Have you ever sat through the credits of a movie? If you have, maybe you’ve had one of those moments where you were awestruck by the number of people involved. On average, 600 crew members are needed to make a Hollywood blockbuster. And that’s not even including the cast! 

If you’ve ever watched one of those behind-the-scenes extras about the making of a movie, the director will almost always end up expressing how amazing and incredible it is that all these people worked together with one heart and one mind to achieve their goal. Despite being worldly people, with all kinds of sinful motives, they managed somehow to unite around the goal of making a movie.

As the church, we’re pursuing something far greater than the making of a mere movie! Of all the people on the planet therefore, shouldn’t we be the most united? Especially given that unity was the focus of Jesus’ prayer for us in John 17.

In 1 Peter 3:8 Peter introduces a list of five qualities that ought to characterise everyone in the church, and the first of them deals with unity. In the next few articles, we’ll consider all these qualities as we begin our new series: Church as it Should Be. In this article we’ll discuss the first, ‘unity of mind’ along with the fifth, ‘a humble mind’. We’ll consider two misuses of Peter’s call for ‘unity of mind,’ and then its meaning, before considering how having this ‘unity of mind’ is linked to the similar call to have ‘a humble mind’.

1) The Misuse of the Call for ‘Unity of Mind’

First Misuse: ‘You Must All Believe Whatever the Teacher Says’

A classic cult technique is to suggest that you must attempt to believe whatever the teacher says, regardless of what he says, in order to have ‘unity of mind’. Unfortunately, examples of this kind of misuse and abuse of Peter’s words abound.

A few years ago, David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians (an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist cult), told his congregation that he was the Lamb of God from the book of Revelation, and only he could open the scroll. Koresh went on to teach that only he could give people the proper interpretation of Scripture. That kind of thought-control allows cult leaders to take their people down almost any path. In this case, it ended with dozens of them dying in a stand-off with the FBI who’d come to arrest him.

Other cults like the Scientologists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses have similarly authoritarian approaches with their own authorised interpreters of Scripture and strong warnings about reading the writings of anyone who’s not 'approved'.

This mindset flies in the face of what Scripture teaches. In Acts 17:11, the Bereans are commended as being ‘more noble than the Thessalonians and the others’. Why? Because they had ‘unity of mind’ by blindly accepting whatever Paul said? No! Because they were committed to ‘examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.’ They examined whether what Paul was teaching was true or not. It’s a terrible thing to abuse the position of the pulpit and to claim from a position of a teacher that you all must have unity of mind and that means you all must believe what I say, whatever I say.

The Reformers had to deal with this from the Roman Catholic Church, and they made it clear that Scripture is clear (perspicuous)! Good churches teach their people how to read the Bible for themselves. With the help of the Holy Spirit and some hard work, you can understand it. It is therefore a misuse to say that having ‘unity of mind’ means that you’re supposed to believe whatever your teacher says.

Second Misuse: ‘You Must All Believe Whatever the Confession Says’

It’s also a misuse of this verse to suggest that the need for us to have ‘unity of mind’ implies, as some of our confessional friends might say, that we all must believe whatever the confession says.

Several problems mean that this is a misuse of the need we have to ‘have unity of mind’. First, a confession is a condensation of biblical truth. A condensation is inevitably inadequate because it leaves things out! Second, a confession is inevitably faulty, since it is the product of human thought. A third problem emerges when we ask which confession we must believe in order to have ‘unity of mind’. A lot of the Reformed confessions are really very good, however, you can’t logically say, as some do, that you believe all of the main ones, because they differ with each other. So, which confession must we all believe, if having unity of mind means believing the confession?

It ought to be obvious, that to say that you believe a confession, you first ought to have read it and adequately understood it. That, however, is no small task, and it is unrealistic to ask a newly converted Christian to grapple with their arguments. Brilliant theologians came together to produce them, and it takes very careful thought to even grasp the arguments around their doctrinal differences, let alone come to a conclusion.

For this reason, to insist (as some confessional churches do) that you affirm your belief in their chosen confession, before even being allowed to become a member of the church, is a misuse of this idea of having unity of mind. The entry requirement for membership in the church is not wholehearted belief in a particular confession, but true faith in Christ, repentance and baptism upon that faith and repentance.

This is why we call our statement of faith ‘what we teach’ rather than ‘what we believe’. As John MacArthur put it, ‘We know you don’t all believe it, that’s why we teach it!’

As a footnote, it is wise to require someone joining any church to read and attempt to understand its confession. I am certainly not arguing against that. Everyone joining GraceLife London is required to read and be transparent about any areas of disagreement or difficulty in understanding ‘What we Teach’. This is not, however the same as requiring belief,and the distinction may seem subtle, but is profound. To require belief binds the conscience to the confession instead of the Bible, and that is to misconstrue what is meant by unity of mind.

