How about several thousand factions of a community that is SUPPOSED to be recognizable by its unity?
Or how about those same factions rejecting the dynamic authority commissioned by Christ for a static book written by those authorities which was not commissioned by Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:12-26 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Or how about those same factions rejecting the dynamic authority commissioned by Christ for a static book written by those authorities which was not commissioned by Christ.
Just wow. The Bible a *static book*??? Sounds like the liberals who criticize the Constitution instead claiming that it's a *living document*. Look at the mess we're in that that kind of thinking has gotten us.
*dynamic authority*??? IOW, what's true today isn't true tomorrow depending on the whims of whatever the authority d'jour decides.
That *static book* wash what Jesus used when He said *It is written...* in HIS appeals to authority.
There is unity in Spirit among true believers. It is unity from within because of the Holy Spirit as opposed to enforced unity imposed on people from the outside under threat of damnation.
The beauty of that spiritual unity allows me to consider others brothers and sisters in Christ when they trust Christ alone for salvation by grace through faith.
It doesn't matter whether they're Baptist, Pentecostal, OPC, Methodist, whatever.
If they hold to salvation by grace through faith in Christ, they are the redeemed, regardless of what they hold to in other doctrines such as the exercise of the gifts.
Do you even have any idea what the unity IS? What believers are unified IN?