Two old men were sitting outside a seniors’ home enjoying the sunshine.
One turned to the other and said, “Slim, I’m 83 years old and I’m just full of aches and pains. You’re about my age. How do you feel?”
Slim said, “I feel just like a newborn baby.”
“Really? Like a newborn baby?”
“Yep. No hair. No teeth. And I think I just wet my pants.”
There is a strange comfort in humor like that, because it names something we all know but don’t often say out loud: life has a way of undoing us.
What once felt solid begins to loosen. What once held together begins to fray. Bodies wear down. Relationships strain. Certainties wobble. Even faith, if we are honest, can feel stretched thin at times.
Most of us live with a quiet but persistent question humming beneath the surface of our lives: How do I keep this together? How do I keep my marriage together, my family together, my sanity together, my faith together?
And if we belong to a church, we eventually ask the same question there. How do we keep this together?
When things begin to feel fragile, our instinct is to reach for control. We tighten rules. We clarify positions. We draw lines.
We assume that if we can just define things clearly enough, enforce things strongly enough, or defend things passionately enough, the cracks will stop spreading.
But Scripture asks a different question. Not what do we need to fix? but what is holding us?
Because when the center is strong, tension does not destroy.
And when the center is weak, no amount of effort can compensate.
The poet William Butler Yeats wrote in the aftermath of World War I, watching the collapse of order and the rise of chaos:
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
He wasn’t writing theology, but he was telling the truth. He describes a world spinning out of control, like a falcon circling farther and farther away until it can no longer hear the falconer’s voice.
Once that connection is lost, the flight becomes dangerous. Direction disappears. Collapse is inevitable.
That image feels painfully familiar today. We live in a world of spinning voices — news cycles, outrage cycles, opinion cycles — all moving faster, louder, farther apart. And the church is not immune. We are often caught in the same widening gyre, pulled by fear on one side and certainty on the other.
We argue about doctrine.
We fracture over politics.
We divide over worship styles, culture, race, gender, and interpretation.
And we keep asking, How do we keep this together?
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was written to a community asking exactly that question. Jews and Gentiles were trying to occupy the same spiritual space, carrying centuries of suspicion, resentment, and religious boundary-keeping.
This was not a disagreement over preferences. This was deep, historical division.
What is striking is where Paul begins. He does not start with instructions. He does not start with warnings. He does not start with conflict resolution strategies.
He starts with God.
Ephesians 1 takes us back before the church, before the conflict, before the division, before we ever made a single decision for or against God. Paul takes us back to eternity and says something breathtaking: God always wanted a family.
Not a program.
Not an institution.
A family.
And you were always meant to be part of it.
God did not discover you late. He did not respond to you reluctantly.
He did not include you conditionally.
Scripture says that before the foundation of the world, God set His love on you. That means your place in God’s heart is not fragile. It does not depend on your consistency, your insight, or your performance.
This matters more than we realize, because many of us live as if our belonging is always at risk. We assume that God’s affection must be continually earned, continually reinforced, continually justified. But Paul says the opposite. God’s decision came first. Our response came later.
That is why Scripture uses two powerful words to describe our relationship to God, and it uses both without apology.
Jesus says, You must be born again.
Paul says, You have been adopted.
Born — because real life is given, not improved.
Adopted — because we were intentionally chosen, not accidentally included.
Those are not contradictions. They are what theologians call an antinomy — two truths that seem to pull in opposite directions, but are held together perfectly by God. We struggle with antinomies because we like neat categories. God is comfortable with mystery.
We are born into God’s family.
And we are adopted into God’s family.
Both are true.
And both tell us something essential: you belong here.
Paul then explains what it cost God to make that belonging possible. He uses the language of redemption, and in doing so, he reaches into the harsh realities of the ancient world.
In Paul’s day, slavery was woven into daily life. People were bought and sold openly in the marketplace. And Paul deliberately borrows that imagery to make a point — not because God endorses it, but because it exposes the depth of what Christ has done.
The first word he uses means to buy in the marketplace.
The second means to buy out of the marketplace, removing someone from sale forever.
The third means to release, to set free.
God did not buy us to own us.
God did not buy us to control us.
God bought us to free us.
That distinction matters. Many people imagine God as a harsher master replacing a cruel one. But Paul says redemption does not exchange chains — it breaks them.
We were enslaved to sin, fear, shame, and death. And Christ did not merely forgive us from a distance. He entered the marketplace of this world, paid a price we could never pay, and led us out as free people.
That is why grace is not merely pardon; it is liberation. Grace does not simply cancel the past. It reclaims the future.
And once you understand that, you begin to see why unity cannot be forced.
Free people do not need to dominate. Free people do not need to control. Free people do not need to prove themselves superior.
