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\(^{18b}\)I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, \(^{19}\)for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

I think this might be the closest the New Testament comes to condoning division in the church. But it isn’t actually talking about division as a good thing. It is in the middle of a passage where Paul is trying to encourage the believers to be kind and considerate of one another at the Lord’s Supper. He presupposes that the church will continue meeting together and he wants the gatherings to be peaceful and harmonious.

Where he says that there must be factions so that those who are genuine may be recognised, he’s implying that if all were genuine, there would be no division. We are all sinful, disagreements are inevitable but Paul is grieved to hear about division in the church.

I think Paul would be dismayed at the division in the church today. If Paul wrote to the church in Shrewsbury, we’re so unused to the idea we would be puzzling over which one he meant, or asking if he meant “to the churches in Shrewsbury”, and surely not all of them, or perhaps the Bible preaching churches [1]in Shrewsbury and we’d be disputing who was in and out of the list.

I can see clearly why Luther broke away from the Catholic Church but even though that may well have been necessary, it is also tragic that it happened. But even though the Catholic-Protestant split may have been necessary, once Protestants got a taste of division, they just kept on going and we now have innumerable splits. I can’t see this as anything but a failure of the church to live up to Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. Satan will ultimately be defeated and Christ will win. The church will be presented to Christ without blemish, undivided in the end. But along the way Satan has won small victories wherever division and fights have broken out in God’s church.

I don’t believe our divisions are something to wear as a badge of honour, pointing out our particular collection of distinctions from other Christians with pride. There are many Christians who seem to see attempts at finding unity as dangerous, you’ll get corrupted, you’ll embrace an unfettered liberalism, you’ll compromise on everything important. A good look at the New Testament will show you that Jesus and the apostles did not see striving for unity as a sign of compromise, but as something centrally important, a demonstration of the love we are meant to have for one another. And it didn’t need to come at the expense of holding fast to the truth.

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[1]

For clarity, it is vitally important to preach from the Bible. I include the phrase because it is one I hear misused. I can think of many examples of wonderful preaching from the Bible at churches that would be slandered as not being “a Bible preaching church” as well as terrible unbiblical preaching at churches who label themselves as “Bible preaching”. The label itself is problematic. You cannot attain somehow to the status of being a “Bible preaching church”, every preacher must wrestle when preparing every sermon to be faithful to the message. It is always a temptation to soften the message for the listeners, or for the preacher to use faulty interpretation to justify themselves.