Striving Together
as One

Paul adds a second image immediately after the first, and it moves the church from defense to offense.

Standing firm is about holding a line, but striving together as one is about pushing forward. The word Paul chooses is an athletic term describing a team contending side by side in a contest, and it’s the root from which we get our word agonize. There’s nothing gentle about it. It describes coordinated effort that costs every person involved something real.

“

Unity isn’t a bonus feature of the mission but the mechanism of it.

The phrase that should stop us is together as one, because unity isn’t a bonus feature of the mission but the mechanism of it. Paul isn’t telling them to strive individually while trying to stay friendly. He’s saying that the striving itself is a shared activity, and a church pulling in ten directions isn’t ten times as effective but simply a group of exhausted people who can’t understand why nothing is moving.

Here’s what makes this really hard. Unity is easy to praise and expensive to practice, because it requires that you regularly do things the way someone else prefers when your way would’ve been just fine too. It means letting a small preference die so that a larger purpose can live. Most churches don’t split over doctrine, and most Life Groups don’t fall apart over theology. They come apart over preferences that no one was willing to release.

It means letting a small preference die so that a larger purpose can live.

Notice also what they’re striving for, which is the faith of the gospel. Paul gives the effort a direction. Unity for its own sake is just a group of people avoiding conflict, and that has a shelf life. Unity aimed at something bigger than the group is what actually holds, because the disagreement is no longer the largest thing in the room.

At Authentic Life Church we say it plainly. We aren’t gathering to be comfortable together but to move together, and moving together always costs more than sitting together does.

So ask yourself which preference you’re currently holding onto that’s quietly slowing down something a lot bigger than you.