INTRODUCTION
The Beatles once sang, “Come together, right now…” It was a cry for unity in a world already spinning apart—an anthem of longing to belong, to find common ground again. Yet half a century later, that echo still rings hollow. We’re more connected than ever, but somehow more divided than we can remember.
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians offers a different kind of togetherness—one that doesn’t depend on slogans or sentiment, but on a Savior. He reminds us that Christ Himself is our peace—that in Him, the center truly holds. And that’s what I want to talk about today: how God brings all of us, with our differences and scars and stories, all together, right now, in Christ.
Not long ago, I watched an older couple at a café. The husband looked up from his coffee, sighed, and said, “You know, we’ve been married forty-seven years, and I still don’t understand her.”
Without missing a beat, his wife smiled and said, “Good. Keeps you humble.”
Everyone around them laughed, but I thought: that’s the church in miniature. We’re together, but we don’t always understand each other. Sometimes we rub; sometimes we rest. Yet we keep showing up—because something, or rather Someone, keeps holding us together even when we can’t hold ourselves together.
That’s really the story of Ephesians 1 and 2. Paul writes to a community filled with difference—Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, men and women—and he says: “Christ Himself is our peace.” In other words, Jesus is the center that holds when everything else falls apart.
1. WHEN THE CENTER STARTS TO COME LOOSE
More than a hundred years ago the Irish poet William Butler Yeats looked at the broken world left by World War I and wrote words that still ring today:
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
He wasn’t writing theology, but he captured it perfectly. When people lose their center—when they stop hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit—the world spins itself apart.
Look around and you can see it again: politics that divide, families that fracture, faith communities that splinter. The center doesn’t hold easily anymore.
So here’s the question Paul answers: What keeps us together? What holds the family of God when personalities clash and opinions differ? He points us back to grace—back to what God has done in Christ.
2. THE MYSTERY OF REDEMPTION
Ephesians 1 opens with one long, breathless sentence in Greek—Paul’s heart spilling out praise:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”
Paul uses three Greek words to paint one portrait of redemption:
1. Agorazo — to buy in the marketplace.
2. Exagorazo — to buy out of the marketplace, never to be sold again.
3. Lutroo — to release or set free.
That’s the gospel in three movements. Christ entered the marketplace of human slavery—where sin owned the deeds to our lives—and He bought us with His blood. Then He carried us out of that marketplace and finally, He set us free.
Redemption isn’t just rescue; it’s release. God doesn’t purchase you to make you property; He buys you to bring you home. Think about that. We were not purchased as servants but restored as sons and daughters.
3. ADOPTION AND BELONGING
Paul keeps the thought going: “In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ.”
In the ancient world, adoption was irreversible. A natural child could be disowned; an adopted child could not. Once your name was entered on the family register, it stayed there for life.
When you accepted Christ, you didn’t just join an organization—you joined a family that can never disown you.
I understand something about adoption because I watched it unfold in my own family.
When my parents were missionaries in Burma, our home was always full—four sisters, two brothers, and a steady hum of laughter, arguments, and hand-me-downs. My father was a doctor and my mother a nurse, both always giving more than they had.
Years later, after we’d left Rangoon, my father’s Burmese nurse married a British businessman and moved to England. Time passed, and one day the phone rang. Her husband had died suddenly of a heart attack, and now she herself was dying of cancer.
She asked my parents if they would take her little boy, Tommy.
A few weeks later, on a September afternoon, he arrived at JFK—small, clutching a teddy bear and a backpack. He went from being an only child to one of the gang overnight.
And though there was no shared blood, there was shared love. Tommy didn’t have to earn his place; he simply belonged. My parents didn’t just open their house—they opened their hearts.
That’s what God has done for us. We came into His family holding the tattered teddy bears of our brokenness, but He welcomed us as sons and daughters. He said, “You belong here now.”
A lot of Christians live like that little boy—half packed, half-loved, unsure they’re really home. But God doesn’t change His mind. He doesn’t love you because you’re lovable; He loves you because it’s His nature to love.
That’s the heart of grace—He wanted you on your worst day as much as on your best.
