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Unity in Christ

“Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future,” -Ephesians 4:1-4 

It’s not a secret that we live in a nation marked by division. It doesn’t take much searching to find headlines in major newspapers like:

  • New York Times Article: These Divided States
  • Voters are angry and divided
  • Divisions are only growing wider
  • America is in a cold civil war

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, in their book The Coddling of the American Mind talk about the concept of affective polarization. They contend that we’ve become increasingly polarized because of our echo chambers. We’re no longer having to engage with people who think differently than us. We have isolated worldviews.

“A major reason is the media environment, which has changed in ways that foster division. Long gone is the time when everybody watched one of three national television networks. By the 1990s, there was a cable news channel for most points on the political spectrum, and by the early 2000s there was a website or discussion group for every conceivable interest group and grievance. By the 2010s, most Americans were using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, which make it easy to encase oneself within an echo chamber. And then there’s the ‘filter bubble’ in which search engines and YouTube algorithms are designed to give you more of what you seem to be interested in, leading conservatives and progressives into disconnected moral matrices backed up by mutually contradictory informational worlds.”

The tough part is there’s good reason to disagree. Education is at stake. An accurate telling of history, or sometimes the telling of it at all, seems to be at stake. Biblical truth, religious liberty, the ability to work, the values upon which this country was originally conceived all seem to be at stake. We’re afraid of what might happen if we do not disagree.

So I want to talk about what unity is not:

  • It’s not total agreement. We can graciously disagree
  • It’s not cowardice nor backing down in the face of evil. Quite the contrary, we must unite against evil
  • It’s not uniformity. God, in his sovereign wisdom gave us brilliant and beautiful diversity of thought, passion, gifting, and background that helps us sharpen each other and navigate wisely.
  • It’s not mere tolerance. Tolerance alone breeds a kind of fragile pretended unity.
  • It’s not a virtue in and of itself. Think of the Tower of Babel. You can be unified around the wrong thing.

The world doesn’t need generic unity. It’s already “unified” over sports teams and politics and the pursuit of money and pleasure. We need Biblical unity. Unity in Christ.

Philippians 2:2-4 says, “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 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.”

According to the apostle Paul, what instigates Christian unity is others-centered love that’s driven by first receiving and reveling Christ’s selfless, us-centered love.

Christ bridges our differences. Christ makes it safe for us to graciously disagree and still trust one another’s heart for the other. Christ allows us to unite around the mutual purpose of obeying God, loving each other, and working together to bring the world back into relationship with Christ.

That’s ultimately the mission of Pepperdine. Unity in Christ for the glory of God and the good of the world.

I think it rather fitting that we begin the year with a passion, not for pretended unity, or unity around the wrong things, or tacit niceness that denotes a lack of trust, but genuine unity in spirit and truth. Unity in Christ.

About the Author

Cameron Gilliam

Pepperdine Alumnus