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This is day 3 together of our look through 1 Corinthians chapter 1, this chapter
that talks about how do you live a great life. In order to live a great life you
need to be a part of a great church. And what does it mean to be a great church?

Paul is answering the question showing us that any church can be a great church
based on three things. First you have to have grace. You have to see yourself
for who God has made you to be, relying on his gifts, his resources in life.

There's a second quality of a great church he talks about in verses 10 to 15.
The second quality is unity. He says in verse 10, "I appeal to you brothers in
the name of our Lord Jesus that all of you agree with one another so that there
may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and
thought.

" This is Paul's appeal for unity. This appeal caused one of the people on our
research team to write, "This phrase made me this week repent about a quarrel
that I had with my sister and make things right with her. " And it's my prayer
that that might happen through our study today.

This just won't be a study about the Corinthians who lived a couple thousand
years ago. It's really about your life. Who is it that you're struggling with
and how can these words from God's word remind you of the power of unity?

If I think it's not important, then I'll let the argument go on and on and on.
But when I realize that unity is one of the keys to a great life, to a great
church, then I'll make the sacrifice. I'll have the humility to make the
relationship right.

Paul is writing to the Corinthians not because they were great at this one. They
were struggling with this as a church. It's one of the first reasons that he
began to write to them.

So in verses 11 to 16, here's what Paul says, "My brothers, some from Chloe's
household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is
this. One of you says, 'I follow Paul.

' Another, 'I follow Apollos. ' Another, 'I follow Cephas. ' And still another,
'I follow Christ.

' Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name
of Paul?

I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius so that
no one can say you were baptized in my name. Yes, I also baptized the household
of Stiffanus. Beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else.

" Now before we talk about unity, that's of great encouragement to many people
that Paul says, "I don't remember all that happened. He was an apostle greatly
used of God, but if your memory slips sometimes, so did Paul's. " In these
verses, he is being inspired by the Spirit to challenge them concerning unity.

If you want to have a great life, if you want to be a great church, you have to
realize the power of our unity. You want to destroy the effectiveness of a
church, of a group of Christians. You turn the church of God into the church
just down the street, just a building on the corner by losing your unity.

If you have unity, you burn the building, they'll just build a new one. You take
away some of the most important members, God will just give new servants. You
persecute a church with unity, that'll only fan the flames of growth.

But you put disunity into a church, the greatest of buildings will be empty. The
most effective of servants will wither. The smallest irritation will tear the
church apart, tear the small group apart.

And this Corinthian church, it had been divided. And maybe, just maybe a look at
their divisions will help us to understand how this could happen. Paul goes
through the list.

He says, "Some of you say I'm of Paul, some of Apollo, some of Cephas, some of
Christ. " There are really four different divisions there. The Paul party, the
Apollos party, the Peter party, Cephas is Greek for Peter, and the Christ party.

Knowing something of the Corinthians and knowing something of the history of
that day, you can make a pretty good guess at which of these parties, which
emphasis was in each of these parties. The Paul party emphasized freedom,
liberalism. They emphasized our freedom in Christ.

We can do whatever we want because now we know Jesus. And they took that, we're
going to see later in the book of Corinthians, some at least took that to the
extent we can sin however we want because we believe in Jesus. They made of a
true teaching a false teaching by taking it way too far.

This was the Paul party. They emphasized freedom and liberalism. Then you have
the Apollos party.

They emphasized intellectualism. Apollos, who had this center in Alexandria, he
was a strong teacher. And because he was a strong teacher, people loved those
thoughts.

So it's likely that they emphasized thoughts and intellectualism and how smart
we are. In fact, we're smarter than other believers. There the divisions come
in.

Then you have the Peter party, Cephas being Greek for Peter. They emphasized
legalism. Peter, who grew up as a Jew and was part of the leadership of the
Jerusalem church and sometimes had struggles with legalism.

They emphasize the keeping of the Old Testament law in order to be closer to
God. And then you have the Christ party. Now this isn't talking about this is
the only right one.

The idea here is that they'd even made of the name of Jesus something that
divided them. They emphasized they emphasized exclusivism. They were upper class
Christians.

They were better than everybody else. They were more spiritual than everybody
else. Sometimes you call it being super spiritual.

These are the divisions that were in this church. They had turned the Church of
God into a group of isms. And it wasn't the fault of these leaders.

It wasn't Paul's fault or Apollos' fault or Peter's fault. They're all good
leaders. But the Corinthians had made of the fact that they were different an
excuse.

An excuse for divisions rather than an opportunity for growth. It's always a lot
easier to argue about our differences than to let God challenge us to change.
And when you're resistant to change, when God's challenging a change in your
life and you don't want to make that change, one of the first things you do is
attack somebody else.

