This whole CoVid19 thing, along with all the upheaval and division in the world today, has given us believers pause to consider this matter of LIFE and DEATH as it applies to Christian unity of all believers. We see that we believers are becoming in several ways, too much of the world, and not just in it, not properly letting the One Truth who is the Word to sanctify and separate us from the world, to set us apart for God's purposes, in this world and into eternity.

“15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 ¶ Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” (Joh 17:15-18 NivUS)

As we look closer at the present condition the world is in, we believers are realizing that we need to focus more on fulfilling the work of the Father, the work the Father sent Jesus into the world to give to us by Jesus fulfilling the First and Second most important commandments we are to obey: to help gather all the Father’s sheep in the world today into the one flock, with One, Good Shepherd, as Jesus and the Father are one.

Instead of Christian unity in this presently messed up world, we see believers are split on political issues, even though all the laws of man, like tax laws, or laws about how to respond to CoVid19, all man’s laws are all just things of the Caesars of this world that Jesus spoke of, regardless which Caesars are in power at the moment, at any level, in any of the governments of men. We see believers mistakenly insist on making Christ political, regardless that Jesus never remotely suggested God needs the laws of men to enforce God’s laws, even though Jesus lived under the imposed rule of one of the most corrupt and inhumane governments, and resultantly foul societies, in history. Is it just possible that Jesus wants us to vote or promote man’s laws as we see fit, but never allow anything to distract us from our primary focus, above all, letting nothing in the world de-rail us from our mission, on helping Jesus write the laws of God on people’s hearts, especially those to be written in mutual love on the hearts of all us believers, like He did, laying down our lives, at least spiritually, for all one another believers, so the world will know God sent Jesus to give us the good news of Life in his Spirit, and that’s how the laws of the world will be constructed to follow in time as God sees fit, when the world really knows God sent Jesus? It’s a matter of priority of efforts. Trust the promises of God or of political man, LIFE or DEATH, who do you know is telling the truth? One is the Truth, the other is just man making politics an idol, seeking to be His own God, like Adam and Eve, imagining they are knowing good and evil for themselves in the garden.

Instead of Christian unity, we see believers are split on issues of seeking wealth and power among men, like excesses of the ‘prosperity gospel’, even though Jesus clearly said we are guaranteed only to have all our physical needs met, and all the needs of serving His kingdom met in this life, if and only if, we seek of first importance in our lives, His kingdom and His righteousness. We must seek His kingdom in which He rules as the King who commands the obedience of our hearts, and in which God gives us credit for His righteousness in His Spirit to live in our hearts, and with promises of seeing His glory if we seek first His kingdom which will be united as the Father and Jesus are one. They are one Spirit of God in the world, in showing the world that God sent Jesus to gather all the Father’s sheep into one, spiritual flock, including all Christian faith groups of repentant, mutually loving and forgiving believers. God has more than enough money to provide for His Kingdom. Remember the fish with the silver coin in his mouth caught on the un-baited hook? Prosperity in monetary wealth is not the good news of Jesus. But knowing we can trust God to meet our physical needs in this life on Earth is part of the good news Jesus promises to us believers, and if the body of Christ hasn’t made that happen yet for all the least of our brethren in Christ, then that’s our fault for how we use our wealth, not God’s. Want to bet whether or not we will learn to feel a lot more responsible for the desperate physical needs of all believers when we begin to see, as Jesus promised both we and the world will see, the glory of God to make us one as Jesus and the Father are one? I’ll bet it will seem a lot more real to us believers, as well as to the world, that God really did send Jesus to make us one, as Jesus and the Father are one, in the One, Good Shepherd, who makes sure all the Father’s sheep get both the spiritual and physical feeding they need, as well as feeding God’s love to as many of our unbelieving neighbors in the world as we can, so the world will know how much we love one another with our lives laid down, and thus learn, as Jesus promised in John 17, we love neighbors in the world as much as we love ourselves so they will know God sent Jesus,as surely as we believers know it, especially since any unbelieving neighbor in the world, even among our enemies, may yet show themselves to be one of the Father’s sheep when God shows them He really did send Jesus to gather them in, and the Father’s sheep then respond as Jesus said they would by coming to Him and following His voice which they now hear from the united body of Christ on Earth, saying “Repent and believe the good news”.