So if you’ve been walking around with your spiritual bags packed, waiting for rejection, unpack them. You’re home.
4. THE FELLOWSHIP FACTOR
Once you realize you’re adopted, you discover you have siblings—many of them.
Peter writes, “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.” To honor everyone is to treat every human being as someone God thought worth dying for. To love the brotherhood means to enter into koinonia—shared life.
We’ve watered that word down to mean coffee and cookies after church, but koinonia means something richer: sharing joys, carrying burdens, belonging deeply enough to risk honesty.
When we ask, “How are you?” we often mean, “Please don’t tell me.” Fellowship starts when we mean it—when we stop glancing at our phones and look each other in the eye long enough to say, “No, really—how are you?”
That’s where the Spirit begins weaving hearts together—thread by thread, story by story, until strangers become family.
5. CHOOSING TO BELONG
True fellowship doesn’t happen accidentally. It begins with a choice. We choose to belong. We choose to show up. We choose to let others in.
The believers in Acts 2 were described as “devoted to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship.” They didn’t attend when convenient; they rearranged their lives around community.
Belonging means commitment. It means staying when others leave, forgiving when others withdraw, reaching out when others close off.
Imagine if church felt like that old TV show Cheers—the place “where everybody knows your name.” Deep down, we all want that. Even the most introverted among us wants to be known and accepted.
Belonging is oxygen to the soul. Without it, faith becomes theory. With it, faith becomes life.
6. THE CHALLENGE OF UNITY
But belonging isn’t easy. We come from different backgrounds—cultures, politics, temperaments, generations. Even inside one congregation we find conservatives and progressives, literalists and poets, planners and dreamers.
Unity feels impossible when we confuse it with uniformity. Uniformity says, “Everyone must think and act like me.” Unity says, “We share the same center, and His name is Jesus.”
That’s why Paul wrote Ephesians 2. Jews and Gentiles had been divided for centuries. Each thought the other spiritually inferior. Then Paul writes these revolutionary words: “He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us.”
7. CHRIST OUR PEACE
Peace isn’t just a feeling—it’s a Person. Paul writes, “He Himself is our peace.” Not He gives peace, though He does that too. Not He preaches peace, though His words still calm storms. No—He Himself is peace.
That means peace isn’t found by avoiding people who disagree with you; it’s found by drawing closer to Jesus together.
When the center of the circle is Christ, the closer we move toward Him, the closer we move toward each other.
8. WHEN WALLS BECOME MEMORIES
Every generation of believers has its walls. In the first century, it was Jew and Gentile. In our time, it might be conservative and progressive, old hymns and new songs, or the thousand small fences we build to make ourselves feel safer.
Paul says Jesus “abolished in His flesh the law of commandments contained in ordinances.” He’s not saying moral law no longer matters—he’s saying the way law was used to divide no longer has any authority.
If Christ has torn down the wall, why are we still stacking bricks?
9. GRACE THAT CROSSES THE AISLE
I once watched that truth play out in my own family. Two of my uncles built a successful business together. They were bright, hardworking, generous men—respected by everyone who knew them. Then came a misunderstanding—small at first, but pride gave it oxygen. Words sharpened, tempers rose, and one day it turned physical.
After that, they never spoke again. The family divided down loyalty lines. Cousins who once played together stopped talking. No one remembers what started it.
Whenever I think of them, I realize how fragile peace can be—and how easily we trade years of love for minutes of anger.
What began as a disagreement became a monument to silence. Paul’s words echo through that memory: “He Himself is our peace.” Only Jesus can reach across that kind of canyon and start building again. Grace is the only language that can speak into that silence.
10. WHEN PEACE BECOMES PERSONAL
Not long ago, a pastor friend told me about a season when conflict nearly split his church. Harsh words had been exchanged; trust had evaporated. One Sabbath, as he was praying, one of the members quietly walked up, placed a hand on his shoulder, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
The pastor stood there in stunned silence. Then he wrapped his arms around the man, and the congregation began to weep. Peace wasn’t a doctrine that day—it was an embrace. That’s what happens when the presence of Christ fills the space between two imperfect people.
