What does the Bible say about division?

With the fact that the blessed Lord died “to gather in one the children of God” (John 11:52), and His prayer in John 17 before us, we can but view division in that family with the profoundest sorrow and shame. The blame is ours whenever it occurs, nor can dis-unity be the work, or energy of Him whose unity we are enjoined to keep in the uniting bond of peace (Eph. 4:3). Far otherwise! Hence we read in Romans 16:17, that they who cause division are to be avoided; in 1 Corinthians 3:3, that they are a mark of carnality; that in 1 Corinthians 1:10, “there be no divisions among you”; that in 1 Corinthians 11, their coming together was for the worse, because of their divisions; that in 1 Corinthians 14 the same care for one another, as members of the one body, would effectually obviate division; and finally that, in Galatians 5:20, seditions (divisions) and heresies (schools of opinion) instead of being the fruit of the Spirit, are the works of the flesh.

Division is nowhere in Scripture presented as an evidence of spirituality but always of carnality. "Ye are yet carnal," was the Apostle's indictment. How did he prove his charge? By simply saying, "whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walkas men?" (1 Cor. 3:3). Similarly in Galatians 5:20, "heresies" or "schools of opinion" are cited as amongst "the works of the flesh." If carnality prevails, divisions are sure to raise their ugly head. Hence, when the report of the divisions at Corinth reached Paul it did not take him by surprise. "I partly believe it," he writes, "for there must be also heresies [schools of opinion] among you" (1 Cor. 11:18-19). Emphasize that "you." There was no such "must" in the case of the faithful saints at Ephesus, or Colosse or Philippi. But amongst "you" — the carnal believers at Corinth — there are sure to be these "heresies" as the inevitable fruit of your carnal state. That God knows how to overrule even heresies and make them serve towards the making manifest of those who are approved of Himself — those not infected with the spirit of division — is no, excuse for the heresies or divisions.

That God condemns division none would wish to deny who bow to His inspired word. At the very first appearance or bud of divisions the apostle says, “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you … Every one of you says, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor. 1:10-13.) Surely I cannot mistake the mind of the Lord in this day, when one says, I am of Rome, I of the Greek, I of the Anglican, I of Wesley, etc. God beseeches all believers by the glory and pre-eminence of the Name of the Lord Jesus that there be no divisions. Not one name or division can God tolerate. To allow any name but His is to lower His blessed Name to the same level. I of Paul, and I of Christ. If it is thus God’s will that there should be no divisions, how can I belong to any, or in any way countenance any sect, without positive disobedience to God’s revealed mind? Do, my reader, answer that question in the presence of God with His word before you.

Lest there should be any mistake, the Spirit of God again speaks on the same subject: “For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one says, I am of Paul; and another, I of Apollos; are ye not carnal?” If it thus grieved the Spirit to say, I am of Paul, or Apollos, does it now please the Spirit to say, I am of Wesley, I of the Independents? Is this carnality? or is it spirituality? Does God approve or disapprove? And again, when the apostle refers to having heard there were sects among them, he says, “I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse.” (1 Cor. 11:17.)

Verse 17. “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause [or form] divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.” There are two things here we must carefully notice. Division is an evil in itself — it is strongly condemned in other scriptures. (See 1 Cor. 1; 1 Cor. 3.) We also learn, that if any are practising that evil, by causing or forming divisions, contrary to the doctrine they had received, others were to avoid them; that is, to separate from them. But if believers do thus separate from and avoid those who form divisions, do they not also form a sect, or division? No, obedience to the word is not division. And, further, those who cause divisions may always be known by the spirit in which they act. “For they that are such, serve not our Lord Jesus Christ,” etc. We never go wrong if Christ is the only object. Happy is it when it can be said, “For your obedience is come abroad to all men.” “Yet I would have you wise to that which is good and simple concerning evil.” It is most deadening to all spiritual life to be occupied with evil.

