Right Doctrine and the Wrong Spirit
After moving to Florida in 2022, our family visited dozens of churches. While looking for a church home, we were seeking agreement on a divisive theological issue—the nature of God’s initiative in salvation. Was it a monergistic work of God bringing elect individuals from spiritual death to eternal life, or was it dependent on a free personal choice in synergistic collaboration with the Spirit of God?
As we returned from Sunday services, we were often sad and silent because of deep disagreement over the value of that morning’s sermon. Though we shared faith in Christ, we couldn’t agree on a church home. The tension meant often eating Sunday lunch in silence rather than enjoying joyful conversations. But unity can exist without agreement. We never considered parting ways because of our difficulties. Our family stayed intact—love closed the gap. This experience has shaped how I understand the denominational and theological divisions within the church.
Our Sunday visits revealed a church divided into theological camps and different ways of “doing church.” Some congregations were more passive, others more active. Some emphasized salvation apart from works, others faith that works. Some offered deep, rich teaching while others left me hungry for more substance. Some services exuded excitement about the Christian life while others seemed listless.
Still, the distance between Christians was not, I believed, very great, and such separation seemed unnecessary. Doctrinal understanding mattered a great deal, but in the final analysis, I wondered if a communal imperfect-but-lived-out faith might matter more than disagreements over anything less central than the person of Jesus Christ.
Recently I wrote about my disenchantment with the churches I visited. I extended these criticisms to all post-reformation Protestant churches. Although there is truth in my critique, I founded it on a misreading of John 17. I thought Jesus was praying about visible church unity and organizational structures, so I judged the modern church too harshly.
That said, our preferences can quickly rise to the level of doctrine. I’ve been in churches where I felt the unspoken message that God might prefer their drum-free worship to my previous church’s praise band. I was disheartened by the multitude of churches with slightly varying creeds that gathered every Sunday morning. But denominational differences can be held without contradicting the harmony of believers for which Jesus prayed.
We all need to differentiate what is truly essential in our theological convictions from what is inconsequential. But we must be cautious about discord, because any spirit that divides over secondary doctrinal matters does little to advance the cause of Christ. Division repels rather than attracts, working against the mission of the church to draw all people into relationship with Christ.
When I conclude that my interpretation of Scripture is right and everyone else is wrong, I’m on slippery footing. If correct, my understanding is laudable, but what guards me from walking in pride? When insight elevates individuals over their community, leading them to break fellowship with anyone who disagrees, such private revelations are rarely true insights. I must recognize and resist the tendency to become puffed up by new understanding. I love to be correct, and when I feel I have grasped something thoroughly, I can occasionally become belligerent in argumentation. But such arguments can destroy the bonds of fellowship.
A few months ago, I was part of a conversation that forced me to defend my personal conviction about salvation being a work of God alone (monergism). I held my own—in fact, I thought my case was stronger than the countering arguments. But I became agitated as the night went on. I had wanted fellowship, not verbal sparring, and the whole affair was producing animosity. I wanted it to end. I wanted my wife to speak up for me, but she was watching and learning.
About two hours into the conversation, I’d had enough. In clipped speech, I told my friend he needed to read more about the ideas he criticized before debating them. My dismissive attitude was hurtful, and I did not walk in the grace that should characterize my life—especially if I believed in monergism.
That debate provoked soul searching, not so much about the theology I embraced, but the attitude with which I held it. Sometimes dissension over doctrine is unavoidable, but not in this case. My self-reflection led me to a softened theological stance that is open to a more synergistic view of salvation. I began to see that my particular way of holding Reformed theology had reduced the complexity of the biblical record and left too little room for mystery. This theology did not adequately account for warnings against apostasy and may have diminished free will beyond what was required.
What remains is a love of Reformed theology, which delights me because of its internal consistency given its foundational assumptions. I am willing to see mystery and questions where I once had answers.
My fractious spirit in that conversation harmed my witness. Jesus said love and harmony would characterize the church, but I needed to win the argument. I’ve felt the effects of such a spirit many times, and I’d rather not perpetuate it.
When I was a child, every second summer our family visited the Mennonite church where my Dad grew up. It was a very religious place, so before Sunday church services I was always anxious. The other kids were work-hardened dairy farmers, and I felt out of place because of my puny arm muscles, but deeper differences added to my uneasiness. My clothes were not as plain as theirs, my Dad did not wear a straw hat to church, and our car wasn’t black like all the others in the parking lot.
