The Communion of Saints (The Creed, Part 18)

[This devotion is part of our series on The Apostles’ Creed, you can find all the videos in there series on our Apostles’ Creed Page. The devotions will be added as they are posted.]

John 4:23, 8:31-32, 17:22, 1 John 1:5

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I believe in the communion of saints. I met a man once who grew up in Eastern Europe, underneath the Iron Curtain and Soviet rule, where Christianity was illegal. As a small boy, he remembered his parents raising him with a Bible hidden under the floorboards. He remembered nights when his parents would secretly whisk him and his siblings out of the house. They would take him through the dark woods at night and meet with other Christians in secret. He remembered seeing baptisms and secret worship services. To me, it’s interesting that no matter where you find Christians, no matter how dangerous or illegal it is for Christians to worship, Christians will still always gather together for worship. That’s what we mean when we say the communion of saints.

That part of the Christian faith is that we are drawn into, first of all, the communion of the body of Christ through faith and that unity that we have with all believers of all times must express itself in fellowship, a union or unity with a local congregation of believers. But what is the basis for that unity?

Oftentimes, Christians today say it should be love. That love is what joins us together, and our tolerance for one another is what enables us to keep coming together and growing. Others would say it’s our mission. As long as Christians agree on a few fundamental things, then the rest of the stuff doesn’t matter. That enables us to accomplish more working together. Some Christians say that what joins us together is outward purity, and so they can never find a group of believers that is pure enough for them. But what’s the real answer? What actually joins us together? In John chapter 17, Jesus is praying in the garden before his death on the cross. And what’s so beautiful is he’s praying for us. He’s praying for his church. And not once, not twice, but four times. Jesus prays that the church on earth would be one as we are one, Jesus says.

Did you hear that? As we are one? He uses the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in all eternity as the basis for the unity that the Christian Church experiences. The union between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a union of truth. We’re told in Scripture that God is light. In him there is no darkness at all.

Jesus is the truth. He tells us that true worshipers of the Father worship in spirit and truth. Jesus tells us, if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. The truth is what binds us together.

I like to explain it this way. Here in the Midwest, we oftentimes do whatever we can to avoid conflict. Oftentimes, we might even think the health of a relationship is measured by its lack of conflict. But that isn’t true. Maybe you’ve experienced that before, where, where everyone is tiptoeing around the elephant in the room, afraid to talk about the real problem. That isn’t true unity. But rather the health of a relationship is determined by how you deal with conflict, that you deal with conflict with truth and love.

Christians find their unity in truth and love when we come together around God’s Word. There’s really only one thing we have to agree on, and that is that we’ll follow the Bible and what the Bible teaches. So as often as you confess those words, we believe in the communion of saints. First of all, rejoice that the Holy Spirit draws true believers to Christian churches around the world. And secondly, rejoice in the fellowship, the communion of believers that God has brought you to. Rejoice in receiving the word and the sacrament for the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, your Savior.

Amen.