How Christians Can Disagree and Remain One

Today's Scripture

Read Romans 14:1-13 slowly. Paul is writing to a church split over food and holy days — issues the members were sure revealed who the serious Christians were.

Romans 14:4 — "Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand."

Ephesians 4:2-3 — "...with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

The Big Idea

Christians who love the same Lord can read the same Bible and still vote differently. The Bible's command for moments like that is not "agree on everything." It is "welcome one another." Our unity does not rest on matching opinions; it rests on what Christ has done for all of us. That is why the church can hold together people the rest of the culture says should hate each other.

Reflection

The church that almost split over dinner

The church in Rome was a miracle and a mess. Jewish believers and Gentile believers, ex-pagans and lifelong rule-keepers, all crammed into the same house churches. They fought about meat (much of it had been offered to idols before hitting the market) and about holy days. These felt like loyalty tests. Real Christians eat freely. No — real Christians abstain.

Paul's response in Romans 14:1-13 is startling: he refuses to settle the argument. He tells the "strong" not to despise the careful, and the "weak" not to judge the free. Then he asks the question that deflates every self-appointed referee: Romans 14:4 — "Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls." Your fellow Christian does not answer to you. He has a Master, and — here is the tenderness in the verse — "he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand."

In case anyone missed it, Paul repeats the point with a courtroom picture: Romans 14:10 — "Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God." Notice the two failures: judging (the conscience-bound person condemning the free) and despising (the free person sneering at the careful). Sound familiar? One side of the church calls the other compromised. The other side calls them simpletons. Paul forbids both.

Now, are political questions really like the meat question? Many are. Scripture gives us non-negotiable goals — justice, the dignity of every human life, care for the poor, honesty in leadership — but it rarely dictates the policy that best reaches them. Tim Keller, who pastored Democrats and Republicans in the same Manhattan congregation for decades, put it precisely:

"The Bible binds my conscience to care for the poor, but it does not tell me the best practical way to do it." — Tim Keller, "How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don't"

Two Christians can share the command and disagree about the mechanism — taxes or charity, regulation or markets — without either one betraying Jesus. A seventeenth-century pastor named Rupertus Meldenius, writing during a war in which Christians were killing Christians over doctrine, gave the church a rule of thumb it has never improved on:

"In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." — Rupertus Meldenius, Paraenesis votiva pro Pace Ecclesiae

Essentials — Christ crucified and risen, salvation by grace — admit no compromise. Most platform planks are not in that category. And charity (an old word for active, costly love) covers the whole map.

Is Christ divided?

This is not a new problem wearing a new jersey. The church in Corinth had sorted itself into fan clubs: 1 Corinthians 1:12-13 — "Each one of you says, 'I follow Paul,' or 'I follow Apollos,' or 'I follow Cephas,' or 'I follow Christ.' Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?" Swap the names for cable networks and candidates and the verse reads like this morning's group chat. Paul's questions still land: Is Christ divided? Was your party's founder crucified for you?

You have probably lived this at a holiday table. Somebody mentions the election between the turkey and the pie, and a family that shares one Lord, one baptism, and one casserole suddenly splits into two camps that cannot hear each other. The Bible's first aid for that moment is almost embarrassingly practical. James 1:19 — "Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger." And Proverbs 18:2 — "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion." Be honest: which half of that proverb does your social media feed reward?

John Wesley preached a whole sermon for Christians who could not reach agreement, and its central question has never stopped being useful:

"Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion?" — John Wesley, "Catholic Spirit"

Wesley was not saying opinions don't matter. He held his fiercely. He was saying that one heart does not require one opinion. C.S. Lewis built the same charity into the preface of Mere Christianity, where he pictured the faith as a hallway with many rooms — different traditions, different emphases, one house:

"When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Be kind. Pray for them. You are under orders. Those orders do not pause during election years.

Love is the final apologetic

Why does this matter so much? Because Jesus tied the world's ability to believe in him to the way his people treat each other. John 13:34-35 — "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you... By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Then, hours before the cross, he prayed for us: John 17:20-21 — "...that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you... so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

Read that prayer twice. The unity of quarreling Christians is one of the evidences Jesus chose for his own mission. Francis Schaeffer called this "the final apologetic" — an apologetic is a case made in defense of the faith — and he meant that the watching world has Jesus's own permission to judge our message by our love:

"Love — and the unity it attests to — is the mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father." — Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian

A church that splits along party lines is not just having a hard season. It is un-saying its sermon. Dietrich Bonhoeffer adds a warning aimed at every one of us who has imagined a church purified of the other kind of Christian:

"He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

The dream of an all-likeminded church — all voting one way, all nodding together — is not a higher ideal. It is a wrecking ball. Because, as Bonhoeffer goes on, the real church is not something we build out of compatible people at all:

"Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

You did not choose your siblings. God did. That strange Christian across the aisle — across both aisles, the church's and the Capitol's — is not your project or your problem. He is your brother, created by the same grace.

Welcomed first

So how do we actually do this? Not by pretending issues don't matter, and not by gritting our teeth. Paul gives the engine in one sentence: Romans 15:7 — "Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God."

As Christ has welcomed you. Think about what that welcome cost. You were not on Jesus's side when he came for you; you were on the other one. He did not wait for your opinions to improve before going to the cross. He welcomed you while you were wrong about a thousand things — some of which you have not discovered yet. A person who knows that, deep in the bones, can sit across from a wrong-headed brother without contempt. After all, grace got to me before correct opinions did.

Jesus even built a demonstration of this into his first team. Among the twelve disciples were Matthew, a tax collector who had worked for the occupying empire, and Simon the Zealot, from a movement sworn to drive that empire out. Politically, those two men should have despised each other. Jesus called them both, and they walked the same roads behind the same Lord for three years. The early church understood: the table of Christ is wider than any party tent.

Ephesians 4:1-6 is Paul's whole recipe for this. First the walk: "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love" (Ephesians 4:2-3). Then the ground it stands on: Ephesians 4:4-6 — "There is one body and one Spirit... one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all." Notice the verbs. We do not create this unity; we are told to be "eager to maintain" it. The oneness is a gift, purchased at the cross. Our job is to stop vandalizing it.

The gospel does not make Christians into a caucus. It makes them into a family — and family is the one thing you cannot resign from when you lose a vote.

Going Deeper

Think of one Christian you respect who votes differently than you do. This week, ask them a question that has nothing to do with politics: how they came to faith, or what God has been teaching them lately. Listen the way James 1:19 says — quick to hear, slow to speak. Then pray for them by name, and thank God that the same Master upholds you both. You do not have to agree with someone to be eager about the unity Christ already paid for.