i]

If anyone will think these things over and look into them, there is no need for a long discussion and argument. The proof is easy for faith to grasp in a short summary of the truth. The Lord speaks to Peter: “I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overpower it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven as well, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” And again to the same man, after his resurrection, he says, “Feed my sheep.” And although after his resurrection he gives an equal power to all the apostles, and says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they will be forgiven him; if you hold anyone’s sins, they will be held” — still, in order to set out the church’s oneness, he arranged by his own authority that the origin of that oneness should begin from one man. Certainly the rest of the apostles were exactly what Peter was, sharing equally in honor and in power; but the beginning proceeds from oneness. This one church the Holy Spirit also marks out in the Song of Songs, speaking in the person of our Lord: “My dove, my spotless one, is only one. She is her mother’s only one, the chosen of the one who bore her.” Does a man who does not hold this unity of the church think that he holds the faith? Does a man who fights against the church and resists it trust that he is in the church — when the blessed apostle Paul teaches the same thing and sets out the sacred sign of unity: “There is one body and one Spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God”? [j]

This is the unity we ought to hold firmly and insist on — those of us above all who preside in the church as overseers — so that we may prove that the office of overseer is itself one and undivided. Let no one deceive the brotherhood with a lie. Let no one corrupt the truth of the faith by treacherous double-dealing. The office of overseer is one, and each man holds his share of it in a way that answers for the whole. The church is one too, spread far and wide into a multitude as it grows more fruitful. There are many rays of the sun, but one light; many branches on a tree, but one strength based in a root that grips; many streams flowing from one spring, and though the many seem spread out by the generosity of an overflowing supply, the unity is still kept in the source. Separate a ray of the sun from the body of light: its unity does not allow the light to be divided. Break a branch off a tree: once broken, it cannot bud. Cut a stream off from its fountain: what is cut off dries up. So it is with the church. Lit up with the light of the Lord, she throws out her rays over the whole world; but it is one light that is spread everywhere, and the unity of the body is not broken up. Her fruitfulness stretches her branches over the whole earth; she spreads her rivers wide and lets them run freely. Yet her head is one and her source is one, and she is one mother, rich in the results of her fruitfulness. From her womb we are born, by her milk we are fed, by her spirit we are given life. [o]

The bride of Christ cannot be made an adulteress; she is undefiled and pure. She knows one home. She guards with chaste modesty the holiness of one bed. She keeps us for God. She enrolls for the kingdom the sons she has borne. Whoever is cut off from the church and joined to an adulteress is cut off from the promises of the church, and no one who leaves the church of Christ can reach the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is unholy; he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his Father who does not have the church for his mother. If anyone outside the ark of Noah could escape, then a man outside the church may escape too. The Lord warns us, saying, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” A man who breaks the peace and the harmony of Christ acts against Christ; a man who gathers anywhere but in the church scatters the church of Christ. The Lord says, “I and the Father are one.” And again it is written of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, “And these three are one.” Does anyone believe that this unity, which comes from the strength of God and holds together in the sacred signs of heaven, can be split inside the church and torn apart by the pulling of wills against each other? A man who does not hold this unity does not hold God’s law. He does not hold faith in the Father and the Son. He does not hold life and salvation. [q]

This sacred sign of unity, this bond of a harmony that holds together and cannot be pulled apart, is set out in the Gospel where the tunic of the Lord Jesus Christ is not divided or cut at all, but is received as one whole garment and is kept undamaged and undivided by the men who cast lots for Christ’s clothing — men who would have done better to put Christ on. Holy Scripture says: “But since the tunic was not sewn, but woven in one piece from the top down, they said to one another, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to see whose it will be.” That tunic carried with it a unity that came down from the top — that is, one that came from heaven and from the Father — and it was not to be torn at all by the man who received it and owned it; instead we receive it whole and solid, its wholeness undivided. A man who parts the church of Christ and divides it cannot own the garment of Christ. On the other hand, when Solomon died and his kingdom and his people were divided, the prophet Ahijah met King Jeroboam out in the open country and tore his own garment into twelve pieces, saying: “Take ten pieces for yourself. For this is what the Lord says: Look, I am tearing the kingdom out of Solomon’s hand, and I will give ten scepters to you; and two scepters will be left to him, for the sake of my servant David and for Jerusalem, the city I have chosen to put my name there.” When the twelve tribes of Israel were divided, the prophet Ahijah tore his garment. But because Christ’s people cannot be torn, his robe — woven and joined all the way through — is not divided by the men who hold it. Undivided, joined, held together, it shows the close harmony of our people, who have put Christ on. By the sacred sign of his garment he has declared the unity of the church. [s]

