PCA Founder John Edwards Richards on Christian Unity

“Christians should be one as God is; God is a Spirit, therefore this is a spiritual oneness for which our Savior prayed. God is a spirit, not a body of different parts, and our unity in Him is a spiritual relationship. It has NOT to do with physical proximity, nor matter, nor color, nor earthly properties. It has to do with the soul of man which God breathed into him, not the body which was made from the dust of the ground.”

John Edwards Richards (1911-1989)
One of the Founders of the PCA
Sermon on Christian Unity

Note Dr. Edwards clearly outlines that the unity of Christians that is expected among Christians is spiritual and not about color. Japanese Christians and Nigerian Christians can have this unity without marrying each other or adopting each other’s children. To transfer and insist on the Christian doctrine of unity into nonspiritual realms, as the NAPARC churches are now doing is to confuse the categories of creation and redemption and is to embrace the vision of unity articulated by Marxist philosophers since the rise of Marx.

There is more of Marx than there is of Christ in the latest ARP effort to rail against the Christianity once and forever delivered unto the saints. I pray that God will open their eyes before they are visited with pestilence for their disobedience.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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