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Pastor Tyler Lynde continued our In Christ series with a message he called One on Purpose, urging us to move from identity to intentionality. If Ephesians 1–3 ground us in who we are in Christ, Ephesians 4 turns the corner to how we walk because of that identity. Tyler read Paul’s words like a pastoral charge: walk in a manner worthy of your calling—with humility, gentleness, patience, and enduring love—eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. That phrase—eager to maintain—rang out all morning. Unity is not something we invent or engineer; it is a grace gift God has already given by the Spirit. Our job is to guard it, cultivate it, and refuse to let lesser things outrank what matters forever.

Tyler named the ache we all feel: division is easy and outrage is cheap. It doesn’t take effort to get sideways with each other. The currents of our moment pull us toward tribes, caricatures, and contempt. Families split holiday tables over votes. Churches split over carpet colors. Personalities clash; opinions harden into ultimatums. And behind it all is a spiritual enemy happy to stall the spread of the gospel by splintering the church. He cannot dethrone God, so he tries to derail God’s people. Tyler pressed us to lift our eyes, trade our own scales for God’s, and agree together that Christians should refuse to be divided over what won’t matter in the long run, and instead choose to be united around what truly matters for eternity.

From there he took us into Psalm 133, where unity is called “good and pleasant,” where it’s likened to the consecrating oil on Aaron and the life-giving dew on Zion. Remarkably, it’s one of the few places Scripture says God commands a blessing. Unity, then, is not sentimental niceness; it’s sacred ground. But how do we actually maintain it? Tyler followed Paul’s path in Ephesians 4 and sketched a biblical peace pattern that makes unity possible in real life: peace with God through the gospel, the peace of God that holds us in the storm, and the Spirit’s fruit of peace that refashions our reflexes in community.

First is peace with God. Tyler refused to soften the edges here. We were born in sin and we’ve all chosen sin; what we earned was judgment, not entitlement. But God sent his Son—the true Prince of Peace—who lived the life we could not, bore our sin on the cross we deserved, finished the work, rose again, and now reconciles enemies into family. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” To receive that peace, Tyler said, means acknowledging our need, turning from sin, believing on Jesus, and then actually living a transformed life by grace. A prayer without a changed life misses the point. This isn’t about perfection overnight, but about the Spirit’s ongoing work of sanctification—the kind that surfaces what needs confessing and reshapes heart, habit, and hope. And without peace with God first, he reminded us, there is no other peace to be found.

Second is the peace of God. This is the non-circumstantial calm that “surpasses understanding” and guards hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. It isn’t pegged to headlines, bank accounts, or medical charts. Tyler shared the moment he lay in a hospital room years ago, clouded and weak, listening to worship from our gathering. The presence of God filled the room. Nurses stepped in one by one, drawn by a peace they couldn’t explain. Prayers were rising across the world, and the God of peace was guarding him. That is what Jesus gives his people: a steadying presence that holds when life breaks.

Then comes the fruit of peace. The Spirit plants this in us and it grows into new reflexes—quieter tones in hard meetings, wiser words in tense disagreements, a readiness to forgive, a patient way of staying at the table when it would be easier to walk out. Imagine, Tyler said, the volume shift in our homes if we all chose peace. Imagine car rides to church. Imagine the credibility of a Christian community that corrects without contempt, listens without labeling, and declines to outsource convictions to party lines and pundits. Scripture calls us to live peaceably with all, as far as it depends on us. We cannot control another’s choices, but by grace we can control how we speak, react, and repair.

Tyler was clear that unity does not mean blind agreement on everything. Christian unity is the practiced priority of love while we pursue truth together. And to keep unity substantive rather than sentimental, Paul anchors it in seven essentials—a shared center we rally around even while we practice wise freedom on secondary questions. There is one body. God has made a single, visible family out of reconciled Jews and Gentiles, a “new man” in Christ. That unity is bigger than a building or brand; it’s the global church gathered under the gospel. Tyler had just returned from Puerto Rico and brought their greetings, a living reminder that language and culture vary, but the body is one.

There is one Spirit. The same Holy Spirit indwells every true believer, graciously ministering to and through us. Debates about the Spirit’s gifts and timings abound, but beneath them is an unbreakable reality: there is one Spirit uniting one people in one Christ. There is one hope. Our hope is not a timeline but a Person. The same Jesus who ascended will appear in glory and make all things new. Christians have long debated charts and calendars, but the church can joyfully agree here: he will come again, and that blessed hope steadies our steps now.

There is one Lord. We didn’t make Jesus Lord; God did. He is the way, the truth, and the life, the sole head of his church, worthy of undying allegiance in a world that invents new gods every minute. There is one faith. We are saved by grace through faith, a personal entrusting of ourselves to the crucified and risen Son. This is the faith that looks to Christ alone for salvation and then learns to say with Paul, “I know whom I have believed.”

There is one baptism. Tyler helped us keep eternal things eternal. The Spirit baptizes us into the one body of Christ—that’s the reality that lasts forever. Water baptism, which we love to celebrate, bears witness on earth to that heavenly truth, and the Spirit fills and gifts the church for her work. But when we see Jesus, methods and moments will fade before the magnitude of belonging to him. And there is one God and Father of all. He is over all—the sovereign King. He is through all—working his purposes, even through us. He is in all—indwelling his people by the Spirit. In a world of fractured paternities and imperfect dads, we rest under the care of a perfect Father who binds a diverse family together in himself.

Around these seven pillars we practice the ancient wisdom Tyler quoted and commended to us: in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity. Liberty doesn’t mean we stop caring about important discussions—it means we give each other room to wrestle with end-times timelines, spiritual gifts, or ministry methods without confusing methods for the message or preferences for principles. Charity means we refuse contempt even when we correct. It means we tell the truth seasoned with grace, de-escalate by choice, take concerns to people instead of about them, and keep a seat open for brothers and sisters when differences remain. It means we elevate our baptism into Christ’s body above our micro-tribes and ask how our gifts can build, not brand.

Tyler kept bringing us back to the cross. The Spirit unites us there, where all boasting ends and all ground is level. There we remember our shared rescue and recover the eagerness to maintain the unity we’ve received. That eagerness is not passive optimism; it’s disciplined, Spirit-led action. It confesses quickly, forgives fully, refuses caricatures, and resists the easy outrage that sells so well in our age. It asks in moments of friction, Is this eternal or preferential? It lets essentials carry the weight and refuses to treat every difference as a dividing line. It chooses stubborn love.

The outcome, Tyler reminded us, is missional. Jesus prayed in John 17 that our oneness would make the world believe the Father sent the Son. Unity amplifies the gospel’s credibility; division distorts it. A church that keeps the main things main will still feel tension, but it will not fracture under it. Instead, it will model a redeemed imagination: holiness and kindness as friends, conviction and compassion sharing a yoke, peace not as the absence of problems but as the presence of God among a people anchored to one hope that will not disappoint.

So the call was both simple and strong. Let’s refuse to be cheap with division and brave with unity. Let’s let humility, gentleness, patience, and enduring love lead the way. Let’s receive again the peace with God Christ secured, lean into the peace of God that guards us, and ask the Spirit to grow the fruit of peace in our words, homes, and relationships. And let’s fix our lives to those seven shared foundations—one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all—so that we might be one on purpose, for the sake of the gospel and the joy of the world God loves. As Tyler prayed Jesus’ own words over us, it was clear what we’re after: that our oneness would tell the truth about him. May God grant it, and may he command his blessing there.