And when they heard this, they lifted up their voice with one accord to God and said, “Sovereign Master, You are the One who has made heaven and earth and the sea and all things in them.”
— Acts 4:24
Now the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind toward one another according to Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
— Romans 15:5-6
In the whole New Testament there are only two places where the term “one accord” is mentioned in a positive sense. It is used once in Acts in connection with the church in Jerusalem, and once in Romans with Paul’s admonishment to the saints in Rome. In all the other epistles the matter of one accord is not stressed or is not mentioned. Rather, the matter of oneness is very much stressed.
The words “one,” “oneness,” and “one accord” are three different Greek words varying in meaning. The Greek word for “oneness” or “unity” is henotes (Strong’s #1775), a noun form of the Greek word for “one,” heis (Strong’s #1520), which can refer to something singular in number or stress the essence or nature of a matter. So when believers are one, it indicates they are one in essence and in nature. However, when the term one accord, homothumadon (Strong’s #3661), is used, the stress is on the unity, the harmony, the communion, and the union. The thought here is not merely of constitution, but also of the exercise according to such a constitution. Thus, to be in one accord is to have the living, the display, of oneness.
Adapted from Oneness and the One Accord, page 19.
Tomorrow: “Teaching by Example”