Unity in Marriage (And Unity In The Church)

September 9, 2023 Changing Us

Unity. It’s what we’re told marriage is about. Two becoming one. But what does that mean?

Unity as agreement

Many people see unity as being in a state of constant agreement - of always being on the same page - so that a husband and wife do not differ in what they believe and so that there is no conflict.

If agreement is the evidence of unity, then forget it, especially in contentious marriages where one spouse wants the other to yield to their perspective on everything and will argue their stance until you are worn out and give up. [Learn all the 40+ tactics that contentious spouses use to get their way.] If unity is about agreement, then it would never be possible.

Yet some would say, in their striving for unity, that if you love someone and can acquiesce to their perspective (even if you disagree with them), then you can still be unified. It’s the idea of a “unified front” (i.e. you look unified because you are presenting as unified even though you haven’t come to agree). But is this really unity? Or is it just pretending? Because behind closed doors, it doesn’t feel like unity as the person who wants you to agree with their perspective will not let up in their pursuit of unity as defined by them: that you become totally subservient to their perspective. And if you become subservient to their perspective in an effort to love them well and let them have their way so that there is “unity” and peace, is that really unity, or is it slavery to someone else’s will?

If your idea of love is that you only do things that feel good to someone else (e.g. agreeing with your spouse), then love cannot bring unity because 1. Your spouse will never get all that they need from you to feel good and you will always feel that you are not doing enough, which is not a sense of unity. And 2. That kind of love only brings more tension, because when you keep backing down in an effort to let someone else lead or in an effort to honor someone, then you begin to lose yourself. And when you lose yourself, you get depressed, anxious, and resentful that you are not being treated as a human being with value - and there’s no unity in that.

Scripture makes a clear point about what it is that brings unity: the gospel. Ephesians 3:6 says that “through the gospel we are members together of one body and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” And if you are constantly striving to make your spouse feel good about themselves and right in their perspective, then you are preventing the very thing that brings unity.

Here’s what I mean: In order to receive the gospel, people need to be aware of their sin. And if you are always trying to help them avoid feeling wrong and unsupported, then you are making it easy for them to overlook their sin and miss their need for the gospel. At that point, rather than doing good (which is what it feels like you’re doing when you are helping them feel good and be better), you are harming them by preventing them from seeing their need for Jesus.

You may think you are doing things that are empowering to your spouse, but really those things are just enabling them to continue to do wrong.

Needless to say, unity is not agreement.

Unity as intimacy

Others would say that the concept of unity is about the intimate bond between a husband and wife that they have with no one else. This intimacy involves a devotion to the other person's needs more so than to your own - taking on the other person's needs as though they were yours. It means yielding yourself without reservation to the other person. For some this is particularly about the intimacy of the sexual relationship between a husband and wife. And in maintaining that intimate bond, two people merge into one.

On the surface this sounds like a romantic idea, being completely engulfed in someone else. But realistically, like romance, it can’t be sustained. It becomes apparent that the dying-to-self for the sake of someone else who is but flawed and selfish is hurting you. Eventually there will be nothing left of you to give because you will have emptied yourself and become nothing - nothing but a Stepford Wife, perhaps. [Here’s what a healthy marriage should look like]

It is only to a perfect God that we can safely die to ourselves, knowing that we won’t be hurt or led the wrong way. It is also only with God that, rather than being drained by our dying to self, we become filled up with the Spirit of God.

So it would be safe to say that intimacy with a perfect God is unity, but intimacy with another human being is a temporary or false sense of unity.

Unity as togetherness

Some people see unity as always being together and partnering together in every aspect of life from parenting together to taking vacations to having the same friends - even to the time that they go to bed. It’s being completely involved in each others’ lives to the extent that you don’t even each live your own life but, rather, your two lives are like one life.

This is actually the closest thing to the meaning of the word “one flesh” in Hebrew. It’s not just that Scripture says that the two will become “one” but, in every reference to the two becoming one, it says the two will become “one flesh.” In the original Hebrew, this is a reference to a husband and wife becoming blood relatives, but more than that, becoming the same relative, one person - they are equivalent to each other and can even fill in for each other in social contexts and legal roles (e.g. signing contracts, making decisions on behalf of minor children, etc.).

But “togetherness” can be taken too far, especially by a spouse who wants to control what the other does, making the other spouse completely answerable to them and not allowing their spouse to be their own person in the name of “unity.”

So, although unity in marriage is this idea that the two of you are one person (especially from a legal perspective), it does not represent the spirit of unity, because being with someone all the time on the outside does not mean that you are aligned with them at all times on the inside.

Unity in the church

We see these same misconceptions about unity in the Church: the Church strives for unity by trying to convince each other about what is the “right” way to do things and trying to get others to agree. And if they don’t agree, then we create a denomination (or a non-denomination). We create more division in an attempt to be unified.

