Unity in the Spirit

Unity is a dominical value, as our Lord’s prayer in the garden shows (John 17). And unity in the Spirit is an apostolic value, as both Paul’s writings and his practice show. Recall that Paul instructs the Ephesian believers to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). To live this way is to walk in a manner worthy of their calling to be Christians (Eph. 4:1). Paul practiced what he preached. His espoused theology and his operational theology were one. And so he entreats Euodia and Syntyche—both of whom were gospel workers with him—“to agree in the Lord” (Phil. 4:2–3). These women need to heed his earlier general admonition to the Philippians that if they have “any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,” then the way to complete Paul’s joy was to be unified in mind and in love (Phil. 2:1–2). Humility needs to replace rivalry and conceit (v. 3). To give a different Pauline example, what the Jerusalem church thought of the Gentile mission mattered to him. He rejoiced that “the right hand of fellowship” with its leadership had been extended to him (Gal. 2:1–10)—even though it is clear from the argument of his Galatians letter that, if he had thought that the Galatian leaders’ approval would have risked the integrity of his message of grace, he would not have mentioned it (Gal. 1:6–10; 2:11–14).
 
However, the NT nowhere mandates that a dull uniformity of Ecclesiastical polity is to be pursued. There is every indication that the Pauline communities developed differently from that in Jerusalem. “The right hand of fellowship” does not mean organizational homogeneity, nor that one apostolic leader such as Peter rose above all others (contra the claims of the church of Rome). 

In fact even the Pauline communities themselves may have differed in organization. The first letter to Timothy, for example, speaks of elders and deacons (1 Tim. 3:1–13), but the letter to Titus refers only to elders (Titus 1:5–9). His Corinthian correspondence refers neither to elders nor to deacons. In contrast the Jerusalem church seems to have ultimately come under the presidency of James the brother of Jesus (Acts 15:1–21). Indeed there is some extrabiblical evidence that the leadership of that church may have been kept within Jesus’ own family.

- Graham A. Cole, He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 2007