“Now I mean this, that each of you says, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?” — 1 Corinthians 1:12-13
“Therefore receive one another, as Christ also received you, to the glory of God.” — Romans 15:7
What makes a person, or a group, a sect? Is it that they meet in a different place? That they bear a different name? That they see some truths differently? If we answer according to Scripture, the answer will surprise many: division is first not a matter of organization but a matter of the heart, a matter of the flesh. A group meeting in one building, under one name, saying all the correct things, can be thoroughly sectarian within; while two companies of believers on opposite sides of a city, bearing different names, can be entirely free of sect within.
This article asks a precise question: how does Scripture define sect and division? The answer does not turn on where the outward line is drawn, but on what I use as the ground for receiving a brother.
Two Greek Words: The Tear and the Choosing
The New Testament uses two words for this, and both point inward, not outward.
The first word is “division” (σχίσμα, schisma). Its literal sense is “a tear, a rip” — Matthew 9:16 uses the same word for a new patch on an old garment that makes the tear “worse” (Blue Letter Bible G4978). Paul applies this “tearing” to the body: “that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same care for one another” (1 Cor. 12:25). Division is not two bodies standing apart; it is one body torn open — what ought to grow together, ripped.
The second word is “faction” or “sect” (αἵρεσις, hairesis). It comes from the word “to choose,” and so means “a chosen course, a party, a school of thought” (Blue Letter Bible G139). Acts uses it neutrally for the “sect” of the Sadducees or Pharisees; but when it lands inside the church, it becomes the self-chosen, self-made party. Paul lists “dissensions” and “factions” together among the works of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-21). Note that classification: being divisive is reckoned not as a difference of opinion but as an expression of the flesh, set alongside jealousy, anger, and rivalry.
Here is the first insight: sect and division, in Scripture, are first a spiritual and moral category, not an organizational or geographic one. They grow in the flesh, not on a map.
The Definition of Division: Making Something Other Than Christ the Ground of Reception
The Corinthian believers give us division’s clearest definition. They had not each founded a separate church; they still gathered in one place. Their division was four sentences on the lips: “I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ” (1 Cor. 1:12). Paul calls this division and asks, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?” (1:13). He says that all who talk this way are “fleshly” and “walk according to the manner of man” (1 Cor. 3:3-4).
The substance of division lies in the grammar of those four sentences — “I am of ___.” Each one lifts a thing (a teacher, a gift, a school of opinion) up alongside Christ, sets it as a banner, and uses it to divide the ones the Lord has joined. The most startling is the fourth: “I am of Christ.” That sentence is entirely correct in itself — we do all belong to Christ. Yet when it is wielded as a party flag, to mark off “us” from “you,” to look down on others, then even “Christ” — the truest of names — becomes the ground of a faction. This is Scripture’s deepest exposure of sect: it is not only the wrong thing that can cause division. The rightest thing — a truth, a gift, even the name of Christ — can cause it just as well, the moment you take it up as a line that shuts a brother out.
Brother Watchman Nee saw this clearly. He wrote: “What is division? Division is to be without the ground, and to be without the ground is to be divisive, and is something condemned by God.” He also observed that when the Corinthians were dividing into those of Paul, of Cephas, of Apollos, and of Christ, the Holy Spirit judged it to be fleshly (Brother Watchman Nee, Further Talks on the Church Life, ch. 1, “The Ground of the Church,” bibleread.online). This longing for oneness, this grief over sectarianism, is a precious and biblical burden.
The Opposite of Division: Receiving Those God Receives
If division is taking something other than Christ as the ground of reception, its opposite is clear — receiving every person God has received. Paul’s remedy is not “abolish all difference” but “receive one another”: “Now him who is weak in faith receive, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his considerations… for God has received him” (Rom. 14:1-3). The reason is decisive — God has already received him; who are you not to? So Paul concludes, “Receive one another, as Christ also received you” (Rom. 15:7).
The ground of fellowship is always Christ and faith in Him — never agreement on secondary things, never membership in my particular company. This is the very oneness Paul keeps in Ephesians: “being diligent to keep the oneness of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace: one Body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:3-6). The foundation of oneness is the “one” that already exists — one Lord, one faith, one baptism — not a oneness we manufacture and then require others to join.
The Reformation confessions put this very practically. The Augsburg Confession, Article VII, says the church is the congregation of saints in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments rightly administered, and that “to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. Nor is it necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies, instituted by men, should be everywhere alike” (Book of Concord, Augsburg Confession, Article VII). John Calvin likewise said that wherever we see the Word of God sincerely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, “there we cannot have any doubt that the Church of God has some existence” (John Calvin, Institutes, Book IV, ch. 1, CCEL). Unity lies in Christ being preached and received, not in men’s traditions, names, and organizations being made uniform.
The Difference Between Schism and Heresy — and a Warning
The ancient fathers drew an important distinction here: heresy and schism are not the same thing. Jerome, commenting on Titus 3:10, said: “Between heresy and schism there is this difference, that heresy perverts dogma, while schism, by rebellion against the bishop, separates from the Church.” Augustine put it even more piercingly: “By false doctrines concerning God heretics wound faith; by iniquitous dissensions schismatics deviate from fraternal charity, although they believe what we believe” (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Schism,” quoting Jerome and Augustine, New Advent).
Read Augustine’s sentence a second time. A schismatic can “believe what we believe” — sound in doctrine, zealous in defending the faith, correct on every point — and still be a schismatic, because he has deviated from brotherly love. This moves the measuring rod of sect away from “how right is your doctrine” and “how serious are you about oneness,” and sets it somewhere else: “have you cut off love and care from those who confess the same Lord as you?”
Here is a warning that those who prize oneness most need to hear. Cyprian raised one of the most beautiful cries ever raised for the church’s unbroken unity — taking as his image Christ’s tunic, “woven from the top throughout,” which even the soldiers would not tear; he went so far as to say, “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother” (Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, §6-7, New Advent). This love for unity is holy. Yet history shows, again and again, a sobering thing: the ones who most loudly proclaim “we alone are the one true church” are often, in that very claim, turning themselves into a sect — because they have drawn a line Christ did not draw, and shut out brothers the Lord has received. The most hidden sect of all is the party that forms around being un-sectarian.
The True Ground Is Christ Himself
What, then, is the church’s true ground? It is Christ Himself, and nothing else. Whomever Christ has received, I receive; whomever God calls His child, I call my brother. This line is not mine to draw — the Lord drew it, and I have no authority to draw it narrower.
This is why the pursuit of oneness, if it is not watchful, runs into its own opposite. A person can burn with zeal for the church’s oneness, and yet in that zeal come to believe that “oneness” happens only within his own company, so that every other believer becomes “divisive,” “not on the ground.” At that point the hand guarding unity is already manufacturing division. The remedy is always to return to one sentence: “God has received him” (Rom. 14:3). As wide as the heart of Christ is, that wide should my reception be.
Brothers and sisters, Paul’s question hangs over everyone who loves the Lord — “Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor. 1:13). He is not divided. He has only one Body, bought by one death, a tunic woven from the top throughout, without seam. We are called not to build a purer circle that shuts others out, but to recognize and receive every one whom Christ has already received, as He received us, to the glory of God (Rom. 15:7). The mark of true freedom from every sect is not that we are more separate than others, but that our hearts have finally grown wide enough to hold everyone the Lord loves.