“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; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you” (1 Cor. 1:10-11).
"One of the central problems at Corinth was their fractiousness, and so Paul begins his letter to them by pleading with them, in the name of Jesus Christ, that they drop their contentions. Some from the household of Chloe had told Paul about those contentions, and he saw immediately how destructive they would be (v. 11). He beseeches them, and what he says is quite striking. He asks them to speak the same thing, to avoid divisions in their midst, to be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and to be perfectly joined together in the same judgment (v. 10).
"This exhortation is greatly needed in the American church together, not because we invented fractiousness, but because we have sought to make it into a virtue. On the flip side, we have tried to represent obedience to this as a vice. What would we say about a congregation that actually obeyed the apostle’s exhortations here. The first thing that would come to mind is that they “had all drunk the Kool-Aid.” We would charge the elder board with being a bunch of patsies and yes men."
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