With understated simplicity, God reveals something of his nature in just 62 words. He loves church unity and bestows his blessing wherever he finds it.
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)
His very existence models unity before creation, unity before knowledge and unity forevermore. Tim Keller calls it the “dance of reality”: the Creator of the universe is somehow three and also One. Unity is simply another way of saying “God is love.”
We have trouble with this. We mistake uniformity for unity. We mistake intellectual agreement for unity. But there is no mistaking the oil of anointing in life lived together. There’s no mistaking the refreshment of a saturated mountain-morning when God’s kids learn how to play nicely together.
7 Foundations for Church Unity
Here are seven starters for church unity, all from the New Testament. These points come from Paul’s letter to a healthy church in a place called Ephesus:
- We are—all of us—adopted into God’s family. This means we must learn a new way to live. We are called to take on a family identity that was previously alien to our way of thinking and acting. To carry our old ways into the new family of God is to refuse the new identity he gives us.
- Our eyes of our hearts must be enlightened, not the thoughts of our intellects. More than knowledge, we need the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.
- He wants to show us the “incomparable riches of his grace,” but we frequently mistake the moment of adoption as the beginning and end of his grace. Having breathed the air of grace the first time, we think we received all there is. There is more grace to discover; it starts within the family of God and migrates outward.
