In eternity past, three persons existed in such total unity that they were one: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. Scripture shows us three distinct persons, each with a unique role, and yet so joined together that they are a single being. It’s the hardest Christian doctrine to wrap your mind around, because our finite minds struggle to grasp three individuals who make up one God. But if one word defines the three persons of the Trinity, it’s unity — unity of identity, purpose, and desire.
When God created man, He created him to share in His own glory, and that included the unity the Godhead has always known. God wanted you in that relationship — not just unity with Him, but unity with others. When He took a rib from man and made woman, He was forming a union meant to be permanent and unbroken. You were made for the same kind of unity that has always existed within the Trinity.
Have you ever actually experienced that kind of unbroken unity with anyone? Even in your closest relationships — a marriage, a friendship — you don’t always agree, and you’re not always unified in perspective. We live in a broken, sin-cursed world, and the unity God intended does not exist the way He meant it to.
But God sent Jesus not just to get you to heaven — He sent Him to reverse the sin curse and restore what He always intended for His creation, including the unity and mutual love He has always known within Himself. Here’s a truth worth sitting with: God loves unity. Sin ruins unity. When you experience unity, that’s grace redeeming you from the curse. When you experience division, that’s always the flesh at work — yours, theirs, or both. As John MacArthur put it, “Anything that assaults the unity of the church is of the flesh.” God is not divided, and He is restoring His creation to the unity He intended for it.
That’s why Paul was so passionate about unity in the church. We look at the divisions in the church today — the denominations, the doctrinal fights — and wonder why anyone would want to be part of it. But the church has always fought this battle, because the church has always fought the flesh. The believers Paul is writing to were already showing love and serving the Lord, yet an identity crisis was producing real division among them.
In that day, the primary dividing line was between Jews and Gentiles. When God called Abraham, He created a chosen nation, Israel, set apart by specific laws so that the surrounding nations would look at them and want what they had — as the Queen of Sheba did when she saw Solomon’s glory, and as Rahab did when she heard how God fought for Israel.
But instead of drawing the nations in, the Israelites grew to hate the Gentiles as heathens and idolaters. You see that hatred plainly in Jonah — he didn’t run from Nineveh because he was afraid of them; he ran because he hated them and didn’t want God to show them mercy. When God spared the city anyway, Jonah sat down angry, essentially telling God, “I knew you’d do this, and that’s exactly why I didn’t want to go.”
That hostility didn’t start with the Gentiles — it started with the Jews, long before Jesus. The Gentiles knew they were despised and returned the hatred. But John 3:16 tells us Jesus didn’t come only for the Jews — He so loved the world. Paul took that mission seriously, carrying the gospel into Gentile territory: Ephesus, Philippi, Asia, Europe. And when the gospel took root, Gentiles started showing up in the same room as Jewish believers to worship — and the reaction was hatred. The church, meant to be one body, was split down the middle.
Paul saw this as a crisis, and if he were writing to us today, he’d be just as troubled by the lines American Christians have drawn — political, cultural, personal. None of us can fix the whole of it alone. But if each of us commits to the unity Christ died to give us, we can make a real difference where we are. In this passage, Paul gives three reminders to move us toward that unity.
Remember Your Separation
Paul starts by asking you to remember where you came from. In verse eleven:
Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.
“Uncircumcision” and “circumcision” had become slurs believers hurled at each other. Before addressing that division, Paul reminds them what they were before Christ: outsiders, strangers to every one of God’s covenant promises, with no claim on Him at all.
That’s you and me too. We were outsiders with no way to force our way in, worshiping gods who didn’t care about us, genuinely alone in the world. We were enemies of God, under His righteous judgment, with a real separation between us and heaven. But God, rich in mercy, sent His Son to die in our place and close that gap — bringing us near though we were guilty. He made unity where there was none. As Paul says in verse thirteen:
But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
It’s worth slowing down to remember that. When you lose sight of who you were, you stop appreciating who you are — and it gets easier to hold grudges, nurse hurts, and let differences of opinion, personality, or culture separate you from other people. It’s hard to keep building walls once you remember what it cost Christ to bring you near.
Remember Your Unification
Paul’s next reminder is what Christ actually did. Verses thirteen through eighteen:
But now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.
This “peace” isn’t inward calm — it’s the peace treaty ending the war between Jew and Gentile. Christ took that hostility onto Himself on the cross, so the division would die there instead of continuing between us. He abolished the ceremonial law that had separated Israel from the nations — meaning there’s no longer any grounds for separation between Jew and Gentile, and none between us either.
The Jews aren’t saved because they’re Jews; they’re saved by the same blood that saves Gentiles. In His death, Christ didn’t just save your soul — He tore down every wall you or I might build to divide ourselves from someone else. Division, disunity, segregation, racism, hatred — all of it was dealt with at the cross. You are saved by the exact same grace as everyone else who calls on His name, and any reason you have for separating yourself from another believer, Christ has already answered it. There’s no room left for separation in Him.
Remember Your Sanctification
Finally, Paul tells you why God did all of this. Verse nineteen:
Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.
God did all this because He was building a house for Himself — and you are part of that temple. He cleaned you up and set you apart to be a fitting dwelling place for His Spirit. But you don’t make up the whole house by yourself. Christ is the cornerstone, the apostles and prophets are the foundation, and every believer is a brick fitted into the wall around you. Together, we become the dwelling place of God.
Nobody wants to live in a house with cracked walls and a crumbling foundation — those get condemned so no one gets hurt. Why would God want His house divided? If you want to know His presence, to have the Spirit work through you the way you’ve prayed for, you have to be unified with His body. That’s the only way you’ll know the full blessing of what He wants to give you.
Are You Embracing Unity?
Let me leave you with three questions.
Who do you need to unify with today? Not someone you’re separated from over real doctrinal error — Scripture allows for that — but someone you’ve kept at a distance over a preference, a personality clash, or a difference that isn’t really about truth at all.
What division are you still holding onto? Is it political, racial, social, or cultural? What’s kept you from real unity with another believer in Christ?
And who do you need to forgive for the wall they built against you — the person who hurt you, where you decided two could play that game? Is it time to say, “God, I know they wronged me, but I want to let it go and choose unity instead”?
If you want to be like Christ, unity has to be part of the equation. And because of Christ, it’s possible. It’s attainable. You can know that unity today.
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