Verse 6 (Matthew 6:6) directs us to pray to God in the privacy of our own rooms, that is, alone. It is not that we are to avoid corporate prayer, but that our corporate prayer must be supported by our private prayer.
From a trinitarian perspective there are three overlapping points of communication in prayer, all of which are essential. Prayer is a three-way communication that includes you (the person who is praying), God Himself, and God’s people. The unity of the church, the unity of God’s people, is established through the privacy of our personal prayer, in our prayer closets.
The reward that God has for those who engage prayer as here instructed is unity or union with Christ. Christian unity is a fruit of prayer. Being in unity or in union with someone means to be on the same page with them, to have the same concerns and agenda. And unity with Christ means that our personal and individual concerns and agendas are the same as Christ’s concerns and agenda. We are to align ourselves, our thinking, our hearts and minds, with Him, with His thinking, with His heart, His mind. We are to seek a one-to-one correspondence with the Lord as best as we are able. And the only way to do that is to align ourselves with Scripture, with the revelation of God.
Christian unity is not a matter of being in political or administrative alliance with other Christians. That kind of alliance among other Christians takes our eyes off Jesus and puts our attention on one another. These kinds of alliances produce monotheistic uniformity, not trinitarian unity. These kinds of alliances can only be achieved through compromise because of our limited and sinful perspectives, our different preferences and personalities, and our different callings. Whereas, trinitarian unity issues from the fullness and integrity of God’s covenant because of Christ’s sinless perspective and manifests in the diversity of human character in Christ. Indeed, Christian unity cannot be found in ourselves, nor in our various statements or documents, not in our various churches, alliances, or denominations, not in our differing analyses, theologies, or in our politics.
Rather, Christian unity is a function of our prayer closets, of Christ in our hearts and minds. It is not a fruit of getting together in order to pray. It’s not a matter of posturing or prattling about the importance of our roles or responsibilities regarding Christian unity. It’s not a fruit of praying in mass rallies for Christian unity. Rather, Christian unity is demonstrated by going into our own rooms by ourselves and praying to God in secret, in private, and keeping it to ourselves because that is what it means for something to be private. Christian unity is found by aligning ourselves, our thoughts and desires, with God’s thoughts and desires as they have been revealed in Scripture.
Christian unity is the unity of the body of Christ. And the unity of the body is found in the cooperative diversity of its parts. Each part, each person, each church has a different God-given role to play. Each has a unique perspective, a different function, a unique purpose, different gifts. So, how can each of the diverse parts of the body be in unity? Simple. Their unity is a function of their trinitarian character in Christ. The diversity of Christian character, the diversity of function, is the unity. The whole, though greater than the parts, is still a product of the parts. The unity of the whole depends on the cooperative diversity and the integrity of the parts.
But again, the unity of the body of Christ is not found by seeking outward unity with other Christians. It is found by individual Christians going into their prayer closets alone, and aligning themselves—their own thoughts and desires—to God’s thoughts and desires as revealed in the Bible. Unity is the alignment of the subjectivity of the individual with the objectivity of God, as revealed in Scripture.
The toe doesn’t need to know what the ear is hearing. Nor does the elbow need to see what the eye sees. The body can’t function if the ear is trying to be a toe or the eye an elbow. The body only functions when each part does its own particular job, when each individual is in alignment with God’s particular purpose for him or for her.
But who will be in charge of the unity? How will people know if they are in unity with Christ? Well, Christ is in charge of the unity. It’s His body, not ours. The body doesn’t belong to the foot or the knee. If anything, the head is in charge, and Christ alone is the head of the church. So, each part needs to be in proper alignment, not with each other, but with the Head. Alignment—cooperation, obedience, and integrity in the Head—in Christ—is unity.
From Rock Mountain Creed—Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Phillip A. Ross, Pilgrim Platform, Marietta, Ohio, 2011.