Instead of Christian unity in this world, we see some, who at least claim to be believers, but are divided over issues of racial injustice that the body of Christ was dedicated to completely eliminate from the very beginning in Jerusalem, uniting together in Jesus, persons of every color and culture in the world, and should have been long since overcome by our unity in the words of Jesus, long, long ago.

Instead of Christian unity, we see believers facing issues of all forms of sexual immorality, or sexual harassment in the church leadership, with pastors going astray themselves in their personal lives, and in some cases, pastors leading whole groups of believers away from what the Bible, and Jesus, in particular, plainly say in the Bible about sexual immorality, causing division, splitting Christian faith groups of hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of believers from one another over whether God’s word still requires us to teach repentance and forgiveness of sins, that Jesus said would always be taught in the name of Jesus, and therefor believed, instead of non-repentance and redefinition of sins so the world will like it while remaining in sin. Again, this is another, original sin case, of people willfully choosing to agree with Evil when he asks “did God really say”, and wanting to be gods, themselves, deciding right from wrong for themselves so they can keep the sins the world likes.

But thank you, dear Lord Jesus, in all these things where we see too much of the world in the Church, and too much of the Church being of the world, not just in it while sanctified and set apart from the world by God’s word, we also see beautiful signs of Christian unity starting to form. We see some prominent evangelicals, refusing to be drawn into political issues but insisting on focusing on only the gospel; we see believers starting to reject some of the excesses of the prosperity gospel; we see black and white, and all colors of sisters and brothers uniting in godly support and brotherhood in Christ; and we see some Christian faith groups standing tall and firm with Jesus, faithful in the word of God about sexual morality, seeking unity in God’s word among all willing Christian faith groups, while appealing to all sinners with our heartfelt love for them to either come with us into the one Christian sheepfold for the first time, or if they have simply strayed away from the word of God that sets all us believers apart from the world, to now return to Christ, uniting together with all believers in our shared remembrance of the love of God shown to us all in the blood shed to wash away our sins as well as theirs.

In fact, there are many of us believers working for Christian unity of all repentant, mutually loving and forgiving believers who forgive all who sin against us, who also firmly believe that Satan is behind the mess we see in the world today with all the divisions over CoVid19 issues, and throughout society, primarily in Satan's foolhardy attempt to try to stop Christian unity from progressing, in which effort Satan will surely fail. We believe Satan sees signs of Christian unity increasing and is flailing desperately to sow disunity in the news, in social media, and in every way he can think of hoping some of the lies and hatred he slings will stick on the one Church of all repentant, mutually loving believers in the name of Jesus, to keep us from uniting with Jesus and the Father, as they are united in One Shepherd, united in the self-sacrificial effort to gather all the Father's sheep into one flock, in the One Body of Christ on Earth where all love one another with the same unearned holiness and love that God freely gives, undeservedly, to every one of us such believers in Jesus.

A true definition of Christian unity is that God is in the process of using all believers to spiritually unite in the Spirit which Jesus defined for us in the words of God He was sent here by the Father to speak to us, now letting that same Spirit speak to the world through all of us believers, who start now to agree in the words Jesus spoke to make the world know Jesus was sent here by the real, one true God

That process of uniting in the Spirit defined by the words of Jesus is easy to show in scripture as what God wants to be our intention to make our primary purpose in life: to serve some form of service to help gather all believers in all Christian faith groups into one, spiritual flock of God, even as Jesus and the Father are one in the Spirit in the One, Good Shepherd. Not our only purpose in life, but our primary; we still have many other purposes in our life, for family and making a living, making a home, and making a physical household, but we keep in our minds the unity of the one flock of God’s sheep, including every littlest believer, of every Christian denomination and Christian faith group, all called to repent and believe the good news, as our central purpose in mind for how to relate to all others in our lives every day, because that’s what the first and second most important commands are intended by God to set in order of importance in our lives: the order of importance of the Love who is God, in Jesus, the Love in our hearts that always governs how we relate to all other people in our lives.