I loved my Whisler Mennonite relatives, and on the whole they were accepting of me. But an invisible wall created some distance between us. We didn’t meet their criteria for full community membership. This exclusionary attitude had not always been part of the church culture. I saw pictures of men in my father’s generation wearing ties and clothes that would not have seemed out of place among their friends. By the time I was a child, however, looking different had become their measure of genuine faith, and a once-thriving community insisted on outward compliance as evidence of inward transformation. Over my repeated summer visits during my first two decades of life, the congregation dwindled. People left the church for greater freedom to choose the size of women’s head coverings or dress styles—things clearly outside the domain of essential doctrine.
I still want to fit in, to belong to a church that is not a mere collection of individuals, but a community first—a body where individuals find their place. Yet I was right to criticize the individualism that elevates reason above community, tradition, and God himself, who calls Christians to mutual submission. A fragile foundation of ego and individual brilliance cannot draw people to Christ. It elevates self and diminishes others.
Discord can be even worse than our initial intuitions might reveal. It often bears surprising fruit as it slowly amplifies any divergence in one person’s thinking from the community. Cults emerge by this mechanism: elevating a leader, fostering exclusivism, creating or distorting accepted doctrine, and adopting combative rhetoric. But disunity also manifests in mundane competition between churches and preachers to prove their moral, spiritual, and organizational superiority—a temptation I recognize in myself.
Divisiveness defines a spirituality that is not essentially Christian—Jesus said true Christianity would be defined by love. Humility rather than overblown confidence and pride will mark the true Christian leader.
Our individual quests for truth are not likely to unify our secular culture, since the pursuit of learning seems to produce contradictory ideas and generate divisive ideologies rather than find common ground. But my Christianity is not always the powerful counter-example it should be either. When I read or watch the news, I see a society fractured along ideological lines and without a common understanding of religion.
Believing faith has the power to create a shared worldview. Knowing “the only true God, and Jesus Christ” joins us with Christ, makes us new creatures, and establishes us as members of his body—the church. To be in relationship with Christ is to be in the church, and to be positioned within the faith community of the church is to be in Christ. This is a metaphysical reality that defines the new life in every believer and characterizes the church as a whole. Christians can be in Christ while holding theological convictions that make them doubt the authenticity of other Christians. None of this can defeat the truth that genuine Christians are one in Christ.
The prayer in John 17 does not concern visible unity—the kind I wish the church displayed—but grounds our unity in a deeper reality: Jesus Christ himself. Unity based on that deeper ontological reality of metaphysical union with Christ is guaranteed to all Christians. We are new creatures, and our new life is a reality of the deepest kind. New life defines our essence, and we spend our entire lives embodying it—learning to think and walk like Jesus every day. This is the unity for which Jesus prayed. It was ontological, not organizational; a body, not a building.
Since this body is a mystical one that unites every believing person, I was wrong to despair about organizational divisions. The guiding principle of the covenant family of God must be an outworking of this reality that produces relational unity—love that values truth. We must preserve bonds rather than fracture them and open ourselves to fellowship across denominational lines that seeks points of agreement rather than disagreement. Such love should allow us to exhibit robust grace toward members who believe they have uncovered new truth while gently correcting error. And those who bring new prophetic analyses or insights should value community enough to preserve it rather than encourage division over debatable matters.
So John 17 cannot anchor the idea that the visible church must be organizationally one. Yet it does challenge us to display a love that preserves fellowship across boundaries without surrendering the truth we sincerely hold. We do well to retain what we have tested over time, and we should proclaim faithfulness to Jesus Christ above all. Walking in love may not prevent an occasional fracture over foundational truths, but it will prevent me from leading sectarian arguments rooted in individual ego.
Jesus said he did not come to bring peace, but a sword. The Christian’s enemies, according to him, would even be within their own household. These harsh-sounding words appear to contradict the spirit of his John 17 prayer for unity, but they do not. Parting ways over the person of Jesus Christ is inevitable, even encouraged. He is the tipping point, the dividing line, according to which all humanity will be judged. We are either in Christ or in the world. Our identity will be rooted in one source or another.
But if we are in Christ, we put aside self-promotion and fractiousness, letting love and truth guide our discussions to produce the visible reality of healthy fellowship that demonstrates our ontological oneness in Christ to those on the outside looking in. Will they see fractures, fighting, and foolishness, or will they see the love of God working itself out through a community determined to love God and love each other?
