Walk in Unity (Part 1)
If Seinfeld was the show of choice for your parents, then The Office is probably your favorite show. At least that’s the case for Kali and I. The episode where Jim and Darryl live together is one of our favorites. The two men briefly share a small apartment in Philly while pursuing a new career opportunity, but the arrangement quickly succumbs to turmoil. Why is that? Jim and Darryl couldn’t be more different.
Jim is the messy one, but Darryl is the clean one. Jim uses old t-shirts for wash rags. Darryl, on the other hand, labels his things. The strain becomes unbearable when Jim carelessly uses Darryl’s favorite coffee thermos without asking. Fortunately for the viewers, within 25 minutes Jim and Darryl work things out and find a way to live together peaceable. This is a scene we all wish would play out in our own world. Will there ever be a world where people with different skin colors, backgrounds, and personalities live in peace? God’s word promises that there will be.
The prophet Isaiah announces that a day of peace and unity will come. He writes, “He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not life up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4). In Ephesians 1 Paul adds clarity to the prophetic vision.
God’s plan is a unified cosmos. Ephesians 1:9-10 says, “…making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in heaven and on earth.” In Christ and through his death and resurrection God is uniting heaven and earth. All that separates God from his people and his people from one another has been done away with in Christ. That means that the church is the embodied expression of the united world to come.
The church displays God’s wise and glorious plan (Eph. 3:10, 21). Through Christ the church is God’s dwelling place by the Spirit (Eph. 2:19-21), and is one new humanity, family, and citizenry that transcends ethnicity, gender, social status, and backgrounds. So yes, there is a world where people, transformed by the gospel, with incalculable differences live peaceably. Imperfectly for now, but then one day all will finally and forever perfectly united to Christ in unending peace and joy. Until then, we can begin to enjoy that future world in the local church where Jims and Darryls peaceably live together in Jesus’s name.
