There was striving in the church in Corinth. Some were saying, “I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ” (1 Cor. 1:12). Paul was absolutely against this contention. He said, “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul?” (v. 13). He told the Corinthians that they were factious and that this was a work of the flesh (3:3-4). By speaking in this way, the Corinthians were being divisive.
Suppose one of these Corinthians was called Mark, another Stephen, and a third Philemon. Suppose all of them were for Paul. Suppose one day one of these brothers, whether Stephen or Philemon, stood up and said, “We have been meeting together and having good fellowship. We feel that God’s servant Paul is particularly used by God and that we should pay more attention to his teachings. We have had good fellowship and have received much help from his speaking and his Epistles. All of us are in the Lord and our fellowship is intimate. But recently I have felt that this is wrong. Today in Corinth there are hundreds of believers, but there are not that many of us. We should go to them and fellowship with them in a proper way.”
Suppose the other brothers stood up and said, “You have sinned! When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He prayed and asked the Father to make us one. The Lord Jesus wants us to be one, but you are trying to leave us for another way. You are not being one with us. You are not glorifying the Lord! If you do not want to be one with us, the world will not believe in the Lord through our oneness. You have sinned, and you must depart from our midst because you are being divisive.”
Brothers, do you see this? This is what many people say to our brothers. They themselves are being divisive when they say, “I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.” They have already created many divisions. But as soon as someone wants to leave, they say, “You should keep the Christian oneness.” But their oneness is not as large as the Body of Christ. Their oneness is only as large as Paul. It is divisive to keep a oneness that is smaller than the Body of Christ. Even to say that I am of Paul is to be divisive. Please bear in mind that they have already been separated from the Body. They do not see their own divisiveness, but if someone goes out from among them, they say that he is being divisive.
Brothers and sisters, this is the problem of many Christian groups today. Many so-called people of God, many so-called Christian groups, have already separated themselves from the Body. (I hope I will not offend these ones by saying this. Our spirit must be right. Before God we must know that this is something sad, not joyful. But we must be clear of our position before God.) When some brothers or sisters want to return to the Body of Christ, these groups say that those who want to come out of them are being divisive. They do not realize that all those who are in the divisive groups and who refuse to depart from them are being divisive themselves.
We ask God to open their eyes to see that the Body of Christ is one and that the sects are divided. In 1934 there were one thousand five hundred major denominations in the world. There are so many groups who call themselves the church. They have reduced the boundary of the Body of Christ. One is a leg, and the other is a hand. They have divided the Body of Christ. Today some brothers and sisters desire to return to the boundary of the Body and have fellowship in the Body. Others rise up immediately and say that they are destroying the oneness. If someone tells you that you have broken the oneness, you should answer by saying that you have broken the oneness of the divisions but you have not broken the oneness of the Body. It is right to say that we have broken the oneness of the divisions. You cannot join the larger oneness unless you first destroy the smaller oneness.