So clearly there is a lot of confusion on what, exactly, unity is and how it actually comes about. But let’s look at the One who was able to demonstrate perfect unity: Jesus and his relationship with the Father and the Spirit. In John 5:19, Jesus says that “he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” And in John 16:3 Jesus speaks in the same way about the Spirit: “He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears.”

In another passage, Jesus says that he is in the Father and the Father is in him (John 17:21). And, regarding us, in John 17: 22, 23 Jesus says to the Father about those who are in him: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

In John 15:5 he tells us how to achieve this unity: “remain in me . . . apart from me you can do nothing” for “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” (John 14:20).

This isn’t about agreement or intimacy or togetherness - it’s about having one nature, one Spirit - being of one mind, having one hope, one faith (Ephesians 4:4,5). This unity isn’t about what we do or how we act but about who we are. And it isn’t achieved by our will but by our surrender - a surrender that we can only safely have in our relationship with a perfect God. Surrendering completely to another flawed human being will never be the answer.

And this is the key to unity in marriage - not that you are surrendered to your spouse who is flawed and inherently selfish by nature, but that you are surrendered to God who is perfect and who reveals his perfect will to those who abide in him. The consummation of marriage brings about a unity that makes two people equivalent to each other in flesh (1 Corinthians 6:16), making them one person even if they don’t feel like they are one. But the unity of each of the two people with God brings about a oneness in nature, having a love that is reflective of the character of God.

It is this unity, this one in “being” or in “nature” with God, that allows us to love and be one, though we are many. Just as Scripture speaks about in 1 Corinthians 10:17 that, though we are many, we are one body. And we are one because “we were all baptized in one Spirit so as to form one body, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1Corinthians 12:13). Therefore, we are of one mind - the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).

Because of this we can "agree with one another in what we say so that there may be no divisions among us, being perfectly united in mind and thought.” When Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 1, he isn’t saying that we have to agree on everything. In fact, he’s making the opposite point: That there is only one thing that we have to agree on in order for there to be no division among us - the gospel of Christ. We know this because he chastises people for creating denominations: “One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’”

He says that it’s not about who you follow or into what denomination you were baptized, “for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel” (1 Corinthians 1:17).

It’s not about proving who’s right: (“Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom”) but about Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1Corinthians 1:22-24)

We’ve taken what is meant to be a simple salvation and turned it into a competition about who is right on all of the extraneous things (e.g. baptism, what is sin and what is not, speaking in tongues, whether healing is for today, whether it’s possible for a person to lose their salvation, what kind of music should be played in church, what the preaching should consist of, etc.) - all things that don’t make a bit of a difference in light of the work of salvation done for us by Jesus.

Don’t get me wrong, those are important topics for our lives, but the Church needs to approach people with grace (and not a legalistic hammer) regarding these topics so that we can let the Holy Spirit bring each of us to maturity on them rather than trying to be the voice of the Holy Spirit ourselves. The Holy Spirit can adequately bring people to a mature view on these topics because the “gospel comes not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit, and deep conviction” (1Thessalonians 1:5). So let’s let the gospel do its work. We should be careful not to act as the “convictors,” as Galatians 3:3 says, “Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?”

Scripture calls us to humble ourselves and return to what is really important: “Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord’.”(1 Corinthians 1:10-31).

It is not wisdom or influence or rightness or legalism or strength or knowledge that brings unity. It is only salvation and the humble recognition that we are only righteous, holy, and redeemed because of God. The rules or traditions or understandings that we adhere to after salvation are simply our way of trying to make sense of our lives and create some structure in our lives in light of our salvation.

The Right Way To Do Things

In Matthew 11, Jesus talks about the idea that people who are looking for the “right” way to do things will not be able to agree: “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’.” But those who abide in Jesus will find rest instead of arguing and contention: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Unity is found in keeping the main thing the main thing and allowing others the freedom to express themselves however they choose, remembering that others’ lives are between them and God. When we try to dictate how others should act, we move from the freedom of salvation to being burdened again by a yoke of slavery, which Galatians 5:1 warns us about. We also condemn those for whom there is “now no condemnation in Christ” (Romans 8:1). Therefore, whether in marriage or in the church, unity is about being aligned with the character of God as you “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), doing what “God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

We are all a work in progress, so we are not going to agree, we are not always going to have intimacy with each other, we are not always going to be able to stand to be together all the time. In fact, as we look at the New Testament and the things that Jesus and the apostles did, we clearly see that Jesus’s idea of unity was not about coming to an agreement with everyone about what God requires. Quite the opposite! Jesus and the apostles proposed ways of thinking and doing things that were in direct contradiction to what was accepted as God-honoring, and they horrified the religious people of the day:

