God the Father is the composer, and the Holy Spirit is the conductor, giving each of us the music to play as we keep our eyes on Jesus. Maybe I have a tiny little piccolo flute, which has a small but distinct sound. But what if I get jealous of the drummer because he has such a loud, emphatic sound to his drums? If I begin to focus on him, I will mess up the part I’m supposed to play. When the conductor gives me the cue to play my piccolo, I will miss my notes because I’m focusing on someone else’s instrument. I cause disharmony in the orchestra and the music isn’t what it is intended to be because my part is missing. Every contribution is important. God designed you to play a special part. Just use whatever gifts He gives you for His glory. You can’t create orchestra music alone. We need each other. And when we play in a beautiful spirit of unity, people will surely see and glorify Jesus.
Body of Christ
John M. Perkins
For too long, many in the Church have argued that unity in the body of Christ across ethnic and class lines is a separate issue from the gospel. There has been the suggestion that we can be reconciled to God without being reconciled to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Scripture doesn’t bear that out. We only need to examine what happened when the Church was birthed to see exactly how God intends for this issue of reconciliation within the body of Christ to fall out.
Brennan Manning
If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God’s kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.
John M Perkins
Jesus intentionally brought together disciples who were very different – fishermen, tax collectors – not people who would naturally love one another. But he did this to show us what love looks like in practice. We have the privilege of putting this same kind of love on display as we love those in the body of Christ who don’t look like us.
William T Ham
There are many things which a person can do alone, but being a Christian is not one of them. As the Christian life is, above all things, a state of union with Christ, and of union of his followers with one another, love of the brethren is inseparable from love of God. Resentment toward any human being cannot exist in the same heart with love to God. The personal relationship to Christ can only be realized when one has “come to himself” as a member of His Body, the Christian fellowship.
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Thom S Rainer
We are God’s building, God’s spiritual house. He first built us (created us). He then bought us back (redeemed us) with His own blood. Next, He moved in. He took up residence in our lives. And He is not done. He continually works on us. He is constantly redecorating. Continual transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Michael Koulianos
We’ll never build unity around unity, but we can build it around Jesus.
Martin Luther
It is the part of a Christian to take care of his own body for the very purpose that by its soundness and well being he may be enabled to labour… for the aid of those who are in want, that thus the stronger member may serve the weaker member, and we may be children of God, and busy for one another, bearing one another’s burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ.
Rachel Held Evans
Church is a moment in time when the kingdom of God draws near, when a meal, a story, a song, an apology, and even a failure is made holy by the presence of Jesus among us and within us. Church was alive and well long before we came up with the words relevant and missional, and church will go on long after the grass grows through our cathedral floors. The Holy Trinity doesn’t need our permission to carry on in their endlessly resourceful work of making all things new. That we are invited to catch even a glimpse of the splendor is grace. All of it, every breath and every second, is grace.
Thomas Aquinas
We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.