Key Verse: "For by one Spirit are we
all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we
be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit."
- 1 Corinthians 12:13 KJV
The Church of God is equally one in the Holy Spirit. One Spirit regenerating all, fashioning all, teaching all, sealing all, comforting all, and dwelling in all. Degrees of grace and "diversities of gifts" there are, "but the same Spirit." That same Spirit making all believers partakers of the same divine nature, and then taking up his abode in each, must necessarily assimilate them in every essential quality, and feature, and attribute of the Christian character. Thus, the unity of the Church is an essential and a hidden unity.
With all the differences of opinion, and the varieties of ceremonial, and the multiplicity of sects into which she is broken and divided, and which tend greatly to impair her strength, and shade her beauty, she is yet essentially and indivisibly one- her unity consisting, not in a uniformity of judgment, but better far than this, in the "unity of the Spirit."
Thus, no individual believer can with
truth say that he possesses the Spirit exclusively, boasting himself of what
other saints have not; nor can any one section of the Christian Church lay
claim to its being the only true Church, and that salvation is found only
within its pale. These lofty pretensions, these exclusive claims, this
vain-glory and uncharitableness, are all demolished by one lightning touch
of truth, even by that blessed declaration, "For by one Spirit are we all
baptized into one body."
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