It does not take long in church life before you bump up against someone who sees things differently to you. Different backgrounds, different experiences, different convictions. The question is not whether differences will arise, but what we do when they do. Jesus gave the disciples a very clear answer in John 13, and the early church had to work it out in real time in Acts 15.
The Mark of a Disciple Is Love, Not Agreement
In John 13, Jesus is speaking plainly to his disciples when he says:
A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)
The mark of a disciple is not that we see everything eye to eye. It is our love for each other. That love flows from receiving the love of Jesus and then choosing to display it to others. Unity in the church is only possible when we do what Jesus commanded, and it is what makes combined church events, coffee with Christians from other congregations, and genuine fellowship across differences possible at all.
The Early Church Faced This Too
Acts 15 shows us two very different groups trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus together. Jewish believers had kept the Law their whole lives. Gentile believers had no history with the Law at all. When certain people from Judea arrived in Antioch teaching that circumcision was required for salvation, it brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute with them. This was not a polite disagreement. Yet the church did not split. They stayed in the room, worked through it, and drew a line between what was essential and what was not.
Peter stood and reminded the gathering of what God had already done:
God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. (Acts 15:8-9)
And the conclusion they reached was striking:
It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements. (Acts 15:28)
Two cultures. One family. The gospel held firmly at the centre.
Three Categories Worth Knowing
Paul carried the Jerusalem council’s wisdom into his ministry, including to the church in Rome, where the same tensions were playing out over food and feast days. He names a category that is worth sitting with:
Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarrelling over disputable matters. (Romans 14:1)
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17)
Disputable matters. Worth having a view on, but not worth fracturing the body over. A helpful framework for navigating this is three categories: dogma, doctrine, and opinion.
Dogma is the non-negotiable core of the Christian faith. These are the things Christians everywhere in every age have confessed: the Trinity, Jesus as fully God and fully human, his death for our sins and bodily resurrection, salvation by grace through faith, and the authority of Scripture. Get these wrong and you have stepped outside Christian orthodoxy. The historic creeds, including the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, were formed precisely to define and protect these essentials.
Doctrine is where faithful Christians can land differently. This is where denominations come from, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. How and when we baptise, what is happening at communion, whether the gifts of the Spirit are for today, how we read end times, how a church is governed: these can all be defended from Scripture, and sincere believers have landed in different places. Hold your doctrinal convictions with both conviction and humility.
Opinion is the third category, and the one we most often mistake for doctrine or dogma. The style and volume of the music. The Bible translation you prefer. Whether you raise your hands in worship or sit quietly. How you structure your prayer life. These are preferences, and treating them as binding on others creates problems that do not need to exist.
Testing the Voices We Listen To
We all have voices that shape our faith: sermons, podcasts, books, conferences, social media. The Bereans provide a good model for how to approach all of them:
The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. (Acts 17:11)
When you encounter any teacher or voice, it is worth asking: who is this person, where have they been formed, are they accountable to anyone, and where might their blind spots be? And Paul’s own instruction in 1 Thessalonians applies:
Test them all; hold on to what is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
The deeper question underneath all of it is this: is Jesus at the centre? Paul was clear about his own focus:
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2)
And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. (Colossians 1:18)
If a teaching keeps drawing you back to Jesus crucified, risen, and reigning, it is on solid ground. If it nudges him to the edge and puts something else at the centre, that is the warning sign.
Practical Steps Forward
Read John 13, Acts 15, and Romans 14 for yourself this week. Let the story of the Jerusalem council sit with you and notice how two very different groups stayed together because the gospel was the centre.
Know your dogma and hold it without flinching. The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed are worth reading and remembering. These are the things worth standing firm on.
Hold your doctrinal convictions with both confidence and humility. You can have a position without needing everyone else to arrive at the same one before you accept them as family.
Hold your opinions with an open hand. A preference is not a principle. What matters deeply to you may simply not be the same for the person sitting next to you, and that is genuinely okay.
Stay in the room. A difference of opinion is not a reason to walk out on family. We have different gifts, we will see things differently, and if Jesus is at the centre, we will be okay.