That shepherd analogy that Jesus speaks of again and again in the Bible is no high-minded theological, man-made construct, but the words of God, Himself, spoken by the Word who is God, spoken by God here on Earth about how we are to live our lives every day. And to get there, we pray and ask God to help us learn how, and we do like Jesus did when He was just getting started about His Father’s business, so we study the word of God that Jesus was sent here to speak to us, for us to learn more about how to live out His kind of love, so we can learn how to simply live it better with the people we meet daily.

For the trip from where we are all at right now, together in this lousy world, at this moment in time, lousy by comparison to where we believers are all headed together in Jesus, the trip from lousy here to a fuller Christian unity that Jesus promised, unity that starts now in this life, where we now begin our eternal life in knowing the Father by knowing Jesus, whom the Father sent here as a man filled with His Spirit; that is the same Spirit of the Father’s sheep-gathering Spirit that Jesus has promised to give to live in the heart of each and every repentant, mutually loving and forgiving believer, each of us believers who somehow manage to forgive all who sin against us, even enemies; that joyous trip to fuller Christian unity in that one Spirit, is in being onboard in our daily lives, on an ark piloted by the Holy Spirit deeper into All Truth, the Truth who is Jesus, who is the Word in the Bible, who tells us it’s all true, but to focus on the very words Jesus spoke there in the Bible, by which the Holy Spirit has promised us to eventually give us to understand all Truth the same in Jesus.

Every day we live our regular lives is just another step of faith we take on that trip to Christian unity that starts in this life with that Spirit leading, and is a step of just knowing our dedication to Christian unity is spiritually growing in our hearts, in our everyday life, at work, at home, online, on holiday, in quarantine, or wherever; that for every person we talk or communicate with, we live Christian unity in our everyday, personal relations with that person, when we regard them as one of two kinds of people, both requiring a respective level of Biblical love commanded by God, as first and second most important:
(1) either we love them as a Biblical child of God in Christ, whom we love with our lives laid down, because love is what family is for, even more so in the family where God is the Father, and God is Love, and God is the Eldest Brother, Jesus, who is Himself, all God's Love given to the world and for the world, and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God who Jesus gives to live in our hearts so we can be God’s children, too, through faith in the name of Jesus, as Jesus promised that faith in His name would always be taught in His name to be, in repentance and forgiveness of sins as much as we forgive all who sin against us; or,
(2) we regard that person with love as our Biblical neighbor in the world, whom we love as much as ourselves, because it may be they are either unrepentant or ignorant, simply because they haven’t yet seen us believers in the body of Christ on earth today to reach the fullness of unity that Jesus said would make the world know Jesus was sent by God, and in at least that sense, if not others as well, we were all at one time either ignorant or unrepentant, or a combination of both, of sins as clearly defined to be sins in the Bible, such as our collective failure to obey in the first and second most important commandments, which we Christian faith groups have all been trying to fulfill for many centuries, each in the best way we could see during those former times, but now we are beginning to focus on those two, 1st and 2nd , commands as our two, main priorities in life, so God will eventually show all people in the whole world the wonderful, good news, that the Father sent Jesus to give God's own Spirit to live in them, too, if they want out of living in the worldly spirit of misery and destruction that their own sin causes in their lives, out of which worldly darkness the Father gives all of His sheep the first-in-time gift of the Spirit: the gift of ears to hear Jesus calling them to come into Himself, to now be of God and not of the world, while yet in the world; to live here together starting now as one flock, the same as Jesus calls all of us believers to live in the light of life in God's own Spirit, all following His call to simply "Repent and believe the good news".

