The Bible does not contradict itself, but Bible teachers (and students) sometimes disagree. And by “sometimes” I mean often. This is not, in itself, a bad thing. Differences of opinion can lead people to engage more deeply with the Scriptures, in order to try and resolve the issue (1 Corinthians 11:19). But we have to be careful, because differences of opinion can also lead to quarrels and division. Especially when they become tied to pride. Too often we downplay the seriousness of this, but factions, jealousy and quarreling are not minor matters. The Apostle Paul wrote:
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
Paul is not talking here about individual believers (although he does later, in 1 Corinthians 6:19). In this passage he’s saying that the whole church is the temple. We, together, are God’s temple. And no one who desecrates God’s temple will escape punishment. Anyone who destroys the temple, who brings division where there should be unity, will himself be destroyed. That’s how seriously God takes this.
This subject is on my heart right now because I recently saw a YouTube video from a fairly prominent Christian declaring that he was willing to cause division in the church over the issue of how best to understand the first few chapters of Genesis. Sadly, this is not the only issue that believers are willing to divide over, although it appears to be a very common one at this point in time. We tell ourselves that we’re defending the authority of God’s word when all we’re really doing is defending the conceit that we know better than anyone else how to correctly handle the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15).
I’m not talking here about doctrines like the deity of Christ or salvation by grace through faith. These are fundamental to what it means to be a Christian at all. But the issues we fight about, things like the age of the earth, or the covenant state of the modern nation of Israel, or whether there will be a “rapture”, are matters that faithful followers of Christ have long disagreed about, and will most likely continue to disagree about for as long as we only know in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). How is it that so many of us who claim to follow Christ are willing to destroy his body on earth rather than admit even the possibility that we might be wrong? To correctly handle God’s word we have to have the humility to be more interested in finding out the truth than in being right. If, instead, I fail to distinguish between God’s word and my understanding of God’s word, I make myself the equal of God.
Jesus himself, on the night he was betrayed, prayed for unity:
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:20-23).
We, all of us together, are God’s temple. In his incredible grace, God has entrusted to us the power to help construct his temple by the way we support and encourage one another. Let’s not misuse that power to destroy what we should be building.