During our Sunday gathering yesterday, we continued week two in our sermon series, “The Beautiful Mess,” through 1st Corinthians. Last week we saw how the church at Corinth was a beautiful mess. They were beautiful because they were saved by Jesus, covered by His grace, and called together; but messy because of their ongoing sin, division, and confusion of the Gospel. Yesterday we dove into Paul’s major concern about how the church was divided into different groups. While this may not seem to be a huge issue to us because we are familiar with hundreds of Christian denominations, Paul explained that divisions are completely at odds with who Jesus is and what He has done for them.

While we may not have divisions in our church that are exactly like the divisions in the church at Corinth, we certainly are prone to dividing over similar issues. Paul didn’t simply command them to be united, but begged them to act united because we have already been united in Jesus. One of the beautiful aspects of the Gospel is that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, everyone who has put their faith in Him are united to Him and given all of the blessings that He earned. Paul argues that if every Christian is united to Jesus, then every Christian is united to one another as well. Division in the church is contradictory to the reconciling work of Jesus. As Christians, our dream is to help the world see Jesus clearly and nothing does that better than being a people united together in His name!

If you missed Sunday’s sermon, “The Unity Jesus Brings,” listen to it here.