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What if the deepest divides in our world aren’t primarily political or cultural, but spiritual—and what if they’ve already been defeated? That was the starting point for Pastor Mark Medley as he continued our In Christ series with a message called Built Together, walking us through Ephesians 2:13–22. Mark didn’t soft-pedal how fractured life can feel. He began with the ache: humanity moved from friendship with God to alienation, from harmony with one another to hostility. Sin separated us vertically and horizontally. We were spiritually dead—unable to respond to God as we should—on our way to physical death, and, if nothing changed, headed toward eternal separation. But then Paul pivots with two words, “but now,” and everything changes. “But now in Christ Jesus,” the far have been brought near by his blood. The gospel doesn’t just explain hate; it ends it.

Mark helped us hear those words in the concrete world of the first-century church. Jews and Gentiles didn’t just disagree; they despised and feared each other. A literal stone barrier stood in the Jerusalem temple, blocking Gentiles from entering on pain of death. Beyond stone, there were stony hearts reinforced by laws, customs, and pride. Jews called Gentiles “uncircumcision,” and some rabbis taught they were unclean by design. Gentiles, for their part, could look down on Jews as backward or strange. All of it hardened into habit. Into that world, Paul declares that Jesus “himself is our peace,” that he “has made us both one” and “broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.” The cross fulfilled God’s law—so that it is no longer a badge of superiority—and then removed it as a boundary that kept people apart. Jesus didn’t just negotiate a truce. He created “one new humanity” in himself, reconciling both to God in one body through the cross and, as Paul says, “killing the hostility.”

Mark lingered on that word killing. To kill hostility means the war is over at the deepest level. The dividing wall was torn down not by human legislation or by cultural pressure, but “in his flesh”—through Jesus’ own broken body. That’s why communion becomes more than a ritual. At the table we see our common union through a broken body and shed blood, the ground level and no one standing taller than grace. Mark put it simply: by his blood we are brought near to God; by his body we are made one with each other. Every time we come to the table, we see we’re all in the same boat—needing salvation, receiving grace.

Then he widened the lens to our moment. Prejudice survives, he said, not only in overt slurs, but in quieter habits and curated feeds that reward outrage. We pre-judge before we know. We rank people by race, tribe, status, education, political party, even church style. We tell ourselves we’re just discerning, when often we’re indulging contempt. Scripture is blunt: God looks at the heart while we fixate on appearances. This isn’t just a matter of adjusting a few preferences; it calls for new life. You must be born again. The Spirit searches and convicts—not to shame, but to free—because if our minds are shaped more by algorithms than by the gospel, we will mirror our tribe and miss our King.

To help us see the positive vision, Mark took us back to Paul’s imagery. The church isn’t a club or a brand; it’s a temple made of people, not stone. With Christ Jesus as the cornerstone and the apostles and prophets as the foundation, we are being joined together, growing into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. That image gives both dignity and direction. Every believer, from every nation and background, belongs. And growth requires alignment. Living stones take their shape from the cornerstone. Unity, Mark said, isn’t sameness and it isn’t fragile niceness either. It’s a miracle secured at Calvary and stewarded with repentance, humility, and love.

He also reminded us how timely Paul’s words were. Within a decade of writing Ephesians, the Jerusalem temple would be rubble, destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70. The stone walls came down. God was already teaching his people to move their reference point from a physical building to a living one—the household of God made up of Jews and Gentiles together. Peter uses the same language: living stones being built into a spiritual house. This building is organic; it grows. Jesus said, “I will build my church,” and he has been doing that for two thousand years with material more diverse than any architect could imagine—people from every nation, tribe, and tongue.

If that’s what we are In Christ, why do modern termites still chew at the foundation? Mark named them without flinching: racism, nationalism, elitism, contempt. Prejudice is a pre-judgment—a verdict rendered before we truly know—and it’s powered by pride. The line between good and evil, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, runs not between classes or parties, but straight through every human heart. That’s why simply changing laws, or seizing the levers of cultural power, can’t cure us. Our hearts must be made new. When we cling to superiority, whether personal or tribal, we rebuild the walls Jesus already destroyed. Either we don’t understand his work, or we are turning our backs on it.

