Dever on Unity or Purity

Today we contemplate further the church with an article extract from Mark Dever entitled 'Together for what?' Here he defines unity people and purity people but it is worth reading the whole article for his definition of gospel partnership.

The Unity People
The unity people love Bible chapters like John 17. They perceive clearly that our unity with one another testifies to our unity with God in Christ, and that our love for one another shows God’s love for us (as Jesus taught in John 13:34-35). They love the love passages in the Bible:

• "Make my joy complete by being like-minded" (Phil. 2:2);
• "agree with each other in the Lord" (Phil. 4:2);
• "all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought" (1 Cor. 1:10);
• "My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love" (Col. 2:2).

There have been many unity movements among professing Christians in the last few decades. There is old-line liberal ecumenism—"let’s bring all the denominations together." There are the parachurch ministries which rally people from different churches to share the gospel—from Billy Graham to Campus Crusade. There is the charismatic movement, which has helped to create fellowship across old church divides. More recently there has been what we could call Great Traditionalism, which relies on an "oldest-common-denominator." You see this in the current fad among some evangelicals to use methods and objects associated with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as aids to piety.

The popular T-shirts among the unity crowd say things like "Doctrine divides" or "Love unites" or "Mission unites." It was from this camp that one bishop came who, not too long ago, said, "Heresy is better than schism." These doctrinal minimalists want "No creed but Christ; no law but love."

The Purity People
The opposite of the unity people are the purity people. They want purity of doctrine and purity of life. They want purity in our churches, in our Christian colleges, and in our seminaries.

These people take the Bible’s command to separate seriously. They know 2 John well: "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house [church] or welcome him. Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work" (vv. 10-11).
Or John’s warning from his first letter: "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world" (4:1). And then there is Paul’s warnings: "keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us" (2 Thes. 3:6). And "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? . . . ‘Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord’" (2 Cor. 6:14, 17). Add to these all the passages on church discipline (e.g. 1 Cor 5.) as well as Jude’s command, "contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude 3).

The folks contending for the faith are the Fundamentalists and conservative Mennonites among us. These brothers and sisters will contend more quickly than they cooperate.

If you’re tempted to quote Jesus in Matthew 7:1 to such contenders—"Do not judge, or you too will be judged"—you should look a little further down the same page at verse 15 of the same chapter, where Jesus taught "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves" (7:15). And, of course, it’s Jesus in Matthew 18 who commands the church to eject unrepentant sinners from its fellowship!

The purity people seem to have a prophetic ministry of correction, just like the Puritans are stereotyped as having. Maybe their shoes were too tight. That made them grouchy. Their approach to everything can feel like, "Shoot first; ask questions later."

As we consider the unity people and the purity people together, the question we want to ask ourselves is, how do we take the best of both? The biblical desire for unity and cooperation as well as the biblical desire for truth and holiness?