This happens in families, husbands and wives. Your wife, your husband says
something that you know they're right, you don't really want to hear it. What do
you do?

Oftentimes you attack back. You say, "Well, what about this? " and you bring it
up.

It also often happens in churches. It happens in businesses too, by the way. In
churches, somebody says, "We really ought to be more serious about doing this.

" And everyone in the church knows that the church needs to make that sacrifice
in order to reach out with missions, in order to reach out into the community,
in order to better serve that church and grow in Christ. But there are some who
selfishly want to hold on to something that made them feel self-important, maybe
a position, maybe a place they sat in the church, maybe the size of the church.
And in selfishly wanting to hold on, they begin to fight back with these isms.

It's always a lot easier to argue about our differences than to listen to God's
challenge for us to change. And that's where they end up. This group of isms
that began to rule the church rather than Jesus being their focus.

This unity and ineffectiveness are inevitable when that happens. So how do you
confront it? When this begins to happen in your life, in somebody else's life,
how do you confront it?

How do you undivide divisions? Well Paul asks three questions which point us to
how you and I can constantly realize and challenge and live out a spirit of
unity. He asks, "Has Christ been divided?

" He asks, "Paul was not crucified for you, was he? " And he asks, "Were you
baptized in the name of Paul? " Those three questions.

And those questions are a reminder of where our unity comes from. First he says,
"Has Christ been divided? " Our unity grows out of the oneness of God.

Just as God is one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Jesus prayed this in the high
priestly prayer in John chapter 17. Just as God is one, he wants us to be one.
The very oneness of God is the foundation for our unity.

And so Paul is saying Jesus isn't divided into parts, God's not divided into
parts. So if you, his body, have been divided into parts, into isms, you have to
realize something is wrong. It doesn't match who Jesus is.

Secondly, Paul says, "Paul wasn't crucified for you, was he? " Unity grows out
of the cross of Christ. If you want to go from a place of disunity to unity, I
don't know of any better way than to sense that you're standing together at the
foot of the cross.

It's often Benton said, and I agree, "The ground is level at the foot of the
cross. No one's higher, no one's lower. We all stand equally in need of the love
of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice, the blood that he shed for us.

When in my own heart I'm feeling disunity with somebody else, I remind myself of
the cross of Jesus. And if in a relationship with someone else, and you have a
time of disunity, you just can't seem to bring it back together, if you can come
together to the cross, not forcing someone there, but coming together there,
choosing together to be there, realize that's where your salvation is. That is a
tremendously powerful source of unity.

In the Trinity we find unity, in the cross we find unity. We also find unity,
Paul says, "Were you baptized in the name of Paul? " We also find unity in the
name, in the name of Jesus.

"Were you baptized in the name of Paul? " No, it was in the name of Jesus. So we
don't follow different human leaders.

"Oh, this teacher might help you over here, and this teacher might help you over
here, and this is your pastor, and you're following that pastor. " But the truth
of the matter is, that's just a person, a human being, that God is using their
gifts to help you to follow Jesus Christ. That's the goal of the church.

We are all unified in his name. I'll never forget being in Washington, D. C.

years ago when a million men went together with Promise Keepers, and Max Lucado
was preaching, and he asked everyone to shout out the name of their church all
at the same time, a million people from hundreds of thousands of churches. And
everybody shouted out their names, and it was just this loud, confusing noise.
And then he said, "Now would you say a different name, the one name that unifies
all of us?

Would you say together with me that one name, Jesus? " And everyone with great
power, a million voices lifted up and said together, in unity, the name Jesus.
Jesus is Lord.

That's what unifies us. The name of Jesus, the cross of Christ, the Trinity of
God. You go back to those central foundations.

That's where you're unified in Christ. So if you're having struggle being
unified with someone, yeah, there may be an issue that needs to be resolved. No
doubt about it.

But the resolution doesn't usually begin with the issue. The resolution begins
at the cross, in the Trinity, in the name of Jesus. Then you deal with the
issue.

That's true in your marriage, in a marriage of believers. That's true in your
family. That's true in your church.

That's true in our lives. Let's pray together. Jesus, I pray, pray for myself,
for each of us, when we struggle with this unity, that instead of going to
ourselves, trying to make it right on our own, we come to you first.

Because you're the source. The closer we get to you, Lord Jesus, the closer we
get to one another. We come to the cross together.

We come to the love of God that we have together. We come to the name of Jesus
together. I pray specifically for someone who's struggling with a disunity right
now.

It may have been there for a long time. And Lord, I pray you'd help them to do
all that they can do to be unified. And once they've done that, to be at peace,
to be at peace in your name, Jesus.

I pray this, grateful for the unity that you bring us through the cross. In
Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow, Paul's going to focus on a third mark of every
great church.