Freedom changes how we relate — to God and to one another.
Paul says that God has made known to us the mystery of His will.
In Scripture, a mystery is not something spooky or unknowable. It is something that was hidden and has now been revealed.
And the mystery Paul is talking about is this: God’s plan was always to bring everything together in Christ.
Not just souls.
Not just beliefs.
Everything.
The gospel is not about escape from the world; it is about the healing of the world. God is not abandoning creation; He is reclaiming it. And the church is meant to be the first place where that reclamation becomes visible.
That means the church is not held together by sameness. It is held together by presence. Christ’s presence. Christ at the center.
Which brings us to the sentence that will carry the weight of everything that follows:
“He Himself is our peace.”
Not a policy.
Not a compromise.
Not an agreement.
A Person.
When Christ is the center, tension does not destroy us.
When Christ is the center, difference does not threaten us.
When Christ is the center, the church can stretch without tearing.
And if the center ever shifts — if Christ is displaced by fear, certainty, ideology, or control — then no amount of effort will keep things together.
That is where Paul will take us next.
From God’s eternal purpose…
to Christ’s reconciling work…
to the hard, holy calling of living together as people who belong to Him.
---
And once Paul establishes that Christ is the center, he does something very deliberate. He refuses to let us treat belonging as a private comfort.
Belonging, in Paul’s mind, immediately raises the question of how we live with one another.
Because family language sounds warm until you remember what families are actually like.
Families are where you are seen.
Families are where you are known.
Families are where differences are unavoidable.
You can choose your friends. You cannot choose your siblings.
And when God forms a family, He does not begin by smoothing out all the differences. He brings people together as they are and then commits Himself to the long work of transformation.
That is why Paul keeps returning to grace in Ephesians 2. He does not want us to forget where we came from. “You were dead in your trespasses and sins,” he says. Not sick. Not misguided.
Dead. That word matters, because it dismantles every illusion of spiritual superiority.
Dead people do not improve themselves.
Dead people do not rescue themselves.
Dead people do not arrive at insight through effort.
Grace is not God helping us do better. Grace is God giving us life where there was none.
And if grace is the starting point for everyone, then hierarchy collapses. There is no ladder to climb. There is no platform to defend. There is only gratitude.
This is why grace is the great equalizer in the church. The moment we forget grace, we begin to sort people. We begin to categorize maturity, intelligence, sincerity, and worth. We begin to imagine that some belong more than others.
Paul will not allow that.
He reminds Jewish believers that they were once bound by law but powerless to keep it perfectly. He reminds Gentile believers that they were once outsiders, strangers to the covenants, without hope. Different histories, same helplessness. Different stories, same need.
Grace erases boasting.
Grace dismantles entitlement.
Grace leaves us standing side by side, equally dependent.
That is the soil in which unity can grow.
But Paul goes further. He does not merely say that Christ forgives individuals.
He says Christ creates something new.
“For He Himself is our peace,”
Paul writes, “who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”
That phrase — the dividing wall of hostility — is not metaphor alone. In the Jerusalem temple there was an actual wall separating Jews from Gentiles, reinforced by law, tradition, and threat of violence. The message was unmistakable: you do not belong here.
Religion had become architecture.
Law had become exclusion.
Holiness had become distance.
And Paul says Christ did not negotiate that wall. He did not remodel it. He destroyed it.
Not by ignoring difference, but by absorbing hostility into Himself.
On the cross, Jesus did not simply carry individual guilt. He carried collective enmity. He carried centuries of suspicion, resentment, and religious pride. And when He died, hostility died with Him.
This is where unity becomes costly, because it means we can no longer justify our distance from one another. We can no longer say, “I would love you, but…” and then list our reasons.
Christ removes our excuses.
Paul says that Jesus abolished hostility expressed through commandments and regulations.
That does not mean God discarded morality. It means God dismantled the use of morality as a weapon. Law was never meant to separate people from one another; it was meant to expose our shared need for grace.
When law becomes a badge of belonging, it ceases to function as grace.
When righteousness becomes leverage, love becomes optional.
And the church fractures.
This is why unity cannot be legislated. It cannot be enforced by pressure. It must be sustained by peace.
And peace, Paul insists, is not something Christ gives us from the outside. Peace is something Christ is.
Here is where many Christians struggle, because we confuse conviction with hostility. We assume that holding strong beliefs requires holding others at arm’s length. But Paul never suggests that unity requires the absence of conviction.
He suggests that unity requires the presence of Christ.
Christ-centered unity is not agreement on everything. It is agreement on Someone.
That distinction changes everything.
It allows us to hold convictions without contempt.
It allows us to disagree without dehumanizing.
It allows us to stay in relationship when walking away would be easier.
