Unity in Christ Unity in Christ

Series: Standing Firm in Shifting Sands: The Gospel in a Transformed Culture: Defined by God, Not the Culture – Day 4

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14, NIV)

Good morning, friends! We live in an age that has become extraordinarily skilled at sorting people. By race, by income, by politics, by neighborhood, by cause. Every category comes loaded with its own loyalties and its own grievances, and the pressure to choose a side and stay there is relentless. Into that fractured world, Scripture places something the culture cannot produce and cannot explain: a community where the deepest divisions have already been dealt with, not by human agreement or compromise, but by the finished work of Jesus Christ.

The Wall That Came Down

The apostle Paul wrote to a congregation in Ephesus that was living proof of what only the Gospel can accomplish. Jewish believers and Gentile believers were gathered under one roof, and the distance between them had been real and deep for generations. Gentiles had been strangers to God’s covenant, outsiders in the most profound sense. Paul does not soften this history. He names it plainly in Ephesians 2:11-13: “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called ‘uncircumcised’ by those who call themselves ‘the circumcision’ (which is done in the body by human hands) — remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (NIV)

Two words are worth stopping on: “But now.” Everything before them is the honest diagnosis. Everything after them is Gospel. The Gentiles were far. They were excluded. They had no hope. And then Christ bled, and the distance collapsed. Paul names what that accomplished in the very next verse: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14, NIV) The wall did not come down because the two groups decided to tolerate each other. It came down because Jesus Christ destroyed it at the cross. This is not a human achievement. It is a divine one, accomplished once, permanently, for all who belong to Him.

And what followed from that destruction was not a fragile truce but a new creation altogether. Paul describes what Christ actually built in Ephesians 2:19-22: “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” (NIV) Foreigners made into fellow citizens. Strangers welcomed into God’s own household. Individual stones from wildly different backgrounds fitted together into one temple. This is what the cross produced, and no shift in our culture can undo it.

The Mind That Guards It

Knowing what Christ has done does not automatically translate into the daily practice of unity. The pull toward our own kind, our own comfort, and our own grievances is persistent. Paul is clear-eyed about this, which is why he calls us in Ephesians 4:3-6 to something active and deliberate: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (NIV) The unity already exists because Christ purchased it. Our calling is to live inside what He has already built rather than work against it by the way we treat one another.

Paul then shows us what that living looks like, and he anchors it not in a strategy but in a person. In Philippians 2:3-8 he writes: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!” (NIV)

Jesus Christ, who possessed every advantage and stood under no obligation to cross any distance at all, descended into the full depth of our division and bore the full weight of our hostility on the cross. He did not demand that we close the gap before He would come to us. He closed it Himself. That act is the foundation of every relationship we share with one another in His name, and it is the posture we are called to carry when unity feels costly or inconvenient. We love across dividing lines because Jesus Christ crossed the greatest divide that has ever existed to bring us near to God.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, I confess how naturally I gravitate toward those who are like me and how quickly I treat differences as reasons for distance rather than opportunities to reflect what Christ has already accomplished. Forgive me for the moments I have let the culture’s way of sorting people shape my fellowship more than the cross has. Thank You for the staggering truth that Christ destroyed the dividing wall and brought me near when I was far.

Today, help me to carry the mind of Christ into every relationship I enter. Where there is tension in my congregation or in my community, make me a builder of the unity the Spirit has already created. Give me the humility to value others above myself and the courage to stand on what we truly share in Christ rather than retreat to what divides us. Let the peace Jesus purchased be visible in the way I live this day. In Jesus’s name, I pray. Amen.

As we go through this day, the pressure to sort ourselves will be constant. The world is skilled at reminding us of everything that separates us. We carry a different story: a dividing wall brought down, strangers made into household members, a temple being built stone by stone from people who had no reason to belong together except the one reason that changes everything. That reason is Jesus Christ, and He is more than enough.

We praise You, Lord Jesus, for becoming our peace and destroying every wall that stood between us and God and between us and one another! We praise You, Father, for making strangers into fellow citizens through the blood of Your Son. We praise You, Holy Spirit, for binding us together in the bond of peace. What a gift You have given us in one another!

To God be the glory.

We are so grateful for every person who shares these devotions with someone who needs them! To receive them each morning, text ADD to 1-833-779-8793. Together we stand firm in the unity Christ purchased for us.