The Road to Unity: One in Christ

Once upon a time, there was a church in conflict. Paul had founded a church in Galatia among the Gentiles, people who were not Jewish. He proclaimed the good news of Jesus Christ, saw the people of that community experience Jesus’ love and the Holy Spirit begin to take root in their lives. After Paul left, though, church leaders from Jerusalem visited and added to the message, telling the Galatian church that in order to truly follow Jesus, you must convert to Judaism, men must undergo circumcision, and the community must follow Jewish law. This really upset Paul because he felt like the amazing work of the Spirit he had seen happen in Galatia and the good news of God’s grace through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ was being undermined by these church leaders who visited from Jerusalem who were now teaching what Paul believed was a tainted or false version of the gospel. In Paul’s letter to try and straighten things out, Paul gets passionate, feisty, and uses extreme language that he believed would make his points crystal clear. 

So the book of Galatians gives us some of the most famous verses in the New Testament, laying out foundational Christian theology, AND it says some things about the Jewish faith that have been read out of the original context and that have led to an unfortunate history of harming, misrepresenting, and disrespecting the Jewish community. Galatians is a challenging read but dealing with church conflict is challenging. It ignites emotions and passions that can push out God’s spirit of love and leave chaos in its place. After calling the Galatians fools multiple times, after laying out his most passionate defense against the teachings of the church leaders from Jerusalem, Paul lays out a picture of unity, to a road to being one in Christ Jesus, which is where our passage comes from today. 

Galatians 3.23–29

23 Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be reckoned as righteous[j] by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

….and hearing Paul’s words, the opposing groups realized fighting was indeed foolish because they were one in Christ, so the church lived happily ever after, never to have a disagreement again. The end. 

I wish that was how the story went. These words seem so simple and matter of fact—in Jesus Christ, we are all children of God—there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—through baptism we are one in Christ! Well, we should be one in Christ if we embrace those truths, but with the sin and brokenness of the world, almost two thousand years later, we still haven’t figured it out. Maybe Paul thought his vision of unity was possible in his time, but what Paul presents feels more like a utopian dream, and less like the world we live in, especially when we are living in a time where some argue that the American church is the most divided it has been since the Civil War. Preaching a sermon on Christian unity in the United States in 2025 feels almost impossible or like a joke. I hear story after story of people who love Jesus but don’t want to be associated with the word Christian. Every time I tell someone I am a pastor, I feel the need to add an asterisk to describe the type of church I pastor. I see people who call themselves Christians but their religion and beliefs seem to be completely different than mine and contrary to Jesus’ gospel. The big C church is nowhere close to being one in Christ. 

So what do we do? How do we try to faithfully pursue this vision of being “one in Christ Jesus” today? Well, we can brush it off by saying, “Oh, what Paul is talking about is nice, but he didn’t really envision us being one in Christ until Jesus returns,” and then continue about our lives and dream of the future when Jesus makes all things right. We can draw lines and boxes around Christians and churches saying, “Those people and churches are the REAL Christians and these people and churches are fake.” I am one in Christ with the REAL Christians. Or we can do the hard work of wrestling with these words and see what God might be teaching us from them today, in the United States, in 2025. And I am thankful to be a part of a church that chooses to wrestle with hard questions. As I have wrestled with this text, identity is the theme that sticks out to me as we consider what it means to be “one in Christ Jesus.” When our personal identity and our shared identity in Christ are woven together in love, just maybe we can get a glimpse of what being “one in Christ Jesus” might look like. 

These verses pose a question—if Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female are “no longer” in Christ, does personal identity matter at all? Looking at Scripture as a whole, the resounding answer is yes, our personal identities matter. Scripture is full of people with different gifts and characteristics that do God’s work and without those unique gifts and characteristics, they would be unable to do the work God called them to do. Genesis and the psalms describe how God lovingly and uniquely creates each of us. And if you noticed, in Paul’s list of contrasts he says Greek OR Jew; slave OR free; but for gender he changes the conjunction, Paul says male AND female, a reference to Genesis 1:27 that says, “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Paul wanted us to think of the image of God alongside his words that we are one in Christ Jesus.

The image of God means our personal identities matter because our unique qualities tell others something about God. If God wanted us all to be the same, God would have made it that way, but instead, we have the gift of diversity. Without diversity, we are unable to experience the greatness of God. As Christians, we are called to seek out the image of God in one another, to learn about God from one another, but that is not an easy task. There are some people that I struggle to see any hint of the image of God within, but to deny the image of God within someone is to dehumanize them and dehumanization is a dangerous practice. Historians will tell you that in order for wars or genocide to happen, dehumanization must happen first. Leaders must convince the group that something is so wrong with “the other” that hurting or killing them is okay and maybe even necessary. As Christians, we must be against dehumanization because the Bible says God created ALL of us in the image of God. 

Now I will admit that it is easier to see the image of God in some people than it is in others. Pastor Osheta Moore learned about seeing the image of God in one another by watching a mural next to a coffee shop she goes to. On this wall people have permission to paint and create what they would like, so the mural changes over time. She writes about how at one point there was a beautiful flower on the mural, but over time it got harder to see because of other art made around it and eventually the flower got covered up, but that did not mean that flower no longer existed, she just couldn’t see it. Moore says the image of God is the same—sin and the hardships of life make it harder to see the image of God in one another but sin never completely erases the image of God from a person. If we dehumanize one another, we are turning away from the good news of the gospel. If we refuse to seek out the image of God in someone, we are saying that God’s transformative grace and love isn’t big enough for the redemption of that person. So part of being one in Christ means believing and working to see the image of God in every single person. If we don’t do it we are harming a part of God’s creation and giving up any chance for unity. 

Being one in Christ Jesus also involves relinquishing power. Each of Paul’s contrasts—Jew or Greek; slave or free; male and female—have power dynamics. Jews seem to have the upper hand over Greeks in this situation because Jesus was a Jew but both Jews and Greeks were under Roman rule. Slaves had owners that controlled much of their lives. Men controlled women, and often women were considered more like property than human. When Paul says these contrasts are no longer, he isn’t erasing identities, so maybe he’s trying to get rid of the power struggle. Author and theologian Madeleine L’Engle contrasts love and power. She wrote, “Love is not power, which is always coercive. To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.” I think part of what Paul is saying here is that because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ we can be filled with great love, and when that love becomes so great, there is no longer room for coercive power dynamics. Being one in Christ means we have to give up power and privilege, which will leave room for love to take root, grow, and blossom. Now this isn’t easy. It requires vulnerability. It means taking down walls, erasing lines, and creating space for love. And once we have given up power and privilege and made space for love, we must love one another by deeply caring and helping one another today. 

We started out with a question, “How do we try to faithfully pursue this vision of being ‘one in Christ Jesus’ today, in the midst of such division?” 

I wish I had easy answers but they don’t exist. I do firmly believe, though, that we must believe in and seek out the image of God in one another. If we give up that belief or if we pick and choose who receives it, we are going against God’s desires and saying that God’s love is not for everyone. Believing that all are made in the image of God means embracing diversity, giving up power and privilege and making room for love. Once we have made room for love, we are reminded that God’s love is so great that God sees each and every person as beloved. And when someone becomes beloved to us, we care about them and their wellbeing, and we find ways to work towards alleviating suffering and injustice so all are treated as beloved and made in the image of God. This is the essential work that can give us a glimpse of what it means to be one in Christ and to work for the kindom of God in this world.