No doubt this arises from the constitution of' man's nature. But does this excuse it? To the spiritual eye, it only proves more conclusively how evil it is. "The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God." To say, then, that it is natural, is only to say that it is contrary to God's mind. Does Scripture palliate these divisions because they are natural? Nay, this is just the ground on which it condemns them. "And I, brethren," writes the apostle. "could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat; for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal; for whereas there is among you envying and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one says, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal?" (1 Cor. 3:1-4). Here, then, the Holy Ghost clearly teaches that sects and divisions are not of God, but of man, that they are the results of unspirituality, carnality, and walking as men. Yet Christians defend them as the result of man's nature. "We are only walking as men," they say. "If you are walking as men," replies the apostle, "you are carnal, and I cannot speak to you as spiritual." What a fearful chasm between the thoughts of Christians and the thoughts of Christ!

The Holy Ghost has shown in another portion of this same epistle the true origin of these divisions, and God's judgment concerning them. He says — "In this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye come together, not for the better, but for the worse. For, first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions (or schisms) among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also sects among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you" (1 Cor. 11:17-19). Now here He names these divisions as matter for blame, and declares their assembling to be for the worse, and not for the better, while these exist. True, He says, they must be — but why? In order that the faithful may be separated from the unfaithful. Does this, then, sanction the divisions? Our Lord says — "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence comes!" (Matt. 18:7). Here Jesus distinctly declares that offences must come, but does He, therefore, sanction or excuse the offence? He knew what was in man, and predicts the sad result, but only to denounce judgment against him who brings it about. In like manner the Holy Ghost, speaking through Paul in the passage above quoted, foretells, what indeed was already partly visible, the divisions which man's will and infidelity to the truth would introduce into the Church, and the sifting process through which the faithful would thus be called to pass. But He no more sanctions those divisions than Christ sanctions the offences which He declares to be necessary. On the contrary, although He foresaw them to be inevitable from man's nature, He distinctly declares them to be evil.

Here, however, a grave question arises. Are believers, it may be asked, to hold together whatever evil doctrine or practice is tolerated? Or, if not, how is division to be avoided? The Word of God is perfectly clear. Division is condemned, separation from evil enjoined. Where false doctrine or immorality has shown itself, separation is to take place. Thus, when there was immoral conduct at Corinth, the leaven was to be purged out (1 Cor. 5:7); a heretic (or divider) was, after the first and second admonition, to be rejected (Titus 3:10); if a person preached another gospel than that Paul had taught the Galatians, "let him be accursed" (Gal. 1:8-9); and when Hymenaeus and Alexander made shipwreck concerning the faith, they were "delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Tim. 1:20). This, however, was not division. It was united action, shown in separating from evil. Even if large numbers had supported Hymenaeus and Alexander, and had gone with them — nay, if all the assembly had upheld them, except two or three, who in faithfulness to Christ withdrew from them — the act of these latter would merely have been godly separation from evil, and the division which had occurred would have been the act of those who followed the false teachers, not of these who, in obedience to the Lord's mind, separated from them. As far as these were concerned, whether few or many, the principle of the oneness of the Church would have been maintained, and no departure from the divine order would have occurred. They would have remained on God's ground, and would have constituted His assembly or Church.

Suppose a teacher told his scholars that he did not wish them to be scattered, and therefore they were all to remain in the playground. The playground then becomes the place where their oneness is to be shown. If some wander away into neighbouring fields, the manifested oneness is no doubt gone, but which of the scholars maintain the principle of it — those who go abroad, or those who remain where they were told? Even if those who remain are but two or three out of two or three hundred, they have not caused the division, and their separation from those who disobeyed the teacher by leaving the playground, so far from breaking up the oneness, keeps them in the only place where the oneness which the teacher desired could have been exhibited. Take Israel as an illustration. Their unity of worship was established by ordinances of God. But the people departed from God's directions and substituted their own. What, then, were the faithful ones to do? Not to "follow a multitude to do evil" (Ex. 23:2), but to separate from the evil-doers and act in obedience themselves. This was not division. It was standing by God's unity of worship; while the creators of division were those who departed from it. We must shut our eyes to some of the clearest teachings of God's Word if we do not see that the same scriptures which condemn division demand separation. Thus the "elect lady" is told, — "if there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine [the doctrine of Christ], receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed; for he that bids him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds" (2 John 10-11). Godly separation from evil, then, is not division and sectarianism, for the truth of God cannot contradict itself. Separation from evil never makes sects, and is a necessary step in delivering ourselves from sects.

