Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
— Ephesians 1:3-5
It has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household, that there are contentions among you.
— First Corinthians 1:11
There is something that is a challenge to every local church: how to practically keep the mystical oneness of the Body of Christ. On the one hand, Paul presents the high revelation of oneness in his wonderful epistle to the Ephesians, and yet on the other, he emphasizes its outworking in such a place as the church in Corinth. This is surely something of God’s arrangement, for every local church is, in experience, the church in Corinth. Regardless of what locality we live in, we can testify that the Corinthians’ “abnormal” situation is actually the norm. Therefore we shouldn’t be too bothered when we consider our problems, because it is normal to have problems in the church life.
Adapted from Oneness and the One Accord, page 45.
Tomorrow: “Problems in the Church Life are Normal (2)”