OK, now let's start agreeing--and repent

8. To carry the point even further: the New Testament rebukes the mentalities and practices which were later to produce denominational division in the church. These mentalities and practices are:

• (a) autonomy: picking and choosing which leaders in the church will have one's respect (1 Cor. 1:10-17; 3:1-23);
• (b) factionalism: forming partisan groups in the church to advance the program (or supposed program) of one's favorite leaders (same passages);
• (c) lust for power: seeking to be boss (Matt. 20:20-28; Acts 8:9-24; 20:30; Phil. 2:1-11; 1 Pet. 5:1-3; 3 John 9);
• (d) unwillingness to seek reconciliation (Matt. 5:23-26;10 18:15-20; Rom. 12:18; Eph. 4:3; Phil. 2:1ff.; 4:2;1 Thess. 5:13; Heb. 12:14; Jam. 3:17);
• (e) failure to maintain church discipline (Matt. 18:15ff.; 1 Cor. 5);
• (f) inattention to doctrinal and practical purity (1 Tim. 4; 6:11-21; 2 Tim. 1:13ff.; 2:14-4:5; Tit.; etc.);
• (g) failure to help fellow believers in need (Matt. 25:31-46; 3 John).

[15]

[emphasis reproduced from original, list format added]

Here's where the rubber meets the road. As Frame has already foreshadowed, and will develop later, to the (very great) extent that denominationalism represents rancorous division, radical separatism, competition for resources, commodifying of the membership, or even the staid, satisfied comfort of an old prison now grown familiar, the very existence of denominations in the church is a consequence of sin, and quite probably indicates that one or both "sides" of any given "split" are continually living in sin, perhaps even generations later. (see item [d], O ye who live in comfort in your soft pews!)

Again, I see no need to link this to a prior demand for organizational unity. The church that practices rightly in these areas will be led, naturally and necessarily, into cooperation with those other churches that practice rightly; and moreover, I suspect, they will together feel it incumbent on them to seek out those who do not cooperate with them, and find--not subjugation, not conversion, but Biblical unity--reconciliation. Of course, if they do so in a wrong spirit or are rejected, there remains sin between them--let each believer examine himself, and repent of his sin, so long as these divisions remain!

I have to touch, briefly, on Frame's use of "autonomy," above. See my note about "me deacon es su deacon?" for the qualifier: there is undoubtedly some appropriate "autonomy" of the local church, insofar as the leaders of my church are not the leaders of your church, however much we may agree that they are worthy of "respect" in either place. This is, of course, an "independent Baptist" distinctive, but I think it's also a Biblical response to the denominational problem (Frame disagrees, as we shall see later, which is why I insert the caveat now).

Oh, but friends, brothers and sisters, let's weep and mourn for our sins, here. Have any of us, has any church we've belonged to, not been condemned by that list of the things God explicitly warned us against, the things that rend Christ's Body asunder here and now, even as He knits it together toward the Consummation?

To repent these sins, we will need to get beneath the level of even Frame's organizational dream or my local-church response. This is the heart-blood of the Christian life: do we care about Christ, do we love His body, more than our group, our communion, our tradition, our style? Are we committed to that discipline of the church which springs from and insists upon Christ's mission to reconcile all things to Himself?

We are not. We must become so. Help us, Lord!