Unity with Christ Is Essential

Unity with Christ is essential to the life of His church. People sometimes lose a foot or a leg or an arm or an eye or an ear. It is remarkable how a person can continue to exist after they have lost several of their limbs, but they cannot live if their head is taken away. Cut the head off and the decapitated body is dead in an instant. So, brothers and sisters, the church of God lives because Christ lives, and its life is entirely derived from Him. If there were no Christ, there would be no church. If there is a body of professing believers anywhere without a vital union to Christ, they are not a church. They may have the name of a church, but they are most assuredly dead. The Spirit of God flows through Christ into the whole of His true church, spreading throughout every part of His wonderful, spiritual body. But the Spirit of God is first on the Head and in the Head, and then from Him the gracious anointing of the Holy One descends to the entire body.

Ask yourselves, dear friends, whether you are joined to Christ. Do you belong to that church that is really one in Christ, the true catholic and apostolic church (and by “catholic” I of course mean “universal”), the one and only church of the living God? All who are in Christ belong to His church, but those who are out of Christ are outside the bounds of His church. If there is a church that is not in Him, it is not Christ’s church at all. So you see that unity with Christ is essential to the life of His church.”

From Spurgeon on Unity, p. 48.