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When Jesus said, "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," did he intend that the people called to bear his name in the world would eventually be divided into 37,000 competing denominations? That is the number of separate Christian bodies worldwide, according to missions statistician Todd Johnson of the World Christian Database. Some argue that this number is inflated due to the database's definition of denomination. But even if we were to suppose he is high by one-fourth (not likely), we're still looking at 27,000 separate Christian groups.

Sometimes church division is a tragic necessity, and the call to Christian unity does not mean that we must blend all believers into a single homogenous unit. But neither does it allow us to relax and accept the status quo as God's perfect will. Evangelicals believe in the spiritual oneness of all true Christians-what Augustine of Hippo called the invisible church-but does this mean that we should have no concern for visible church unity?

Our visible disunity causes many unbelievers to stumble. The problem is not only division, but divisiveness, within congregations as well as between (and within) denominations. To jar the Corinthians-a divided church if ever there was one-out of complacency, Paul asked three pointed questions in 1 Corinthians 1:13, questions we need to reconsider today.

Eugene Peterson translates the first part as, "Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own?" You're acting, Paul says, as though Christ were a chunk of meat, a commodity you can buy down at the butcher shop, something to be hacked and diced up and passed around like hors d'oeuvres at a party! The Greek word here is memeristai, which means "to divide into parties or sects." We could translate Paul's question this way: Is Christ a partisan? Is Christ sectarian? The very idea, of course, is ludicrous. Christ is not divisible. The church of the New Testament is the church of the undivided Christ.

This fact alone marked Christianity off from the pagan religions of the ancient Mediterranean world. Wherever one looked in Corinth, there was evidence of a pervasive polytheism. On top of the nearby mountain stood the great temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. The cult of the Roman emperor also flourished there, as did many of the mystery religions imported from Egypt and the East.

No wonder Paul can say that in the world there are many "gods" and many "lords." Yet for us, he insists, "there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (8:6). Jesus Christ cannot be divided, because there is only one God, and Jesus is the one who has come from "the bosom of the Father" to disclose the eternal reality of the one eternal God, who has forever known himself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Here is Paul's point: There is a direct correlation between ecclesiology and Christology, between the church and its heavenly Head, Jesus Christ. And when we live in rancor, bitterness, and enmity with one another, we are not only sinning against one another, we are also sinning against Christ. This is a lesson Paul learned on the first day he became a Christian. On his way to persecute believers in Damascus, he was suddenly halted by the risen Christ, who asked him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Jesus' question to Saul implies that it is not possible to hurt those who belong to him, those who have been redeemed by his blood, without also hurting him. When you do it unto the least of these, my brother, you do it unto me!

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July 2005, Vol. 49, No. 7