Who then is so wicked and faithless, who is so insane with the madness of discord, that he either believes the unity of God can be divided, or dares to tear it — the garment of the Lord, the church of Christ? He warns us himself in his Gospel and teaches us, saying, “And there will be one flock and one shepherd.” And does anyone believe that in one place there can be either many shepherds or many flocks? The apostle Paul, moreover, presses this same unity on us. He begs and urges: “I beg you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no splits among you, but that you be joined together in the same mind and the same judgment.” And again he says, “Putting up with one another in love, working to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Do you think you can stand and live if you withdraw from the church and build yourself other homes and a different place to live — when it was said to Rahab, in whom the church was pictured beforehand: “You will gather your father and your mother and your brothers and your father’s whole household to yourself, into your house; and whoever goes outside the door of your house, his blood will be on his own head”? The sacred sign of the Passover, too, holds nothing else in the law of the Exodus than this: the lamb that is killed as a figure of Christ is to be eaten in one house. God says, “You will eat it in one house; you will not send its flesh outside the house.” The flesh of Christ, and the holy thing of the Lord, cannot be sent outside, and believers have no other home than the one church. This home, this lodging of one mind, the Holy Spirit marks out and points to in the Psalms, saying, “God, who makes men of one mind live in a house.” In the house of God, in the church of Christ, men live of one mind and go on in harmony and simplicity. [u]

That is also why the Holy Spirit came as a dove — a simple and cheerful creature, not bitter with gall, not cruel when it bites, not violent with tearing claws; a bird that loves people’s houses and knows the fellowship of one home. When doves have young, they bring them up together. When they fly out, they stay side by side in flight. They spend their lives in one another’s company. They acknowledge the harmony of peace with a kiss of the beak, and in everything they keep the law of one mind. This is the simplicity that ought to be recognized in the church; this is the love that ought to be reached; so that the love of the brotherhood may copy the doves, and their gentleness and meekness be like lambs and sheep. What is the fierceness of wolves doing in a Christian’s breast? Or the savagery of dogs, or the deadly venom of snakes, or the bloody cruelty of wild animals? We are to be congratulated when people like that are separated from the church, so that they do not lay waste the doves and the sheep of Christ with their cruel and poisoned infection. Bitterness cannot stand together and keep company with sweetness, or darkness with light, or rain with a clear sky, or war with peace, or barrenness with fruitfulness, or drought with springs, or storm with calm. Let no one think that good men can leave the church. The wind does not carry off the wheat, and a hurricane does not tear up a tree that is set on a solid root. It is the light straws that are tossed about by the storm; it is the weak trees that go over when the whirlwind hits them. The apostle John curses such men and attacks them hard when he says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have stayed with us.” [x]

This is how heresies have again and again been started, and still are being started: a twisted mind has no peace, and a quarrelsome faithlessness does not keep unity. But the Lord allows this and puts up with it, while each man’s freedom to choose remains, so that while the test of truth is trying our hearts and our minds, the sound faith of those who pass may shine out in plain light. The Holy Spirit warns us ahead of time through the apostle and says, “There must also be heresies, so that those who are approved may be shown up among you.” This is how the faithful are approved and how the faithless are detected; and this is how, even here, before the day of judgment, the souls of the righteous and of the unrighteous are already being divided, and the chaff is sorted out from the wheat. These are the men who set themselves up, of their own accord and with no appointment from God, to preside over a gathering of reckless strangers; who make themselves leaders with no law of ordination behind them; who take the name of overseer for themselves when nobody has given them the office. The Holy Spirit points them out in the Psalms as men sitting in the chair of pestilence — plagues and blots on the faith, deceiving with a serpent’s tongue, skilled at corrupting the truth, spewing deadly poison out of infectious tongues; men whose talk creeps like a cancer, whose speech drops a deadly poison into the heart and breast of everyone. [y]