God desires that His people be a single testimony

Before anything else, the Word of God tells us that God's PLAN in Christianity is that “Jesus should die... also to gather into one the children of God who were scattered abroad” (John 11:51-52), and then there would be “one flock” (John 10:16). Before going to the cross the Lord prayed with this goal, saying, “Holy Father, keep in your name those whom you have given me, so that they may be one, just as we are... that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; that they also may be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:11, 21). Although these verses in John do not speak directly of the truth of the unity of the body of Christ, but rather of the unity of the family of God, they clearly demonstrate that God's desire for His people is that they be found together in a visible unity on the earth.

The first time the Lord revealed His thoughts of a practical unity manifested among His people in the church was in Matthew 18:20. There it says: “For where two or three are gathered in [to] my name, there am I in the midst of them”. He did not want His people to be merely “gathered” where He was in the midst, but united. Thus the Lord was indicating that all those whom the Spirit of God would gather to His name, wherever they might be on the face of the earth, would be united in a visible unity. He did not mean that they should be gathered geographically in one place (as happened in Judaism with Jerusalem), but that they should act unanimously in the various localities where the Spirit gathered them, in order to give a universal expression of the fact that they are one.

You may think that I am reading more into the word “gathered” than the Spirit of God intended to include in it, and it is true that if we had only this verse of Matthew 18:20 speaking of the subject of gathering, perhaps we would not have a basis to affirm this. But when we open the book of Acts and the epistles, and interpret this passage in the light of the whole tenor of Christian revelation, we can see that the Lord was indicating the truth of the unity of the church in testimony. It is only sketched in Matthew 18 because the disciples did not yet have the Holy Spirit, and would not be able to understand the truth contained there (John 14:25-26; 16:12). The Lord acted this way on various occasions of His ministry, giving no more than the seed of some truth, and then leaving it to be developed through the apostles after the Holy Spirit had been given.

As the gospel reached many lands and many were converted, various meetings scattered throughout the earth would naturally arise, but the Lord wanted them to continue to be part of one communion and testimony. This is seen in the observation made by the apostle Paul to the Thessalonians: “For you, brothers, have become imitators of the churches of God that are in Judea in Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 2:14). The Lord did not intend for His people to form independent groups, but that there should be one flock -- a universal communion of the saints on earth. It is to this communion that all Christians are called (1 Cor. 1:9).