Unity in the People of God

In Moses’ time, he went alone onto the mount and saw God. But now it is ‘we all' (2 Cor. 3:18), that is Jews and Gentiles, wherever the gospel is preached. You see that the church is enlarged by the coming of Christ. It was a comfort to Paul and to all good Christians to think of the enlargement of the church by taking in the Gentiles, and it will be a comfort to think of the enlarging of the church by taking in the Jews again. In Christianity, the more the better.
Why is it a privilege for many, why 'we all'? Because in matters of grace and glory there is no envy at all. All may share without prejudice. Here on earth not all can be kings, nor can all be great men, because the more one has the less another has. But in Christ all may have grace. There is no envy, as I said, in grace and glory, where all may share alike. That is why it is always comforting to think of community in faith; it is joined with comfort.
Indeed, it is also comforting to see a communion of many in one. For what is the mystical body of Christ Jesus, but many members joined in one body, under one gracious and glorious head? A divided and disunited body is deformed. That is what the devil rules in: divide and conquer. But God and Christ rule in unity. The same Spirit of God that knits the members to the head by faith, knits the members to one another in love.
Then let us labour to cherish unity and hate division. No one gains by disunion but the devil himself. His policy is always to make any breach greater. But the more who join together in the blessed mysteries of the gospel, the more comfort, and the more glory there is. When all live and join together in the holy things of God, and in sweet love toward one another, it is the glory of that place and society and state.
By love let us labour to bring our hearts to a holy communion.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Glorious Freedom, pp. 99-100 [107-09]
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