Character of Unity

Sermons of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 603 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2026

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What guides and keeps a church unified? How can the church encourage unity among its members? In this sermon on Romans 12:5-6 titled “Character of Unity,” Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones explains there are two elements to preserving the unity of a church. There is a spiritual unity that can only be brought about the Spirit of God and there is a necessary fundamental agreement of doctrine. While agreeing in the area of doctrine, it is also important to remember that the church body was created for a specific purpose. It ought to function in a living and active way together as many members of one body. The church must be using her gifts otherwise she is failing as a church. Dr. Lloyd-Jones cautions the listener to beware of their church falling into two extremes when it comes to being active: on one hand, activism or over busyness tires the body and wears out its members. On the other hand, hyper-paralysis, where the individual members are only worried about themselves, causes the church to be perpetually inactive and unhealthy. The activity of the church must be consistent and in conformity with the mind of the head, which is Christ Jesus, as he instructs in Scripture.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So, in that same way, we, being many, are one body in Christ and everyone members one of another.
0:09.6	Now then, we began dealing with this last Friday, and we saw that the teaching concerning the church as the body of Christ is the thing which the
0:23.1	apostles puts here before us. And it's a very profound doctrine, and I was trying to
0:29.0	show it's extreme relevance to the present situation. There's all this talk about church
0:37.4	unity, but before you can talk about unity, you must be
0:40.9	quite clear in your mind as to what the church is, because the character of the unity is
0:45.7	determined by the nature of the church.
0:49.8	And so, we saw certain things last Friday.
0:52.5	The unity is always, of course, a spiritual one. The unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The church is one that unity is meant to be visible.
1:04.0	It is, as I say, a spiritual unity which can only be brought about by the Holy Spirit himself. No man can ever add anybody to the church.
1:14.1	You can add people to a church role,
1:16.1	but that isn't the same of necessity as adding them to the church,
1:20.3	through the Lord Jesus Christ.
1:22.9	The spirit alone can do this.
1:25.1	No man can be a member of the body of Christ unless he is born again, unless he is a partaker
1:31.9	of the divine nature.
1:34.1	How vital all this is to the doctrine of the church and especially to this modern discussion
1:40.1	about church unity.
1:43.4	And then we ended by saying that this is a unity that must include the mind, the thinking, the outlook.
1:51.8	It's not used talking about a vague general spirit of unity.
1:56.5	The unity that is here described is a unity which includes the head and the head governs all the rest.
2:05.2	So the Apostle Paul is so right when he writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 21 Corinthians
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