Truth is essential to unity …

Where there is a lack of unity you will find an absence of truth.

We like to think compromise is what is required to bring people together, but that isn’t the case. The more you compromise, the more chaos you have, and chaos and unity don’t co-exist. Larry Lewis illustrates this fact in the following story …

• A story is told of a man who visited an asylum for the criminally insane. He was taken aback to realize there were only a few guards caring for more than a hundred patients. Alarmed, he asked one of the guards where the other guards were. He was told that there were no other guards.

“Aren’t you worried that the patients will unite and try to overpower you and escape?”

“Not worried at all,” replied the guard. “Lunatics never unite.”

Some think it’s crazy to hold fast to truth, but the opposite is true.

Truth is central to unity, otherwise it’s every man or woman for themselves with regard to thinking and doing what they please. That results in scattering people, not bringing us together. Hearing the truth, seeing the truth, acknowledging the truth, and finally applying the truth brings us all to the same place.

Truth embraced unites us!

As Christians, we see and know truth as a Person:

“Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me,'” John 14:6.

It is no wonder, then, that enshrined into the Great Commission of the church is the exhortation to teach disciples all that Jesus has commanded …

“Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you …” Matthew 28:19-20a.

Christ commands us to teach all He commanded because truth unites us so that we can have fellowship not only with Him, but with each other as well.

“And we know that the Son of God has come, and he has given us understanding so that we can know the true God. And now we live in fellowship with the true God because we live in fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the only true God, and he is eternal life,” 1 John 5:20.

Are you building unity in the truth we find in Christ, or are you going your own way to think and do as you please?

Scotty