With One Accord

I heard someone comment the other day that the Lord doesn’t celebrate diversity; He celebrates unity.  That’s clear from the scriptures and especially from the Savior’s final teachings to the apostles before His death.  In the great intercessory prayer given by the Savior right before He went into the garden, He prayed for His disciples this way, “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are….  Neither I pray for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may be one in us” (John 17:11, 20-21).  He continued by praying, “The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one” (John 17:22-23).  The Savior wasn’t looking to fill some diversity standard in picking His disciples; rather, He earnestly hoped that they would be united as He and His Father are perfectly united.  I think we see that what is recorded later in the New Testament about the early Church shows that they were indeed striving for this kind of unity.  

                The phrase “one accord” is repeated multiple times in the second half of the New Testament, showing the kind of unity that the apostles sought to create among those early Saints.  Shortly after the ascension of the Savior, we read that the disciples “all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren” (Acts 1:14).  The apostles, the brothers of Christ, and the faithful women of the Church were praying together with “one accord” as they were surely seeking guidance on where they would go from there.  In the next chapter we get the same phrase: “When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place” (Acts 2:1).  And certainly it was at least in part because of that unity that they were able to have such an outpouring of the Spirit on that famous day.  Later in the same chapter we read that the disciples grew in number and had all things in common, “and they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart” (Acts 2:46).  Shortly thereafter when Peter and John were released from prison and rejoined their group of Saints, “they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is” (Acts 4:24).  They were completely united in their prayers and praise to God.  In the next chapter after what happened to Ananias and Sapphira who were clearly not unified with the Saints, we read again that “they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch” (Acts 5:12).  Later in Samaria when Philip taught the gospel there, Luke recorded, “the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did” (Acts 8:6).  Paul summarized the instruction that was surely oft-repeated by all the apostles: “Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind” (Philippians 2:2).  The early Saints knew that it was unity that the Lord required of His Saints, and it was the disintegration of that unity that ultimately led to the apostasy.  For us in our day the Lord’s desire for us in the Church is surely the same; we are to seek to be “led with one accord into the land of promise” like Lehi of old (1 Nephi 10:13).