I would like you to take note of something: God’s intention is not just for His children to be one but for them to be one in the Holy Spirit. This is what Christian oneness means. God did not say that we could have any kind or style of oneness. He said that we have to be one in the Spirit. This is why we call this Christian oneness. This oneness is oneness in Christ. In order to keep Christian oneness, we must be kept in Christ, in the Body, and in the oneness of the Spirit. This oneness has a boundary; it is as large as the Body. Please bear in mind that the boundary of Christian oneness is the Body of Christ.
Many people wrongly assume that all God wants is for us to be one. However, if the boundary of their oneness is not the Body of Christ, then this oneness should be condemned. If we maintain any oneness that has a boundary smaller than that of the Body of Christ, we are involved in what the Bible calls a division. God wants us to maintain the oneness in the Spirit. In this oneness the boundary is as large as the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is the boundary of that oneness.
Suppose a group of believers feels that everyone should be baptized by immersion. This is a biblical truth; nothing is wrong with it. But suppose these believers establish a principle of excluding anyone who is not immersed in water, even if such a one is a child of God. If they do this, they are taking a doctrine as the base of their oneness. This is not oneness in the Spirit. Such a group has a boundary that is smaller than the Body.
Suppose a brother decides to join this kind of group. He has good fellowship with them and receives much spiritual help from them. But one day God opens his eyes to see that though these are genuine children of God, the group as a whole is not the church: It only accepts and meets with those baptized by immersion, and anyone who is not baptized by immersion is not accepted, even though he may be a child of God. When this brother realizes that they have rejected other children of God, he should leave them. He leaves because the Lord has enlightened him.
Suppose after a while, another brother comes and pleads with him, saying, “We are all Christians, and we are all children of God. We are brothers. God says in the Bible that brothers should love one another. You should not leave us. If you leave, you offend the Christian oneness. If you leave, you are being divisive, and you become a sect and a denomination.” After the brother hears this, he may go to his Bible and study it and come to the conclusion that God’s children should be one and that he should not have left the group. Do you see the error here? The error here is very obvious.
If anyone thinks that he should not be divisive, he should first bear in mind what it means to be divisive. Being divisive means being divided from the Body. The division in 1 Corinthians 12 refers to a division from the Body (v. 25), not a separation from a group which is not according to the Body. The Christian oneness which God refers to is a oneness that is as large as the Body. This is the oneness that we should keep and should not come out of. If anyone who is concerned about keeping the oneness is in a group that is smaller and narrower than the Body of Christ, he should realize that this oneness is not Christian oneness or the oneness of the Spirit, even though the group may speak of oneness. It is not Christian oneness because this kind of oneness is not as large as the Body. If he leaves any realm, group, or organization that is not as large as the Body, he is not offending Christian oneness; neither is he breaking it.
We cannot uphold any boundary or group that comes short of the Body of Christ. We must come out of that “oneness.” A child of God who keeps a oneness smaller than the Body of Christ is actually breaking Christian oneness.