The good news is the life of God which God gives all believers to now live in, too, now believing the past life of God when He once walked the Earth in the man named Jesus of Nazareth, sent here to pay with God's own life's blood to give us His Spirit of God, instead of our own Spirit of the world, to now live in each of us on Earth, where the one Spirit of both Jesus and the Father now lives in us believers; where His Spirit in us is given life, and strength, and growth in us, by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God when He was first named Jesus of Nazareth on Earth; and especially is given to live in us now that He is still yet named Jesus of Nazareth in His glorified, eternal body, in which Jesus also appeared to many on Earth, and which is now both in and with our Father in Heaven, now seated on His throne at the Father's right hand, given all power in Heaven and Earth, with all power to give us anything are able to ask as by the Spirit that is one in Jesus' name, now in the body of Christ on Earth united with the littlest believer among us so Jesus will be there, too, on Earth as it is in Heaven, where our Father tells Jesus to remain comfortably seated, while the Father makes the world into the footstool of Jesus, for Jesus to rest His feet on, while the Father delivers all His sheep to Jesus, by giving all the Father's sheep the first gift of the Spirit, which is the gift of ears to hear the voice of the one body of Christ, the voice of both the body then in the past, and now, again, the body of Christ on Earth, heard on Earth now coming from all believers who are united in calling out from the one body of Christ, which is also the one flock with the Spirit of the One, Good Shepherd with and in us here, as Jesus and our Father are one, all united in calling out to all repentant, mutually loving and forgiving believers, who forgive all who sin against us, welcoming into the one body and one flock, any and all such believers who are in every Christian faith group and denomination, to gather both ourselves and every littlest believer, sheep, and littlest lamb, whether once in and now strayed, or never gathered in, either way, as Jesus said, 'I have other sheep to be gathered', yet remaining out there in the world, yet to be gathered into the one flock, even the littlest babe who can only manage to believe in repentance and forgiveness of sins, as much as we love and forgive one another, in this name of Jesus of Nazareth.
“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, [and] one shepherd.” (Joh 10:16 AV)

"Repent and believe the good news" is where Jesus of Nazareth once started His ministry to the world, and it is where the body of Christ on Earth today is now beginning our ministry of Christian unity on this Earth, to let the world see the glory Jesus already gave us to make us one, as Jesus and the Father are one, in the One, Good Shepherd.

We still separately obey the Great Commission Jesus gave us to teach every command Jesus of Nazareth ever gave when He walked the Earth among men, as Jesus requires us to teach as we best understand, while we don't yet agree in His every command.

But we agree and unite as one in telling the world the first two commands that Jesus of Nazareth spoke, first in time, to all of us believers, all of the Father's sheep, all of whom were delivered by the Father to hear the voice of Jesus with God-given ears to hear it: "Repent and believe the good news".

Jesus came to save the world, not condemn it, so don’t think we believers don’t know this "LIFE and DEATH!" question shown in the post above, is facing us today and still applies to the whole body of Christ, as much as to unbelievers!

Jesus offers the whole world, believer and unbeliever, the exact same, good news of LIFE in His Spirit, to replace spiritual DEATH of living in the flesh, when He began His ministry here on Earth. So this spiritual LIFE and DEATH matter applies to all of us believers on earth today, including those of us in every Christian denomination and faith group, where believers still believe we have to take God at His Word, in the whole Bible, and especially in the words Jesus spoke in the Bible!

Whether or not we now have ears to hear, and hunger to eat, the Word and Bread of Life, in the words spoken by Jesus in the Bible, and by which we are led by the Spirit to understand, remember, and obediently follow into all Truth in Jesus, is the vital question of LIFE and DEATH in that Spirit that God gives to live in the heart of every one of us believers. That Spirit can only continue to live and grow in strength in us if it feeds every day on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God when He walked the earth in the man named Jesus of Nazareth, speaking the words of His Father which Jesus was sent here to give to anyone who seeks to hear the good news of all good things God gives to all who are willing to follow that Spirit, as He leads us to live in ever-increasing faith of the name of Jesus for repentance and forgiveness of sins. All of those scriptures cited in that post above apply equally to all us believers as well as to unbelievers.
“14 ¶ After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"” (Mr 1:14-15 NivUS)
“Jesus answered, "It is written: ’Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’"” (Mt 4:4 NivUS)
“9 "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"” (Lu 11:9-13 NivUS)

We’re not perfect. We know we’re still capable of sinning. But we’re trying as hard as we can to learn from the Spirit, and repent of our own sins as fast as He shows them to us, and to help each other and the world learn to repent, and learn to live constantly remembering the good news of Life in the Spirit, and Death to sin, as sin is defined in the Bible, death to all the lusts of the flesh, for immoral pleasure, excessive wealth for personal comfort, power and honor among men, instead of honor from God, knowing that while we follow the Spirit’s leading, we already are given the joy of beginning our Eternal Life in knowing God in Jesus, daily rejoicing that we are given to live now in this Life of the Spirit He gives to live in us, credited by God, to already have the inheritance and perfect holiness Jesus gives us in His blood to wash our sins away.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tim Warlick,