The spreading oneness

This is where for Paul the oneness of God in Christ is really makes a difference to how we live. It isn’t mere knowledge that gives you a superiority complex and allows you to scoff at the silly concerns people have for the sacredness of food: it is a matter of being known by God and seeking the good of the other. The oneness of this God is not the crushing oneness of the tyrant, enforcing conformity at every turn – it is oneness that is expressed in forbearance of the weakness of the other person, and in allowing difference to flourish.


So: in our knowledge of the great supremacy and exclusivity of this singular God, are we forgetting the means by which his victory was won? Are we perhaps riding roughshod over those whose knowledge of God is not so advanced? You will certainly be impatient with your congregations and their clinging to silly and unnecessary beliefs about the significance of things. Can you bear with them? Can you endure without sneering the imperfect and incomplete knowledge of others?


And can we build a church that reflects the unity and distinction of God himself – just as Paul will argue in Ephesians 4:4-6? Can we live out our calling to a united interdependence – or must we make people after our own likeness? It takes a great security and ego balance as leaders of churches not to enjoy it when people start to mimic us, and to even encourage us. In the name of the oneness of God the Father, Son and Spirit and as an expression of the unity of the Spirit, can we release them from that burden? Can we celebrate the weaker parts of the body?


The oneness of this God is not just a matter of his splendid isolation. It is a missional oneness – a declaration of his intention to draw people everywhere to himself. It is an end to all tribalisms, even the ones churches have built for themselves. The one God is not the preserve of a single nation but a message for the whole world. It is not a message that advances by conquest but one that proceeds by dint of costly service. His kingdom takes the form of the cross – that is his power on the earth. The God of this gospel then does not belong to us but is our privilege to share. Proclaiming his oneness is not just a declaration of his victory over all other pretenders to divine status – his exposure of the idols and other alternate objects of our worship as fraudulent on a Madoff scale – it is an invitation into his very life.


And that is a great relief in the face of the apparent chaos and insecurity of contemporary life. The existence and the life of the supreme and unique God, the God of Jesus Christ, is not just an idea or a principle – it is a personal reality in the actual life of the planet. And it is truly an end of anxiety and the introduction of hope. It is not just a message proclaiming a superior knowledge about God, thought it is that of course; it is a declaration of the possibility of being known by this God, and united with him by the power of the Spirit and the work of the Son.