This is the third in a series of blog posts on the beauty, goodness, and glory of the unity of the church. This comes from our message on Psalm 133, from our series on the Psalms. You can find this on our sermons page.
“How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe.
It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.”
Psalm 133 gives us a vision for the good life together. The only way we can experience this radical and beautiful unity is through what Jesus has done and continues to do in the life of His people.
Real unity, as the Bible talks about it can sound like a pipe dream. It can sound too good to be true. The stuff of utopian dreams. But it’s real and something any Christian can experience now. This is something Jesus has prayed for (and prays for), and something Jesus has already accomplished, as well as something that the Holy Spirit continually enables in our hearts today.
Unity is nothing less than the work of God to bring us together, with Him, together. Jesus died for unity.
Before He went to the cross, Jesus prayed for the disciples and for us, the future church. In John 17.23, we read “I [Jesus] in them [us, plural] and you [Father] in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
Our unity that Jesus is praying for has a purpose beyond itself: so that the world would know. The thing that Jesus says the world will know as a result of our unity is a deep theological truth: that the Father send the Son and the Father loves us with all the love He has for the Son. That’s what our unity points to. It’s supernatural. The Trinity at work within us, so that Trinity would be known beyond us. This is not Jesus praying for individuals, this is Jesus praying for the church.
This is what Jesus is praying and working for, right now. Jesus assumed the church would grow, He prayed for it to be unified. So let’s not work against Jesus (never a good thing, by the way!). When you find yourself on the other side of Jesus’ prayers, that’s an opportunity to be re-aligned, and get on the right path.
Our unity is like an engine it’s made to go: so that others—“the world”—would know that the Father sent the Son and that the Father loves us, His church, as much as the Father loves the Son.
In 2 Corinthians we are told that, as believers, we have been given the ministry of reconciliation through the work of Jesus. That’s every believer, not just the professionals or the rockstars. Every believer has a ministry of reconciliation. This is a gift from God, not ourselves. When we become the new creations we are in Christ, we have been given the Holy Spirit, and He is what empowers us to live a life of unity. He is what enables us to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).
Unity is something God gives, He has it, always has had it. God has never had a time where He hasn’t existed in a perfect, loving unity. This is one of the main differences between Islam and Christianity: the Trinity. An always loving, always perfect unity between Father, Son, and Spirit. There’s never been a time where God hasn’t been loving.
Out of the overflow of this perfect unity, we were created. And the first humans in the Garden of Eden lived in perfect unity with the Triune God. But they walked off the path of this perfect unity and sought something for themselves first. They didn’t believe that God was good to them, and they wanted goodness without God. Sounds like what we do today, right?
This broke that unity. Now disunity has been sown into the world, with our broken chords and wrong notes. It wasn’t until Jesus came that He made the music right again. He made it possible for us to hear the song of unity, and not only that—for us to join in and sing.
When we are born, we are born into a world full of broken chords and wrong notes. And we add to these ourselves. We are trying to play a song we can’t hear and playing along to a piece we don’t have music for.
But instead of adding to the chaotic cacophony of this world, Jesus has given us a better way. He has a chorus, a band, an orchestra, that He has invited us to. And when we’re in this group, now we can hear the music. He gives us the notes, He puts an instrument in our hands and tells us to play along.
Instead of community being something that holds us back, it’s something that pushes us forward! We listen to others and hear the music, others point out where we ought to be playing. And more of that means more of us. More of community means more of you!
We used to live in disharmony, now we’re in harmony. To be saved from our disharmony is something we enjoy now, and something that we will enjoy “forevermore” as in Psalm 133. This is the only hope we have! To not follow Jesus means to stay stuck in that chaotic, disharmonious place. The Bible calls it death. And when we die, we don’t get to experience God’s love, we get the full punishment that our disharmony deserves: death forever.
Because God wants to save us from that, He came to earth, and the punishment that we deserved for our life of bad chords and wrong notes was put on Him. Jesus died so that we could live in harmony. To live any other way is to despise what Jesus died for. This is what He is praying for, working for, and what He has died for.
Let’s not despise this, let’s embrace it. We might not get all the notes right the first time (in fact, let’s assume you won’t), but it’s a better life, and with practice, we do get better.
This is not only the hope for us, this is the hope for others. The radical and beautiful unity that the Bible paints is real, and it’s what Jesus has won for us.