One of the greatest tragedies in 21st century Christianity is the degree to which identity politics has infiltrated our churches. Hardly a day goes by that I do not communicate with believers who lament the sorrows that have come on their churches due to the godless ideologies of critical theory or intersectionality gaining a foothold in their congregations. Where once there was mutual love and unity among brothers and sisters of various backgrounds, ethnicities, educational backgrounds, or income levels, now there is suspicion, frustration, and disunity within their ranks.
Such tribalism and rivalry cannot coexist with humble, sincere devotion to Jesus Christ as Lord. To have Christ is to embrace the ways of Christ which includes living with the people of Christ in a local church in the unity of the Spirit. Christians are able to do that because “in Christ” we are made into “one new man” (Ephesians 2:15). Seeing yourself as a hyphenated-Christian before you see yourself as a blood-bought sinner inevitably tears the fabric of this precious unity.
As the Apostle Paul puts it in Ephesians 4:4-6, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Any idea or teaching that leads to the balkanization of a church denies this fundamental truth and comes from the pit of hell. No Christian should fall prey to such error and no pastor should allow it entry into the church he serves.
I appreciate what Alistair Begg has written on this in a devotional thought on “The Key to Unity.” His wisdom and encouragement are welcome counsel to every follower of Christ who is trying to navigate the swirling currents of contemporary Christian thought.

The Key to Unity
“In him you also are begin built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” Ephesians 2:22
When someone comes to Christ by faith, the transformation of their identity is comprehensive. In the language Paul employs in Ephesians 2, the dead sinner is now alive in Christ; the child of wrath becomes a child of God. But the new identity is not merely individual. We are not each of us alone in Christ; we are in Him with all of God’s people. This is why Paul, in Ephesians 2, moves from our individual experience of grace to the corporate work that God’s grace accomplishes. Paul tells us, “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (v.19). The “one new man” (v. 15) that Christ is making is gloriously crowded with fellow heirs of grace. This is not to say that our individual human identity becomes irrelevant. Our background and our makeup—our sex, ethnicity, and personal history—are not obliterated in Christ. We are who we are, made in God’s image, fashioned according to His purposes. But what unifies us in Christ—our union with Christ—transcends everything else.
We must beware the temptation to forget the reason for our unity. No one is immune from turning elements of their identity into barriers—barriers of status, of color, of class, of personality type, or personal preferences. As Christians, we must be prepared to acknowledge how easy it is to get this wrong. We must be prepared, if we find ourselves guilty of such wrong, to repent from and grieve over that which displeases God.
The key to Christian unity is the gospel. Paul recognized that only God can soften hard hearts, only God can open blind eyes, and ony God can bring disparate people together and form something truly, gloriously united. God is making “one new man” and He is making that new man in His church. In Christ, God is building a “holy temple” (Ephesians 2:21) that is “being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” Partiality based on race, class, or status has no place in the place where God dwells by His Spirit. One day you will experience the fullness of your union with Christ and His people for eternity; but that can, and should, begin now. You have the privilege of fostering that unity today in the way you use your time and in the way you think of, pray for, and speak to your brothers and sisters in your church.

We are building day by day,
As the moments glide away,
Our temple, which the world may not see;
Every victory won by grace
Will be sure to find its place
In our building for eternity.
—Fanny J. Crosby, “We are Building”
(Truth for Life, 365 Daily Devotions, February 12)

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Life is all about relationships. A significant part of what it means for us to be created in the image of God is to be relational. God Himself is a relational being. Not only does He relate personally to us as His image-bearers, He also has enjoyed perfect relational harmony as Father, Son, and Spirit from all eternity.
Our greatest joys and sorrows come because of relationships. In order for us to live as we ought, we must have our relationships properly ordered. This means that we must relate to the right things in the right way. God has not left us to figure out on our own how to do this. He has spoken very simply and clearly about the essence and priority of all human relationships. Jesus explained it when answering a question from a lawyer.
“Which is the great commandment in the Law?” (Matt. 22:36). The question seems innocent enough until we consider its background and context. The Jewish leaders had plotted against Jesus and were trying to “entangle him in his talk” (v. 15). After turning the tables on them when they asked Him about taxes, exposing their ignorance of Scripture and God’s power concerning the resurrection, He entertained this question about the law.
Rabbis had lengthy debates over this question. They had divided the Mosaic Law into 613 commands — 248 positive ones and 365 negative ones. Their arguments focused on which ones are great and heavy versus those that are small and light.
In order for us to live as we ought, we must have our relationships properly ordered.
Jesus dismissed all of those niggling debates by giving a comprehensive answer that both satisfied the inquisitor and revealed God’s overarching will for those who bear His image. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt: 22:37–40).
Jesus’ answer gives the point and purpose of the whole law. He summarizes our complete responsibility in terms of relationships, specifically, our relationships to God and to people. The essence of all our relationships, He says, is love.
The first priority of love is God Himself. We are to love God comprehensively and supremely. Heart, soul, and mind are each qualified by “all,” indicating that we are obligated to love God with every part of every faculty that we possess.
What does such love look like? Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). So obedience is closely connected to loving the Lord, but it is not enough to say that they are the same thing. Love is more than an act of the will. It includes that, but it first arises in the affections.
John makes this connection in 1 John 5:3 where he writes, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.” Loving God involves keeping His commandments — not as a burden but as a delight. More than a dozen times this attitude of delighting in God’s law is expressed in Psalm 119.
Augustine described the love that we are to have for God as “the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of one’s self and of one’s neighbor for the sake of God.” To love God is to enjoy Him above everything and everyone else and out of that joy to live in glad obedience to His will.
But Jesus does not stop there. He goes on to teach us that, after loving God supremely, our next greatest responsibility is to love people sincerely. Contrary to what some teach about this, Jesus is not commanding self-love. Nor should His words be taken to imply that we cannot love others until we learn to love ourselves.
To love God is to enjoy Him above everything and everyone else and out of that joy to live in glad obedience to His will.
Jesus assumes that we already do love ourselves. Paul explicitly makes this point by noting that “no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it” (Eph. 5:29). This kind of natural self-love is manifested by the choices that we make to serve our own interests. No matter how destructive such choices are, they are expressions of self-love.
Once we understand the inevitability of self-love, Jesus’ command that we love others as much as we love ourselves becomes incredibly broad. The health, comfort, companionship, and benefits that I desire for myself I am also to desire for my neighbors.
This means that while I must never love people — even my closest relations — more than God, I must love them as much as I love myself.
All of this, of course, shows how completely dependent we are on the grace of Jesus Christ. We cannot love God supremely or people sincerely apart from His love first reaching us through the power of the Gospel. Only as we are so loved will we be set free to love in return.

