What Is Unity in the Bible, Actually?

The origin story of the church is both profound and simple. Jesus died in our place and was raised from the dead (1 Cor 15:1–4). He appeared to his disciples, commissioned them to make more disciples (Matt 28:18–20), and then empowered them by his Spirit to do so (Acts 1:8). That group of disciples was small enough to fit into a single room when they gathered together in Acts 1:12–26. Under the leadership of the apostles, they prayed and carefully discerned their next steps. Acts 2 describes that monumental day during the Feast of Pentecost. While worshipping together in the upper room of a home in Jerusalem, the Spirit descended upon the disciples in power. Peter preached his famous sermon and thousands of people found Jesus and flooded into this new movement. The church outgrew the upper room, but that growth came with the pain of division and fragmentation. And the church has continued both to grow and fragment ever since. Jesus clearly wants his church to grow, or he wouldn’t have commanded us to “make disciples of the nations” (Matt 28:19). And Jesus also clearly wants church unity, or he wouldn’t have prayed for it so passionately (John 17:11, 20–23). In fact, on the edge of ...