Thank you for helping to support Peace Devotions through your prayers, likes, and shares.
If you’d like to support our ministry financially, you can donate here.
Sin Divides Us
There's a lot of ways in life that we divide ourselves or separate ourselves into different groups.
John 17:21
There’s a lot of ways in life that we divide ourselves or separate ourselves into different groups. Maybe it’s based on location. Are you a midwesterner or are you a Southerner? Maybe it’s based on which sports team you like best, or maybe most prevalent, as we go into later this summer and into this fall. Which political party you support?
This division, this separation, when we look at it from a biblical perspective, we understand that separation has its root in sin. Sin is what divides people, divides us from God and us from one another. It divided brothers throughout history and Scripture. You see that it divides Cain and Abel. That had divided Joseph and his brothers, that it created separation between Jacob and Esau. We know it’s that same sin that divides us from one another, that creates that separation and division between family members and friends and neighbors.
Jesus knew that this was the case, and before he goes to the cross, he goes into the upper room and he prays what we call this high priestly prayer. And in that prayer, he prays for unity. He prays for oneness for us as his people. He prays that
May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. (John 17:21 EHV)
We look to Jesus, we look to our Trinity, the one true God, and we see there a perfect picture of unity, of oneness. The Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit are perfectly united in substance and also in purpose. The Trinity is working as Jesus is carrying out his earthly ministry for one reason, to make it so that God and man are one, are united, once again. So that sin that divides us could be defeated. Jesus is the only one who can make this happen. And so he leaves the safety of that upper room and marches to the cross as he is suffering for sins that are not his, but ours, as he is enduring hell in our place. The temple curtain tears in two, and that’s huge.
That curtain in the temple was a sign of division, a sign of separation. The fact that God’s people could not be in the presence of their God. But now that separation is gone, sin has been paid for, it has been overcome, and that separation has been healed. Man is reconciled with God. That victory that Jesus won is made yours through baptism. When you’re baptized, when faith is created in your heart, the oneness that Jesus prays for here is created. We are united with our God. In all the ways that we divide ourselves and separate ourselves into different groups, remember the oneness that is created. If you are in Christ and your brother is in Christ, then you are united with one another. Defying all that separation Jesus creates this oneness with each other and with him. So let’s celebrate that oneness, that oneness that is created and sustained through the purity, the truth of God’s saving word, the sacrifice of our loving Savior. Amen.