Hence, again, they must not be surprised if, man being what he is, Christ's presence produced conflict, opposition, if men were stirred up into jealousies and envies, hatred and enmity. All these things became manifest in those in whom it had not been seen before. People might have gone on quietly; but Jesus always puts the heart to the test; and if there be not faith, no man knows what he may not do whenever the Truth (as Jesus is) puts him to the proof. "Think ye that I have come to give peace in the earth?" Undoubtedly such will be the effect of His reign by and by, but it is far from being the case now, where good has to make its way and show itself in the midst of evil which is in power. We must always remember that this is an essential characteristic of the time when Jesus was on earth; and it is so still. As far as the world is concerned, evil is in power: good therefore has to maintain itself by faith in conflict with it and superiority over it. It is not that good loves conflict, but that evil will oppose what is good, and, consequently, suffering there must be. "Think ye that I have come to give peace in the earth? Nay, I say unto you; but rather division;346 for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided: three shall be divided against two, and two against three."

This state of moral rupture is simply the result of Christ's coming to the world, as it is man in a state of alienation and opposition, more particularly man with religious privileges, who cannot bear to have all his imaginary good sentenced to death. Therefore the Jews were ever more hostile than Gentiles. The latter could not but see their vanities judged by that which carried its own evidence of light and love along with it; but the Jews had what was really of God, only preparatory, however, and pointing onward to Him, Who was now come, and Whom they would not have, but rejected utterly. In that rejection the baptism spoken of was accomplished, and sin was judged, and God now can be righteous in justifying him who believes, and this solely on the ground of atonement for proved, convicted sin. This, alas! was the last thing a Jew was willing to admit. He would not own that he needed redemption as much as a Gentile, and that a Jew no less than a Gentile must enter the kingdom by being born again. Hence division in families, in no way because the grace of Christ in itself promotes discord, but because man's evil fights against the truth which puts it in the light, and man's hatred refuses the love of which it does not feel the need.

Christ Himself is the test of men's condition. He did not come to send peace on earth, that is, to make men comfortable with one another while still In a state of quilt. Rather His presence is as a sharp, dividing sword, bringing into focus the reality of some and the rebellion of others. By this touchstone the variance between father and son is manifested, and between mother and daughter, etc. So it has proven in history: many households have been divided because Christ is received by some and refused by other members of a family.

There is one thing I should like to make clear, as to what I said about separation from evil — so essential as I believe it to be to God's principle of unity. What has tried me in those we have had to do with since Bethesda — when it was imperative, because if Newton's doctrine of Christ was true, everything was gone; his Christ was not God's according to Scripture, and Bethesda and the open brethren's course betrayed such indifference to Him, and ignorance of the Assembly's unity, that all was lost as to the recovery of the truth, if they had been gone on with — is, that when teachers have developed ideas of the truth contrary to what we have received, and led away disciples after them in some form or other of independency, the principles that guided us as to Bethesda were taken to be the model upon which all subsequent separation was to be carried out. Namely, that not only was the independent gathering of such a teacher to be avoided, but everyone who may not have had the truth so clearly as to form a true judgment of his deflection from it, was to be treated in the same way, and thus a division made absolute and world-wide; and this when no question of not bringing the doctrine of Christ was at stake. Those who preferred following a favourite teacher in independency might have been surely allowed to do so, while we sought to walk in the divinely constituted unity of the Body.

Up to now we have considered false teaching. This must be refused as poisonous. Yet we must carefully distinguish it from mistaken views of Scripture. A believer may take impressions from the Word of God which he later realizes need correction. We need to apply Philippians 3:15 in such cases: "If in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you." We must not require absolute conformity in teaching but leave room for the Holy Spirit to teach each individual. For example, Romans 14 speaks of abstaining from certain meats and of observing certain days. A person with a weak conscience may be mistaken as to what God requires in these things but that is no reason to refuse fellowship with him. Also, there are many views on prophecy. Grace will enable us to help each other in these areas. However, a "divisive man" who pushes wrong views on others must be rejected after a second admonition (Tim.3: 10).