What Unbelievers See

By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.
–John 13:35

A unified church is a powerful witness to unbelievers. We see this in Acts 6. The early church refused to be divided over a complaint; instead, they solved the problem together and kept on carrying out their mission. As a result, “the word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith” (v. 7). When the church was united and everybody was doing what they were supposed to be doing, new believers were flooding into the church, including many Jewish priests. A unified church attracts people to Jesus Christ.

But the opposite is also true: A dysfunctional church repels people from Jesus Christ. In the Bible, the church is often described as the body of Christ. While people can’t see Jesus right now, they can see His body–that is, believers on earth. What an unbeliever thinks about Jesus Christ is largely determined by what they see in the church.

Unfortunately, when many people look at the church, they see something ugly. One preacher suggested that disunity in the church “has been the scandal of the ages. It has been Satan’s master strategy. The sin of disunity probably has caused more souls to be lost than all other sins combined.” Fights, schisms, and lawsuits don’t attract people to the gospel; they repel people from the gospel. God honors a church that chooses to lay aside its differences and come together to work for God’s purpose.

Does that mean everybody in the church has to agree on everything? Of course not. Unity is not uniformity. But the church must be solid in its commitment to one another and to God’s purpose. Ephesians 4:3 says, “[Be] diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” If we do this, God will bless the church, and unbelievers will be attracted to the gospel.

That’s what happened in the early church. They were united in generosity and love. In John 13:35, Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Love is what made the early church an unstoppable force for God.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “How to Avoid a Church Fight,” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2021.

Paul E. Billheimer, Love Covers: A Viable Platform for Christian Unity (Christian Literature Crusade, 1981), 7.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.