2) The Meaning of ‘Unity of Mind’

So, what does ‘unity of mind’ actually imply? The Greek word here is a helpful place to start: Homophrones is made up of Homo which means ‘the same’ and phrēn, which is referring to our thinking. Literalistically interpreted then, Peter is saying we are supposed to have the same thinking, but that isn’t conclusive because we still have to ask, ‘What does that mean?’

Strabo, a Greek philosopher and geographer who died in AD 24, gives us a little more help when he uses this word to describe people who lived, ‘as if brothers of one another’. That suggests it’s talking about a kind of unity that exists regardless of disagreement. We might describe that as a unity in spirit.

The biggest help comes from the Bible itself. While the exact form of this word doesn’t show up anywhere else in the New Testament, the idea is everywhere. Consider the early chapters of Acts where the church had exploded in growth, and it’s said in Acts 4:32, ‘The full number of those who believed were of one heart and one soul.’ The result of this unity of heart and soul, was that they took care of each other’s needs, as brothers: ‘No one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common’ (Acts 4:32).

In Philippians 2, the same idea is present. Paul says, ‘If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind’ (Philippians 2:1-2). And in the next verse he says: ‘Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves’ (Philippians 2:3).

Taking all this together, it’s possible to say that unity of mind means being united in heart and soul around a common purpose. A few other New Testament examples only reinforce this same picture (Romans 12:16; 15:5; 1 Corinthians 1:10; 1 Corinthains 12; 2 Corinthians 13:11), and the Corinthians provide the classic example of the mess that follows when this is missing.

As David said in Psalm 133, ‘How good and pleasant is it when brothers dwell together in unity!’ It really is a beautiful thing to see ‘unity of mind’ enabling people of different gifts to each play their part in harmony. Just as a drummer has to rein it some times, and other times be willing to sit and do nothing, the church body descends into chaos when every Christian wants it to be about them.

3) How it Goes Together with Having 'a Humble Mind'

With that said, it’s not difficult to see how unity of mind pairs perfectly with humility, but it’s worth talking a moment to notice how Peter made this pairing quite deliberate.  

Both Greek and Hebrew authors would often balance a list of words or thoughts by using a device called a chiasm. What that means is that in a list of five qualities like this, number one would be paired with number five. Number two would then pair with number four, and the one quality left on its own in the middle would be the heart of the matter which the author is trying to highlight.

In the list in verse 8, that’s exactly what appears to be happening, and it means there are three main ideas here being put forward instead of five. The first idea is unity of mind and a humble mind. The second idea is sympathy and tender-heartedness. The third and main focus is brotherly love.

As we’ll see in next week’s article, there’s such an overlap in the meaning of the words translated as ‘sympathy’ and ‘tender heart’, that it’s very difficult to understand this list as five separate qualities, and better to see them in this way, as a chiasm presenting three main ideas.

The Greek word for a ‘humble mind’ is tapeinophrones made up of tapeinos meaning ‘humble’ and phrēn (thinking). Peter, then, is talking about the need for humble thinking, humble-mindedness, low-mindedness—in other words not thinking of yourself more highly than you ought, but thinking of yourself in a lowly manner.

The connection to ‘unity of mind’ is clear. As we see in Philippians 2:2-3, when the New Testament calls for ‘unity of mind’, it immediately calls for humility. Having called for unity of mind Paul goes straight on to say that you must ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men’ (Philippians 2:5-7). That’s humility of mind!

The connection between the two terms really makes sense when we begin to ask the question: what happens when we don’t do this? What happens when a choir member wants to stand out instead of blend in? What happens when too many people try to direct things? When ‘unity of mind’ and a ‘humble mind’ are missing, people get hurt and the mission fails.

Conclusion

The world is watching how Christians get on with each other. It’s a tragedy that it’s so easy for the world to see examples of disunity among people who are saying with their lips, ‘This world is not my home. I’m just a-passing through.’ When we say ‘It’s not about what I get in this life, and I’ve got an inheritance stored up for me in heaven.’ but we display a lack of humility of mind by being like the choir member who has to stand out, our actions contradict our words.

Peter is saying that we’ve all got to have humble-minded unity. And that means you’ve got to put down your disputes, as we hope Euodia and Syntyche eventually did (Philippians 4:2)!

We have the most incredible task to complete together. No mere movie, but a Great Commission to bring the gospel to our city and the ends of the earth! There’s also a list of credits coming one day for God’s people. And God is going to reward every act of self-sacrificial, humble unity. None of it will go unnoticed by our Saviour. Let’s not be the people who say by the way we act that ‘it’s all about me’.