11. TRUSTING THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN OTHERS
Unity takes humility. It means trusting that God’s Spirit is at work in someone else’s life even if they’re not where you are yet. It’s not my job to make you like me; it’s the Spirit’s job to make us both like Christ.
That trust changes how we listen and how we speak. It softens the tone, quiets the impulse to correct, and gives room for grace to breathe.
12. THE HUMAN SIDE OF GRACE
Let me confess something. For years, I thought unity depended on my ability to convince people I was right. If I could just explain things clearly enough, others would see the light. But unity doesn’t come through persuasion; it comes through presence—the presence of the Spirit that whispers, “You both belong here.”
13. MAKE EVERY EFFORT
Paul’s appeal in Ephesians 4:3 is simple but weighty: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” That phrase—“make every effort”—assumes effort will be required. Unity doesn’t drift in naturally; it has to be guarded.
14. ONE LORD, ONE FAITH, ONE BAPTISM
Paul goes on: “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.” That’s the creed of unity. Not a statement we sign, but a reality we live.
15. THE GIFT OF DIFFERENCE
Here’s the paradox: God loves unity, but He also loves diversity. The same Spirit who brings us together also hands out different gifts. Paul says Christ “gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.” Different callings, one purpose: to build up the body of Christ.
16. WHEN UNITY COSTS SOMETHING
Real unity will always cost us something. It costs our pride, our defensiveness, and our right to have the last word. It means laying down the sword we polish with our opinions and choosing the towel Jesus used to wash feet. You can’t hold a sword and a towel at the same time.
17. WHEN GRACE BECOMES CULTURE
The gospel doesn’t just save individuals; it reshapes communities. When grace starts circulating through a congregation, it changes the air. Criticism loses its oxygen. Encouragement becomes contagious. Forgiveness starts to feel normal again.
18. BUILDING WHAT HE ALREADY BOUGHT
Paul reminds us that we are “fellow citizens with God’s people and members of His household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.” Every stone in that wall bears a different texture and color, yet together they form a dwelling place for God.
19. WHEN HEAVEN MEETS THE LOCAL CHURCH
Let’s imagine what this might look like if we really believed it. Picture a congregation where people don’t need to hide their struggles because grace is thicker than gossip. Where newcomers feel safe before they feel inspected. Where worship rises not because the music is perfect but because hearts are free.
20. A FAMILY STORY
The church at its best feels like family. Not a perfect family, but one where grace keeps rewriting the story. That’s why I keep thinking back to Tommy. He came to us clutching a teddy bear and a backpack, stepping into a household already noisy and crowded. He didn’t share our DNA, but he shared our dinner table. Within weeks it was hard to remember life before he arrived.
21. WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW
Our culture is unraveling at the edges. People are isolated, suspicious, quick to cancel, slow to forgive. If ever the world needed to see a community that holds together, it’s now. But the answer won’t come from tighter rules or louder arguments. It will come from people who quietly live as evidence that Jesus still holds.
22. THE ROAD HOME
I once heard someone say, “The Christian life is simply learning to walk home together.” I like that. We’re headed to the same destination—different paces, different routes, but the same home.
23. A FINAL PICTURE
When Michelangelo finished painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he wrote a small note to a friend: “I have seen the end of the world.” What he meant was that in those scenes of creation and redemption, he caught a glimpse of what God is building—heaven and earth joined together under one Lord.
24. THE CALL
So where do we begin? Maybe it’s a phone call to someone you’ve avoided. Maybe it’s forgiving a pastor who disappointed you, or listening to a member whose convictions frustrate you. Maybe it’s joining that small group even though you’re shy. Maybe it’s simply staying when everything in you wants to leave.
25. CLOSING APPEAL
Would you bow your head with me?
Lord Jesus, we confess how easily we build walls You already tore down. We confess our quick tempers, our slow forgiveness, our hunger to be right. Thank You for calling us family, for adopting us when we were orphans, for loving us when we were unlovable. Teach us to live what You have already made true—that we are one in You. Let the world see Your peace in our patience, Your grace in our kindness, Your truth in our love. Make us, together, Your dwelling place. In Your name, we pray. Amen.
