He has one bride, and her unity is so important that, as Paul stipulates in Ephesians 2:14, it was among the intended aims of Jesus’s atoning death: “he . . . has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.” In context, Paul is speaking of the union of Jews and Gentiles, but his point is certainly relevant to all expressions of unity in the body of Christ, including among various estranged Gentile groups. Note the words in his flesh. It was at the cost of Jesus’s death that we were reconciled to God and, in the same movement, reconciled with those
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