Page 6 - Demo

2. Be of the same mind or heart.The only way that we are going to maintain unity among Christians is to be of the same mind or heart. \encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus.\15:5) \same difference) \Jesus Christ.%u201d (v. 6) %u201cAccept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.\Paul told the Corinthians the same thing \Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be\1:10)Can you imagine the chaos if your body had more than one mind? Can you imagine having two brains up there, one saying \eat.\I'm just going to sit here for a little while.\one mind? How can we be \opinions, judgments, preferences, and even different personal convictions?The one mind has to be the mind of Christ. \Jesus.\to tell us, \grasped (held on to), but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death%u2014even death on a cross!\But, what does it mean to be of the same mind with one another? It means to have the same selfless sacrificing mind of Christ that puts others ahead of self even to the point of death. That's the command.How many things would we argue about if the very foremost part of our mindset was: I love you so much that I will gladly die for you? Do you suppose that might dilute trivial arguments? I love you so much I'd die for you. Unity is not the result of total agreement on every opinion. They never arrived at that in Rome, some of them still celebrated those days and some didn't. Some of them still ate vegetables and others ate meat. It's not the result of total agreement on every opinion. Unity is the result of two people putting each other's interest ahead of their own, and that's the only way it will ever happen. %u201cYou be of the same mind%u201d doesn't mean you have to be of my mind or that I have to be of your mind. It means that together we share the very mind of Christ. Our convictions on the side issues will not always agree, but the Christ who unites us is bigger than the opinions that divide us. The convicting testimony of Christian unity is not that we are all alike but that we are one even though we are not all alike. The reason that the church grew so well in the first century is not by making all the Gentiles become Jews so that everybody would be alike. What was incredible about the church, particularly churches like the one in Rome is that the Jews stayed Jews by culture, the Gentiles