Mark asked us to let the Spirit do business with us. Who am I better than? What group do I dismiss because I’m convinced they look down on me? Where have I inherited ways of thinking that sound savvy, even righteous, but cut against the heart of Christ? It’s easy to drift with the current of our culture—harder to let the gospel put us in a different stream. He talked about how quickly we sort people the moment they walk into a room, and how far that is from the mind of Christ. The judgments of the Lord are righteous; our snap judgments usually aren’t.

The way forward begins with remembering. Paul has already told us earlier in Ephesians that we were dead in sin but God made us alive; we were without hope and without God, but now have both. Mark said that remembering softens our judgments and stirs gratitude and humility. When you know you have been brought near by sheer mercy, you don’t need to stand taller than grace. From there, we clear the ground. We ask the Spirit to dig up roots of prejudice, old narratives that excuse our contempt, victim mentalities that make us stingy with love. We level the site by embracing the cross as our equality. No one stands on higher ground at Calvary. Then we set our reference points by Jesus’ self-giving love, checking our alignment not by partisan talking points or subcultural tastes, but by the cornerstone himself.

Mark pressed on how practical this gets. Tune your inputs away from constant outrage. If your media diet inflames contempt, starve it. Sit at diverse tables—communion tables and dinner tables—and listen long enough to love. Refuse the lazy certainty of echo chambers. Honor the image of God in opponents. Speak peace where your world trades in poison. And gather as the church not to display our perfection, but to display the Savior who kills hostility. He shared a story from years ago at a men’s breakfast—blacks and whites, Germans and Jews, upper and lower class, older and younger—eating and laughing together. In that living room he could feel how big the kingdom of God is and how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. It was a small, real picture of Revelation’s promise: a multitude no one can number, from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue, standing before the Lamb and crying out, “Salvation belongs to our God.”

None of this means the differences among us vanish. Unity isn’t sameness. Cultures, histories, and personalities remain, but they are reframed by a deeper citizenship. Paul says we are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household. The kingdom of God overrules our earthly categories and corrects our bent loyalties. When we cling to contempt, we are siding with the old world that’s passing away. When we walk in love, we are living like citizens of the new world already begun in Christ.

Mark was clear that this is a holy issue. God has made of one blood every nation. He shed his own blood to bring us near and to make us one. We cannot nurse prejudices and call them wisdom. We cannot give hatred a respectable home in our hearts. There is a righteous fear of the Lord here: will we stand before him still clinging to the very walls his Son died to tear down? The good news is that Jesus has done the decisive work. He himself is our peace. He has killed the hostility. The call is to live in step with what he has already done—repenting quickly, humbling ourselves often, and keeping our eyes on the cornerstone.

If you’ve felt your love grow cold, Mark suggested, perhaps you have forgotten who Jesus is and what he has done. There’s a simple way to remember that turns into a simple way to witness: “At one time I was far, but now in Christ I am near. At one time I was estranged, but now I’m reconciled. At one time I was without hope, but now I have hope.” That’s not spin; it’s your story if you belong to him. And that story is never just vertical. To be reconciled to God is to be reconciled to his people. Christ’s shed blood brings us home to the Father; his broken body makes us one family. This is why Jesus can build a church out of people who would never have chosen each other and turn them into living stones that fit together. It’s why he can take neighbors who used to trade contempt and make them servants who trade peace. It’s why unity is not a slogan we paste over our divisions but a miracle we steward with repentance, humility, and hope.

Built Together is more than the title of a message; it’s the truth of who we are In Christ. We are being joined, adjusted, aligned, and grown into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. The cornerstone is set. The foundation is secure. The walls that mattered have been torn down. So we clear the ground in our hearts, we level the site at the cross, and we keep measuring by Jesus’ self-giving love. And as we do, the church rises—not a Lego monument to our ingenuity, but a living temple where God lives and a watching world can see his peace.