Gentiles became part of the family of God (Ephesians 1:13 & 2:11)
The Sabbath became a day that was less about rules and more about the heart behind it: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (meaning that the Sabbath day is meant to be a day of refreshment, not a day of burdensome, legalistic rules - so go ahead and refresh yourselves with consecrated bread if you need it to live, seek healing if it’s available on a Sabbath, and help others for their benefit) (Mark 2:27)
The honored people of the day were told to take the lowest place instead of the place of honor (Luke 14:10)
When fasting was considered expected, Jesus said that his followers don’t have to fast while he is with him (Mark 2:19)
The people were told that they have to be willing to be stretched when they learn about new ways of doing things instead of trying to make the old work with the new (Mark 2:21,22)
Eating with sinners and tax collectors became the thing to do when, to the “righteous” people of the day, good people don’t do that (Mark 2:16)
The belief that the worse sinners have bad things happen to them was dispelled, and people were reminded that they are all sinners but that God has patience with us all (Luke 13:1-9)
When everyone worshipped at the temples, Jesus said that God doesn’t live in temples made by human hands (Acts 17:24)
Jesus took priests and teachers off their pedestals, for everyone is on equal ground in Christ: “you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven” (Matthew 23:8,9)
Jesus cut down the idea that those who give lots of money to the church are better than those who give little (Mark 12:41-44)
Jesus demolished their ways of becoming righteous by telling them that they won’t see the kingdom of God by doing all the “right” things unless they become more righteous than the most righteous people on earth (which you can’t do except by the blood of Jesus, by the way) (Matthew 5:20)
Sin was revealed as a condition of the heart, not just a behavior (lust, hatred/anger, divorce/adultery, oaths, attitude toward enemies, giving in private, prayers and fasting being for God’s attention not man’s, treasures stored up in heaven not on earth) (Matthew 5:22, 28, 32, 37, 44, 6:3, 6:6-7,18,20)
The Messiah was revealed as a sacrificial lamb come to take away the sin of the world and not the military leader they were expecting to set them free (John 1:29)
Women had the same privileges and authority as men: “Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy” (Acts 2:18)

…just to name a few ;)

Like some of the “heretical” ideas of today, these “heretical” ideas brought division in the moment but actually served the purpose of unity when it was revealed that they were consistent with the character of God. These ideas humbled people who realized they’d been focused on the wrong things (legalism). The “heretical” ideas also revealed the heart of God and the character of God and the freedom we have in Christ as opposed to the false sense of security and false sense of unity that people have when there are rules and more rules to help us follow the rules that we’ve imagined will align us with what we think God wants from us.

What unity is not

Unity is not about doing things together or all of us having to come to agreement and believing the same things about how God wants us to think and act (reference all the gazillion things that the Church disagrees on and argues about and is divided on).

Unity is also not achieved by following people who hold perceived authority. Rather, we are all part of one body, having equal importance, for “those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor, and the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body” (1 Corinthians 12:22-25). This means that we should encourage and strengthen each other (Romans 1:11, 1Thessalonians 5:11, 2Corinthians 13:11), and we should pray for each other (James 5:16), and we should each participate when we meet together (1 Corinthians 14:26) - but there is no leader who should be given greater authority than anyone else in the body. We are each responsible for the working out of our own salvation. As it says in1John 2:27: “the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not needanyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him” and in Hebrews 8:11 “No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”

Therefore…

“Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister.” (Romans 14:10-13)

What unity is

Unity happens when we give each other the freedom to live out our faith in the ways we believe we are called to - even if some think one way and others think another - because all who are in Christ are in him regardless of how they think about certain things. And if some people think differently than you do but they have a relationship with God, then God will make clear to them how he wants them to think (Philippians 3:15 “All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.”)

We don’t have to work to convince others of what God wants nor do we have to work hard to “bring unity.” We have all been given gifts to serve each other, and we all have a role that we play to build each other up “until we come to a unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God” (Ephesians 4:13). Ephesians 4 goes on to describe that “coming to unity in the faith and knowledge of God” like this:

put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires
put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness
put off falsehood and speak truthfully
in your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold
steal no longer, but work, doing something useful with your hands, that you may have something to share with those in need
do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God
get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice
be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other

Unity in marriage

What this means for marriage is that unity comes when each person in the marriage is abiding in Christ and being transformed by the renewing of their minds (Romans 12:2). It isn’t behavior, it’s character. And if one person’s character does not evidence salvation, then you need to understand that there can be no unity with that person. So do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is (Ephesians 5:17). “Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them” (Ephesians 5:3-7).

Unity in the Church

What this means for the church is that unity comes when each person who is part of the body is abiding in Christ and being transformed by the renewing of their minds. It isn’t what we do, it’s who we are. So we need to stop biting and devouring each other (Galatians 5:15). “He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up” (1Thessalonians 5:10,11). “Watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them” (Romans 16:17).

And when we understand that unity isn’t about getting our situation right (i.e. figuring out how to be on the same page), we will see that….