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Have you heard the latest church scandal? Sadly, the question is too broad and too evergreen to signal what situation is in mind. Ask that question any time in the last decade and it will be relevant.

No church that is comprised of sinners is perfect, which is to say that there is no perfect church. Yet, Jesus has given us clear instructions to deal with sin in a church. If biblical church polity and authority were better appreciated and exercised, many of the scandalous sins and crimes that have plagued churches over the last ten years would have been far better handled than they were.

When church membership is taken seriously and both formative and corrective discipline are implemented carefully there can still be sinful things (even egregiously sinful and sometimes criminal) things done in a congregation. But when such sins and/or crimes occur, both the victims and perpetrators will be better loved and cared for than would otherwise be the case.

Faithful church leaders will lead a church to recognize the supreme authority of Jesus Christ.

Such a church, though not impervious to wolves coming among them (see Acts 20:29-30) will be a less attractive target for evil people. The elders of such churches recognize that no small part of their shepherding work includes defending the flock from wicked people. These men must be qualified & determined to “rebuke those who contradict” the faith and practice that Christ has given to His church (Titus 1:9). Elders must also be willing and able to “silence” anyone in the church who becomes insubordinate or deceitful (Titus 1:10-11). Commenting on these verses, John Calvin wisely said, “A pastor needs two voices, one for gathering the sheep and the other for driving away wolves and thieves.”

Faithful church leaders will lead a church to recognize the supreme authority of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18) and to appreciate His delegation of specific authority to people and institutions in His world. This includes the authority that magistrates (the state, executives, legislators, judges, police, etc.) have in the civil realm. They specifically have been made responsible by Christ to punish evil, or as the Apostle Paul puts it, to be “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). In other words, Christ has ordained the state to deal with crimes.

He has similarly ordained the church to deal with sins. Matthew 18:15-120 is quite clear about what is to be done if a church member becomes recalcitrant in offensive sin and “refuses to listen even to the church” and repent. Such a person is to be regarded “as a Gentile and a tax collector,” or as an outsider. In other words, he is to be excommunicated. Where the sin is both scandalous and public, the steps Jesus outlines are to be compressed into immediate excommunication, as Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 5.

Were churches to understand and follow these clear teachings of Scripture then sin would not be tolerated but would be lovingly corrected in the power of the risen Christ (1 Corinthians 5:4) with a view to helping the wayward brother repent and make things right. When such correction is rejected, then the church will exercise the authority Christ has delegated to it and the perpetrator would no longer be allowed to be a member.

In the same way when a crime is committed in the church (as has sadly and too often happened) the police should be called. Those government officials should exercise the authority Christ has vested in them and pursue justice, including vindication for any victims and punishment for any criminals. The church should cooperate with this process to see this outcome.

If you want to see the weak and the vulnerable loved and protected in churches, then pray and work for a renewal of biblical church authority and polity.

Think of the various scandals that have plagued churches over the last decade. We have heard horrific stories of children being preyed on by sexual perverts, women being abused by leaders, and money being wickedly misappropriated. How many of these situations do you know that were handled according to the instructions of God’s Word that I outlined above? Very few, if any at all. Had those churches been well-ordered and followed the instructions of Scripture, the stories would be much different.

That does not mean that there would have been no perpetrators nor victims. Again, no church is without sin. But it does mean that both the sinners and those who were sinned against would have been afforded the provisions that God has made in His church and world. I know of many such situations where this has been the case. Churches exercised the keys of the kingdom through excommunication and civil municipalities did not “bear the sword in vain” but prosecuted criminals. These cases tend not to make the headlines the way that the mishandled ones do. The sins are no less wicked and the crimes are no less heinous, but the grace and justice that Jesus has provided through His life, death, and resurrection were more readily and effectively applied as His Word was obeyed.

God’s ways are not only right, they are good. If you want to see the weak and the vulnerable loved and protected in churches, then pray and work for a renewal of biblical church authority and polity.