Paul says that in Christ, God has created “one new humanity.” Not by erasing difference, but by redefining identity. Our deepest identity is no longer found in ethnicity, background, status, or even theological sophistication. Our deepest identity is in Christ.
That does not flatten us.
It frees us.
When Christ is the center, diversity becomes a gift rather than a threat. Difference becomes an opportunity for humility rather than a reason for fear. We stop asking, “How do I protect my position?” and begin asking, “How do I reflect His character?”
This is where Paul’s vision of the church becomes both beautiful and demanding. The church is not a gathering of people who think alike. It is a gathering of people who belong to Christ and are learning to trust His Spirit in one another.
That trust is not easy. It requires patience. It requires restraint. It requires the humility to admit that the Spirit may be at work in ways we do not immediately recognize.
I have to trust that the Spirit who is shaping me is also shaping you — even if you are in a different place, even if you ask different questions, even if your convictions are still forming.
I am not called to manage your conscience.
I am not called to force your growth.
I am not called to make you like me.
That is the Spirit’s work.
My calling is to love you, walk with you, and refuse hostility.
This is where unity becomes a spiritual discipline rather than a personality trait. Some of us are naturally agreeable. Others are naturally combative. Unity is not about temperament. It is about obedience.
Paul will later say, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Notice what he does not say. He does not say create unity. He says keep it.
Unity already exists in Christ.
Our responsibility is to protect it.
And protecting unity often means resisting the urge to win.
It means resisting the satisfaction of being right at the expense of being loving. It means choosing relationship over resolution when resolution would require damage.
That does not mean avoiding hard conversations. It means having them without contempt. It means speaking truth without severing connection.
Unity is not maintained by enthusiasm. It is maintained by endurance.
We learn unity by staying.
We learn unity by listening.
We learn unity by forgiving.
We learn unity by refusing to leave when things become uncomfortable.
And this is precisely why the church matters. You cannot learn unity in isolation. You cannot practice reconciliation alone. You cannot grow in patience without people who test it.
God places us in community not because it is easy, but because it is formative.
Paul’s vision is not naïve. He knows that people wound one another. He knows that disagreements escalate. He knows that history leaves scars. But he also knows something deeper: Christ has already dealt with hostility at its root.
Which means the church is not called to pretend conflict does not exist. The church is called to face conflict without fear, because fear no longer rules us.
We are no longer strangers.
We are no longer outsiders.
We are members of God’s household.
And households learn how to live together not by pretending difference does not exist, but by choosing love over division again and again.
That choice is costly.
It requires maturity.
It requires trust.
And Paul is not finished yet.
Because once we understand what Christ has done, and once we accept the call to live together as free people, there remains one final question:
how do we keep this unity alive over time?
---
Here Paul becomes intensely practical, because unity, left undefined, quickly becomes sentimental. It sounds beautiful until it has to be lived. So Paul brings the conversation out of abstraction and into daily life.
He writes, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
That sentence is easy to skim past, but every word matters.
First, unity is something that already exists. Paul does not say create unity. He says keep it. Unity is not something we manufacture through clever leadership or shared enthusiasm.
Unity is something Christ has already accomplished. Our role is custodial, not creative.
Second, unity belongs to the Spirit. It is not rooted in personality, preference, or agreement. It is rooted in God’s presence among us. That means unity is not fragile in the way we fear, but it is vulnerable to neglect.
And third, unity is held together by peace. Not by pressure. Not by conformity. Not by silence. Peace is the bond. When peace erodes, unity follows.
Paul then anchors that unity in a series of “ones”: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.
He is not narrowing the church; he is grounding it. He is saying that beneath our many differences there is a shared reality deeper than opinion.
This is crucial, because the church does not break apart primarily over theology. It breaks apart over fear.
Fear of losing control. Fear of being misunderstood. Fear of being marginalized. Fear of change. Fear of difference.
Fear is what turns conviction into hostility.
Paul’s answer to fear is not reassurance. It is Christ.
When Christ is the center, fear loses its leverage. We no longer need to defend ourselves at all costs. We no longer need to guard our identity as if it were fragile. Our identity is already secure in Him.
That security changes how we speak. It changes how we listen. It changes how we disagree.
Paul goes on to say that Christ has given gifts to the church — not as rewards for maturity, but as resources for growth.
Teaching, leadership, service, encouragement — all of these are meant to build up the body, not divide it.
This is an important correction, because gifts can easily become tools of separation. Teaching can become arrogance. Leadership can become control. Conviction can become dominance.
But Paul insists that gifts are given “to equip the saints for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”
Not built into factions.
Not built into hierarchies.
Built up into maturity.
And maturity, Paul says, looks like this: we become people who can speak the truth in love.
Notice the order.
Truth in love.
Not truth instead of love.
Not love without truth.
