The political spirit would love to divide even the church, so she fights herself instead of the injustices. If we aren’t careful in this season, the rips in the world will become rips in God’s House, and we will no longer be able to mend the broken hearts we are here for.
For too long, many in the Church have argued that unity in the body of Christ across ethnic and class lines is a separate issue from the gospel. There has been the suggestion that we can be reconciled to God without being reconciled to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Scripture doesn’t bear that out. We only need to examine what happened when the Church was birthed to see exactly how God intends for this issue of reconciliation within the body of Christ to fall out.
Race instinct, sense of nationality, enmity, and hatred, these are divisive forces between peoples. This is an astonishing punishment and a terrible judgment, and cannot be undone by any cosmopolitanism or leagues of peace, by any ‘universal’ language, nor by any world-state or international culture. If ever there is to be unity among mankind again it will not be achieved by any external, mechanical rallying around some tower of Babel or other, but by a development from within, a gathering under one and the same Head (Eph 1:10), by the peacemaking creation of all peoples into a new man (Eph 2:15), by regeneration and renewal through the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:15), and by the walking of all people in one and the same light (Rev 21:24).
Nowhere is there a love that overcomes the barriers of death, sin, captivity, separation, fear, alienation, and purposelessness except at the Cross. There is hope for racial reconciliation, for peace between the sexes, for ethnic harmony, and for healing when we rally around a common identity in Christ, love him as our Redeemer, and serve his Kingdom.