One Faith, One People

The seven "ones" Paul lists in Ephesians 4 — one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all — are not goals to reach. They are declarations. What God has already established, we keep trying to tear apart — building walls inside something He declared whole, making our opinions carry the weight of the gospel itself. Like Raccoon John Smith, the frontier preacher who arrived at his convictions about unity through genuine loss, we have to learn what actually holds: one faith, not one opinion. If the oneness is already given and not built, the only question left is whether we'll live like it.