Truth without love produces harshness.
Love without truth produces confusion.
But truth shaped by love produces growth.
This is one of the clearest markers of spiritual maturity. Immature faith is loud and reactive. Mature faith is grounded and patient. Immature faith needs to win. Mature faith needs to love.
Paul says maturity looks like growing into Christ, “who is the head.” That image matters.
A body does not survive by competing with its head. It survives by remaining connected to it.
When the church loses connection to Christ as its head, it begins to devour itself.
Arguments escalate. Motives are questioned. People become projects or problems instead of brothers and sisters.
But when Christ remains the head, even disagreement can be navigated with humility.
This brings us back to the human reality of church life. Because unity does not mean we stop hurting one another. It means we stop using hurt as justification for hostility.
Let me be honest. Christians wound one another. Deeply. Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes carelessly. Sometimes out of fear.
Forgiveness, in those moments, is not quick. It is not neat. It is often a long obedience in the same direction.
Unity does not require pretending nothing happened. Unity requires refusing to let what happened become our identity.
There are moments when separation is necessary for safety and healing. Paul is not naïve about that.
There is a difference between protective boundaries and relational contempt. One seeks healing. The other seeks distance.
Christ calls us away from contempt.
There was a moment in my own life when this truth stopped being theological and became painfully real.
I was serving an interim role at a church. One Sabbath morning, I was telling the children’s story, working my way through the Ten Commandments.
That week I came to the commandment to honor father and mother.
I thought I was prepared.
I was not.
As I spoke, something broke open in me. Years of unresolved pain surfaced all at once. Memories, anger, grief — it came crashing in.
I lost control. I began to weep, uncontrollably, right there in front of the congregation.
We moved into the pastoral prayer, and I knelt behind the pulpit, trying desperately to regain composure. I remember thinking, This is not happening. Not here. Not now.
The prayer ended. And before I could stand, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Then arms around me. Strong, steady, unhesitating.
A brother — someone I had never been embraced by in that way — held me until I could breathe again.
No words.
No explanations.
Just presence.
Something ancient died in that moment. Something I did not even realize I was still carrying. A hostility I had inherited without choosing. A distance I had learned without questioning.
Christ did not lecture me out of it.
He loved me out of it.
That man was not my project.
He was not my symbol.
He was my brother.
And Jesus was our peace.
That is what Paul means when he says Christ has put hostility to death.
Hostility does not always look like anger. Sometimes it looks like avoidance. Sometimes it looks like superiority. Sometimes it looks like silence.
But Christ dismantles all of it.
This does not mean we suddenly feel warm toward everyone. Feelings often lag behind obedience. But obedience opens the door for healing.
We do not wait until we feel unified to act unified. We act unified because Christ has already made us one.
So what does this mean for us, practically?
It means we resist the temptation to reduce one another to labels. Conservative. Liberal. Traditional. Progressive.
Those labels may describe tendencies, but they do not define identity.
If someone loves Jesus, that matters.
I may not agree with all of their conclusions.
I may not be where they are, or they where I am.
But I trust the Spirit to do His work in them, just as I trust Him to do His work in me.
That trust is an act of faith.
It means I do not have to force resolution on every difference. I do not have to win every argument. I do not have to correct every perceived flaw. Christ is not threatened by unfinished people.
We are all unfinished.
Unity is preserved not by uniformity, but by humility.
Paul’s vision is demanding, but it is also hopeful. He believes that the church can actually reflect the reconciling work of Christ in the world. Not perfectly. Not effortlessly. But faithfully.
In a world that is increasingly fragmented, anxious, and hostile, the church is called to be something radically different. Not because we are wiser. Not because we are better. But because we are centered.
When Christ is the center, the falcon can still hear the falconer. Direction is restored. Purpose is clarified. Motion becomes meaningful again.
Things fall apart when the center cannot hold.
But in Christ, the center holds.
So let me ask you plainly: what are you trying to hold together in your own strength?
A relationship?
A disagreement?
A church tension?
A sense of belonging?
You were never meant to hold it alone.
Christ does not stand at the edge of our fractures, offering advice.
He stands at the center, offering Himself.
“He Himself is our peace.”
Not an idea.
Not a policy.
A Person.
And when we place Him back at the center — again and again — the church does not become perfect. But it becomes faithful.
And that is enough.
>> Prayer
Lord Jesus,
We confess how easily we drift from the center.
How quickly fear replaces trust, and certainty replaces love.
Bring us back to You.
Not to an argument.
Not to a position.
To You.
Where hostility has taken root, put it to death.
Where fear has ruled, establish peace.
Where division has hardened us, soften us again.
Hold us together where we cannot hold ourselves.
Make us one — not by uniformity, but by love.
You are our peace.
And we rest in You.
Amen.
