True unity is based on this foundational fact: “There is one God” (Ephesians 4:6).13 One God has one mind, which leads us in one direction. To follow the one God is of necessity to be united behind Him. God exemplifies and exalts this truth by the way He reveals Himself as three yet one. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are united in complete unity. In the prayer of John 17, the Son seeks the Father’s help for the apostles, “that they may be one, even as We are one” (John 17:11). His prayer broadens to encompass all future believers.
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me (John 17:20-23).
Every “believer” must take this prayer seriously. Consider who prays it. Consider when He prays it. Our Lord goes to the cross seeking unity for all believers, including every believer now alive. This unity is not shallow or symbolic, just loose alliances of differing factions. It is “complete unity,” the kind that the Son enjoys with His Father. “May [they] be one as We are one.” The key to this unity is God’s presence within each believer – “I in them and You in Me.”
Later, in Corinth, some members act in ways that disrupt their assembly. Even there, Paul finds the solution in God’s nature: “God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33). Since God loves peace and order, Satan seeks the opposite: confusion and chaos. He works through “acts of the sinful nature,”14 which include,
…idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:20-21).
Divisions – another word for “discord… dissensions, factions” – resist the very nature of God. If unity leads to faith in Christ,15 then disunity drives people into disbelief and despair. For we see today, not just one disorderly assembly, but disorder across all Christendom. We see many separate groups constantly splintering. This trend works directly against the goal Jesus pursued through the agony of the cross – to reconcile them to God in one body.16
13. 1 Timothy 1:17; 2:5; 6:15; Dt 6:4